Would you let your child do this?

Why does she want to?

Would she be doing this alone?

What will she gain/learn from doing this?

Will it be done with you and or DP as a 'learning experience' for your DC?

Will she have to write you some sort of essay on what it was like inside the fish, what she learned, ect??

Would you let her do this to the family cat?

I think I would let my DC do this to another fish. Not the "family" fish. As pp .. perhaps find a donor fish?

I agree with getting another fish to dissect, but not the family pet. Maybe take her fishing (I have no idea about fishing seasons or licenses so I may be way off on that suggestion ), dissect it with her, then cook it up for dinner

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Ack! My mother used to think it was the coolest thing *ever* to take the boy scouts fishing, then take the catch to school for her seventh grade science class to dissect, then bring home what was left for dinner.

Frankly, it grossed me out. I'm all for reusing and recycling and respecting ther critters by using them to their utmost, but it was asking a lot of a teenager to expect me to eat fish first caught by a bunch of boy scouts then dissected by a bunch of seventh graders!

Just had to share. Didn't mean to hijack.

I'll further hijack My class always did the salmon project here and one of our activities was dissecting the salmon we caught. First, we'd use them to do fish prints on paper and shirts. Then, I'd organize 180+ kids in the gym to dissect the fish and really only a couple ever complained about being squeamish.

Awesome learning tools.

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EWWWWWWWW eating it? I am sorry but I would worry about bacteria and food posioning after the seventh graders disected it.

I did have a college professor who had the heart (amoung other organs) from a deer that she hit with her car. She used it as a free learning tool, which was cool.

I am surprised the Boy Scouts didn't take the fish home or cook it up.

This is a little OT, but slightly along the same lines. I miscarried early (12 weeks, fetal growth stopped at 7) and I couldn't bring myself to flush the perfect little fetus in an intact sac with the placenta still attached. So I stuck it in a ziplock in the freezer. Well, a few days later it fell out when my 5 year old was looking for something. He asked. I told. (He knew that our baby had died.) His first reaction was that we should disect it.

I'm still not sure, but I think we will bury it in the yard when the ground thaws, and that I will let him examine it a bit first. This is more than a pet, but really wasn't a child. Just wanted to let you see the other end of the spectrum. I think it is just normal curiousity on the part of your child.