Zoology and Anthropology don't entail cutting up animals, do they?

[savraj_uk]

I'm deciding wherther to study anthropolgy or zoology and I'm an avid animal lover. Do either contain dissecting/vivisecting(curse these words)?

[inferno]

Anthropology is the study of human cultures so I don't imagine ther ewould be too much cutting up of animals! I don't know if they do it in zoology.

[GuavaHalf]

Zoology certainly does. How do you hope to learn anything about animals without examinging them in detail? No ideal about anthropology

[andy hughes]

If the concept of disection bothers you, think of it in terms of gaining knowledge to assist far more animals to live, than will have died to furnish you with the knowledge you need.

[New Forester]

There aren't that many human cultures available for study which do not cut up animals on a regular basis... (Did you really mean anthropology though?) Zoology is much better than it used to be. For example I know of one zoology department which gave each student a baby tortoise for dissection. Luckily for me I was only given frogs & rabbits, bits of cattle, pigs & sheep, mice, rats, locusts, cuttlefish, sharks, worms, snails, mussels, etc, etc. (The mussels were alive, alive-O, too). Nowadays I think the numbers are kept lower (eg groups sharing), and very much more account is taken of students' ethical concerns. Talk to the departments you are thinking of applying to, and ask what their policies are. Many other biological sciences involve at least some use of animals -- for example, cell biology, veterinary science, physiology, human medicine, pharmacology etc. Have you thought of botany instead...? Avoiding vivisection is of course very much easier than avoiding dissection of dead animals. Personally I never had to work on conscious animals, apart from those mussels (mussels are barely conscious in the first place, but I still feel guilty about the poor things). I agree with GuavaHalf though -- you can't learn properly about animal anatomy (including humans) without dissection of some real specimens. Some efforts are being made to develop virtual-reality programmes to avoid the need for real dissection, but personally I think it'll be a long time before they can compete. And how could one replace the thrilling scent of the formaldehyde as it destroys one's nasal membranes?