Hi guys,

 

I thought some of you might find this interesting. Having done a short course of veterinary clinical pathology and looking at things under the microscope for various animals, I thought I’d share some of my findings with you.

 

There is a huge universe we can glimpse when we look at things under the microscope. There are an unbelievable number of different cells, and our bodies are made up of literally trillions of individual ones (that's 1 followed by over twelve zeroes). It’s quite amazing when you think that these little guys are what allow us to be alive, to function, to go about our daily lives, all without us being aware of them doing it.

 

My first lot of photos is of…

 

Bird blood!

 

Gross, you might say. In that red fluid there are many different types of cells all with very special functions. The following photos are of blood from my very own budgie Millie. A long time ago when she was sick the vet made a smear using her blood. The vet let me keep it as my own reference. I kept it tucked away and only during my short course the past few weeks have I gotten them permanently fixed, and then used a special camera to take photos. So we have budgie specific blood to look at. (Different birds have different looking cells).

 

To make a blood smear, a single drop of blood is placed onto a slide. It is then smeared out to make a thin layer of cells we can look at (so they don’t sit on top of each other and make it hard to distinguish individual ones). Then it is stained with special coloured fluids so that we can see the cell structures (most of which are normally colourless). This creates some artifacts you'll see in my photos - little bits of debris, some weird and different uptake of stain leading to different colours. The following photos are magnified at least 1000 times the actual size, and a think another ten times on top of that because I cut and zoomed in for you to see them clearly.

 

So here we go: Milly blood.

 

Red blood cells (erythrocytes)

If you’re familiar with blood from say people and some other mammals, you’ll be familiar with red blood cells are mostly round with no nucleus. Well, birds are a bit weird! Bird blood has a nucleus and the cell is ovoid in shape. The role of red blood cells is to carry oxygen. The red blood cells pick up oxygen in the lungs and then circulate to different tissues, which use it for metabolism in order to function.

 

Red blood cells make up the majority of blood. They're the ovoid reddish ones. There are some cells that are rounder and bluer. These are younger red blood cells, which will soon grow up to be mature red blood cells like the others.

 

Platelets (thrombocytes)

The role of platelets in all animals is to plug any holes in the blood vessels. They’re responsible for stopping a broken vessel from bleeding out indefinitely. After a certain series of reactions, the platelets are bound together to form a clot – if there’s a big enough clot we see them as scabs.

 

Bird platelets are weird too – they also have a nucleus where mammalian ones don’t. Bird platelets like to hang out in groups on a blood smear.

 

The thrombocytes are the little ones sitting together.

 

White blood cells (leukocytes)

White blood cells are a group of types of cells. Their role as a whole is to defend the body from invaders. They can be divided into granulocytes and agranulocytes.

Granulocytes

All granulocytes have granules inside them. These granules have special enzymes designed to break down material.

 

Anyone familiar with the mammalian neutrophil? They are the most abundant white blood cell and their role is to eat and digest any invaders in the blood (and other tissues too). Their main target is bacteria. They engulf the bacteria and then release their granules, which break down and destroy the offenders. Neutrophils also engulf and destroy things that don’t belong in the blood or body, like dirt or splinters and so on. When a whole lot of neutrophils accumulate and die, the debris from their remains form what we call pus.

Birds don’t have neutrophils, but instead have a cell called a heterophil. They have exactly the same job as the mammalian neutrophil.

 

There are two heterophils in this picture (and a platelet, and a baby red blood cell)

 

Birds also have eosinophils and basophils like mammals, though in a normal bird they’re rare. Milly wasn’t sick enough to have these, so I don’t have any pictures.

 

Agranulocytes

Agranulocyets are white cells without granules inside them. They can be further divided into monocytes and lymphocytes.

 

Monocytes (like macrophages) come to the neutrophils’ (or heterophils’) defence if an invasion has been going on for some time, and to mop up any mess they make. They too are designed to engulf things, including invaders, but they also engulf dead neutrophils and red blood cells to remove their remains from circulation. Monocytes also call on lymphocytes to do their job.

 

The monocyte is the one with a "kidney" shaped nucleus. There are also two heterophils, a thrombocye and a young red blood cell. The little clumps of dense colour are due to the stain being processed incorrectly.

 

The main role of lymphocytes is in immunity and viral diseases. A subgroup these cells are designed to “remember” a certain invader, so that the next time it happens they send off signals quickly so a response can be launched faster (this is the basis for vaccinations). Another subgroup of these cells makes antibodies specific to the invader, which coats and neutralises the invader. Heterophils and monocytes then come by and engulf these coated invaders. Yet another subgroup releases toxic granules that kill any infected cells, killing their “own” in order to stop the spread of disease.

 

The lymphocyte is the weirdly shaped cell in the centre that looks a bit squished (this is normal for them).

 

I hope you’ve found this post interesting. Since I’m going to work with an avian specialist for the next three weeks, I’ll try to take as many photos as I can of things under a microscope, and post them here.

 

Mods if this should be in the health section please move it.

Edited August 28, 200915 yr by Chrysocome

Wow! Thanks for that ~ very informative

Excellent! Great to see this, and a great feeling actually knowing what you're talking about lol. Human science is part of my nursing degree so im glad to have some background on this stuff! I'd love to spend some time learning what you are learning! Perhaps some day!

 

Keep the info coming

this is excellent, I will leave it here

cool chryso! thats amazing pictures!

 

thanks, they are somewaht inspiring for me to think of the wide universe made of small atoms and cells!

im interested in learning how to screen my birds poo

what type of miccroscope would i need to get chrysocome

and where could i learn with out doing a course that would certainly do my head in

Im also looking into getting a microscope at the moment to do faecal smears on my birds.

 

I found an EXCELLENT website for beginners like us! (Link wouldnt work, so i just posted the address)

 

http://www.finchaviary.com/Maintenance/Fec...ar.htm#AvianVet

Edited October 10, 200915 yr by Dean_NZ

Im also looking into getting a microscope at the moment to do faecal smears on my birds.

 

I found an EXCELLENT website for beginners like us! (Link wouldnt work, so i just posted the address)

 

http://www.finchaviary.com/Maintenance/Fec...ar.htm#AvianVet

 

thank you very much dean i really appreciate that as i cant ,don't and wont surf the net as i get frustrated took 1 week looking for a bit of info on a certain turtle in end i asked kaz to help me which she did very quickly

 

thanks kaz for that (was a while ago now)

Very informative Chrysocome and thanks Dean for the link :fingerscrossed:

Bird blood has a nucleus and the cell is ovoid in shape.

 

That's really interesting, and very different from human RBC! In Haematology, we were always taught that the absence of a nucleus in a mature red blood cell reduces energy usage and allows the cell to carry the highest amount of oxygen/carbon dioxide possible, so it's amazing to ponder how birds can still metabolise so quickly with all their RBC nuclei working away. Thanks for posting your slides Chryso :fingerscrossed:

Thanks for the slides, that's awesome.

What is the function of the nucleus in the birds red blood cell? Why do they still have them?

I'm guessing that it is so they can still divide by mitosis and replace their red blood cells more rapidly if they needed to in response to injury/blood loss, but only a guess.

Are bird red blood cells capable of regeneration by cell division in the bloodstream?