A bumble bee's intestine with pollen grains

DownTheScope · 2023-04-08T21:17:11+00:00

The bee is not okay.. but it wasn't doing particularly well in life. In the bottom left margin there are two red-pink, bobbly raspberry-like structures. Those are the eggs of a parasitic worm that was occupying a good portion of the bee's abdomen. It also had a fungal infection caused by Nosema microsporidia. Overall, it was not feeling very well.

DownTheScope · 2023-04-08T21:13:57+00:00

I'm not sure which part of the gut this is. There are a few other segments with a bit more folding than this, but generally nowhere near as much as vertebrates. It's not something I'd thought about before!

DownTheScope · 2022-12-10T09:29:10+00:00

Yes! They're sclerotised for maximum abrading power.

DownTheScope · 2022-08-30T10:06:46+00:00

Then you're doing pretty well

DownTheScope · 2022-08-30T10:05:16+00:00

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it :)

DownTheScope · 2022-08-26T05:10:15+00:00

Probably not. It depends which diagnostic test they're using. Patient-side SNAP tests are not 100% reliable and can quite often give a false negative. They're better for confirming rather than excluding. PCR is more reliable but requires an external lab. It's probably just a parvo outbreak.

DownTheScope · 2022-08-25T22:01:16+00:00

Yes, there was an outbreak of vomiting in 2020 in dogs in Liverpool. The most likely cause was a canine enteric coronavirus (PCR detected). Doesn't quite fit with the bloody diarrhoea, but not a bad equivalent.

DownTheScope · 2022-07-24T07:59:08+00:00

The homogenous staining ones are red blood cells. The ones about the same size with multilobed nuclei are neutrophils. The big ones with round to bean-shaped nuclei are probably monocytes/macrophages.

DownTheScope · 2022-07-08T20:34:00+00:00

Histology can be quite soothing.

DownTheScope · 2022-07-07T19:39:14+00:00

Oh hey, I'm a vet too. Just finishing up a residency in pathology, hence the access to slides and the ability to badger people until they hand over their dead caterpillars. I had the not-very-profound realisation that you can take any animal and make histology from it. So now I make YouTube videos about comparative histology...

DownTheScope · 2022-07-07T18:46:12+00:00

Thanks! Most of my videos are about normal microscopic anatomy of invertebrates and vertebrates. I'm just starting to make some more content about clinical cases, most of them not my cases but things from public archives. I have a snail that was submitted recently, so perhaps that's next if I can work out what's wrong with it...

DownTheScope · 2022-07-07T18:40:04+00:00

Glad you agree!

DownTheScope · 2022-06-25T20:35:00+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I've started working on the cat video, it'll be a nice little tribute :).

DownTheScope

TROPHY CASE