The Unusual Soft Anatomy of Snakes - Reptilenesia

This year I had the opportunity to help my friend Lori Neuman-Lee dissect a number of Wandering Gartersnakes (Thamnophis elegans) for her research on the effect of toxic chemicals on reptile physiology. During my Master's, I had the opportunity to help teach a Comparative Anatomy course, during which I learned a great deal about the internal anatomy of vertebrates. However, dissecting an animal for research requires greater accuracy and precision than dissecting for teaching, and we decided to read up on snake anatomy before we got started. 

Because we found few resources to aid us in our work, we video-taped one of the dissections to help future would-be snake anatomists locate and identify snake organs, several of which can be a little tricky. Check out the video below and learn to dissect a snake! Lori is doing the dissection in the video, and like many things, she makes it look easy. I would recommend some pretty intense practice first if you want to become as accomplished as she is. Salvaged, all-too-common road-killed specimens often make for ideal practice if you don't mind bits of them being smashed, and they sometimes have interesting things in their stomachs.