For Release: June 21, 2007
Contact:
John Gibbons 
(202) 391-4231
Sarah Taylor (202) 633-3081
Crane Hatching Marks a Victory for Both Science and Conservation
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo is marking a milestone at its Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va.―the hatching of a rare female white-naped crane. To achieve this success, however, staff at the center first had to overcome several challenges.
The chick’s biological mother is one of the most genetically valuable white-naped cranes in the Species Survival Program―a breeding program that ensures the creation and maintenance of a healthy and genetically diverse captive population. However, the chick’s mother was reared by humans and is too aggressive with other cranes. The only way for her to lay a fertile egg was for the center’s scientists to perform an artificial insemination.
An additional challenge was the imbalance of the sexes within the breeding program: there were more than enough male cranes, but female offspring were needed. However, how is the gender of a chick determined before it hatches? Again, science is the answer. The center’s bird unit staff developed a technique that allows them to penetrate the eggshell and extract blood without killing the embryo or introducing microorganisms that would later kill the embryo. It was this process that gave the center’s staff the answer they were looking for―the chick inside the shell was a female. Now, she is being raised by a foster pair of cranes.
“This is an important milestone for the reproductive management of cranes,” said Warren Lynch, bird keeper at the Conservation and Research Center. “Not only was this chick produced from a crane that would never naturally reproduce, but the offspring was pre-diagnosed as a female.” This success demonstrates how the employment of advanced scientific research and procedures―in this case, the combination of artificial insemination and gender determination before hatching―enables scientists to more effectively manage species conservation to maximize genetic diversity.
Destruction of its native wetland habitat in northeast China has dramatically decreased white-naped crane populations in the wild to an estimated 5,000
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Note to editors: Photos of the white-naped crane chick are available through the National Zoo’s Office of Public Affairs.
