Whooping Crane Windpipe

“Very generally, in cranes and swans, the trachea enters the keel of the sternum, which is excavated to receive it, and where it forms one or more coils before emerging to pass to the lungs. This curious winding is carried to the extreme in our Grus americanus, the whoopong crane, in which the wind-pipe is about as long as the whole bird, and about half of it - over two feet of it! - is coiled away in the breast-bone.” Elliot Coues

Keywords

birds, ornithology, bird anatomy, bird sternum, North American birds, internal parts of birds, bird trachea, bird windpipe, Grus amercanus, wind-pipe, windpipe coiling

Galleries

Bird Anatomy

Source

Elliot Coues Key to North American Birds (Boston, MA: Estes and Lauriat, 1884)

Downloads

TIFF (full resolution)

2400×1918, 1.1 MiB

Large GIF

1024×818, 175.4 KiB

Medium GIF

640×511, 76.3 KiB

Small GIF

320×255, 20.3 KiB