Fish Lab Results

Question: What features of a perch identify it as a bony fish?
Research: All fishes belong to the phylum Chordata. Fishes are divided into three classes: jawless, cartilaginous, and bony fishes. The perch is an example of a bony fish. It is a ray-finned fish with a streamlined body and spiny fins to help it swim.
Hypothesis: If I dissect the perch according to the procedures, then I will be able to tell why it is identified as a bony fish.
Experiment:
Place the perch into a dissecting pan as shown. Locate the head, trunk and tail.
Examine the perches head. Locate the eyes, mouth and teeth.
Locate the gill cover, or operculum. Lift the operculum and examine the gills.
Examine the fins on the perch. Identify the pectoral, dorsal, pelvic, anal, …show more content…
Observations: The perch was laid in the pan. It was a grayish color with many interlocking scales all over its body. Its symmetry was bilateral, as it looked the same on either side. The surface was rough and a bit sharp, while also feeling cold and slippery. Its two eyes, one on either side of its head, looked filmy and had light circle inside of a dark ring. The eyes had no eyelids. Behind the eyes were two gill flaps, or opercula. Their purpose was to protect the gills. Peeling back the operculum revealed the gills. These gills had three distinct layers, which were feathery when peeled back. The fish had many fins in various places across its body. The anterior and posterior dorsal fins were along the top of the fish. When these fins were spread apart with the probe, their bones were very sharp. The tail of the fish was formed by the caudal fin, while the pectoral fins were in the center of the body behind the eyes. The pelvic and anal fins were located on the body of the fish.
The lateral line was across the top of the fish, below the dorsal fins. When looked at with the hand lens it appeared thin and brownish. To look at the internal anatomy, a cut was started along the lateral line with the scissors. The scissors cut the perch along the length of its body and back up until the skin could be peeled back with the tweezers. Some difficulty was found opening up the fish. The layer of muscle was not cut deeply enough and revealed a layer of orange muscle. While cutting …show more content…
Reflection
This lab was somewhat interesting to me, but there were a few parts that made it more difficult than enriching. The hands-on learning was a great way to better understand concepts we had talked about in class. After all, it was at least a break from taking notes and doing tests on paper. I feel that I can better understand some things after having seen them for myself. However, there were some parts about this lab that were either very difficult or irritating, and that made it a bit harder than I thought it might be.
One of the most difficult parts of the lab was how crowded the table was with three people working together. We managed to take turns with the tools and writing in the packets, but we were often reaching over each other or bumping into people from the next table. With so many other students it was very noisy and hard to focus. The hardest part was trying to cut through the thick skin and muscle of the fish’s body. We had no idea how deep to cut and if what we were cutting was muscle or just skin. The small scissors dug into our skin and even when sharp did not cut so easily. Our hands and the tray were covered in slimy water before long. The smell only got worse as we went on, but we learned to deal with it. Once we had taken off the skin and muscle of the fish, many of the organs we saw were decomposed, looking slightly mashed and slurried. We could identify them after much deliberation, but there was not enough time left to get an entirely

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