Quantification and distribution of circumvallate lingual papillae in saanen goats

The present study aimed to describe the disposition and amount of circumvallate lingual papillae in Saanen goats using 26 goat tongues from the Laboratory of Animal Anatomy and Morphology of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, which were previously fixed in 10% formaldehyde solution for later dissection of tongues that were removed from the oral cavity for the necessary studies. After identification, morphometric data were tabulated and submitted to statistical analysis for further description. In descriptive statistics, the mean of 17.85 was close to the median of 17.5 and the overall dispersion (standard deviation) was relatively low (2.24), which represents a coefficient of variation (CV) of 12.8 %. Confidence interval for mean with 95 % with 99 % confidence was also performed. Regarding the distribution of papillae, 21 tongues (80.7 %) of the total samples were located on the side of the tongue root, 3 tongues (11.5%) were distributed on the side of the tongue root, migrating toward the tongue median sagittal plane, 1 tongue (3.8 %) was located in the concave position on the side of the tongue root and 1 tongue (3.8 %) was disposed on the sides of the tongue, with some papillae arranged close to the region of the tongue median sagittal plane.