Squid Dissection

The 7th and 8th grade classes had an opportunity to explore the Shedd Aquarium on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. During their visit we toured the Wild Reef and the Oceanarium. More excitingly the students explored the structural and functional anatomy of the Northern Atlantic Squid.

Student responses:
"On Wednesday, we dissected North Atlantic Squid at the Shedd Aquarium. We were given questions we had to answer about the squid, which could be found out by cutting open the squid and examining certain things with our eyes and microscopes." - 8th grade student, A.C.

"Our question was: "can this animal live on land? Why or why not?" first, we wrote down a few points about what we knew would not allow the squid to live on land. We knew the squid has gills and did not have any bones, but a tip of pen... Now that we had a reason to open the squid we dove in. " - 8th grade student, M.S.

"We had to answer the question: "How does a squid catch its prey?" First, using a tweezer we plucked off one of the suction thingies from the tentacles and put it under a microscope. Contrary to my initial hypothesis, that the squids suction thingies acted as actual suction cups, I learned that each little one contains teeth which dig into the prey... To finish up the lab, we cut off its arm and tentacle for presentation purposes, and presented our findings and observations to the class. I can now say that I am pretty close to being a squid expert." - 8th grade student, M.O.

"My group;s question was "how does the squid eat its prey?"...The squid uses its suckers to grab the food. The tentacles are used to help the squid put the food into its beak. The food the [goes into] the stomach...I was also surprised to find that the squids eyes were by its 'feet'." -8th grade student, J.S.



After completing our squid dissection we explored the Wild Reef and Oceanarium.












We even got to pet a living star fish!