Gastrin Activity in the Chicken Proventriculus

Reaumur and Spallanzani 1 used birds as experimental animals in the early days of digestive physiology; other workers on avian gastric digestion include Cheney 2 , Friedman 3 and Long 4 . The bird lacks the gastric antrum analogous to that in the mammalian species and there is a tubularly shaped glandular stomach called proventriculus which produces the gastric juice 5–9 . Unlike mammals, which have a separate HCl and pepsin-producing cells 5 , birds produce HCl and pepsin from the same gastric cells called oxynticopeptic cells 5–9 . These cells are arranged in tubular glands organised in lobules deep in the proventricular mucosa with central collecting cavities which open on the mucosal surface through ducts 5,6 .