- Zoos: A Historical Perspective from Smithsonian Institution Libraries
The National Zoological Park is an accredited member of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums.
AZA
From Erika Bauer, the Zoo’s first Fujifilm Curatorial Resident in Animal Care
February 2008
It is fitting that the first month of 2008 brought with it a first for me in my National Zoo experience—I was able to observe an artificial insemination of one of our adult female Asian elephants, Shanthi. For the animal-care staff at the Elephant House, this has become a familiar procedure, because they have had to repeat it every few months over the past two years. If Shanthi becomes pregnant, it would mark an important milestone in the Zoo’s commitment to Asian elephant conservation.
In fact, the January insemination was the fourth attempt at impregnating Shanthi since the birth of her son, Kandula, in November 2001. Kandula was the successful result of an artificial insemination that veterinarians performed in February 2000. Shanthi has a history of proven success for these sorts of things, so we are cautiously optimistic that four is the magic number in our post-Kandula attempts!
A Matter of Timing
I arrived at the Elephant House after the Zoo had closed, at around 7 p.m. on January 17. You see, the timing of these procedures is in large part dependent on a combination of when good semen samples are collected and the time it takes to transport the samples from the potential sire’s (i.e. dad’s) zoo to the potential dam (i.e., mom).
In this case, the donor was a male Asian elephant named Sneezy, who lives at the Tulsa Zoo in Oklahoma. So the timing of the actual insemination relied in part on flight schedules from Oklahoma to Washington, D.C., and traffic between the D.C. airport and the National Zoo. On this particular night, we had one of D.C.’s rare winter storm warnings, but luckily all the required staff made it to the Elephant House close to the scheduled time for the procedure.
The Atmosphere
If you’ve been inside the Elephant House during the day, you probably already know that it is usually a flurry of activity. Keepers are busy feeding, cleaning, and training the animals. Lots of people gather to watch elephant bath demonstrations (you may be able to 
watch a demo on our elephant cam) and to run from enclosure to enclosure to see all the animals. Children and strollers abound, and are often accompanied by numerous high-pitched young voices.
The Elephant House I walked into on the night of the insemination was markedly different. The lights were dim, and the usual mass of people was absent. All the people present were adults, primarily Zoo staff, and there were no screaming voices echoing through the building. In fact, the only noises I heard were the soft sounds of music emitting from one of the exhibit’s display monitors, the quiet shuffling of hay in Kandula’s enclosure, and an occasional snarf from Happy, the Nile hippo, at the end of building.
It was a mellow atmosphere, and I couldn’t help but notice that, although such things were certainly not required for the successful completion of the procedure, the soft lighting and background music certainly did seem to create a mood. Hopefully Shanthi would appreciate these aspects of the night’s experience too.
Who's Involved?
Before I had arrived on this particular evening, Janine Brown, one of the Zoo’s reproductive physiologists, had set up an array of equipment and test kits for analyzing the semen sample when it arrived. Janine was also responsible for tracking Shanthi’s hormone fluctuations over the preceding months to determine the optimal time for conducting the artificial insemination. There were also several tables set up with all sorts of medical supplies and high-tech equipment in the room adjoining the permanently installed Elephant Restraint Device (ERD), where the procedure would take place.
As you might expect, it takes more than just a couple of people to perform an artificial insemination on an elephant, and numerous essential staff members were present on this evening. All of the elephant keepers were there to assist with the procedure, and several veterinarians and veterinary technicians would be working with them. Suzan Murray, the Zoo’s chief veterinarian, and Ray Ball, from Busch Gardens, would be the primary vets conducting the procedure. And for the procedure to move forward, they needed some healthy elephant sperm!
Luckily, the sample was delivered on time, and when it arrived all of the essential personnel slipped into action. Janine was busy examining the sperm in the sample, evaluating whether it still looked viable after its long journey from Oklahoma. While she did that, animal keepers busied themselves with Shanthi. Luckily, members of the Zoo's animal-care staff work with Shanthi every day to prepare her for health exams and procedures such as this, and an artificial insemination is certainly an opportunity for all their hard work and training to really pay off.
Preparations
First things first, Shanthi is trained to urinate and defecate on command, which is very useful, but one of the keepers still has to don scrubs, cover his arms and upper body in plastic, and climb up a stepladder behind Shanthi because he will be using a hose to help Shanthi along with a little enema. Luckily, Shanthi doesn’t seem to mind this at all. After that’s done, keepers give her a nice soapy bath, something she’s quite used to since she gets one every day. She’s trained to lie down on the floor while keepers scrub her with long scrub brushes, and then she flips over to allow them to clean her other side. After the bath, she’s hosed off and towel dried.
As the keepers prepared Shanthi for the big event, the vets were getting a quick tutorial on a new piece of equipment they would be using for the first time on this night: a new scope, with high-resolution video recording capabilities that would improve the doctors’ view of Shanthi’s internal reproductive system during the procedure. It worked in much the same way as the equipment they had used in the past, but the better quality video provided a useful upgrade over the old recording equipment. After the tutorial and the elephant bath, Shanthi was ready to enter the ERD.
While the term ERD, or Elephant Restraint Device, might not have that cute and cuddly ring to it, it’s actually a terrific contraption. When wide open, an elephant can freely walk in and out of the device. There’s a scale set up underneath it, making it very easy for keepers to record elephant weights whenever the animals are standing within the confines of the device. The sides of the ERD move in to provide snug security around the elephant’s body—this improves the safety of both the keepers and the elephants.
In general, our elephants really seem to like this device, because they experience a lot of good things when they are inside it. Treats (like pieces of fruit and chow biscuits) are used as positive reinforcement for good behavior, and the ERD is always a good source of treats for an elephant who works well with the keepers during training sessions. On this night, Shanthi entered the ERD with ease, her back end facing the station that had been set up for the vets.
The great thing about all of the hours of training that the keepers invest in our elephants is that something that could be potentially very stressful for the animal, something that involves lots of people, a confined space, and a great deal of touching—something exactly like an artificial insemination procedure—becomes almost second nature. The animal is familiar with all aspects of the procedure, has positive rather than negative associations with the experience, and doesn’t need to be anesthetized to make the procedure possible. Safety improves, and stress is minimized—both factors increase the chances for a successful impregnation.
The Procedure
What happened after Shanthi entered the ERD, well, let me just say I can only hope that I never have an occasion for so many people to be gathered around staring at my own back end! But Shanthi was calm and cooperative throughout the procedure and seemed to be quite comfortable with the whole scene.
Ray first conducted an ultrasound. The equipment he used reminded me of a virtual reality set up. He wore a high-tech set of goggles that allowed him to see the visual image of the ultrasound as he was moving his probe where he needed it to be. It was a much more comfortable and efficient set-up than having to position the probe and turn to view the ultrasound on a separate monitor. He was investigating Shanthi’s ovaries, to determine which one displayed the tell-tale follicle that announced ovulation, and also checked out the rest of her reproductive tract to investigate whether there were signs of any problems that might interfere with fertilization or implantation. All looked good. He gave the green light to proceed.
Next step: using the new scope to determine proper placement of the semen sample. This equipment would enter Shanthi’s reproductive tract surrounded by a flexible plastic tube. The plastic tube would be pushed in a few inches, and then the scope with the camera on the end would move forward to the end of the tube. Over and over, Suzan and Ray shimmied the camera toward Shanthi’s cervix and uterus, all the while watching the images of the camera’s inside view on the monitor beside them.
Several of us non-essential staff members peered over the shoulders of the vets for a better view of the image—it was truly amazing!
Once the vets had good placement, the semen sample was injected through tiny plastic piping, and we watched as it oozed out the other end, right where the scope’s camera was placed. Semen was deposited primarily into Shanthi’s uterus, and into her cervix as well. The sperm sample was good. The placement was good. Shanthi did well throughout the procedure. Everyone present expressed cautious optimism.
Conducting the Procedure Again
The following day, the vets performed the procedure again, this time during daylight hours. The Elephant House was closed to the public for a few hours to facilitate the procedure. The second procedure was done to increase Shanthi's chances of becoming pregnant. This time, the vets determined that the egg-releasing follicle was no longer present on the ovary—this indicated that the inseminations were timed perfectly around her ovulation. Again, cautious optimism was the general consensus.
In a couple of months we’ll be able to determine whether we were successful in getting Shanthi pregnant. The vet staff and elephant keepers did a superb job, and Janine will be closely monitoring Shanthi’s hormones. Everyone did the best they could to make this happen, but I think I’ll still keep my fingers crossed just for a little extra luck. And I’m putting some faith in the soft lighting and mood music of that first night—maybe that created just the right atmosphere for Shanthi to make another baby.
