Pigs (Sus scrofa) are known far and wide as the wise and noble animals of the barnyard. Of all modern species in the family Suidae, S. scrofa has the widest geographical range, which is due in no small part to their domestication by humans ~4900 years ago. Subsequently, pigs have been introduced virtually everywhere that humans have gone, and have been selectively bred to produce a wide variety of breeds – the number of which rivals that of the domestic dog.

In the biomedical field, pigs are the animal of choice for modeling human anatomical systems because of their availability and proximity in size to humans. These wide ranging applications include drug testing and organ transplants, as well as understanding disorders of the temporomandibular joint, degenerative joint disease, and the production of joint prostheses.

This specimen was collected in Travis County, Texas. It was made available to The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. Timothy Rowe of The University of Texas at Austin. Funding for scanning and image processing was provided by a National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative grant to Dr. Rowe.

Lateral view of skull	Dorsal view of skull	Ventral view of skull

The specimen was scanned by Richard Ketcham on 22 September 2005 along the coronal axis for a total of 606 slices. Each slice is 0.50 mm thick, with an interslice spacing of 0.45 mm, resulting in a slice overlap of 0.05 mm. The field of reconstruction is 194 mm.

Literature

Witmer, L.M., Ridgely, R.C., Mayle, H., and D. Adams. 2004. The best of both worlds: integrating CT and MR. RT image 17(32):16-19

Links

Sus scrofa on the Animal Diversity Web (Univ. of Michigan Museum of Zoology)