Wenling Ye; Fengling Wang; Shuangyu Lv; Yange Wang; Shuo Dong & Jianlin Wang

Summary

The adrenal gland is an important endocrine organ in vertebratesthat produces a wide variety of hormones. The anatomical results showed that the adrenal gland in Bactrian camel had a typical blood supply and innervation. Surprisingly, we found that there was a novel connection mainly consisted of fibrous tissue, blood vessels and nerve bundles between the adrenal gland and the kidney in Bactrian camel, and we named it fibrous tissue-blood vessels-nerve bundles (FBN bundle). To the best of our knowledge, this FBN bundle was the first reported in Bactrian camel, and not yet observed in other animals. While, its functions and mechanisms should be studied further. We speculated that a direct function of this novel path might be to strengthen the communication of the adrenal gland and the kidney. So this communicationpath might have importantadaptive significance for the Bactrian camel living in arid and semi-arid ecological zones.

KEY WORDS: Anatomical; Adrenal gland; FBN bundle; Blood supply; Bactrian camels.

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