Introduction

A chapter on injuries of the jaws is included because the teeth are usually involved and play an important part in the way in which the fractured parts are displaced.

Fractures of the jaw and other injuries are common in animals living in the wild. The true prevalence is unknown because the evidence is based almost exclusively on those in which healing sufficient for the animal to survive occurs and on the few whose skeletons ultimately happen to be examined.

A great deal of old skeletal injury, especially fracture, is found in non-human primates in the wild (Schultz, 1939,1956) perhaps because many sooner or later meet with accidents in the course of their remarkable leaps in the tree-tops. Other injuries derive from human and other predators. Orang-utans (Duckworth, 1912) and baboons (Bramblett, 1967) seem to be particularly susceptible; the heavy-bodied baboon, although largely terrestrial, takes refuge in trees and is a clumsy climber. Many examples are reviewed by Schultz of survival and recovery from, or adaptation to, severe multiple injuries. A capuchin for example was shot dead while apparently feeding in the trees as actively as its fellows. It was found to have previous fractures of both femora, one repaired with much shortening, much of its mandible had been shot or torn away, and there were fractures of the facial bones and sternum.

Colyer (1921) found three instances of healed severe injury to the premaxillary region among the skulls of 300 young rhesus monkeys which died soon after being brought to the UK for medical research during the First World War.