Scanning electron microscopic and histological features of the oral cavity of the Egyptian tortoise (Testudo kleinmanni)

Abstract

This investigation was led to depict the structural and functional adaptations of the oral cavity of herbivorous Egyptian tortoises using scanning electron and light microscopes. The SEM showed that the triangular papillary tongue possessed three conical papillary subtypes: the rectangular conical on the tip, the round conical on the rest of the dorsal lingual surface and the elongated conical on the caudal portion of the lingual wing. The presence of the serrated lips with their valves compensated for the absence of the teeth. The rostral part had a vomeronasal opening while the middle part had the choana, but the caudal part had numerous openings of the salivary glands. There are three palatine folds: a single median palatine fold, two peripheral palatine folds and the choanal fold. The current histological results show the keratinized dorsal lingual surface, in which the keratinized layer extended to cover the papillae. Two types of lingual glands, according to their position, are papillary superficial and deep lingual glands. Papillary or superficial glands open in the interpapillary spaces via narrow openings, while the deep glands are surrounded by well‐developed muscles and open via wide openings on the dorsal lingual surface. An entoglossal cartilaginous structure of hyaline cartilage was found in the mid‐ and hindtongue, with numerous chondrocytes lodged within the lacunae. Our results conclude that the oral cavity of the herbivorous Egyptian tortoise was adapted to the dietary and vigorous demands of the Egyptian fauna.

Histology, histochemistry and fine structure of the lacrimal gland in the one‐humped camel (Camelus dromedarius)

“…The histological technique is the ordinary education method for describing the microscopic features of any structure in the animal body to facilitate the understanding of the veterinarian students (Abumandour et al, 2023;Kandyel et al, 2023Kandyel et al, , 2024Massoud et al, 2023); additionally, there are recent simple education methods such as plastination (El-Shafey et al, 2022;Grondin et al, 1994) and ChatGPT (Choudhary et al, 2023). There are numerous morphological previously published data describing the camel's different organs adaptations to the Egyptian hot deserts (Elghoul et al, 2022;Roshdy et al, 2021;Yousef et al, 2024).…”