Getting used to blood

Fox autopsy yesterday was as disgusting as always. Looking at the positive sides of this: its a great course of mammal morphology and fur-skinning as well as dissection. You learn skills you never imagined you (or anyone...) could be good at, like finding different organs from inside different body cavities in different stages of bloodiness and rotting. How useful such skills are is debatable...

You get to test yourself... and realize how easy it is to get used to disgusting things. Its probably good to keep in mind that there is a reason why you get disgusted the first time you do some bloody stuff like that - and that getting used to it doesn't necessarily mean that it is any better or acceptable. Some non-biologist claim that we have need to kill everything we study. I hope its not true. But what surely is true is that we get used to all killing we do. These foxes are hunted by nature management people to leave some space for the polar fox (http://www.fjellrev-finnmark.uit.no/). In Norway this type of management seems to be more accepted than in Finland. I don't quite know if I think its ok - removing one species does not remove the (human-induced) reasons why this species has taken space from the others. But sure it is good that we take all the possible samples we can take once the animals have been killed.

Last (but not quite least) I do get payed to do that, and it is interesting data we get... and maybe I manage to tolerate the smell so well that I dare to bring some skins home and make something out of them. By now the idea of the same smell at home hasn't been too interesting. Quite the opposite.

You don't want yo see any photos related to this:)