School Essays

Essay 6: Biology(Chicken heart report)

Biology Chicken heart report

Hello, my name is Anthony Delgado. This lab report is about the Chicken-heart dissection practical.    

For this practical, we had to dissect a chicken heart. In this lab report, i am going to research how and why the chicken heart is different from the human heart.

I think the chicken heart will be in some ways very different from the human heart, yet in some ways very similar. I think the parts the human hearts has, can also be found in the chicken heart. It could be that the chicken hearts has more or less parts than the human hearts has.

Material and Methods

To do this practical, you need:

A chicken heart. You are going to investigate the insides of it.

A scalpel. Be careful, it isn’t as clean as the one in the hospital. If you cut yourself, you may very   well get an infection.

A dissecting board. It’s on this board that you are going to cut the heart open.

A probe. This is for finding the chambers of the hearts while it’s still whole, and as a guiding line when cutting the heart open.

A pen or pencil.

A notebook to write and draw your findings on.

First, find the top of the Chicken heart. It’s the side with two holes. The big hole is the left atrium, which flows into the left ventricle, all the way to the bottom of the heart. 

Make a drawing of the heart when it’s whole, or take a photo with your cellphone.

With your probe, find the apex, which is the bottom of the heart. 

Now, using the probe as a guiding stick, place the heart in the cutting board, and using the scalpel, cut the heart in half. You can see the four chambers of the heart, as well as some veins.

Make a drawing or take a photo of the heart when it’s cut open, so you can see the chambers and the veins.

Now that you have a drawing or photo of the chicken heart when it’s cut in half, you have to label it.

Results

This is my result from observing the inside of the chicken heart.

I took pictures of the heart, and according to those pictures, and pictures i found on the internet, made a sketch of a chicken heart, which i have labeled. It was very hard to make a good sketch.

(See link, the picture file is named heart_diagram_labeled_T: https://sites.google.com/a/wolfert.nl/darkdoesminecraft/photos)

Conclusion

In general, the experiment went pretty good. I had some difficulties with how to cut the heart at first, but it turned out alright. I still have some questions to answer.

What is the difference between the left and the right side of the heart, and why is it there?

Each side of the heart has two parts, the atrium and ventricle. The atrium is where blood enters that side and the ventricle is where blood exits that side. 

The right side of the heart (or left if you were looking directly at someone, and staring at their chest) is the side of the heart where blood flows into from the rest of the body. Blood is then pumped from the right side of the heart to the lungs where it drops of CO2 and picks up oxygen. 

Once blood is oxygenated, it flows to the left side of the heart into the left atrium. The left ventricle then pumps blood to the rest of the body through the aortic artery(a huge artery).

Why does the heart have left and right pulmonary veins?

The pulmonary veins receive oxygenated blood from the lungs, and bring it the the left atrium. The reason there are left and right pulmonary veins, is because they bring oxygenated blood from the left and the right lung. The pulmonary veins are among the few veins that carry oxygenated blood.

Which side of the heart is less important before birth than after birth?

The left side of the heart is less important before birth, as every part of the heart makes blood flow through the body. It is more important after birth, because it then makes blood flow through the body on it’s own. So after birth, it is way stronger than the right side, while before birth, they are equally strong.

What would happen if there was a hole between the left and the right atria?

If there was a hole between the two atria, it could allow blood to pass from the left side of the heart to the right side. This means that oxygen-rich blood can mix with oxygen-poor blood, causing the oxygen-rich blood to be pumped to the lungs a second time. 

Look up a type of animal that has a different type of circulation and explain how it works.

Fish have a single circulatory system. While in humans, the blood goes from the heart, to the lungs, back to the heart, and then to the rest of the body, in fish, it goes only to the body, as fish don’t have lungs. In most fish, the heart consists of four parts, an entrance, an atrium, an ventricle, and a exit. A sac called the Sinus venous collects blood from the fish’s veins, before allowing it to flow to the atria. It then flows into the ventricle, before going to the rest of the body.

Discussion

In general, the experiment went well. I did have some trouble cutting the heart, but it turned out alright. I took a lot of pictures during the experiment, which helped when making a sketch of the heart. It still was very difficult making the sketch, but after a few tries, i made one which was acceptable. In the conclusion, i had to answer some questions. Some were very easy to answer, but some were very difficult.