Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Recently took this photo and labeled it with some of the visible major organs... Just thought you guys might be curious what the inside looks like...
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Ben

It helps if I attach the photo doesn't it?... It's a U. henkeli female by the way...

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Ben

Dead center, are the ovaries with undeveloped ova... In the bottom right-hand corner are the kidneys... These were hidden under the intestine in the previous picture...

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Ben

cause of death?

There was no obvious answer, but we suspected coccidiosis... We did find an ascarid in the body cavity and two in her lungs(seperate species), but these were likely not the cause of death... They were very small, immature and unhealthy (she was undergoing a very aggressive fenbendazole treatment regime)...

Her alimentrary tract was loaded with coccidians, something that does occur naturally... However, from the amount observed in two small samples it seems she had a pretty high infestation... Once oocysts are detected in the feces, no drug will have much of an effect on reducing numbers... Medication will reduced the magnitude of the challenge put forth on the immune system, but will not solely eliminate the problem... Because anticoccidian meds only alleviate the problem, one can only hope to allow the animal to build up its own immunity by reducing stress and minimalizing the contamination of the cage from oocysts... Coccidians can quickly become unchecked because of the slightest inbalance and most unobvious of conditions... So because she was a long term captive (two years) coccidiosis was probably the byproduct of an undeterminable, larger manifestation... We are awaiting results of tissue samples so they might tell us something as well...
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Ben