Search our library of articles, papers and other published materials. You can use keywords or boolean-style search:
Both the discussions of the vascular system of the giraffe…mention venous valves, but both overlook the special ‘seried’ valves found at the entry of major tributaries into the axillary and brachial veins, though not into the jugular. Fewer occur in the closely-related okapi and some in jugular and femoral veins of the bactrian camel.
When a giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) lowers its head to drink, blood could enter the jugular vein from the inferior vena cava or regurgitate from the jugular veins into the cranial veins. We investigated the anatomy of jugular valves in giraffes to establish if they could prevent either of these regurgitations. Jugular vein length and intervalve distances of 396 valves (192 left, 204 right) were measured in 60 veins from 25 adult (11 males and 14 females) and five foetal giraffes.