Earlier this week I was invited to watch Cris (the vet I work with at R3) do a necropsy on a baby fur seal that had died last week. She had arrived at the rehabilitation centre already pretty weak and was not eating very well during her stay. Shortly after arriving she had died; Cris thinks that it is likely because of pneumonia. I thought it would be a very interesting thing to watch and jumped on the opportunity to go. I asked Cris if Tracy would be welcome as well, because I knew she would be interested in it too, and Cris said "of course she is!" (I love her more and more each day!) So this morning Tracy and I meet up with Cris and two biology students at the biology section of campus to check out what the process is like.
For those who might be somewhat confused as to what a necropsy is, it's basically an autopsy but for non-human animals. First they started by skinning the fur seal - I was pretty surprised with how little this bothered me to watch; there were only a few times that I got grossed out. Once the pelt was removed they made sure that majority of the meat was removed to reduce the smell as it dries - I actually got to help with this part! I wasn't expecting to actually be allowed to get right in there but Cris is AWESOME and always promotes that I do things with her and not just watch as she does it. While a few of us were doing that Cris was taking little pieces of the kidney, the liver, the stomache, the heart, the lungs, and the large and small intestinges to send to Sao Paulo for biopsy reports. I was very surprised at the sizes of organs in relation to the others. The bladder and uterus were both really small; I wasn't too surprised to see that because she was just a young fur seal. But then once we saw the kidneys they seemed massive! Each kidney was about the size of two golf balls whereas the uterus was about one golf ball and the bladder was even smaller. The liver was also a lot bigger than I expected it to be; it was like a blanket wrapped almost completely around the whole stomache! Each lung wasn't much bigger than the kidneys were which was smaller than I thought they would be. It was all very interesting!
Once they had removed all the innards, the skeleton and what else was left was put into a green mesh bag that was sewn up at the top. This basically just keeps all the bones in the same sac while the body stays in this pool that allows the meat to break away. After about a month they will take the bones out and clean them off completely allowing them to reconstruct the skeleton. At this time the other biology student was mounting the pelt on a frame to let it dry properly.
The biology department has collected over 2000 skulls so far! I'm not sure how many are alongside of an intact skeleton but there is such a large mass of them that they don't have anywhere they can display them! They are trying to get the funding and enough people supporting them to build a proper museum for marine wildlife/biology. What they would like to be able to do is show all the bones they've collected, display the pelts, and to possibly have an area for penguins and/or other marine animals that can't be rehabilitated as well! They have everything they need minus the building :P I really hope that they can get this because it would be an amazing opportunity for all the biology students, as well as everyone else to learn from.
First part of the necropsy - Skinning
Removing the extra meat from the pelt to prepare it for drying
Mounting the pelt onto the canvas - Final step needed to dry!
The remaining skeleton in the mesh bag in preparation for the pool
The pool with other bags of bones - would not want to have to clean that
Baleen plate from a whale!! So cool - just look how big it is!
One of the many thousands of skulls they have... a Turtle!
wow. sounds like your really getting a great hands on experience! keep up the good work kaz.
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