Reproductive physiology is one of the places where zoos have made major changes and learned a lot more. There are assisted reproductive techniques that we are using, as you’ve mentioned, artificial insemination, embryo transfer that we’re utilizing fairly regularly. The only Sumatran rhinos ever born in North America are due to the work that they’ve done in Cincinnati, Dr. Terry Roth, and that’s artificially inseminating animals. And this was necessary because these animals are so ferocious when they are put together and they breed. And in a fairly small area that the males may really do a lot of damage to the females, but the females show almost no external signs that they’re in heat. And so it’s important that we learn when they are in heat and the way that they approached it at Cincinnati was they trained the animal to go and stand in a shoot and be fed while the reproductive physiologist would do an examination, a rectal examination with ultrasound to determine what stage of ovulation they were in. They could watch it on a day to day basis. They could say, here’s a follicle on the left ovary, today it’s this big to the, today, it’s this big today, it’s this big, look, it just ovulated and at that point where it ovulates, they have the artificial insemination, the semen ready, they inseminate the animal and they’ve had two pregnancies at least, and some more that they lost early.
