VIENNA Aug 14 (Reuters) – Scientists have succeeded for the
first time in impregnating an elephant with frozen sperm,
ultrasound pictures presented by Vienna’s Schoenbrunn Zoo showed
on Tuesday.
The scan shows a 10.6-centimetre-long (4.2 inch),
five-month-old elephant foetus with its trunk, legs, tail, eyes
and ears clearly discernible.
The foetus, which was scanned in April, is likely now 20 cm
long, the zoo said, and is due to be born to 26-year-old African
elephant Tonga in or around August 2013 after a pregnancy of
about 630 days.
Elephants have been impregnated with fresh or refrigerated
sperm in the past in an effort to protect endangered species,
but frozen sperm can be transported further, and allows the
female elephant to be inseminated at her most fertile time.
The sperm was taken from a sedated wild elephant in South
Africa using electroejaculation in the project known internally
as “Operation Frozen Dumbo,” a zoo spokeswoman said.
It took eight months to clear customs on its way to France
due to lack of an established procedure for such wares.
The project was a joint effort of Schoenbrunn Zoo, Berlin’s
Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, France’s
Beauval Zoo and Pittsburgh Zoo in the United States.
Both African and Asian species of elephant are endangered,
especially the Asian, mainly due to poaching for meat and ivory
tusks and destruction of their habitats.
Around 2,000 elephants live in zoos, and a further 15,000
Asian elephants are estimated to be kept privately, employed in
the timber industry or living in temples.
“Since the survival of elephants in their natural habitat is
under threat, zoos around the world are striving to preserve
them,” said Schoenbrunn Zoo Director Dagmar Schratter.
“Artificial insemination with the semen of a wild bull
elephant is a chance to enrich the gene pool to further species
conservation,” she said, adding that there were five female
elephants living in zoos to every one male.
(Reporting by Heinz-Peter Bader and Georgina Prodhan, editing
by Paul Casciato)
