Anatomic And Histological Observations And A Preliminary Study On Physiologic Function From The Digestive Tract Of Africa Ostrich

Africa ostrich belong to Aves, Ratitae, Struthioniforme, Struthionidae, Struthio, Struthio camelus and are the largest and strongest birds in the world. They grow fast, resistant to crude feed, and is a kind of large herbivorous birds. With the increasing awareness of the African ostrich, the size of their culture have gradually expanded, it is vital that the disease control and prevention for the ostrich to improve their performance. In strengthening the disease control and prevention of the African Ostrich to improve the performance of their production, at the same time, to study its digestive tract morphology and histological features, to provide some morphological evidence for the behavior, physiology, pathology, ecology, as well as artificial feeding and reproduction of the African ostrich. And then provide the valuable theoretical basis for the large-scale breeding and disease control and prevention of African ostriches.At first we observe the esophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine African ostrich through the eyes and the general anatomical observation in this experiment, aiming to understand the digestive location and structural features of the African ostrich. The esophagus is longer, starting in the retropharyngeal and then extend to the cardia in the glandular stomach, and trachea accompanied. Stomach is consisted of well-developed glandular stomach and muscular stomach consists, and front-end is the glandular stomach, the back-end is the stomach muscles. Muscular stomach is directly linked with the glandular stomach, and is located in the left side of the glandular stomach. The small intestine is obviously divided into duodenum, jejunum and ileum, duodenum from the pylorus from the muscular stomach, and then to the right side of abdomen to form a duodenal twisting or bend into "U"-shaped loop of intestine, when to the right kidney turn back to the front of the rear, behind the glandular stomach is jejunum. Ileum is located at the lower right corner of the duodenum, and link with the both sides of the cecum associated by ileocecal ligament. The large intestine includs the two caecums, colon and rectum, the caecum starts from the both sides of the weld between ileum and colon, ileocecal ligament attached to both sides of ileum, colon is longer and suspend from the mesenteric node of the bottom of the lumbar spine, rectum suspend in the dorsal of abdominal cavity by a short dorsal mesangial.The histological structures of digestive system were studied by paraffin sectioning and H.E staining. It is indicated that African Ostrich's digestive tract is composed of four conventional layers. The grossus plica, developed muscularis, and developed esophageal glands exist in the esophagus. Ingluvies is not observed. The glandular glands in glandular stomach consist of simple tubular glands in the lamina propria and compound tubular glands in the submucosa. The muscularis mucosa of the muscular stomach is obvious, and it is composed of internal-longitudinal and externa-ring smooth muscles. The villi in small intestine are long and branchy, but they contain no central chyle vessels. There are developed intestinal glands and many aggregated lymphoid nodule in the lamina proper of the duodenum. There is no duodenal gland in the submucosa. From duodenum to ileum, intestinal villi have more evident confluences and branches; the intestinal villi in jejumum are crook and "S" shaped, and the number of aggregated lymphoid nodule gradually decreases. African ostrich has a pair of developed cecum and very developed colon, where the epithelium mucosae is stratified columnar epithelium with many goblet cells, and where there are mucosa plica and short and developed villi. These features of the digestive tract are possibly related food habit, and determine the fact that African Ostrich has a strong ability to digest and absorb food.