When the word skull, most people immediately think of lurid stories of murders, corpses and manslaughter. The skull has always been fascinating to humanity, probably because it is the face of the dead. But the skull is also an interesting part in living beings. It contains the brain, an organ that we all like to keep intact. The skull has a protective role in this.
The skull
The skull consists of three parts:
- The skullcap
- The skull base
- The facial skull
The skullcap
The skullcap, as the word suggests, is the roof of the skull, the lid of the head. The skullcap consists of several parts of bone. The different parts of bone are connected with connective tissue connections. In young animals and humans, the different bone parts are not yet connected to each other. This to facilitate birth. The skull of young animals and humans contains a fontanelle. This is a space between the bones of the skull cap. In certain breeds, the fontanelle remains open, such as in the Chihuahua
The skull base
The skull base is the bottom of the skull. Note: the lower jawbones belong to the facial area of the skull and not to the base of the skull.
The facial skull
This is the part of the skull that contains the face. Some of the bones in the facial skull are air-filled cavities. The cavities are lined with mucous membranes. Consider, for example, the forehead cavity and the maxillary cavity. Cats and dogs also have a forehead cavity and a maxillary sinus
Skull shapes
In dogs and cats we distinguish three types of skull shapes.
- The narrow, elongated skull that flows smoothly into the bridge of the nose, as we see in the Scottish collie and the Siamese.
- The short, convex skull with a clear kink (stop) between the brain skull and the bridge of the nose, as we see in the bulldog and the press.
- The intermediate form in between, as we see in the rottweiler and the European short hair.
