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The skin is removed from the animal's carcass, treated with absorbents, and filled with cotton or polyester batting (In the past plant fibres or sawdust were used). Bird specimens have a long, thin, wooden dowel wrapped in batting at their center. The dowel is often intentionally longer than the bird's body and exits at the animal's vent.
Unlike other birds infected with T. gallinae, pigeons are susceptible to secondary organ invasion by virulent strains of the parasite. The visceral form of the disease involves the liver and gastrointestinal tract, causing organ dysfunction. When observed under a light microscope, samples can be seen rapidly moving in a circular jerky motion.
Gular skin (throat skin), in ornithology, is an area of featherless skin on birds that joins the lower mandible of the beak (or bill) to the bird's neck. [1] Other vertebrate taxa may have a comparable anatomical structure that is referred to as either a gular sac, throat sac, vocal sac or gular fold .
Most birds have approximately 175 different muscles, mainly controlling the wings, skin, and legs. Overall, the muscle mass of birds is concentrated ventrally. The largest muscles in the bird are the pectorals, or the pectoralis major, which control the wings and make up about 15–25% of a flighted bird's body weight.
Position of the uropygial gland, indicated on a budgerigar Uropygial gland of a blue jay. The uropygial gland, informally known as the preen gland or the oil gland, is a bilobed sebaceous gland possessed by the majority of birds used to distribute the gland's oil through the plumage by means of preening.
The use of bird skins to document species has been a standard part of systematic ornithology. Bird skins are prepared by retaining the key bones of the wings, legs, and skull along with the skin and feathers. In the past, they were treated with arsenic to prevent fungal and insect (mostly dermestid) attack.
They are the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates [1] [2] and an example of a complex evolutionary novelty. [3] They are among the characteristics that distinguish the extant birds from other living groups. [4] Although feathers cover most of the bird's body, they arise only from certain well-defined tracts on the skin.
Typically mammalian skin consists of collagen fibers arranged in a felt-work pattern, with no preferential fiber orientation. [12] However, the structures of skin in bats, birds, and gliding lizards are very different from those of typical mammalian skin. The structural arrangement of the fibers within bat wing skin enables the bat to act like ...