On individual differences of the blood of chickens and ducks.

Abstract

It was originally demonstrated 1 in the case of human blood that there exist differences between members of the same species detectable by the isohemagglutinin reaction. Similar results have been found in several species of animals, e. g., cattle, horses, sheep, dogs. With the blood of other animals, however, clear-cut reactions have not been obtained, although biochemical individual differences must for other reasons be assumed to exist. Adequate study of the question of isoagglutination has been hampered to a certain degree by the failure to obtain satisfactory results in common laboratory animals such as rabbits, rats, and mice. 2 It was our purpose to find suitable laboratory animals for further investigation, especially for breeding experiments (cf. von Dungern and Hirschfeld, Epstein and Ottenberg, and others) and for the study of racial differences.

Our observations were made on chickens and ducks. In most of the studies hitherto reported, isoagglutination (or heteroag-glutination) by normal sera and isolysin reactions by immune sera have been employed. In our experiments we made use of immune sera obtained from a distant species. This method, which offers some advantages, can be used if by previous treatment with cells of individual bloods those agglutinins are removed which act indiscriminately upon all bloods of the species. 3