Welcome again. Hope you are doing well. If you are a newbie to learning veterinary anatomy, this article is for you. But, if you are already familiar with veterinary anatomy, you may avoid this article.
If you want to start learning veterinary anatomy, first you should know the whole courses and their contents. You may visit here and get an idea (Veterinary Gross Anatomy Course; Veterinary Histology Course; Applied Veterinary Anatomy Course and Avian Anatomy Course).
As you noticed, the contents of every course of veterinary anatomy are so vast; but you need not worry about it. I hope you will make it simple and easy. I am not an expert in veterinary anatomy, but I will try to help you to make those courses easy and enjoyable for you. Let’s work together.
You may follow some strategies to learn veterinary anatomy easily:
I am not forcing you to follow a strategy to learn veterinary anatomy. Read the points mentioned below; if you find them good, you may follow them.
I am not saying veterinary anatomy is so easy to learn. No, it’s not so easy; but you may make it easy if you want. You need passion. It would be best if you tried it. Okay, let’s talk about how you may learn veterinary anatomy in easy ways.
Common strategy:
You may follow this –
Follow the class lecture of your teacher
Take more time to read at first time for your targeted topics from TEXTBOOK (not from any hand note)
Make it understandable (read more than two times) and note down the key features or points of your topics
For more information, you may go internet (try to follow what other people did)
It is a better time to watch videos related to your topics or organs
Now you may go through your hand notes
If you read any courses, then try to make them short by sketching
Try to draw or sketch of your targeted topics or organs (don’t need to be good, but you should store it for further use; it may be useful for you)
Now try to memorize
Try to follow this common strategy at least two days per week or as per your schedule. I am not forcing you to follow this strategy every day.
How to learn gross veterinary anatomy easily:
As there are lots of animal species, so contents are vast. But, you need to follow the basic structure of the animal body from one species, then you should compare it with other species. You may follow the strategy before starting to learn gross veterinary anatomy –
First of all, you need to follow the class lecture of your teacher, it’s very important, and you need to follow the same strategy that I have mentioned above as a common strategy. After completing all the tasks, you should go to the gross anatomy laboratory (if you don’t have bones or organs in your room) and find out the key features (what you have note-down) of your targeted topics or bone or organs from skeleton or organs. It is better to have a skeleton or organ system in your room while reading books.
Suppose you read and note down the key features or osteological features of scapula bone as follows –
Scapula: bone of forelimb; flat triangular bone
Osteological features:
Surface: two (Lateral surface and medial surface)
Border: three (cranial border, dorsal border, and caudal border)
Angle: three (cranial, caudal, and distal angle)
You need to note down key or important features and identify those features in live animals or skeletons in the laboratory
Such as –
Important features:
Spine, acromion process, supraspinous fossa, infraspinous fossa
Subscapular fossa
Tuber scapulae, coracoid process, glenoid cavity
You need to identify those features mentioned above from scapula bone in life.
You need to know the proximal end and distal end in every bone. You may also note –down the key features according to the surface or the proximal and distal ends.
Suppose you want to learn about humerus bone. You may write the key features as follow –
Humerus: Long bone
Surface: four (cranial, lateral, medial, and caudal)
Cranial surface – triangular
Lateral surface – spiral; having a musculospiral groove
Medial surface – rounded
Posterior surface – rounded and smooth; having nutrient foramen
Proximal end: having head, neck, tuberosity, bicipital groove
Distal end:
Cranially – having coronoid fossa
Laterally and medially – condyle
Caudally – trochlea, olecranon fossa
You may also draw a picture of the humerus and may try to identify the osteological features.
This short form will help you to learn the easy way. But you must read the full text well the first time.
For any internal organ or visceral organs:
You should know their topographic and surface anatomy and then follow the above mention strategy (list the key features that need to identify from live samples)
For any courses of organs or nerve or blood vessels:
It would be best to read the full text and then try to sketch the course, as shown in the image below.
“You need to perform dissection during learning veterinary gross anatomy. Without dissection, you will never learn veterinary gross anatomy appropriately.”
Which book you need to follow:
For better understanding, you may follow the below-mentioned books –
Getty, R; Sission and Grossman’s The Anatomy of the Domestic Animal
Miller’s guide to the dissection of the dog by Evans and Lahunta
Comparative anatomy of Vertebrates by Kent and Carr
The Anatomy of Domestic Animals by Nickel and Schummer
Primary veterinary anatomy by R. K. Ghosh
How to learn veterinary histology easily:
All the strategies are the same; you should study the histological features of any cell, organ, or tissue under a microscope in a laboratory.
Which books you need to follow:
Color Atlas of Histology by Granter and Hiatt
Applied Veterinary Histology by Williams Banks
How to learn avian anatomy easily:
It would be best to dissect avian species and practically identify all the organs from different systems. For better help, you may follow this website and also follow this book –
A color atlas of Avian Anatomy by Mclelland.
Conclusion
I hope you have got an idea about how to learn veterinary anatomy easily. You may follow this simple strategy if you want.
If you want to learn veterinary anatomy, you should go to the TEACHING AND LEARNING section and start learning your desired topics or course.
If there is any mistake in the above information or if you have any suggestions for me, please, let me know in the comment box. Thank you so much.