Gross anatomy of the oropharyngeal cavity in the falcon

abstract

There is a common oropharyngeal cavity of falcon as the birds because the soft palate, which forms such an obvious delineation between the mouth and pharyngeal cavity, is absent. The lips and teeth are abscent, in which their function replaced by the beak. The oral cavity of the falcon takes the triangular cone shape, while the roof of the oral cavity was formed by an incomplete hard palate, which presents by a long median triangular choanal cleft, which connects the oropharynx to the nasal cavity. The choanal cleft divided into two parts; the rostral narrow part and the caudal wide part. The palate, have an anterior part and a posterior part, which is divided into two regions by the choanal cleft. The roof of the mouth is separated from the edge of the upper beak by the lateral palatine ridges. The infundibular cleft is very narrow, small, shorter, and more caudal midline slit-like opening. Papilla of roof of oral cavity, which caudally directed; numerous small papillae are present scattered singly or arranged in rows, as palatine papillae (scattered singly) and pharyngeal papillas, which arranged in two rows; rostral and caudal row. The tongue is triangular shape, nonprotusible and not extended to fill the limit of the lower beak. The tongue has one transverse row of lingual papillae. The laryngeal mound contains middle, elongated opening (glottis) which connected to the trachea and not guarded by the epiglottis.

Posted by: Mohamed, lecture, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Alexandria University, Egypt (16-May-2013)