The Digital Frog Blog

A few years ago, we decided to dip our feet into the YouTube pond and post a few videos, both from our educational software and others we’ve collected but haven’t been able to use for one reason or another. So far this has mostly been in the shape of several dissection videos from The Digital Frog 2.5.

We added one additional video that we recorded but were never able to use in a finished product: a time lapse showing the decomposition of a rabbit over eight days, reduced to one minute of video. This has become a surprising breakaway smash success on the Digital Frog YouTube Channel, closing in on 400,000 views and over 1200 comments.

We produced the video for a forest ecology program that was never completed as a way of demonstrating natural decomposition in a manner that words alone could not describe. It can be a bit disturbing for some, but quite dramatically shows how quickly the process happens, the various insects and organisms who help in decomposition, and goes a long way to explaining why you don’t often see the carcasses of dead animals in the woods‚ they don’t last long.

The version above is a new, higher resolution version than the original, allowing to you to see a bit more clearly what happens over the week the video was shot.

While our YouTube channel has been a bit quiet over the past while, we’re looking forward to putting up new videos both from our existing educational software and others that have not been publicly seen before. We’ll provide updates here, or you can also subscribe to the Digital Frog YouTube channel to see when new videos come online.

(If you’d like a downloadable version, we’re currently working on a new version of this video with narration to describe what is happening and the processes at work. That will be available exclusively through our Digital Frogger Club. You can sign up now and be notified when the video is ready for download.)

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Earlier this year, PETA partnered with pathologist Dr. Nancy Harrison to produce a short video with highlights of The Digital Frog 2.5. We first met Nancy a few years ago when she was presenting her research on dissection alternatives to science teachers in San Diego.

We could not help wondering why a practicing pathologist, who dissects human tissue for a living, would be taking the time to research dissection alternatives. This is what she says on the Dissection Alternatives website hosted by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine website:

“As a pathologist, I perform careful dissections every day‚ on human tissues, not on animals. It’s my job to know the relationship between anatomy and physiology, between health and disease.

But it wasn’t the frog or cat dissections we performed in public school that inspired me to study science. It was my excellent science teachers! The energy they poured into our classrooms, the academic heights they challenged us to reach, and their own bright intellects drew me into this field.

Decades later, I’ve come to regret those dissections and have since studied computerized alternatives that are extremely comprehensive. As a doctor who performs autopsies, I can assure students that computer images of well-preserved tissues look more like the “real thing” than the squishy gray organs of a formalin-fixed specimen. Simulated dissection is very realistic, the accompanying text is elegant, and the graphics are superb. Computerized alternatives are rapidly replacing animals in medical and veterinary colleges across the country. And the same is true at earlier levels of training. That means that younger students can easily learn biology by taking advantage of state-of-the-art methods that do not involve dissecting at all. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to science teachers everywhere who are creating a passion for humane scientific study. Tomorrow’s great physicians and researchers depend on it.”

We were not involved in the production of this video, but are thrilled with all that Nancy has to say about our program, The Digital Frog 2.5 and that she is one of our biggest supporters and proponents. And Nancy will not even allow us to buy her a cup of coffee!

We find it interesting that The Digital Frog 2.5 has also been voted the best dissection alternative by eSchool News readers. However, we created the program to teach anatomy and physiology, not dissection skills. We included the dissection module to bridge the gap between the traditional way of teaching anatomy and physiology and the 21st century way – better, kinder and much more cost effective way.

And one thing that Nancy does not mention is that schools can save huge amounts of money by teaching anatomy and physiology with The Digital Frog instead of with wet labs and textbooks. We have just returned from a science teachers conference in Texas. One middle school principal, who purchased a Building Site License for The Digital Frog 2.5 last year, stopped by our booth to say that he has already saved $1,200! You’ll be amazed at the cost savings, especially for large schools.

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