Biological Specimens & Dissection Instruments Sacramento, California
A species name is not a specification.
“Frog” is not an order. A plain frog and a double-injected frog are different products, at different prices, for different lessons — and the one that arrives is whichever one the paperwork actually named. So this catalogue is keyed out rather than browsed: four questions, and the answer is a line with a price on it.
9298 Elder Creek Rd, Sacramento, CA 95829 · Mon–Fri 8:00 AM–4:30 PM PT · Supplying teaching labs since 1982
Couplet 1
Start here. Everything in the catalogue is reached from this couplet.
Plate 1 Injection grades, in section
- 1The arterial tree. Filled from single injection upward, and the reason a specimen for a circulation lesson costs more than one for a gross-anatomy lesson.
- 2The venous return. Present only from double injection, which is the grade most circulation labs actually need.
- 3The third system. Ordered only when the portal circulation is being traced; it is injected yellow in a real specimen and is shown grey here.
- 4Whatever grade the requisition names is the grade that is picked, packed and invoiced. Naming the species alone leaves this choice to somebody else.
A schematic of the grade ladder rather than a drawing of one animal. What each grade means, and which lessons need which, is on the grades page.
A 1.0 Specifying
Five fields decide what turns up in the box
Almost everything that goes wrong with a specimen order goes wrong on the requisition, not in the warehouse.
A purchase order that says “12 frogs” has named one of five fields. The other four get decided by whoever picks the order, and they will be decided reasonably — just not necessarily the way the lesson needed. A plain specimen arrives for a circulation lab. A large size arrives for a class working in pairs on small trays. A case arrives when a pack of ten was wanted, or a pack of ten when a case was budgeted.
None of that is anybody being difficult. It is an underspecified order, and the fix is for the catalogue to make the fields visible before the requisition is written rather than after it is filled. That is the whole reason this site is arranged as a key: each question you answer removes an ambiguity that would otherwise be resolved without you.
Every one of the five is on your written quotation before you send a purchase order, and the quotation is what the picking list is built from.
Named on every quotation
- Species
- The organism, by common name and by binomial — Rana pipiens and Lithobates catesbeianus are both “frog” and they are not the same lab.
- Preparation grade
- Plain, single-, double- or triple-injected for a vertebrate; the preparation and mount for an invertebrate. This is the field most often left blank, and the one that moves the price most.
- Size band
- Stated as a length or a weight range rather than as small, medium and large, because what fits a tray and what a pair of students can share is a measurement.
- Holding fluid
- Formalin-fixed or formalin-free. This decides what your room has to be ventilated for and what a district will sign off, so it belongs on the order and not in a conversation after delivery.
- Pack size
- Each, pack of ten, class pack or case. The unit price changes with the break, and the break that suits a budget is not always the break that suits a lab week.
Each field is a real line on the quotation, and the quotation is what the picking list is built from. Nothing is substituted without your say-so — see substitutions.
A 2.0 The catalogue
The catalogue, keyed out
Seven couplets reach all five groups. Couplet 1 is at the top of this page — you are reading this because the answer there was a specimen or a culture. Follow one branch at a time; the price at a terminal is a real catalogue figure.
Couplet 2
Preserved material and living material are different products with different shipping, so they part company first.
Couplet 3
Two quite different preserved products, both dissected in a school lab.
Couplet 4
Backbone or no backbone — the oldest couplet in the trade, and still the one that sets the price band.
Couplet 5
This is the couplet that most requisitions skip, and it is the one that decides what the lesson can actually show.
Couplet 6
Owl pellets come in two quality grades, and they are genuinely different products rather than the same product at two prices.
Couplet 7
Living orders are scheduled around the organism. Everything below this couplet ships Monday to Wednesday only.
Figures at a terminal are catalogue ranges across that group, reviewed September 2026. The owl pellet, plain vertebrate and live invertebrate figures are current published unit prices. Full lists, with quantity breaks, are on the price page, and the five groups are also described one by one in the catalogue.
A 3.0 Money
What it costs, published
Three bands, named for what has been done to the material rather than for how much you are spending. The band decides the price far more than the species does.
Plain
P$1.10–$46.00 each
Fixed and held, with nothing injected. Owl pellets, cow eyes, sheep organs, plain rats and frogs, most invertebrates. The great majority of school dissection sits here, and for gross anatomy it is the correct choice rather than the cheap one.
Gross organ anatomy, external anatomy, organ-system identification, bone sorting and any lab where nothing has to be traced through the body.
Injected
S / D / T$8.40–$95.00 each
Vessels filled with coloured latex so they can be followed by eye: arteries at single, arteries and veins at double, and the hepatic portal system as well at triple. The injection is the labour, so the grade rather than the animal sets this band.
Circulation, heart and vessel work, comparative anatomy, and any lab whose point is a system rather than an organ.
Living
L$9.60–$60.00 per culture or pack
Cultures and live animals, priced by culture or by pack rather than per organism. The figure carries a delivery date as well as a quantity, because a culture that arrives on the wrong day is not a discounted culture — it is a dead one.
Microscopy, population and growth studies, behaviour work, ecology and any sequence that runs over several weeks.
Catalogue prices are USD per unit at the pack size stated, exclude shipping, handling, hazardous-materials surcharges and any applicable tax, and are catalogue ranges for planning a requisition rather than an offer or a quotation. Reviewed September 2026. Living cultures ship Monday to Wednesday only. A figure for your order is confirmed on a written quotation. See the disclaimer.
The full price page, with quantity breaks and the published unit prices
Telephone with the lab week, not the catalogue number
Tell us what the lesson has to show, how many students are working in pairs, and which week it is scheduled for. We will name the species, grade, size, fluid and pack that fit, put it on a written quotation, and hold it against your delivery week.
Niles Biological, Inc. · 9298 Elder Creek Rd, Sacramento, CA 95829
A 4.0 Ordering
Six steps, in the same order every time
The order is not a preference. A quotation exists before a purchase order so that a purchasing office is approving a specification rather than a species name, and two of these steps end at a point nobody works past without your signature.
-
S1
Specify
Species, grade, size band, holding fluid and pack size — by telephone, or keyed out from this catalogue before you call.
same day -
S2 Hold point
Written quotation
Every field on its own line, with the unit price at the pack size stated and shipping shown separately. Nothing is reserved yet.
1 working day -
S3 Hold point
Purchase order
A district purchase order, a card, or net terms where they are established. This is the point at which the order becomes real.
your cycle -
S4
Pick and check
Picked against the quotation, not against the species name, and checked against a packing list that repeats all five fields back to you.
24–48 hours -
S5
Ship
Preserved material any working day. Living material Monday to Wednesday only, so that nothing sits in a depot over a weekend.
Mon–Wed live -
S6
Receive and check
Unpack against the packing list on arrival. You have one week from receipt to tell us anything is wrong, and living material should be reported the day it lands.
1 week
A 5.0 Living material
A living order is a date before it is a quantity
A preserved specimen does not care when it travels. A culture does. Protozoa in a tube have a window, live invertebrates have a temperature range, and both of them lose it in a depot on a Saturday.
So living material ships Monday to Wednesday and no later, which is a constraint the organism sets rather than one we prefer. It is published here rather than discovered at checkout, because the thing it changes is your lab week: a culture wanted for a Tuesday class is an order placed the week before, not the Friday before.
Tell us the week and we will work backwards to the ship date and say plainly whether it is achievable. If it is not, we would rather say so than send something that arrives dead and disappoints a room of thirty.
Living material
Every item under couplet 7 — algae, protozoa, bacteria, fungi, live plants and live invertebrates — leaves on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday so that no living order is in transit over a weekend.
| You need it | It ships | Order by |
|---|---|---|
| Monday class | Wed prior | Mon prior |
| Tuesday class | Mon | Wed prior |
| Wednesday class | Mon or Tue | Thu prior |
| Thursday class | Tue | Fri prior |
| Friday class | Wed | Mon |
A planning table, not a guarantee. Transit time to your address, the organism, and the weather at both ends all move it, which is why the ship date is confirmed on your quotation. Full detail on the shipping page.
A 6.0 Standing behind it
Claims this page refuses to make
There is no count of schools served on this site, no number of orders shipped, no satisfaction percentage, no award, no rating from an unnamed source and no logo wall. Not because they were forgotten — because you have no way to check any of them, and a figure a reader cannot check is decoration.
What is here instead is checkable. A company name you can look up. An address in Sacramento you can drive to. A telephone number a person answers during working hours. A founding year of 1982. Published unit prices with a review date on them. A returns window stated in days. A shipping constraint stated in days of the week. Those are commitments, and they are specific enough to hold us to.
For the rest — references from other departments, a W-9, current safety data sheets, tax-exemption paperwork, or the current catalogue for an item this site does not list — telephone us and we will send it.
Everything in writing, before you ask
The documents most suppliers bury in a footer are linked here on purpose. Read any of them before you speak to us.
All seven are also in the footer of every page on this site.