Blood Values of Two American Carnivores

Abstract

In the course of an investigation of the blood coagulation mechanism of a series of mammals, a male raccoon (Procyon lotor) and a female bear (Euarctos americanus) were presented to the author. The raccoon was captured twenty-four hours before studies were made, near Littlestown, Pennsylvania. The bear, a yearling weighing 21 kg., was captured approximately a week before the studies were made, in the Adirondack region of New York. Twenty-four mis. of blood were taken from the femoral vein of the bear under sodium pentobarbital anesthesia. The raccoon was exsanguinated by intracardiac puncture, after anesthetization with sodium pentobarbital. The data from the blood studies conducted on these two mammals are presented in Tables 1 and 2. The leukocyte and differential counts were made by the usual method. The whole blood clotting was done by the technique of Lee and White (Am. Jour. Med., 145:495, 1913),...