Volume 3, No. 3. February 14, 2003
Valentines for zoos
Success
breeds success
Romance is nice,
but in zoo-think the end results of romance are what count most. And so, elephant
keepers at Toledo Zoo in Ohio and Six Flags Marine World in Vallejo, California,
try to put the tragedies of last year behind them as they prepare for new, historic
maternities this spring.
Both zoos are participating in artificial insemination programs. Last summer,
Toledo’s experiment with a first-ever surgically implanted semen ended
in a stillbirth. In October, Marine World’s artificially inseminated calf
died in the birth canal and the mother, Tika, after carrying the dead fetus
for six more weeks, succumbed to internal infections (the occurrence is not
rare in elephants, which have been known to carry a dead fetus without complications
up to a year after the labor's termination and expel it naturally; surgically
removing the fetus is not a viable option).
Despite these failures, the elephant breeding community still has high hopes
that artificial insemination will help maintain the zoo population of these
animals. First-time mothers, as both Tika and Toledo’s Rafiki were, have
low success rates, a truism for most species. “I would not have expected
us to continue and not have lost a calf from AI,” said Dennis Schmitt,
professor of animal science at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield
and America’s leading researcher and practitioner of elephant AI. “We’ve
lost calves in natural breeding, why would AI be any different? Animals don’t
read the book, and everything never goes as planned.”
What is encouraging over the past year is that AI in and of itself continues
to be successful, as it has been for five elephants (two Asians and three Africans).
Since the first AI pregnancy at Springfield, Missouri, in November 1998, one
more Asian and three African AI babies have been born. One Asian died last year
of a herpes virus, but the other four are healthy little elephants.
In fact, the program’s success continues at both Toledo and Marine World.
Misha, impregnated by surgical means at Marine World, is due next month, and
Renee at Toledo inseminated by non-surgical means is due in early May. Other
AI pregnancies are proceeding at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida,
while Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, awaits the results of an AI procedure
from a month ago.
Furthering the optimism is the perfection of surgical insemination. Previously,
AI could only be accomplished using a three-meter (10-foot) flexible endoscope,
a procedure currently only Schmitt’s team and a veterinary group in Berlin,
Germany, can do. Through surgery, Schmitt can deposit semen directly to the
speculum via a 1 1/2-inch (four-centimeter) incision. The procedure can be accomplished
by trained veterinary staffs anywhere, Schmitt said. The elephant’s temperament
and training determine which procedure is most appropriate.
In development is a third procedure which, if successful, will be a huge breakthrough:
using frozen semen. Currently, AI uses semen collected from one of three on-call
bulls: Dale at Kansas City Zoo in Missouri, MacLean at Disney’s Animal
Kingdom and Bwagi at Lion Country Safari in Loxahatchee, Florida. Windows of
opportunity are short; the female cycle for elephants is three days. While the
three bulls generally are willing to make a donation at any time, sometimes
the specimens are not worth sending. Those that are must be transported to the
receiving zoo the same day, a costly effort fraught with pitfalls.
“Frozen semen allows institutions to do it at their convenience; they can
store it and it’s available at the time they need it,” Schmitt said.
The first AI using frozen specimens has been conducted at the Indianapolis Zoo
in Indiana (where the two first AI African elephants turn 3 years old in March
and August this year) and zoo officials are awaiting the results. So far, the
process can only be used with Africans, whose sperm cells have more stable membranes
than those of Asian elephants.
While AI procedures prove increasingly successful, the end result is still in
doubt and remains so until more research can be done about elephants in childbirth.
Few births in the wild have been documented, and whereas every birth in captivity
is documented, the research is still scant by nature of the beast. “With
a lot of other species, we’ve seen a lot of births, often once a year,”
said Terry Wolf, wildlife director at Lion Country Safari who works with Bwagi.
“With elephants you’re waiting two to three to five years to see a
calf. You’re working with a very small population base. You’re working
with some animals that are pregnant for the first time.”
The best store of knowledge in elephant breeding, in fact, comes from the Ringling
Brothers circus, Schmitt said. “The reason is that many of those cows are
having third, fourth and fifth calves. As we go through more pregnancies, we
will be more successful. If (the elephant) hasn’t had her first, she can’t
have her second or third.”
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