Moreno Valley school switches to virtual frog dissections

Rancho Verde High School in Moreno Valley is the first and, so far, only school in the country to accept an animal rights group's challenge to stop dissections, especially frogs.

In exchange for the minimum five-year promise, the school will switch to virtual-dissection programs with free software worth almost $1,000 provided by a partnership of animal-friendly educators.

"It's arguably not the same as doing it with a real animal," said Rancho Verde assistant principal Kevin Stipp, who taught science from 1986 to 2000. Without the actual touching, a computer dissection can't be as realistic, he allowed, "but it's not so drastically different that the kids won't get something out of it."

The growing number of technological alternatives today is making it possible for thousands of students to swap their scalpels and scissors for the click of a computer mouse. Today 14 states -- including California -- protect a student's choice to learn about animal anatomy without a pickled critter, knife, chemicals and churning stomach.

Two nonprofit groups, Animal Welfare Institute and Save the Frogs!, are sponsoring the "Race to Stop Dissections" contest. They will donate full Digital Frog 2.5 licenses to the first 25 schools that agree to end all animal dissections, which many educators still value as important anatomy and physiology lessons.

Animal rights activists oppose the capture, transport, warehousing and killing of animals destined for dissection, claiming it causes unnecessary suffering and death. They say that millions of frogs are removed from wetland habitats, stuffed into sacks and inhumanely killed by immersion in preservatives. Raising or nabbing frogs to cut up in classroom contributes to their rapidly dwindling populations worldwide.

Therefore, the goal is to get every middle and high school in the United States to abandon their frog dissection programs by 2014, said Dr. Kerry M. Kriger, an ecologist and founder of Save the Frogs!, an amphibian conservation nonprofit group based in Santa Cruz.

Rancho Verde has received the software and will begin using it by the end of the year after phasing out its preserved specimen kits.

"The thought of dissection makes me feel kind of queasy," said Alice Nguyen, 15, a freshman at Rancho Verde High. "It seems wrong, cutting into something." With plans to become a medical researcher, she's excited about the prospect of making kinder, gentler cuts with a virtual blade than with a real scalpel.

California school bans frog dissection » Home & Living News

A California school has banned frog dissection, replacing it with virtual computer-based learning . Rancho Verde High School is said to be the first high school in the US to ban the dissection of frogs in favour of software. According to Animal Welfare Online, millions of frogs are used in American schools every year. The high school’s decision comes after pressure placed on schools by animal welfare activists Save the Frogs! and the Animal Welfare Institute.

For agreeing to stop dissecting frogs, Rancho Verde High School will be receiving Digital Frog 2.5 software free, as will the next 24 schools that move from real to virtual dissection. The school has committed to not using live frogs for five years, and not buying 30 frog dissection kits over these five years will save the school $6,800 (just over £4,000).

Save the Frogs! wants to end the dissection of live frogs in US schools by 2014. They are committed to their cause because a fungus epidemic, damage to habitats and climate change are leading to a steep decline in the world’s wild frog species.

The non-profit organisation says: ‘Frog populations have been declining worldwide at unprecedented rates, and nearly one-third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction. Up to 200 species have completely disappeared since 1980, and this is NOT normal.’

A large number of frogs used in US schools are taken from the wild, which compounds the problem. Frogs bred on farms can carry diseases that will damage local habitats if they escape.

Save the Frogs! says that US schools are teaching children that animals are disposable. Frog dissection has been used for educational purposes in the US since the 1920s but the organisation insists there are alternatives like the Digital Frog 2.5 software they are giving to schools.

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