A pictural guide to postmortem examination of elephants
Abstract
The necropsy of an elephant represents a rare event for most veterinary pathology facilities outside of Africa and Asia. Here, we report a comprehensible, abundantly illustrated, step-by-step protocol adapted to the special technical and anatomical peculiarities of elephant necropsies with regard to the needed equipment, aspects of transmissible disease prevention and workplace safety, personnel, time efforts, as well as important elephant diseases and their zoonotic potential. Detailed instructions for dissection, macroscopic examination and sampling of all relevant organs and tissues are provided, along with checklists for preparation and smooth execution of elephant necropsies. Using the featured protocols, a complete elephant necropsy with generation of extensive samples for histological, microbiological, and molecular analyses can be performed by 10–12 persons (5–6 pathologists and 5–6 assistants) within 4–6 hours in case of an adult animal.
Article Details
Authors (30)
Almuth Falkenau
Ninja Kolb
Alexandra Rieger
Isabelle Lutzmann
Katharina Erber
Clara Kaufhold
Lina Eddicks
Marco Rosati
Sonja Fiedler
Anna Gager
Effrosyni Michelakaki
Elena Dell’Era
Timo Lorenzen
Martin Zöllner
Andreas Brühschwein
Andrea Meyer-Lindenberg
Julia Heckmann
Marco Roller
Karlsruhe Zoo
Lukas Reese
Barbara Lang
Markus Menzinger
Nicole Richter
Robert Fitz
Lukas Pfaudler
Christine Lendl
Hanspeter W. Steinmetz
Christine Gohl
Monir Majzoub-Altweck
Kaspar Matiasek
Andreas Blutke