Reproductive Tract Anatomy

[caiti]

I am taking a class called Fundamentals of Reproduction this semester and we are doing a small final project on the reproductive tracts of an animal of our choice. We've seen cow, goat, pig and possibly sheep tracts (they were a year old and not all labeled) but my partner and I are probably going to do chinchillas.

So I was wondering if anyone had some good informative sites/books on general chinchilla reproductive anatomy. The teacher wasn't too clear so we are going to ask him to specify what he wants the report on but so I'm not sure whether we are doing both sexes or not. A lot of the stuff I'm coming up with on internet searches are just external reproductive anatomy, and a lot of that is sexing chinchillas. While that is useful, I was wondering if anyone knew of any more in depth resources that included internal reproductive anatomy. Thanks.

 

[Claire D]

Try these.......

Reproductive Anatomy & Function in the Male Chinchilla - http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/org_nws/NWSci%20journal%20articles/1950-1959/1957%20vol%2031/v31%20p118%20Hillemanna%20et%20al.PDF

Snippet from the Exotic Animal Medicine for the Veterinary Technician book -
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qQVVUGnA3AIC&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=chinchilla+reproductive+organs+anatomy&source=bl&ots=xNE4OisirH&sig=Ac7zmLtfAGr_Gkmd0U2pd2xc0w8&hl=en&ei=qsTfTPT7ONO3hAfU79mODQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFIQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=chinchilla%20reproductive%20organs%20anatomy&f=false

 

[caiti]

Thank you very much for those links, Claire.

Now I have been researching this and begun to make the presentation. But I am finding some conflicting information. The conflict of most concern to me is what the cone shaped structure is above the female anus. Most scientific papers say it's the clitoris, but most breeder websites say it's the urethral cone. I am so confused and there of course is a huge deficit of information out there on chinchilla reproduction. Does anybody know?

 

[Ash]

My guess is it would be the urethral cone, as I don't know that a female chinchilla would actually have a clitoris. Also, when females spray, it comes from the cone...

 

[Cuddlebug]

I have always heard it referred to as the urethral cone.

 

[TheDarkLlama]

Most scientific papers say it's the clitoris, but most breeder websites say it's the urethral cone. I am so confused and there of course is a huge deficit of information out there on chinchilla reproduction. Does anybody know?

Okay, I'm a random googler curious about the entire urethral cone--why did they evolve this way? Just as a defense mechanism or something else?

And I found this post. To answer you, for any future random curious folk, I would trust the scientists to be accurate. If scientists made that distinction of urethral cone vs clitoris that would mean there was an average number of sensory nerves there adn that it was just evolved for defense... since they call it a clitoris either the research hasn't been done (maybe nobody wants to dissect a chin clitoris for the answer?) or it serves the same function as it does for us with the added benefit of defense.

Why would anybody call it a urethral cone then? Maybe clitoris made somebody uncomfortable and that person had some influence. Soon "urethral cone" made the rounds and everyone thinks that's the name.

OH! and in case anybody is new, chins will hop up and spray pee everywhere if you piss them off... at least the females will. Which is what mine does (she's hilariously hit the cats through the cage, evidently just for the fun of it as I've seen her do it as the cat was casually walking by). Thus, defense mechanism clitoris.