Vet Becomes Elephant Breeder and Midwife

S P R I N G F I E L D, Mo., April 24, 2001 -- Hanging from the wall in Dennis

Schmitt’s university office is a picture of two elephants

snuggling, their trunks intertwined.

Underneath it a sign reads, “Getting things done around here islike mating an elephant:

It’s done at a high level.

There’s a great deal of roaring and screaming.

It takes two years to get results.”

Schmitt, an otherwise serious and tired-looking professor,cracks a smile at that one. “It’s so true,” he says.

Expectant Mothers

He should know. When he isn’t grading papers or teachingveterinary medicine at Southwest Missouri State University, Schmittis busy traveling the globe, assisting zoos and circuses with thebreeding and birthing of pregnant pachyderms.

You might say he is part matchmaker, part elephant midwife.

“I prefer reproductive specialist,” Schmitt says, not crackinga smile this time.

With the worldwide stock of Asian and African elephantsdwindling, the subject of breeding is no laughing matter.

“Most Asian elephants in captivity are past their reproductiveage. If we don’t increase the birth rate considerably in the next20 years, we won’t have any animals left that can reproduce,” hesays.

Schmitt, the zoo veterinarian at Dickerson Park Zoo inSpringfield, is in charge of one of the most aggressive elephantbreeding programs in the country. His latest feat — assisting inthe first successful birth of an artificially inseminated elephant— has earned him a reputation as one of the leading elephantreproductive specialists in the world.

Looking for Good Moms

“The work Schmitt has done in the world of breeding has beencritical to the understanding of the biology of elephants andutilizing artificial reproduction techniques,” said MichaelHutchins, director of conservation and science for the American Zooand Aquarium Association in Maryland. “He has brought the field toa new level.”

Becoming an excellent breeder starts with developing an eye forgood mothers. Teenagers and 20-somethings usually make for thebest candidates, Schmitt says, since elephants older than 30 have atendency to develop tumors and ovarian cysts that make them unableto birth calves.

“Are their reproductive tracks in good physical shape? Aretheir blood cycles regular? Are they socially mature enough tohandle becoming a mother? These are types of things we are lookingfor in a good mom,” he says.

Schmitt’s eye for picking mothers wasn’t developed in theAfrican grasslands or in some other exotic, Jane Goodall-type fieldexcursion. He learned most of what he knows growing up on a dairyfarm outside Springfield, where his father wasted no time teachinghim the finer points of breeding large animals.

His interest in reproductive science led him to vet school, andlater to a reproductive practice in nearby Republic, where weworked nearly 20 years perfecting breeding techniques with cattle.

Penning Up Agressive Males

In the early 1980s, Dickerson Park Zoo asked Schmitt to takepart in a six-month project to develop a technique for freezing andmoving embryos from the horned oryx, a member of the antelopefamily.

“From there I became involved with elephants, and it justballooned,” he says. A six-month project turned into 17 years ofwork at the zoo, and a newfound love for the creatures.

“Elephants are charismatic creatures. They have personalitiesjust like people,” he says. “The way they greet you with theirtrunks and interact with humans. I can’t explain it, there’s justsomething about these animals that is very special.”

One of the biggest challenges facing elephant breeders is thatfew zoos have the capacity to house adult males, which are soaggressive they require special holding pens. Transporting males iscostly and difficult, and doing so with females disrupts theirreproductive cycles.

Veterinarians had tried unsuccessfully since the mid-1980s tosolve the problem by impregnating elephants through artificialinsemination, but they ran into difficulties determining the femalebreeding cycle in captivity.

Finally, Schmitt and his team at Dickerson had luck with anAsian mother named Moola. On Nov. 28, Moola gave birth to a378-pound miracle named Haji, the world’s first Asian elephant bornthrough artificial insemination.

Delivering 300-Pound Newborns

Schmitt, who monitored Moola’s 674-day pregnancy withultrasounds and a lot of house calls, felt like a proud papa. “Itwas an amazing experience,” he says.

A few months later, he flew to the Indianapolis Zoo to helpdeliver the first baby African elephant resulting from artificialinsemination.

Schmitt, who has delivered 14 baby elephants in his career,knows that the technique is far from being perfected. “[But] nowwe can say, yes, it’s possible because it’s been done,” he says.

Asian elephants number 40,000 to 50,000 in the world, with10,000 in captivity. That compares with 500,000 to 600,000 Africanelephants, 5,000 in captivity. Dickerson has 10 of the 251 Asianelephants in North America.

Schmitt’s team at Dickerson is now working on techniques forfreezing the semen for travel and influencing the gender of thecalf.

“We’ve got to find a way to increase birth rates and birthsurvivals of both of these species,” he says. “This is hopefullygoing to be one of the ways.”

Weekend Travel With Bull Semen

With the success of the breeding program at Dickerson, Schmitthas become a very busy man consulting other zoos and circusesacross the country. On most weekends, he finds himself on a planeto places like New York or Indiana — often with a container of bullsemen at his side — to inseminate an awaiting elephant or toperform an ultrasound.

In his travels, Schmitt is finding that the old saying about anelephant’s memory is true.

“Many of the mothers show signs of recognition when I showup,” he says.

That isn’t always a good thing. Ultrasounds can be uncomfortableprocedures for elephants, and occasionally, Schmitt says, he isgreeted by the mother raising her tail and defecating when he walksinto a room.

“I’m just happy that they remembered me,” he says.