Lab Project #3

Chicken Leg Dissection

Introduction:  In this project, I will dissect a chicken leg that is attached to the thighbone. The purpose of this lab is to understand the functions of connective tissue, fat, muscle, tendons, leg joints and marrow and to see how they all work together. Dissecting the chicken leg and seeing how the joints are manipulated are essential elements to us being able to move.

 Procedure:  I began by first washing the chicken leg with water and patting it dry. Using a sharp knife, I peeled away the skin from the muscle paying close attention to the connective tissue underneath the skin. I then took my knife and removed a single muscle by cutting the tendons and peeling the muscle away from the bone. I removed all remaining muscle revealing the bone of the leg. I was then able to operate the leg joint to see what type of movement was being displayed. I then found the ligaments that connect the bone to bone and cut at the joint between the upper and lower leg. This showed me how the leg bone fit into the thighbone. When dealing with chicken remember to wash your hands and your area to avoid Salmonella.

Results:

My chicken leg attached to the thighbone before dissecting.

I separated the skin from the chicken leg and thigh and placed it on top.

I took a picture of the skin so you could see the outside of the skin tissue. As I pulled the skin away from the muscle, I observed the loose connective tissue. The connective tissue was white until stretched to its max where it took on a clear appearance. The tissue was thin, but durable. When I was removing the skin at certain places near the edge of the thigh, the connective tissue resisted being separated.

In this picture of the skin, you can see the yellowish clumps of fat tissue. The fat is loose and thick. Looking closely at it, I can see tiny holes. I would say that it was porous and very flexible. The fat took on a yellowish tint.

Fat is necessary to store energy in the form of lipids, it cushions and insulates the body.

The Biology term for the type of cells that stores fat is called Adipose tissue.

A picture of Muscle Tissue

Here is a good picture of the muscle tissue that is surrounding the bones.

There are three types of muscle tissue: Skeletal muscle, Cardiac muscle and Smooth muscle.

The muscle type in this picture is a skeletal muscle. If you look closely at the muscle tissue you will see white, thin, straight, long, numerous parallel lines that run across the muscle. The skeletal muscles allow the bones to move.

This is not a cardiac muscle because cardiac muscles are only found in the heart. Nor is this a smooth muscle because smooth muscles do not contain straight lines they are spindle-shaped.

A picture of a Tendon

The tendon is the shiny, white tissue at the end of the muscle. Tendons connect the muscle to the bone.

This is a picture showing you how the chicken leg is connected to the thighbone. You can see this at the very top of the picture.

In this picture, I removed all the muscle from the leg bone so that I could see how the leg joint moved in relation to the thighbone. There are many different types of movement, but abduction (movement of a limb away from a body’s mid line) and adduction (movement of a limb toward the body’s mid line) apply to this project. When I moved the chicken leg, it moved toward the body’s mid line. I believe that adduction is the type of movement.

Chicken leg bone

Ligaments connect bone to bone. I found the ligaments that connected the chicken leg and chicken thigh and cut at the joint between the upper and lower leg. The chicken leg bone fits into a pocket where the thighbone ends, allowing the leg bone to move like a ball and socket joint.

The ends of the bone are smooth, firm, solid and remind me of looking at a valley. The ends of the bone are higher than the middle; it dips. The tissue at the end of the bones is called fibrous tissue and the joint is a Synovial joint.

Inside of the bone is bone marrow. Bone marrow produces platelets, white blood cells, red blood cells, T cells and B cells.

Conclusion: This experiment demonstrated how many elements come together to allow the body to function properly. For instance, I learned what connective tissue looks like and that it holds the skin to the muscle. This lab project discussed that there are three different types of muscles and how to differentiate between them. How to identify fat and understanding its uses, that tendons attach muscle to bone, observing how skeletal muscles aid in different types of movement, that ligaments attach bone to bone, there are different kinds of joints and how they hold bones together and allow for movement and bone marrow inside of the bones synthesizes many different types of cells. This experiment has deepened my understanding of how the skeletal system works. There are many elements that make up the body, that have multiple functions and that are necessary for other parts for operation. Such as tendons, connect the muscle to the bone or how tight two bones are wedged into a joint, which results in greater or smaller amounts of range of motion.