Wiggles92;4947897; said:
Cool stuff, Solomon, but it kind of sucks that you spent most of your "spring" break with dead gars instead of living gars. I'm interested to see what you find out from these dissections.
I spy that classic Ichthyology shirt with the gar on it.
Speaking of which, I still have that spotted gar head from that dissection that we did in Ichthyology.
haha, yeah, i definitely LOVE that shirt! i was very excited when i found out it was the class shirt for that year (and i also have that newer version from this year's -your year's- class). back when i took the class the fish on the shirt was a buffalo! not nearly as cool, however, it was the first year of the Ohio Northern gar truck...i still aspire to own that vehicle some day (told Keiser this last time i was down there
).
as for dead gars and spring break...i spent plenty of time dealing with the dozen (live) Cubans, ~50 juvenile spotteds, and all the other gars back at The Tank...so plenty of live fishes too. i should note that i'm "deferring" my spring break to this coming Thurs-Monday - heading to Puerto Rico with the g/f...hmmm, we're not too far from Cuba...
xander;4947911; said:
haha looks like fun sol!! how do u stand the smell? can't wait for more pics & results!
funny you should mention the smell...gars are very likely the smelliest of freshwater fishes (and highly competitive in the SW class too...i just don't have as large a sample there). they smell quite strong when live, but when dead and thawed and cut open the bloody smell can be nearly overwhelming! just kind of suck it up (or not suck it up) and press onward. there are specific areas we have to carefully dissect to extract the appropriate structures, so it can be somewhat challenging and tedious work!
i'll post some examples of the structures and resulting ageing at some point in the near future. i did a demo of the otolith extraction for Ryan's ichthyology class this past fall (we went to the same undergrad, and i go back and help out in the summer field session).
busterbrown;4947926; said:
Sounds like a pretty class but it does suck you had to do it over spring break. Its better than organic chemistry though
haha, wasn't a class...it's part of my research (they do examples of this sort of extraction in one of the classes, but they use much easier fish, usually a freshwater drum. ...and it is better than organic chemistry...took my full year of those courses too back in the day!!!
--solomon
