Anatomy

| DEFINING COMPARATIVE ANATOMYThe title of this course might be more adequately be called "Comparative Vertebrate Functional Anatomy". Why emphasis on function? Integration of form and function is a fundamental necessity in studying an organism. We need to realize that anatomy of an animal is a certain way because an organism needs to function. The most successful structures are those that are going to be able to persist in the population; less successful structures will die out with their owners. Example - Activity of wing muscles of the bird and the bat. Dissection of these animals can give an idea of what the muscular and skeletal structures look like, but you still need to correspond the structures to what actually goes on during flight. What we will see this semester are variations on themes - all organisms must be able to perform certain functions to survive. They all must perform locomotion (or not, in the case of sessile organisms), respiration, circulation, excretion, digestion, and reproduction. The diversity of life that we see is a product of animals finding different ways of performing these functions. A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANATOMYAnatomy comes from the Greek word that means "to cut up" or "dissect" Much of the early work in anatomy was based mostly on descriptions of organ systems, muscle systems, and usually was conducted on domestic animals such as livestock and chickens. Aristotle - 4th century BC Made detailed observations of animal anatomy. For example, he described watching the heart of a chick develop from the liquid mass of an egg. Also established groupings of animals based on their structural form, which is now known as the field of taxonomyGalen - 2nd century AD • Greek physician known for his comparative study of animals • Carried out experiments to understand kidney function, movement of blood through arteries. • Book on Anatomical Preparations was accepted for nearly 1400 years as the Western World’s most authoritative reference on medical...