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Harrison, a pathologist in San Diego, said that simulated dissection is rapidly replacing animals in medical and veterinary colleges. Over the past few decades, more animal rights groups, educators, veterinarians and doctors have been questioning the value of using animals.

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Students can trace incision lines with a computer mouse, snip through skin with a virtual blade and remove and restore organs with a click.

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Some software even generates sound effects for slicing flesh (“slish”) or pinning down skin flaps (“shwoosh.”)Ī study conducted at George Mason University in Virginia found that the newly updated Digital Frog 2.5 taught students more effectively and in less time than traditional animal dissection. “This is more humane, more effective, environmentally friendly, cost-effective and does not teach students to rationalize the unjustified killing of animals,” she said of Digital Frog.Ĭomputer-based alternatives to dissection emerged in the 1980s, but modern software is a cut above, often supplemented with high-powered zoom functions, creative clicking, animations, quizzes, and video clips with information about frog behavior, ecology and environmental issues to teach anatomy. “You can understand and get a feel for dissection without touching a specimen.”Ĭathy Liss, president of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Animal Welfare Institute, commended Rancho Verde for ending its dissection program in favor of online alternatives.

“It’s pretty good,” said Stipp of the software he’s tried at science conventions, which comes in CD and disk form. The software program will also eliminate the problem of 1,225 biology students jockeying to use the limited number of dissection kits.Ĭritics of online dissections claim they can’t compare to holding an animal organ in your hand, but supporters say computer simulations are safer than messing with animals preserved with formaldehyde, allow more student involvement, are more ethical and humane and eliminate the “Ick, I don’t want to touch it” factor.

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Thirty frog dissection kits, which serve 300 biology students for five years, cost $6,800.Ī license for Digital Frog 2.5, which the school will receive at no cost, is priced at $884. Saving money is the primary reason to dump the preserved specimens, Stipp said.

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Schools currently pay $300 or more for an annual software license, though many virtual programs are free and some organizations will loan them out without charge. The mission is not to promote this one software, but to encourage schools to embrace any of the scores of online alternatives available, Kriger said. Rancho Verde, part of the Val Verde Unified School District, quickly jumped on the online challenge this past April. “It seems wrong, cutting into something.” With plans to become a medical researcher, she’s excited about the prospect of making kinder, gentler cuts with a virtual blade than with a real scalpel. “The thought of dissection makes me feel kind of queasy,” said Alice Nguyen, 15, a freshman at Rancho Verde High. Raising or nabbing frogs to cut up in classroom contributes to their rapidly dwindling populations worldwide. They say that millions of frogs are removed from wetland habitats, stuffed into sacks and inhumanely killed by immersion in preservatives.

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They will donate full Digital Frog 2.5 licenses to the first 25 schools that agree to end all animal dissections, which many educators still value as important anatomy and physiology lessons.Īnimal rights activists oppose the capture, transport, warehousing and killing of animals destined for dissection, claiming it causes unnecessary suffering and death. Two nonprofit groups, Animal Welfare Institute and Save the Frogs!, are sponsoring the “Race to Stop Dissections” contest. Today 14 states - including California - protect a student’s choice to learn about animal anatomy without a pickled critter, knife, chemicals and churning stomach. The growing number of technological alternatives today is making it possible for thousands of students to swap their scalpels and scissors for the click of a computer mouse. Without the actual touching, a computer dissection can’t be as realistic, he allowed, “but it’s not so drastically different that the kids won’t get something out of it.” “It’s arguably not the same as doing it with a real animal,” said Rancho Verde assistant principal Kevin Stipp, who taught science from 1986 to 2000. In exchange for the minimum five-year promise, the school will switch to virtual-dissection programs with free software worth almost $1,000 provided by a partnership of animal-friendly educators. Rancho Verde High School in Moreno Valley is the first and, so far, only school in the country to accept an animal rights group’s challenge to stop dissections, especially frogs.