Deliberate geophagia or sand-eating behaviour has been widely documented in herbivorous and omnivorous mammals, but never large felids at captivity. Here we report a case of apparent lethal gastrointestinal impaction from sand intake 10-year-old captive Bengal tigress. After 2 days anorexia prostration the tigress was admitted to University Veterinary Hospital with abdominal distension diarrhoe...

Analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences from 198 species confirms the position of Barilius mesopotamicus as a species of the Asian genus Barilius within the subtribe Chedrina in the subfamily Danioninae. This relationship is supported by a parsimony analysis based on 43 morphological characters, and the morphological examination confirms that B. mesopotamicus possesses the synapomorphi...

Compiled by Manoj Prathapan, Amrita institute of Medical Sciences. Cochin Cataract surgery in its simplest form is at least 4000 years old. Couching for cataract was the earliest method at about 2000 BC, and even then was evidently practiced in the Tigris / Euphrates area, India and Japan. The earliest records are from the early Hindu records of Susruta’s time and from Bible and Red Sea Scrolls...