Re: You can't dissect dogs but you can dissect cats? Huh?!?!

Why cats and not dogs?

I don't that there is an absolutely correct answer to this question, but I 
can give you a few guesses.

First, we live in a dog loving society. My cat may be distressed to hear 
this, but cats are not valued as much as dogs are in our culture. This 
means that some people would baulk at the idea of experimenting with, or 
dissecting, dogs but would not give a second thought to working with cats. 
There is no law, that I know of, that prevents you from obtaining and 
dissecting dog cadavers. Still, the dog loving attitude of our society is 
part of your answer, but not the whole answer. 

Cats tend to be relatively uniform in size; we don't see the chihuahua to 
great dane type of variation in cats. In an experiment, you usually want to 
control for as much variation in your subjects as possible. Using animals 
of a single size helps a lot in this respect. Cats are also easier to 
raise. They reach maturity faster and don't need as much space as dogs 
need. (Just think about how many more cats than dogs live as apartment 
pets.) This makes using cats cheaper than it would be to use dogs. These 
last two reasons alone explain why rats and mice are used in experiments 
much more than either cats or dogs.

Finally, it's tradition. For some reason, cats were chosen as a good subject 
animal for learning basic anatomy through dissection. Cats are big enough 
so that most anatomical structures can be seen fairly easily (unlike the 
rat), but not so big that they become difficult to handle. Once a
tradition gets started, people begin to think only along those lines. 

So that's my answer. Cats are more readily available for education and 
experimental use because:
1. They are more available (traditional use as a lab animal)
2. They are easier to raise (making them less expensive to acquire)
3. They are not as "loved" by our society as a whole.