MORPHOMETRICAL AND RADIOGRAPHIC STUDIES ON FEMUR OF THE INDIAN ELEPHANT (ELEPHAS MAXIMUS INDICUS)

Abstract

The present study entitled “morphometrical and radiographic studies on femur of the Indian elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) was carried out in the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and Histology, College of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Mhow (M.P). This study was focused on the objectives of the morphological, morphometrical and radiographic details of the femur. The femur was strong, heavy and cylindrical shaped, directed downward in a vertical manner. It was consisted of a shaft and two extremities (proximal and distal). It was cylindrical in the middle, antero - posteriorly flattened in proximal part and prismatic distally. The shaft was flattened craniocaudally and presented two surface viz. cranial and caudal and two borders viz. medial and lateral. The nutrient foramen was present in the proximal one third of posterior surface. It had a maximum length of 104.8±3.70 cm and weight of 11.72±1.12 kg comprised of a cylindrical shaft of 85 cm, a proximal extremity of 6 cm and a distal extremity of 13 cm.

Key words : Elephant, Femur, Morphometrical, Radiography

The elephant is classified as sub ungulate (Myers, 2000). The elephant walks in an ambling way and the hind foot tread in the print of the fore foot. Their habitat, primarily the tropical forests and grasslands (Keele and Lewis, 2005) favoured for their diet (especially leaves and grass) but slow digestion due to fast ingesta passage rates (Clauss et al., 2003). The elephant under the order of Proboscidea is a non-ruminant herbivore, belonging to the family Elephantidae with two living genera and species of elephants, Elephas maximus of Southern Asia and Loxodonta africana of Africa (Nowak, 1999). The elephant is the largest living terrestrial mammal. Usually elephant is digitigrade on the forefoot (as the hippopotamus and the tapir) and semiplantigrade on the hindfoot (Mikota et al., 1994). The femur was the longest bone of the appendicular skeleton of an elephant.  

The femur presented the characteristics of a long bone consisted of a shaft and two extremities (proximal and distal) (Lakshmishree et al., 2017).