hsishu 的最愛
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觀察者
andriy描述
Wild felid on campus! Habitat unfrozen creek flanked by extensive reed beds with scarce trees. Resting on top of a tree, possibly chased there by stray dogs.
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什麼
珠頸斑鳩 (Spilopelia chinensis)觀察者
pradyut_b地點
SERENE COUNTY, PRIMROSE, 142, Telecom Nagar, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, Telangana 500032, India (Google, OSM)描述
Tail feather.
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觀察者
william_deml描述
I found this bat dead in a parking garage one night, left on the ground where someone had apparently stepped on it and killed it. I've no way to know whether it was discovered on the ground, or was temporarily roosting in the structure and was deliberately dislodged and stomped on.
I took it into the hospital (where I worked at the time) in a bag and, yes, X-Rayed it. Three cheers for the resourceful Radiological Technician who made a good exposure on the first try!
So, as I knew at the time (I had already done a lot of work with bats with the National Speleological Society), this turned out to be an adult Mexican Free-tailed Bat, very common on the campus of the University of Florida (they roosted in large numbers in several buildings on campus at that time).
The X-Ray film shows evidence of multiple traumas: L.(left) humeral and ulnar fractures, a proximal R. femur fx., multiple L. rib and scapular fx's, and most visibly, a displaced compound spiral fracture of the R. humerus. The skull is, well, pretty dis-integrated one might say. [I'd love to show this again to a proper Radiologist to find out what else might be deduced.]
Interestingly, and especially for identification purposes, one can just barely make out, even in this poor copy, the faint ghost of a shadow of the very distinctive broad overhead ears, the nose, and most importantly, the webbing of skin that extends only halfway down the tail - the defining feature of this family of bats, the Molossidae, commonly known as "free-tail" bats. Molossids have a distinctive musky smell that I am also very familiar with, but that doesn't register on X-Rays of course.
I still have the original X-Ray film, but the image is badly deteriorating. I can however make measurements from it. X-Rays like this are contact prints, so are close to life size; but are generally slightly larger than the subject because of the projection geometry of the source, subject, and film. The X-Ray machine was close, perhaps only 2/3 of a meter away. Be that as it may, I measure the forearm length, directly on the film, to be 43mm., so this is a large individual, slightly magnified on film.
So - a free-tailed bat with a forearm length around, say, ~40-41mm., in Gainesville, Florida.
Easy to identify, even from an X-Ray!
Curiously, while this is the same species that, out West, roosts colonially in caves by the milions, in Florida it roosts mostly in man-made structures. This seems to be because Florida limestone caves, while numerous, tend toward the small and torturous - too hazerdous for this high speed flyer to negotiate. Large colonies of bats in north Florida caves I believe are mostly made up of the slower flying and more maneuverable Myotis austroriparious, the Southestern (mouse-eared) Bat.
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什麼
北美鯰科 (科 Ictaluridae)觀察者
william_deml描述
This observation is of the Fish, rather than the Snake that ingested it (listed separately).
My colleagues and I took this photograph of an actual original and unique X-Ray (physical "hard copy") film made in the Emergency Room of the University hospital in which I worked night shifts back in 2002. It was the regional center for medical treatment of snake bites in north central Florida. This Florida Cottonmouth's (Agkistrodon conanti) coiled body, head to tail, can be measured on the original film by laying a piece of string on the image, tracing the course of the backbone. At 58 inches, or 4 feet 10 inches (147 centimeters) then, this a pretty large snake as Water Moccasins go.
What's more, one of the main reasons we X-rayed it at all was that it had clearly recently eaten something. It had a large bulge in it's stomach, down about a third of it's body length, just past its air-filled lungs that are visible on the film as well defined darker shapes. We found the bulge was a big fish with a large blunt bony skull and easily discernable swim bladder, which we thought to be a catfish (though we lacked an Ichthyologist amongst the E.R. staff of course).
I can follow the fish's spine for much of its length in the image, but lose it somewhere along the snake's lung in the extreme right of the picture. There is an interesting and distinct structure visible at the top that looks to me like a bony spine at the front of the dorsal fin. The skull is about 7 centimeters long, and the fin spine about 3 centimeters long, measured directly from the actual film. I don't know whether the loose dense material below the swim bladder represents the fish's stomach contents, or something else in the snake's stomach. The X-Ray film was 11 by 14 inches in size, so the fish must have been roughly around a foot (30 centimeters) long in total. We did not, in any case dissect the snake in the E.R.
My impression at the time was that this was most likely something like a Brown Bullhead, just judging from what I could make out of its size and shape. It would be fascinating to hear from someone more familiar with fish skeletons and anatomy. I am sure identification from an X-Ray is possible, considering what can be done with even fossil remains among experts. I will defer to anyone with more experience reading fish X-rays.
The Radiological Technician that made the actual exposure for us on film, at my request, wrote the details of the exposure for future reference on the film itself, which, though the film suffered damage when it was later stolen from my vehicle inside a locked briefcase and dumped out in a back alley and further mistreated both by the thieves and the weather, I can still read most of what he wrote with a "magic marker":
"40(or 46) MA
1 MAS
56 KV"
Are there any X-Ray Tech's out there who can confirm that that is in fact a good exposure for a big dead snake with enclosed fish?
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