SLIDE 8
(Thomas Hildebrandt)
Next is a slide of an ovary of an elephant.
And it's only 7 centimeters long, 5 centimeters wide, and about
2 centimeters thick and you see different structures on the ovary.
That's a corpus luteum which produces progesterone, the hormone
which keeps a pregnancy alive. Then you have small follicles
on the surface, all this blue structure, which are, in elephants,
very small. The biggest follicle in elephants which I have ever
found was about two centimeters, in horses they are about four
centimeters. These are some ultrasound pictures of such structures.
Here small follicles in the surface, that's the ovary. Here
a follicle near the rupture, near the ovulation you see a small
mound inside, then a corpus luteum which has another image in
ultrasound, that's such structure and we hope that we found such
things in Shanthi over a long time, because that's the hormone
factory which keeps the pregnancy alive. This a very strange
structure, the corpus albicans. It's function is still unclear.