Students could also be asked to focus on one particular species and do a bit of library research on its natural history. Cheers, Kerry Kilburn ODU Biological Sciences Sherry Brooks asked what others were doing in vertebrate zoology labs. Hospitals dispose of thousands of plain films, CTs and MRIs each year. We have a large collection and students enjoy the challenge of interpreting the images. Subjects can include ecomorphology if you have access to comparative specimens from which they can take measurements.
Skeletons are excellent - beaver, armadillo, otter, etc.
Functional morphology of animals can be studied from wildlife videos using the pause feature on the video machine. They can use each other as specimens. We tell them of the Science report only after they have designed and reported their experiment, so then they can compare their work to that of professionals. See Hildebrand's books for ideas on ecomorphology. One studnet team might be assigned several muscles, for example.