La Dissection

In my biology lab the other day, we dissected cow eyes, and I got really into it. It was much more interesting than when we did the sheep eyes. I guess it just depends on your mood. Here is a photo-by-photo account of what I did. (The descriptions go below the photos).

Here you can see the retina just covering the bluish tapetum lucidium, which is what you see when your cat looks at you in the dark, and her eyes are glowing. It helps them see in the dark.

The jelly like thing is the vitreous humor, which is the "eye juice" and what keeps the volume of the eye. You can see the big creamy lens under the humor, and the black ciliary body surrounding it.

Here, the vitreous humor, or jelly-like stuff, is removed, more or less. The retina is pulled back to reveal the tapetum lucidium, or choroid coat.

The lens is removed here to reveal the full ciliary body and pupil. The ciliary body relaxes and contracts to change the shape of the lens to focus the image on the retina. To me, it kind of looks like the gills under a mushroom :)

Here, I just removed the cornea, and am holding it back with forceps to reveal the pupil underneath. Between the cornea and the protective membranes of the iris and pupil, the aqueous humor is contained.

Here is the ciliary body will the lens and most of the surrounding humor removed. I just stuck this in because it's my favorite, and wanted to show it in detail.

Here I am pulling the choroid layer back from the sclera to see the differences between the sheets of tissue. The white fluffy looking stuff on the outside of the eye is excess fat and fascia that I didn't have time to remove completely from the sclera.