A Crustacean Dissection

The Lambies got their hands dirty today. Several are studying crustaceans in Apologia, so yesterday we bought a cooked crawdad at the grocery store.



Today they dis-assembled it.



They removed his compound eyes and their stalks, the antennae and antennules, the chelipeds, the swimmerettes, the walking legs, the tailfan and other body parts. They prepared slides and observed some of those parts under the microscope.



Here's a pic of after the removal, before they took off the carapace and examined the innards.

So much fun and learning for 14 cents! Some of the braver Lambies even tasted the tail meat. Polly took apart one of the chelipeds and picked out that meat. Most thought it agreeable enough. One of these days we'll have to go mudbuggin' in the mountains.