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Animals

Animals is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal devoted entirely to animals, including zoology and veterinary sciences, and is published semimonthly online by MDPI.
Indexed in PubMed | Quartile Ranking JCR - Q1 (Veterinary Sciences | Agriculture, Dairy and Animal Science)

All Articles (22,890)

Due to the complex anatomical structure of the distal humerus, elbow joint, and the soft tissue mantle (the triceps brachii muscle, large nerves, and vessels), fractures of the distal humerus and humeral condyle are difficult to treat. In most cases, strong instrumentation is needed to stabilize the fractures. To improve exposure of the distal humerus and humeral condyle, we proposed a caudolateral approach that involves elevating the anconeus muscle and splitting the triceps brachii. This study presents the results of using this approach in 16 canine cadavers. After exposing the distal humerus and maximally flexing the elbow joint, photographs were taken of the condyle from the same distance before and after olecranon osteotomy. The visible surface area of the articular cartilage was then calculated in square pixels after calibrating the photographs. It was possible to reach the distal and middle humerus in all cases. The only vital structure that could be easily identified and protected in all cadavers was the radial nerve. The visible area of the articular surface of the humeral condyle increased after olecranon osteotomy. The A0 (visible area before osteotomy) was significantly smaller than the A1 (visible area after osteotomy) in all dogs (p < 0.001). The ratio of A0 to A1 ranged from 57% to 67% in 15 dogs (median: 64%, interquartile range (IQR): 61–66%), with a very high value of 85% observed in one dog. This experiment used cadavers with intact elbows. This could limit the study’s findings because the effectiveness of the proposed access in reducing T-Y fractures was not assessed. The caudolateral approach is a valuable alternative to other methods for treating T-Y humeral fractures in dogs. Olecranon osteotomy widens access to the condyle. Further studies are needed to evaluate the necessity of olecranon osteotomy in clinical cases.

30 December 2025

The anatomy of the canine triceps brachii and anconeus muscle (right forelimb): 1—olecranon, 2—long head of triceps brachii, 3—lateral head of triceps brachii, 4—anconeus muscle, 5—accessory head of triceps brachii, 6—the radial nerve.

Normoxic Oxygen at Birth Enhances Piglet Growth and Survival Under Tropical Farm Conditions

  • Phoo Pwint Pwint Thu,
  • Rafa Boonprakob and
  • Padet Tummaruk
  • + 2 authors

Neonatal piglet mortality remains a major challenge in hyper-prolific sow herds, particularly under tropical conditions where low ambient oxygen (18–21%) may exacerbate hypoxia during prolonged farrowing. This study evaluated whether restoring normoxia (21% O2) immediately after birth improved piglet colostrum intake, blood glucose levels, and survival to 3 d. A total of 1837 piglets from 95 sows were weighed at birth and assigned by litter to exposure to either a normoxic chamber (FiO2 = 0.21) or ambient-air control (FiO2 = 0.16–0.18) for 15 min post-partum. Piglet colostrum intake, blood glucose content, and survival to 24-h and 3 d were analyzed using mixed-effects models. Compared with controls, oxygen-supplemented piglets showed higher postnatal oxygen saturation (94.2 ± 3.6 vs. 88.1 ± 3.5%), greater colostrum intake (348 ± 263 vs. 320 ± 233 g), higher blood glucose (97.7 ± 13.0 vs. 93.8 ± 13.1 mg/dL), and increased 3-day survival (86.1% vs. 80.8%; p < 0.01). The effect was most pronounced in piglets < 1.0 kg and >1.3 kg, reflecting improved recovery from transient hypoxia. Mean weaning weight increased by 0.3 kg, indicating sustained benefits in early growth. These findings demonstrate that short-term normoxic oxygen supplementation is a practical, cost-effective intervention that enhances growth, metabolic stability, and survival in neonatal piglets under tropical commercial farm conditions.

30 December 2025

Fenestrations of mammalian skull bones are rare and poorly understood, particularly within the parietal bone. In bats—a group characterised by advanced sensory specialisation and echolocation—superficial modifications of the cranial vault may have functional significance, yet their occurrence and organisation remain insufficiently documented. In this study, we describe an exceptional fenestrated complex in the posterolateral parietal bone of Plecotus auritus, comprising structural elements not previously recorded within Vespertilionidae. The aim of the study was to characterise in detail the morphology, topography, and variability of the surface structure termed Fenestras Elisabeth (nova structura), with particular emphasis on its relationship with the auditory region and its potential biomechanical–acoustic significance. The material consisted of ten skulls of P. auritus, examined using micro-CT scanning, 3D reconstruction, and qualitative analysis of fenestrated structures and their topographic relationships. Within the posterolateral parietal region, we identified an extensive and repeatable fenestrated complex comprising numerous fenestrae parietales Elisabeth, paired fenestrula Elisabeth, a central depression (recessus acousticus parietalis), and a bordering fissure (fissura occipitalis mastoidea, nova structura topographica). The complex exhibited a stable spatial organisation despite individual variation in the number and shape of the openings. All fenestrations were confined to the posterolateral zone, and the contact between the fenestrae and the fissura occipitalis mastoidea represented a diagnostic feature. Our analysis suggests that the Fenestras Elisabeth complex may be associated with combined biomechanical and acoustic constraints: (1) a biomechanical role—reducing strain in the parietal lamina during movements of the extremely mobile and elongated pinnae; and (2) an acoustic role—modulating micro-vibrations transmitted to the inner-ear structures. Individual variability and lateral asymmetry of fenestration patterns indicate a high degree of adaptive plasticity in this region of the skull. This study provides the first documentation of a large, structurally organised parietal-bone fenestration complex in Plecotus auritus, expanding current knowledge of bat cranial morphology and suggesting a likely functional significance for these previously unknown bony structures.

30 December 2025

In the breeding scene, limited by the small number of samples and environmental interference such as illumination occlusion, sika deer behavior recognition still faces challenges such as insufficient feature representation and weak cross-scale modeling ability. To this end, this study builds a lightweight improved model SDB-YOLO based on YOLOv11n. Firstly, the FPSC module is proposed to enhance the correlation between multi-scale features through the shared convolution mechanism, so as to significantly improve the quality of feature fusion under the condition of small samples. Secondly, the Ghost feature generation and dynamic convolution strategy are introduced into the C3k2 module to construct the C3_GDConv structure, so as to strengthen the fine-grained behavior pattern modeling ability and reduce redundant calculations. In addition, the CBAM attention mechanism is added to the neck of the network to further improve the ability of key information extraction and enhance the discrimination of feature expression. Finally, the EfficientHead was used to replace the original detection head to obtain a more robust training process and higher detection accuracy in small-sample scenarios. Experimental results show that SDB-YOLO achieves 90.2% detection accuracy with only 4.3 GFLOPs of calculation, which achieves significant performance improvement compared with YOLOv11n, and verifies the effectiveness and lightweight advantages of the proposed method in small-sample special animal behavior recognition tasks.

30 December 2025

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Animals - ISSN 2076-2615