Conversations with Strangers & VR Animal Dissections

By Hannah Park ‘24

This past summer, I volunteered in Monteverde, Costa Rica, tracking and collecting data on the pollinators at various farms. For a week, our small volunteer group of five toiled under the humid, unstable weather for up to six hours a day. The work was often mundane and perilous, from collecting data on the trees surrounding the research area to leaping through a barbed fence to balance near the edge of a mountain. It was almost always fearful, my insect-phobia heightened by the hornets, wasps, and bees surrounding the area. 

To lighten the long hours in the field, our group grew familiar with one another through conversations and jokes. It was the telling of stories, however, that soon flourished from being a simple distraction to a tool that cultivated friendships between the diverse ages, races, and backgrounds of our group together. As an extrovert, it felt natural to jump at this fleeting chance of speaking with professionals in a rare environment where we were “equals,” working toward a more sustainable planet. My takeaways ranged from rare facts about hummingbirds to personal stories that offered new perspectives on my daily life. I discovered that by simply being open to conversation, I could encounter information that I could never obtain from my “bubble” of friends back home. 

These conversations were not only limited to the other volunteers. It spanned to the kind and good-natured people of Monteverde; to the owners of the lands we were collecting data on and the people walking past us on the roads. Instead of being a barrier, our differences in language and culture became conversation-starters, assisted by the fluent Spanish of our head researcher. Everyone we met were friendly faces to talk to, some even inviting us into their homes and offering food and water.  

Our working hours depended heavily on Monteverde’s weather. One day, the rain was so heavy that the researcher leading our group decided to bring us back to our accommodations earlier than usual. To avoid the rain as we waited for our driver to arrive, we took shelter underneath an awning of a nearby house. The woman who lived inside soon noticed and ushered us in, setting out plantain chips and warm coffee. The university students and I were occupied with the owner’s affectionate dog while the adults laughed and ate together, asking the woman about Costa Rican culture. Our driver arrived after a few minutes, and we left her home, grateful for her hospitality and stories. 

The expedition’s driver was a Monteverde native, who the researcher joked was essentially “Monteverde’s mayor,” as he recognized and greeted everyone we passed. Though the drive back to our accommodations was usually quiet, tired as we were from the long hours of field work, this day had been much shorter. I could hear Spanish words near the front of the car, where the driver and the researcher spoke to each other like old friends. With my elementary Spanish education, I could hear hints of words I recognized, such as bebé (most likely referring to the researcher’s baby son), and a sighed cómico (after an especially long bout of shared laughter).

I was speaking to a volunteer sitting near me, an AP Environmental Science high school teacher. He had decided to embark on this volunteer expedition to simultaneously fulfill his passion of traveling the world while making a sustainable impact. During the conversation, I identified an oversight I had made in an argument I made a year ago. 

In the beginning of my lower year, I wrote an OpEd titled “It’s Time to Lose the Obsolete Tradition of Classroom Animal Dissections and Adopt a More Ethical, Safer, and Effective Method.” Perhaps alluded to by the monstrously long title, I argued for the replacement of real animals in high school dissections with synthetic animals. I had first heard of synthetic animals from a fascinating discussion with my then Biology teacher, who shared my disgust for using real animals in dissections. After seeing an article published in 2020 about a high school in New Port Richey, Florida that first used artificial dissections, I decided to write about it, with the hopes that the Academy would one day adopt this alternative. 

I mentioned this idea to the APES high school teacher in the car ride back to our accommodations. To my naive surprise, his response was far less enthusiastic than expected. “That’s a good thought,” he began, then went on to explain the implications of producing the synthetic animals. He spoke of consequences that I’ve been aware of, but for some reason, had overlooked in my excitement. With what I can only describe as a kind, “teacherly” voice, he assured me that artificial dissections could decrease the number of animals slaughtered for high school dissections. But the necessary production and shipping leave an impactful carbon footprint, he explained and offered another alternative for me to explore: VR Dissections. 

Virtual reality, a term I had only heard applied to gaming before, has in fact made tremendous progress over the past five years. Its uses range from assisting automotive visual design to aid in pain reduction for burn injuries. If VR has already made strides in transcending the entertainment industries and into making a real, beneficial impact on people, why can’t we apply it to our classrooms? 

It turns out that VR has already made an impact in education as well. At American University in Washington D.C., teacher candidates used Mursion “VR-Powered Learning” to reinforce their “confidence and skill” in science instruction. According to EdTech’s report from 2019, students were found to receive higher scores in a “mixed reality biology classroom” than students who did not use VR education. 

Even among the non-animal alternatives, there are notable distinctions in consequences. For instance, both artificial animal and VR dissections contribute to the planet’s carbon footprint, but manufacturing and shipping synthetic tissue have more of an impact than the shipment of VR headsets.

One may argue that the cost of VR programs are a more expensive counterpart than real animal dissections. This is a fair argument. However, this is not always the case—most of the VR alternatives that I researched have been far less than the $13,801.05 needed for real animal dissections, according to American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS). For instance, the VistorXR’s virtual reality classroom costs $200 for a one year subscription and ten headsets of the VR Pig Dissection. Furthermore, countless students can use the same headset a limitless number of times, allowing for cheaper, more efficient and less wasteful dissections.

A ten-second response from the high school teacher had blossomed into a potential solution for the Academy’s animal dissections: an idea that I became passionate about. This was only a single example among the many takeaways from my time in Costa Rica. The long hours working in the field urged us volunteers to rely on each other to raise spirits. I then realized that engaging in conversation with unfamiliar people is an underrated form of learning. Now, I actively keep this in mind, integrating this idea into my daily life. Evidently, this does not only apply to overseas expeditions. On a recent, short plane ride home, I began a conversation with a man next to me. It resulted in an hour-long discussion of tissue regeneration for poached animal body parts, and I left the plane ride with his business card and email. 

Though valuable information may unexpectedly result from such exchanges, I emphasize that talking to people should not only be for one’s gain. Instead, the true satisfaction stems from real bonds built upon frequent contact, shared interest, or even a collective openness to engage in conversation. So, I encourage you to be open to conversations with “strangers.” Embrace a natural curiosity to people’s lives. Ask that barista you’ve seen everyday for the past two years how they’re doing, or greet that one dog-walker who always takes the same route as you do. Once a connection is forged, there is always a potential for learning, perhaps even revelations.