A newly surfaced video is causing outrage for one animal rights groups after it shows students at a Texas high school appearing to play jump rope — with a cat’s intestines.
The school board says the unconventional choice of classroom activity was simply a lesson on biology and anatomy.
The videos went viral late Tuesday night after they were sent to the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) by what the organization calls a “concerned whistleblower.”
Recorded inside a classroom at Winston Churchill High School in San Antonio, Texas, the amateur video shows students skipping rope with what is allegedly a length of cat intestine during a dissection.
“They need to end all animal dissection immediately. Allowing dissection to continue endorses callousness, disrespect, and cruelty to animals.”
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According to local media reports, the class is a mix of junior (Grade 11) and senior (Grade 12) students.
While the video went viral Tuesday night, it appears to have been posted on May 12 to the Winston Churchill High School facebook page by San Antonio resident Nikky Alie.
“It’s bad enough animals are being killed for this, but using their organs as toys is unethical,” Alie wrote in her original post. “Please don’t let Churchill students and faculty continue to believe this is acceptable.”
It appears Alie was contacted about her story some days later by either PETA or local media as she posted a follow-up on Tuesday afternoon.
“Thank you to all the supporters and even the haters who helped spread awareness through the activity on this post,” she wrote on her own Facebook page. “I was contacted by the media and this post will soon be on the news!”
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In response to the anger generated by the video’s release, the Northeast Independent School District is defending the choice of classroom activity as helping to teach the fundamentals of anatomy.
“This exercise was not meant to be degrading or disrespectful,” NEISD executive director of communications, Aubrey Chancellor, told Global News.
“The idea of the lesson was to explore the tensile strength of the organs, [and] the intention was for students to grasp that concept.”
Chancellor said the teacher who organized the activity did the same thing during her time as a student at Texas A&M University.
“It does looks bad,” 18-year-old Winston Churchill student Ashlei Walsh told NBC News. “It’s really educational. It wasn’t just for fun or any of that.”
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According to PetEducation.com, a cat’s small intestines are about two-and-a-half times the length of the animal, so a two-foot-long cat would have a small intestine of over 60 inches.
The school board says they have no plans to cancel dissections in their schools but are planning to look into alternatives such as digital or online dissection simulations.
Chancellor says the school board has no plans to discipline either the teacher or the student as there was “no ill intent” in the lesson.
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