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Received: 10 Oct., 2018 Revised: 25 Nov., 2018 Accepted: 30 Nov., 2018
ABSTRACT
The present study was carried out on the first, second and third pairs of ribs of six specimens of adult Blue bull (Boselaphus tragocamelus) of either sex. These ribs had a head, neck and a tubercle at the proximal end, shaft or body and a costal cartilage at the distal end. An accessory tubercle was located below the main tubercle of the ribs at their caudal border of the shaft. The accessory tubercle was located 4.1±0.08 cm and 4.2±0.11 cm below the proximal tubercle at the caudal border in females and males respectively. The costal groove was prominent at the proximal aspect of the caudal border of the second rib. The accessory tubercle was absent in the second rib. The accessory tubercle was located 3.3±0.13 cm and 3.5±0.10 cm below the proximal tubercle at the caudal border in females and males respectively. The curviness of the shaft increased up to the 3rd rib. The ribs of both the sides had similar structures and sex wise gross variations were not found. The Biometrical observations on different parameters of first, second and third pairs of ribs of Blue bull reflected significance (P<0.05) differences between the sexes of this species. The present study would be helpful in identification of the first three pairs of ribs of Blue bull and solving vetero-legal cases related with this species.
Keywords: Blue bull, morphology, morphometry, ribs
The Blue bull (Boselaphus tragocamelus) is known to be one of the biggest antelopes in Asia and is widely found in both the forests and adjoining villages with enough green grass (Sathapathy et al, 2017). The Blue bull belongs to the family Bovidae and comes under the genus Boselaphus (Sathapathy et al, 2018a). It is quite prevalent in northern and central parts of India especially in the foothills of Himalayas, eastern part of Pakistan and southern part of Nepal, but has vanished from Bangladesh (Sathapathy et al., 2018b and Sathapathy et al., 2018c). The adult male appears like ox and so called as Blue bull. The Blue bulls are safeguarded beneath the IUCN since 2003 and also under safeguard of 'Schedule III' of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 (Bagchi et al,...