Activity: Chicken Wing Dissection

Mac with the chicken wing and its muscles.

On SCOPE's Sports Body episode, you saw Mac study muscles in a chicken wing. Here's how he did it. Watch the clip.

CAUTION : This activity involves raw chicken. Make sure you wash you hands afterwards, as well as any equipment you used.

What you need

• A raw chicken wing
• Scissors (small pointy nail scissors work best)
• Chopping board
• Toothpicks (optional)

What to do

1. Start from the fattest end of the wing. Gently lift and pull the skin away from the meat underneath. The skin is attached to the meat by thin membrane.
2. Use your scissors to gently cut this membrane allowing the skin to lift off. This meat is actually chicken muscle. Remove the skin down to the first joint and try not to cut any of the muscle.
3. You should now be able to see several large muscles around the bone.
4. You can see the tendons on the chicken wing too. They're the silvery white cords coming out of the joints.
5. Pull on the muscles to see what happens to the wing.
6. Continue the dissection by removing the skin to the next joint, there are many more muscles here.
7. Have a go at manipulating these too and see how the muscles work to control the wing.

What's happening?

Ever wondered what muscles look like and how they work?

Well, wonder no longer, because this easy do at home experiment should help explain what's going on under there. Muscles help us move by pulling on our bones, and tendons attach muscles to bone. You can use your toothpick to gently separate the muscles from each other.

When you bend the wing some of the muscles get longer, while others get shorter. And if you move the wing the other way, the longer muscles are now short and the short ones are long!

This is because muscles work in pairs, and can only achieve motion by pulling, or contracting. When one muscle pulls, the other releases. You can see this on yourself.

Hold out your arm and bend it inwards at the elbow. Now move it back out again until it is straight. When you bend your arm inwards, the muscle on the front of the upper arm, your biceps pulls and gets shorter, while the muscle on the back of your arm, your triceps, releases and gets longer.

When you straighten your arm, the triceps pulls and the biceps releases. It is the same for all of your joints, and the chicken.