Noun(1) (zoology, in birds, reptiles, amphibians, most fish, and monotremes but not mammals(2) a waste pipe that carries away sewage or surface water(3) a waste pipe that carries away sewage or surface water [also: cloacae (pl)]
Noun(1) (zoology, in birds, reptiles, amphibians, most fish, and monotremes but not mammals(2) a waste pipe that carries away sewage or surface water(3) a waste pipe that carries away sewage or surface water [also: cloacae (pl)]
(1) The bursa of Fabricius is an organ located just beside the cloaca .(2) Unlike we humans, the chicken has a single sexual and excretory orifice, the cloaca .(3) Salamanders were measured from the tip of the snout to the anterior end of the cloaca .(4) After males deposit spermatophores onto the cloaca of females, up to 150 eggs are laid on mud near water.(5) The cloaca maxima was the sewer system built in the sixth or seventh century BC, by one of the kings of Rome.(6) Instead, males deposit spermatophores on the substrate and females pick up these spermatophores with their cloaca later.(7) But most birds and Sphenodon lack intromittent organs and transfer sperm by cloacal apposition.(8) A current theory is that the eggs are ovulated through the cloacal pore and are expelled under pressure by muscular contractions.(9) Bird penile tissue, where it exists, also develops on the ventral cloacal wall.(10) Birds were mist-netted or caught in seed-baited traps and sexed by examination of the cloacal protuberance.(11) Little is known of their reproductive biology, but the lack of both spermatheca in females, and cloacal glands in males, suggests external fertilization.
