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Part of veterinarian’s job is performing necropsies to establish the cause of death. There are challenges associated with this and especially for the wildlife veterinarians. One of the challenges is finding a carcass which unless you have very good patrol teams you might never find them. The other challenge, which other wildlife veterinarians will agree with me, is state of decomposition. You will realize that majority of wildlife are found in arid or semi arid areas where ambient temperatures are so high causing rapid decomposition of the carcass and with that no meaningful necropsy can be done and hence difficult to establish the cause of death. In the recent past we have lost animals due to suspected poisoning, only to find carcasses too late when they are already decomposed and hence difficult to come up with a definitive diagnosis. To increase chances of getting fresh carcasses we train our rangers on monitoring and reporting incidences in the field as they occur. Active Carcass Search has really helped in locating fresh carcasses and necropsy is performed before the carcass decomposes. Necropsy acts like a early warning system because your findings will help in preventing and/or controlling re-occurrence of the same problem.
This giraffe was seen on 12th May 2008 at Lewa wildlife conservancy. The rangers reported that, they saw him limping and the left forelimb and the right hind limb had swollen joints. By then the veterinarian was away on another duty and so he could not attend to the animal immediately. When the veterinarian was back, we did not find the animal then. 4 days later the same animal was found dead. We arranged to perform a necropsy to establish the cause of death.
Among the significant findings were fracture of the carpal bone and joint infection. The neck was bent and on opening it up, it was found that the cervical bones were dislocated. It was suspected that the animal must have been knocked by another one causing the dislocation of the cervical bones. There was blood tinged froth in the trachea and its is suspected that the giraffe died of aspiration pneumonia.
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