Chicken Dissection

In this dissection, we examined a whole chicken carcass, to observe the mechanics and placement of various muscles. We started by skinning the chicken and cut through the breasts to view the pectoralis majors and minor. In comparison to humans, the chickens had much bigger pectoralis majors because of their genetic engineering that makes them prime for consumption. These muscles pull the chicken's wings up and down . There were also shiny white tissues at the ends of these muscles, which were tendons, and connect the muscle to the bone. After that we dissected the wings which consisted of many muscles and had a surprising amount of yellow tissue, or fat. We saw some similarity between the chickens anatomy and human anatomy here, for example: the deltoid muscle on both humans and chickens is on the top center of the shoulder and helps raise the arm in humans and the wing of a bird. We then located the flexor carpi ulnaris and the brachioradialis, which are the largest muscles on the birds lower wings. These muscles control movement of the thumb and hand. Finally we moved to the legs and thighs of the chicken. The thighs were very large compared to humans and had lots of muscle tissue. We identified the gluts, quads, and other muscles like the gastrocnemius, which is the primary of the dorsal side of the "drumstick". this muscle attaches to the Achilles tendon than wraps around the foot and helps extend the foot and flex the leg. Throughout the lab we were identifying each and every muscle assigned and pinning them with label as you can see in my photos. We then cleaned up and took notes of our findings which I've transferred onto this post!