The Urinary System

Part 1- Rat Dissection

Pre-lab

• Prepare the dissection tray and equipment.• Put on your gloves.• Retrieve your rat from the tray in your cabinet. • Remove the skin from around your rat and place

the skin back in the zip-lock bag.• Lay the rat in the dissection tray ventral side up.• If you have not removed the digestive organs from

the abdominal cavity do so at this time.• Carefully remove any fat in the lower pelvic region.

Kidneys

Adrenal Gland

Blood Vessels

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This rat was injected with colored latex to help students view the structures of the circulatory system.

Recall that red symbolizes oxygenated blood and blue symbolizes deoxygenated blood.

Blood Vessels

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Ureters

Bladder

Bladder

Carefully remove one kidney from your rat. Save it for a comparison to the sheep kidney.

Part 2

Sheep Kidney

• Obtain a preserved sheep kidney and rinse it with water to remove as much of the preserving fluid as possible.

Renal Capsule

Hilum

Ureter

Renal Blood Vessel

Dissecting the kidney

• Using the knife on the cutting board, carefully cut the sheep kidney in half longitudinally along the frontal plane, beginning on the convex border.

• Using a razor blade cut the rat kidney in half along the same plane.

• Rinse the interior of the kidney with water.

Renal Cortex and Renal Medulla

Renal cortex

Renal medulla

Renal Pyramid

• To see the next three structures, remove the renal medulla from the kidney.

Minor Calyx

Major Calyx

Renal Pelvis

This rat has prostate cancer!

Throw the organs removed from your rat in the garbage.

Spray your rat with preservative.

Put the skin back on the rat and spray it again.

Place the rat in your bag and keep it in your cabinet.