SLIDE 14
(Nancy Pratt)

So, the very first step is to assess Shanthi's reproductive state. Now, there are several ways of doing that, and John has commented to you that for almost eight years now we have been monitoring Shanthi and the other elephants' reproductive cycles hormonally. We can say that Shanthi's reproductive cycle is about 15 to 16 weeks in length. We can say that the follicular stage, that is the phase of the cycle at which time the oocytes, the eggs in her ovaries are growing and maturing and about to ovulate is about five weeks, but we cannot say when ovulation will occur. This is very important. We need to know when those eggs are coming out if we're going to do insemination. So, the very first step is to do an assessment with Thomas's ultrasound technique, and the very first step of that procedure is to clean out the rectum because an elephant is obviously very large, and we can't just put a probe on her belly like you would in a human ultrasound. She has lots of skin and lots of fat and lots of tissue to go through, so the probe has to go transrectally. The first thing we have to do is try to explain to the keepers here how much fun this is so that they will willingly participate, and it's worked with two of them. It is incredible. We haven't convinced the other ones yet. So the rectum is cleaned out and then you can see that what happens here is that Shanthi gets fed out of this red bucket, which is her favorite part of the whole thing. And she will stand almost perfectly still for this procedure. I hope that some of you have been able to see this; if not please come by for it. We do this in the public part of the elephant house so you can see it. Now, Thomas is standing here with this helmet on. You can see it in this picture as well. The reason for this is that he needs to be able to see the image on the ultrasound monitor while he is up to the shoulder in elephant, and this is kind of awkward to do on the little computer screen here, so he has a small monitor on the end of his helmet, and what he does is he moves the probe around inside and then we can manipulate the controls so that he can visualize what he needs to see.