anatomy class

My Anatomy professor is awesome. Today we had a palpation lab in the morning. All the students were encouraged to bring their dogs, and my prof and his wife (who is also a vet and teaches us our animal welfare course) brought their own 10 dogs to class. We all got our own dog to poke and prod. It was sooo fun. We listened to heartbeats, and did physical exams. I also learned a bunch of cool facts about the body that are important for clinical diagnoses.

Here's one: When drawing blood from a bird, always go in through the jugular vein. Why you ask?
Well, birds don't have platelets. Platelets are the cells found in the blood of mammals and aid a wound in clotting... so wounds in birds take a long time to clot.The jugular vein in the neck has muscles around it which provide pressure on the punctured vein and help the hole to clot faster. This way, the bird is less likely to get a big hematoma (a bunch of blood collecting under the skin)! That's why!