A pictural guide to postmortem examination of elephants
The necropsy of an elephant represents a rare event for most veterinary pathology facilities outside of Africa and Asia. Here, we report a comprehensible, abundantly illustrated, step-by-step protocol adapted to the special technical and anatomical peculiarities of elephant necropsies with regard to the needed equipment, aspects of transmissible disease prevention and workplace safety, personnel, time efforts, as well as important elephant diseases and their zoonotic potential. Detailed instructions for dissection, macroscopic examination and sampling of all relevant organs and tissues are provided, along with checklists for preparation and smooth execution of elephant necropsies. Using the featured protocols, a complete elephant necropsy with generation of extensive samples for histological, microbiological, and molecular analyses can be performed by 10-12 persons (5-6 pathologists and 5-6 assistants) within 4-6 hours in case of an adult animal.
Authors
- Kaspar Matiasek (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5021-3280)
- Lina Eddicks (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0705-0097)
- Alexandra Rieger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2297-0716)
- Effrosyni Michelakaki (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2773-0409)
- Christine Gohl
- Andreas Blutke (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7824-2681)
- Almuth Falkenau (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4969-1117)
- Andreas Brühschwein (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7833-8031)
- Ninja Kolb (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2767-7399)
- Hanspeter W. Steinmetz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5879-0207)
- A Gager (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3446-0948)
- Marco Roller (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5678-0892)
- Isabelle Lutzmann
- Marco Rosati (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1485-1610)
- Christine Lendl
- Lukas Reese
- Barbara Lang
- Markus Menzinger
- Lukas Pfaudler
- Sonja Fiedler
- Andrea Meyer-Lindenberg
- Nicole Richter
- Robert Fitz
- Elena Dell’Era
- Clara Kaufhold
- Julia Heckmann
- Timo Lorenzen
- Monir Majzoub-Altweck
- Martin Zöllner
- Katharina Erber
Institutions
- State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe (DE)
- Gesundheitsdienst (CH)
- Münchner Stadtbibliothek (DE)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- PLoS ONE
- Published
- 2026-02-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0338783
- Primary Topic
- Brucella: diagnosis, epidemiology, treatment
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00