Preliminary Fish Dissection
Head of the Fish, March 25-27, 2007, Species Unknown
I made some further photographs from the samples I got. But enough time had passed, they were beginning to go bad so I'll have to get more fresh samples from the fish market.
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This tongue was not cut or any known damage when I obtained it. I used a reasonably fresh fish head, and scissors to trim the jaws away from the rest of the head. The tongue was untouched. Noticeably, the tongue has a smooth transition, until reaching the back third of the tongue.
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Fig. 39Hollow Bones
Nearly all bones from all classes of vertebrate except fish are hollow when studied as decomposed or thoroughly cleaned specimens (and some fish bones are, too). In other words, animals had discovered that tubes are structurally much more efficient than solid rods long before engineers did! Bird bones are actually hollow (air filled) in the living animal, presumably for lightness, but air also circulates within their skeleton and may assist with respiration. Mammal bones, while 'hollow' in that the solid parts of limb bones are tubular, are usually filled with fatty or "white" marrow, which is different from the "red marrow" at the ends of the bones where blood cells are manufactured. The large quantity of fat within large mammal limb bones makes them very difficult to clean thoroughly. Some parts of mammal bones, such as the sinuses in the skull, are air filled.
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Enlarge image to full resolution 2816 x 2112 pixelsThere are nostrils, for detecting odours, on the snout, that part of the head before the eyes. Nostrils are blind sacs and do not connect with the mouth cavity.
Introduction - Fish Structure
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