THAILAND: Thailand's first artificially inseminated baby elephant was born in the northern city of Lampang in Thailand as veterinarians go all out to conserve the elephant population

The first artificially inseminated baby elephant was born last week in the northern city of Thailand under the country's special breeding programme to conserve the animals. A male baby elephant, weighing about 100-kilogrammes entered the world healthy at the Elephant Hospital in Lampang, 600 kilometres north of Bangkok as veterinarians achieved their first successful artificially insemination production. The baby pachyderm became the first of its kind in Thailand and Asia. The mother, 24-year-old Phang Khod was inseminated with sperm from a 15-year-old male Asian elephant on June 2005 and she has carried the baby for more than 21 months. The veterinarians took the baby apart from his mother earlier for safety reasons but now have left them together for breast-feeding. Although this is not the first successful elephant breeding programme in the world, Thai veterinarians consider it a huge success. The method of using fresh sperm for artificial insemination can only be performed on elephants that live near each other as it cannot survive for more than 24 hours. "The elephants are raised separately, especially between male and female elephants as it is hard for them to breed naturally. If we know that the female elephants are spawning then we just take the sperm to inseminate, but it has to be done within a day," said veterinarian Sittidet Manasawangkul, head of the Elephant Hospital at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang. After the success of artificial insemination with fresh sperm, Thai veterinarians are working towards breeding elephants from frozen sperms. The sperm from over a dozen elephants was collected to freeze in a nitrogen tank at a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius. The veterinarians said the frozen sperm can be active for up to 20 years but the semen could loose its 20-30 percent of its strength. "The frozen sperm does not need to be rushed to the female elephant for the insemination which is different from fresh sperm that needs to be inseminated within a day. This method will be more convenient as it can be inseminated into elephants from anywhere, even if it is far away," said Siitidet. The project could help conserve the elephant population which is now less than 4,500 in Thailand. Artificial insemination with fresh sperm for elephants were used in Europe and the U.S. but it is the first for a team of Asian veterinarians to do it. If Thailand succeeds with artificial insemination of frozen sperm, the project will become the world's first. A quirky story.

ITN Source | March 16, 2007

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