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Dissecting a Whole Chicken

Posted onNovember 9, 2010byjrkrieger

Dissecting achicken wingorchicken legis a good way to observe limb anatomy. The wings and

legs of chickens are readily available for their value as meat, and provide good analogs to human

limbs. Whole chickens are just as easy to come bywhy not dissect a whole chicken toinvestigate the muscles and bones of the torso? !ome to think of it, you could probably also

dissect a turkey, a cornish hen, or a holiday duck, but " haven#t tried any of these myself.$

%nlike the limbs, the torso contains not only muscles and bones, but also internal organs. The

muscles and bones of the torso form a sort of musculoskeletal casing, holding and protecting the

package of internal organs inside. This is true of chickens as well as people. & butcher preparing

a whole chicken usually removes the internal organs, since most people aren#t interested in

eating them, but this still leaves the skeleton and musculature of the torso for study. 'ome

people like to eat the neck, heart, gi((ard, and liver, and the butcher will often place these

)giblets* back inside the bird before packaging, so you might not find the torso entirely empty.$

& whole chicken from the supermarket looks like this+

A Whole Chicken

emoving the skin from the torso of the bird is fairly easy. "t separates easily from most of the

front of the fowl, being tied down by fine ligaments in only a couple of places. These ligaments

are easily cut. The skin is glued down tightly over the lower spine, and " just cut around it,

leaving a patch of skin remaining over the lower spine. " also didn#t bother to remove the skin

from the wings. -y skinned bird looked like this+

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A Skinned Chicken

Where is the best meat? Where are the biggest muscles? -ost people like the breast meat best

the muscles there are the largest on the body, and free of bones or ligaments or gristle. Why

would the muscles be the largest here? These are the flight muscles, the ones responsible for

pulling the wings down. They correspond to the pectoral muscles of people, which perform a

similar action on our arms.

"f you eamine any of the muscles closely, you will find fine stripes or lines running through the

muscles. /erhaps you#ve noticed this when you are eating chickenit tends to pull apart in

threads or strips. /erhaps you#ve noticed that anyone who draws muscles draws them with

stripes or lines running through them. When you are looking at the pinstripes in the chickenmuscle, you are seeing that muscle is made up of threads or fibers. -uscle is fibrous.

0ou might also notice that not all muscle has eactly the same color. The flight muscles, the

muscles it uses rarely and briefly but that have to be very powerful, are whitish. The legs of the

chicken, the parts it uses more or less continuously all day long, are darker, a little closer to the

color of blood. To a cook or a diner, the legs are )dark meat* and the breast is )white meat*.

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White Met nd !rk Met

unning down the center of the chest is a ridge of bone, a single bone in the center of the chest

that corresponds to the sternum in humans. &ctually, the ridge is only the end of a )keel*

sticking out of the sternum. This keel provides something for the anchor end of the flight

muscles to grab onto, and is a universal feature in birds. "f you carefully slice the muscle free

from the side of the sternum, you can discover two layers, corresponding to thepectoralis

majorandpectoralis minorin people. Thepectoralis majorflaps the wing down, as you can

demonstrate by pulling on it. Thepectoralis minor, also known as the supracoracoideus,

supposedly gathers into a tendon that runs around the coracoid bone like a pulley, and pulls on

the wing from the upper side, causing it to flap up. " tried to demonstrate this by pulling on the

pectoralis minor in my chicken, but " couldn#t do it without tearing the muscle.

"light M#scles

unning among the muscles of the body are fine wires, and tiny tubes. These are small, delicate,

easy to damage, and hard to find. "f you partially break open the largest joint in a chicken body

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the hip jointand carefully probe within the fold, you may be able to find short sections of these

tubes and wires where they are especially large. The wires can be mistaken for tendons, and the

name )nerve* comes from a 1reek word for sinew or tendon. The tubes apparently carry blood

if you nudge the tube you can s2uish the blood back and forth a little. These are veins. "#m fairly

certain that they are not arteries, which are muscular and generally contract upon death,s2uee(ing the blood out of them.$

"emorl Nerves nd $essels

"f you can thoroughly clean a chicken without damaging the bones underneath, it will also

present you with a nice )aial skeleton* eample, or at least a torso skeleton. " broke off the

wings and legs, thinking it would be much too tedious to try to clean the entire skeleton, and

trimmed as much meat from the torso as " could with a knife and scissors. " then boiled the

skeleton to soften the remaining meat, after which " could pry or gouge it from the bones with

my fingers. This is the result+

%he A&il Skeleton o' Chicken

3irst of all, notice that the overall structure is the same as that of a human+ a ribcage on top, with

some accessory bones where the wings attach, a )waist* in the middle, and a pelvis at the bottom

to which the legs attach. 4ne difference is that the )tailbone* in the chicken is actually long

enough to make a tail. &t the front of the ribcage is a single solid bone resembling, and named

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after, the human sternum. The difference between a chicken sternum and a human sternum is

the gigantic )keel*, the ridge of bone projecting down the center, to which the powerful flight

muscles anchor themselves. The sternum ends in a sharp, dagger5like, cartilaginous point. Try

feeling the bottom of your own ribcage, and follow the ribs on each side as they rise towards the

center and meet at the peak of the )thoracic arch*, which is also the lower end of the sternum. &tthis point you can find a similar pointy projection from the bottom of your own sternum. &

name for these pointy tips that works well with children is )dagger bone*, but the official name

is )iphoid process*. The )iphoid* comes from a greek word for a certain sword which the

sternum resembles, and the )process* refers to the fact that it is projecting or proceeding

outward.$ &t the top of the ribcage you can find the wishbone, which corresponds to our own

collarbones, or clavicles. The difference between the chicken#s wishbone and human clavicles is

that in a human, the clavicles are separate and join the sternum on each side, whereas in the

chicken they are fused to each other, and the junction is joined to the sternum by a ligamentary

connection. &long the upper back are two flattish bones that correspond to the shoulderblades,

or scapulae. There is another large stick5like bone in the shoulder which does not seem to

correspond to a human bone, but by following the skeletal development in embryos, a

correspondence can be traced to the coracoid. "f a human scapula is a triangle with a claw on

top, the coracoid is part of the )claw*.

Abo#t these ds

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