SLIDE 1
(Thomas Hildebrandt)

We will show these slides side by side. They may appear unclear as they are mostly gray ultrasound pictures. In order for you to understand what the pictures say, or should say, I will show you the anatomical structure to these pictures.

The first is a diagram of how the genital tract looks inside an elephant; it's an important point to see the topography of the genital tract. You see, it's a special thing that the male elephant has the testes inside. And it's unclear why the elephant is able to keep the testes inside; normally the testes are outside of the body as the normal body temperature will normally damage sperm. There exists a special system which now is not really clear. Another special thing is that the female elephant has a very strange genital tract. That is very normal - here you see the uterus with the ovaries, but then came the thing which John shows during the birth, that's the vestibule, and it's about one meter. The whole genital tract is about two meters and 50 centimeters. It's very difficult to overcome this structure to bring semen deep in the uterus.