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Index of Subjects This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --Boundary_(ID_LyJQb7ps1s5/GetFksmeTA) Content-type: text/plain; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Nice find Randy, but very sad. I suspect this is the case in many more marine mammals. Helene Helene Van Doninck DVM Cobequid Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre RR#1 Brookfield Nova Scotia Canada B0N1C0 hvandoninck@eastlink.ca www.cwrc.net http://cwrcblog.blogspot.com/ 1-902-893-0253 CWRC 2010 Calendars now for sale, see www.cwrc.net -----Original Message----- From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca]On Behalf Of Randy Lauff Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 7:27 PM To: NatureNS Subject: [NatureNS] Harp Seal About a month and a half ago, Tom Kavanaugh and Stephen Bushell brought me a Harp Seal that had died on a beach in Canso after having being basically moribund for at least two days (thanks again, guys!). This was a new addition to our collection so I decided to keep the entire skeleton. I pulled the animal out of the freezer last Friday so my anatomy students and I could have a good review of most of the systems this afternoon. We were very fortunate to have cameo appearances by parasitologist Dr. Gwyneth Jones of SMU and Curator of Zoology, Andrew Hebda of the NS Museum of Natural History, who both contributed to the afternoon's lesson. Gwyneth kept taking organs from the seal as I was finished with them, and with some of the students, extracted nematodes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematoda) and acanthocephalans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthocephala). One student in particular had a great time slicing through the very long, small intestine and found most of the parasites. Unlike most of the animals I work with in the lab, I am reasonably sure of the cause of death of this seal. Prior to searching for stomach parasites, I noticed a bulge in the junction between the stomach and intestine; there is a sphincter there, the pyloric sphincter, which controls the release of food from the stomach to the small intestine. The bulge seemed bigger than if it was just the sphincter, so I was hoping for lots of worms. There were. And two plastic bottle caps firmly lodged in the sphincter. A 100 kg animal, killed by 20 g of plastic clogging its digestive system. Randy _________________________________ RF Lauff Way in the boonies of Antigonish County, NS. --Boundary_(ID_LyJQb7ps1s5/GetFksmeTA) Content-type: text/html; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16981" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <DIV><SPAN class=109172311-23032010><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Nice find Randy, but very sad. I suspect this is the case in many more marine mammals.</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=109172311-23032010><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=109172311-23032010><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2>Helene</FONT></SPAN></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Helene Van Doninck DVM</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>Cobequid Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>RR#1 Brookfield Nova Scotia Canada B0N1C0</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>hvandoninck@eastlink.ca</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>www.cwrc.net</FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial size=2><A href="http://cwrcblog.blogspot.com/" target=_blank>http://cwrcblog.blogspot.com/</A></FONT> <BR><FONT face=Arial size=2>1-902-893-0253</FONT> </P> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>CWRC 2010 Calendars now for sale, see www.cwrc.net</FONT></P> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader dir=ltr align=left><FONT face=Tahoma size=2>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto:naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca]<B>On Behalf Of </B>Randy Lauff<BR><B>Sent:</B> Monday, March 22, 2010 7:27 PM<BR><B>To:</B> NatureNS<BR><B>Subject:</B> [NatureNS] Harp Seal<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>About a month and a half ago, Tom Kavanaugh and Stephen Bushell brought me a Harp Seal that had died on a beach in Canso after having being basically moribund for at least two days (thanks again, guys!). This was a new addition to our collection so I decided to keep the entire skeleton. I pulled the animal out of the freezer last Friday so my anatomy students and I could have a good review of most of the systems this afternoon. <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV>We were very fortunate to have cameo appearances by parasitologist Dr. Gwyneth Jones of SMU and Curator of Zoology, Andrew Hebda of the NS Museum of Natural History, who both contributed to the afternoon's lesson. Gwyneth kept taking organs from the seal as I was finished with them, and with some of the students, extracted nematodes (<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematoda">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematoda</A>) and acanthocephalans (<A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthocephala">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthocephala</A>). One student in particular had a great time slicing through the very long, small intestine and found most of the parasites.</DIV> <DIV><BR>Unlike most of the animals I work with in the lab, I am reasonably sure of the cause of death of this seal. Prior to searching for stomach parasites, I noticed a bulge in the junction between the stomach and intestine; there is a sphincter there, the pyloric sphincter, which controls the release of food from the stomach to the small intestine. The bulge seemed bigger than if it was just the sphincter, so I was hoping for lots of worms. There were.</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV>And two plastic bottle caps firmly lodged in the sphincter. A 100 kg animal, killed by 20 g of plastic clogging its digestive system.</DIV> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV>Randy<BR>_________________________________<BR>RF Lauff<BR>Way in the boonies of<BR>Antigonish County, NS.<BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML> --Boundary_(ID_LyJQb7ps1s5/GetFksmeTA)--
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