It reminds me of those people in high school who would say that they couldn't dissect a pig in biology class because it went against their religious beliefs.
Considering that there are people for whom that would truly be against their religious beliefs, it's not impossible for that to have been the case, tho I would suspect many, if not all, were BSing to get out of dissecting. However, perhaps Missouri is a hidden hotbed of Buddhism or other such religions that hold all animal life sacred. (Some Christian traditions have been opposed to human dissection, but I'm not aware of any that extend that to all creatures great and small.)
