Elephants Elephants - Wildpro - Twycross Zoo

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can also be used to confirm pregnancy and monitor foetal development. Most
of the work to date has been with transrectal techniques (i.e. with the probe in
the rectum) but more recently techniques have been developed to carry out
transabdominal ultrasonography.
Male infertility is also a problem in captive elephants. Transrectal ultrasound
has been used to characterize the morphology of the urogenital tract
(Hildebrandt et al 2000) (Hildebrandt et al 1998). Fewer reproductive tract
pathologies were found in male elephants and the main causes of
reproductive failure appear to be lack of libido or poor quality sperm.
Reasons given are domination by cows, keepers or an older bull.
Ultrasonography allows identification of testicular pathological conditions
and of the size and appearance of the various parts of the reproductive tract.
HORMONE ANALYSIS
Great advances in monitoring the reproductive cycles of elephants from
hormone analysis have taken place in recent years. Hormones can be
measured from blood serum, urine and faeces (Fieß et al 1999). From this
work we have found out details of the reproductive cycles (see section 3.6.1).
More information on gestation and pregnancy can be found in Sections 3.6.1
and 3.6.2).
Determination of ovulation by faecal or serum progesterone analysis is
retrospective and therefore is not appropriate in AI work. The only endocrine
based method of predicting ovulation is serum levels of LH, a technique not