Grasshopper Dissection

Hi everyone! I will seek to entertain as best as I can, but I can't really promise anything because this post is actually information-oriented. Yay?

When we retreated to Great Mountain Forest, Ray showed us how to do a grasshopper dissection. Obsessed with my new toy (the iPad), I took a video of the entire demonstration, and it's now on YouTube. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9xdkbPN9C4.

But, if you don't feel like watching the 6:58-long video, I will give you a step-by-step protocol to become an Olympian dissector (allegedly, the Insect Olympics are a real thing).

First, you have to choose your specimen. Most specimens will be Orthopterans (grasshoppers, crickets, katydids). There is a special method for Orthopterans because they are huge and their guts rot easily, which is not ideal for specimen preservation. For your collection, if you want your Orthopteran to bear some resemblance to the beautiful specimen you found during your hunt, it needs to be gutted.

So kill that katydid or grasshopper or cricket with your kill jar. No crushing!

Now you can dissect. Here's what you'll probably need:

NEEDS 
styrofoam; many pins; small scissors; a light source; forceps; cotton

DIRECTIONS (this sort of feels like a recipe)
1. Using pins, mount the grasshopper on the styrofoam, ventral side facing upwards.
2. Use the tips of scissors to make several small lateral cuts along the ventral midline. Begin from the posterior end and work your way up. Do not cut the thorax. The anteriormost cut should extend laterally from the tergite-sternite divide on both sides of the abdomen.
3. It should now be fairly simple to use your scissors to now make a cut along the ventral midline. Begin from the posterior end and cut anteriorly until you reach the anteriormost lateral cut from step 2.
4. Open up the two "flaps" you've created in the abdomen, and pin them to the styrofoam. This should expose the gut.
5. Now the fun part. Using forceps and scissors where necessary, gently empty out the contents of the gut. Get rid of everything and put in the trash. Have no shame! All that should remain is exoskeleton.
6. Take a small piece of cotton with your forceps. Beginning as anteriorly as you can, add cotton to the insides, moving posteriorly until there is cotton throughout. Do not put so much cotton that you are distending the Orthopteran's exoskeleton, and do not put so little that it cannot maintain its shape. Find a nice balance.
7. Remove the pins holding down the abdominal exoskeleton to the styrofoam, and put them back in their original place. As long as you didn't remove exoskeleton, the Orthopteran should look as good as new.
8. Press this button:

image source: http://drivenforward.com/upload/Blog/easy-button.png