ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Behavior and Welfare
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1531363
This article is part of the Research TopicAnimal Biomechanics: Application of Biomedical Engineering to Veterinary Sciences for Animal Healthcare, Volume IIView all 8 articles
Analysis of Cervical Bone Structure and Surface Characteristics in Birds
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun, China
- 2Key Laboratory for Bionics Engineering, Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China
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Background: Birds have evolved morphologically diverse neck structures in order to adapt to different foraging styles. Studying avian neck structure and function can not only help us understand their evolutionary processes and ecological roles, but also use them as a research model for modular structure, providing a valuable reference for exploring the morphological and kinematic properties of other organisms.Objective: By analyzing the neck bone structure of Chinese geese and domestic ducks, referring to the characteristic parameters of the neck bone structure, it provides reference for the structural design of bionic bird neck machinery.Methods: This study focuses on two representative avian species of the order Anseriformes-geese and ducks-as research subjects to analyze their cervical vertebral structural morphology and investigate characteristic parameters of their cervical skeletal system. This manuscript mainly includes the following contents: structural morphological dimensions of goose and duck vertebrae were manually measured, and characteristic curves were plotted, analysis of their skeletal structural features. Images of the surface structural morphology of goose and duck vertebrae were taken, processed and measured with Image J software. Through comparative analysis of the morphological characteristics of vertebral surface structures in geese and ducks, their patterns were summarized.The vertebral morphological characteristics of domestic geese and domestic ducks are very similar. With the increase of vertebral length (CL), the fluctuation range of vertebral width (ZW) gradually increases, and the fluctuation trend of vertebral width (ZW) of goose and duck neck is basically the same. The overall changes of the goose cervical CL values were smaller as compared to the duck cervical spine. Furthermore, although geese and ducks differ in cervical spine numbers, both showed functional zoning similar to other birds.
Keywords: Bird neck, Goose neck, Duck neck, Bone structure parameters, bone surface area
Received: 22 Nov 2024; Accepted: 17 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhou, Zhang, Jiang, Huang, Qian, Ren and Ren. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jiajia Wang, Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun, China
Dongyan Huang, Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun, China
Zhihui Qian, Key Laboratory for Bionics Engineering, Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, 130022, Jilin Province, China
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