Interesting facts - related to veterinary med

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
WhtsThFrequency said:
Or twinge of dread in every cat owner's heart when they hear the distinctive "ech...ech....ech..ech" noise from somewhere in the house.
Click to expand...
my cats have gotten into the habit of making a horrible meow before starting the horking process. it's quite unpleasant
Members don't see this ad.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
dyachei said:
my cats have gotten into the habit of making a horrible meow before starting the horking process. it's quite unpleasant
Click to expand...
My cat is suspiciously quiet when he pukes, so I have had the pleasant experience of waking up and stepping in cat vomit as my first experience of the day on several occasions.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Members don't see this ad :)
You can make a sheep fall asleep by pumping anesthetic gas into the rumen due to eructation - the majority of eructated gas is breathed in. If you put in a tracheal cannula, they won't.

Bots in horses can be one of two species - Gasterophilus intestinalis, which is found in the stomach and NOT the intestine, and Gasterophilus nasalis, which is NOT found in the nose but IS found in the intestine.

A few days after a severe brain injury, the heart will develop degenerative lesions as well - the so called cardiogenic neuropathy or brain-heart syndrome.

Most of you probably know about right dorsal colitis in horses given NSAIDS. Foals, however, develop lesions in the stomach and intestines - supposedly due to differences in prostaglandin production with age.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 users
WhtsThFrequency said:
I do. It's because cats are dicks.
Click to expand...
tenor.gif
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
dyachei said:
my cats have gotten into the habit of making a horrible meow before starting the horking process. it's quite unpleasant
Click to expand...
One of my grandma's cats does this!

Cows have really weird kidneys.
19-4.png
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
Zensing said:
Yes they are! C'mon, join in! Cat blood typing, bird malaria, how horses have weird urine...
Click to expand...

I didn't say they weren't cool... just not as cool.
Since Zen brought it up...Cats are the only (common/domestic) animal with preformed antibodies to other blood antigen groups. Which makes no sense from a biologic stand point because why would your body have formed an antibody to something they've never been exposed to? Anyway cats have three blood groups. A, B, and AB. Cats with type B blood have strong anti-A antibodies and will often die (or at least have a huge, big reaction) if given the wrong type of blood. Cats with type A blood have weaker antibodies and can survive the wrong type with greater frequency. The vast majority of cats are type A, but type B cats tend to be overrepresented in purebred breeds like the british shorthair, cornish rex, and devon rex.

There's also a newly recognized feline blood group currently called Mik. Cats that should have been compatible for crossmatching were coming up incompatible, and then this new group was found. It's called Mik because the original cat it was found in was named Mike.


Cats also have rod-shaped eosinophil granules. Most species have round ones.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 8 users
JaynaAli said:
Since Zen brought it up...Cats are the only (common/domestic) animal with preformed antibodies to other blood antigen groups. Which makes no sense from a biologic stand point because why would your body have formed an antibody to something they've never been exposed to? Anyway cats have three blood groups. A, B, and AB. Cats with type B blood have strong anti-A antibodies and will often die (or at least have a huge, big reaction) if given the wrong type of blood. Cats with type A blood have weaker antibodies and can survive the wrong type with greater frequency. The vast majority of cats are type A, but type B cats tend to be overrepresented in purebred breeds like the british shorthair, cornish rex, and devon rex.
Click to expand...
Just learned this in class! Apparently type B is also more prevalent in certain geographic areas like Australia. Had no idea about the Mik.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Devastating said:
Just learned this in class! Apparently type B is also more prevalent in certain geographic areas like Australia. Had no idea about the Mik.
Click to expand...
Mik is more of a clin path boards type tidbit for now since it's so rare. I wasn't taught it in school. And by 'newly discovered' I mean it was described in JVIM in 2007, so not all that new, just not common knowledge.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
You can sometimes tell the gender of the pet by only looking at its blood. The inactivated X chromosome of females is often visible with light microscopy. It's called a Barr body. (You might not see them in every animal but if you do see them it's probably a female).

42479-14ACF358DEE7F9F876E.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: 7 users
You can tell whether a skin biopsy is from a cat or dog just by looking at the vacuolar patterns in the sebaceous glands. You can additionally tell if it is from a horse, cow, or pig by also looking at the hair follicle structure and the apocrine gland location.
See, path peeps be tearin' it up. :highfive:
 
  • Like
Reactions: 4 users
Very rarely can a "cold" be transmitted from animal to human or vice versa. Two words; Mycoplasma pneumoniae.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
JaynaAli said:
Mik is more of a clin path boards type tidbit for now since it's so rare. I wasn't taught it in school. And by 'newly discovered' I mean it was described in JVIM in 2007, so not all that new, just not common knowledge.
Click to expand...
This made me laugh because we learned about Mik in my immunology class last semester but then I remembered that our professor is a clinical pathologist :laugh:
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
JaynaAli said:
You can sometimes tell the gender of the pet by only looking at its blood. The inactivated X chromosome of females is often visible with light microscopy. It's called a Barr body. (You might not see them in every animal but if you do see them it's probably a female).

42479-14ACF358DEE7F9F876E.jpg
Click to expand...
Why haven't we been taught this? This is a cool fact. How reliable would you say it is?
 
pinkpuppy9 said:
Why haven't we been taught this? This is a cool fact. How reliable would you say it is?
Click to expand...

To be honest it isn't something I look for specifically....just something I acknowledge in my mind when I do see it. It's more of a fun fact to tell students and impress them and house officers who rotate with us. If someone were worried that two tubes of blood got confused and one was a male patient and one was a female patient, I'd look for Barr bodies to tell them apart. We'd still make them go redraw the patients to be sure results are correct but I'd consider it. 'False positives' can happen (and have happened to me once) because other pieces of chromatin can fragment off and look similar. Plus animals like male calicos with xxy genes will have an inactivated x and still be male but that's basically one in a million.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
So much nerd in this thread.

It's pretty great.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 8 users
dyachei said:
my cats have gotten into the habit of making a horrible meow before starting the horking process. it's quite unpleasant
Click to expand...
Mine does that too. It sounds like he's dying. He's very dramatic
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 users
batsenecal said:
It wasn't published or anything. But I can see if I can get the old computer to live and pm it to you. No guarantees though; the old computer hates coming out of retirement. You an search for Dr. Mealy (Meely? I can't remember the spelling) from washington to get the original primary sources.
Click to expand...
Ok thank you!
 
LetItSnow said:
Misnomer. They have one stomach. So do cows.

Which makes it even more interesting, because now you can correct people who try to wow you by telling you cows have four stomachs (or camelids have three).
Click to expand...

Oops.

You said ostrich and I read camelid in my head.

I wouldn't have the faintest clue about ostriches. Birds are cray cray.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
LetItSnow said:
Oops.

You said ostrich and I read camelid in my head.

I wouldn't have the faintest clue about ostriches. Birds are cray cray.
Click to expand...
To be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if ostriches did have three stomachs and each one was a portal to hell. That just seems like a bird kind of thing to do.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 12 users
LetItSnow said:
Oops.

You said ostrich and I read camelid in my head.

I wouldn't have the faintest clue about ostriches. Birds are cray cray.
Click to expand...
Wait a minute ... ostriches have 3 stomachs.

Nope, not referring to a camelid. I wonder why you thought an ostrich meant a camelid. A-ha! It's the curse of the WW game! :eek:
 
I like this thread a lot. I have a story our repro teacher has told us. He's told a lot but this is my most memorable. Even though I've heard a lot of his stories twice now that I'm his ta. I'll type it up tomorrow in after behavior
 
Eh, the whole multiple stomachs thing isn't really correct for any species. There is still always one true glandular stomach - the rest are different compartments (e.g. the cow has four stomach compartments, but only one true glandular stomach - the abomasum). Although that's the anatomists' obsession with semantics, to be fair.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 4 users
Doctor-S said:
According to the Purdue Food Animal Education Network:

A cow produces 350,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

Thank you very much to diary cows everywhere!

View attachment 216969
Click to expand...

I love to tell people that we've basically bred dairy cows to be metabolic train wrecks that physically cannot consume enough calories to keep up with their energy expenditure early in lactation. Bad for the cow, but super interesting from a research perspective.:D
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
LetItSnow said:
Oops.

You said ostrich and I read camelid in my head.

I wouldn't have the faintest clue about ostriches. Birds are cray cray.
Click to expand...

Doctor-S said:
Wait a minute ... ostriches have 3 stomachs.

Nope, not referring to a camelid. I wonder why you thought an ostrich meant a camelid. A-ha! It's the curse of the WW game! :eek:
Click to expand...
Interestingly, I think ostriches are also known as "camel birds" (those long necks and eyelashes). Scientific name is Struthio camelus :prof: Thank you Zoobooks
 
Today I was studying and learned that horse urine can turn red or brown when exposed to snow because of something called pyrocatechin. So if an owner complains of pigmenturia in a horse when there is snow out, ask if they actually saw the horse urinate or if they just found red spots on the snow.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 7 users
JaynaAli said:
Today I was studying and learned that horse urine can turn red or brown when exposed to snow because of something called pyrocatechin. So if an owner complains of pigmenturia in a horse when there is snow out, ask if they actually saw the horse urinate or if they just found red spots on the snow.
Click to expand...
Used to freak me out. I was always afraid they weren't drinking enough or something. To be fair, the waterers did try to freeze up at least 3 times per winter.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

haileylee7
University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest (Hungary)
Replies
2
Views
320
battie
battie
M
Tips for Incoming Veterinary Students
Replies
9
Views
2K
Vetdkc0707
Vetdkc0707
M
Veterinary Mental Wellness/DEI Research: Participants needed!
Replies
2
Views
255
Mircookies
M
L
Master of Veterinary Science
Replies
0
Views
422
LivestockSysHealth
L
luvpup
Veterinary/Animal experience in Texas?
Replies
6
Views
670
melissa Curlee
melissa Curlee
Top