Radiographic examination of birds’ skull I. - Techniques of radiodiagnostics and comparative radiography of birds’ skulls

SUMMARY The authors performed radiographic examination on the head of birds, and concluded that general anaesthesia and the use of different restraining instruments is necessary in order to obtain good quality radiographs. Comparing skull radiographs taken in vivo and on museum specimens of the same species they found signifi - cant differences primarily caused by the lack of soft tissues and secondarily by the lack of small bones lost in the course of preparing museum skeleton specimens by the taxidermists. Altogether 777 radiographs of 185 specimens in 128 species belonging to 72 families were taken and analyzed