Emily Chan
A collection of skulls belonging to more than 150 dog breeds and other animals is housed at the Ëotvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. In total, there are 431 skulls of dogs, cats, and their wild relatives. Researchers have digitized the skulls to make them more accessible for research and educational purposes.
For decades, a researcher at the university, Tibor Csörgö, has been collecting animal skulls to teach anatomy to biologists. He obtained them from private donors over the past decades. The animals had died of old age or disease or were euthanized for medical reasons.
As his collection grew, he began to look for patterns among the skulls. Between breeds and species, the shape of the skull varies significantly, especially in dogs. For example, greyhounds have long skulls, while French bulldogs have rounded skulls.
A digital skull database could be extremely useful for future research in medicine and evolution. Some research has already been based on the skull collection. In the past, the director of the HUN-REN Institute of Ecological Research, Zsolt László Garamszegi, collaborated with experts from Ëotvös Loránd University and Niclas Kolm from Stockholm University in Sweden.
They found that modern dog breeds from the last two centuries have larger brains than dogs with ancient origins, and it is because of altered selection effects.
A veterinary neuroanatomist named Kálmán Czeibert and imaging specialists Ádám Csóka, Tamás Donkó, and Örs Petneházy from the Medicopus Nonprofit Ltd. research unit used a medical high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanner to carry out the digitization.
It took approximately five to six minutes to scan each skull. During scanning, a piece of polyurethane foam was placed under some of the skulls to stabilize their positions.
Previously, researchers were required to visit such collections in person to conduct similar research. But now, the skull biobank can be digitized so that anyone from anywhere in the world can examine the skulls from their desk. It saves a lot of travel time and allows experts to focus more directly on their studies.
“This capability enables the conducting of analyses on a larger scale than previously undertaken, fostering collaboration and facilitating data sharing among different institutions, thereby expanding the scope of research,” wrote the authors of the study.
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