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201303Aug13:54

First Prze­wal­ski horse born from arti­fi­cial insemination

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 03 August 2013 | mod­i­fied 28 June 2014
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Sci­en­tists at the Smith­son­ian Con­ser­va­tion Biol­ogy Insti­tute (SCBI) are cel­e­brat­ing the first Przewalski’s horse to be born via arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion. The female foal’s birth on July 27 sig­nals a huge break­through for the sur­vival of this species. SCBI Repro­duc­tive Phys­i­ol­o­gist Bud­han Pukazhen­thi and the Przewalski’s horse hus­bandry team spent seven years work­ing closely with experts at The Wilds and Auburn Uni­ver­sity in Alabama to per­fect the tech­nique of assisted breed­ing. Both the filly and the first-​time mother, Anne, are in good health and bonding.

It seems rea­son­able to assume that repro­duc­tion for the Przewalski’s horse would be sim­i­lar to domes­tic horses, but it sim­ply isn’t the case
Bud­han Pukazhen­thi, Repro­duc­tive Phys­i­ol­o­gist, SCBI »

“After all these years of per­se­ver­ing, I can hon­estly say I was elated to receive the call inform­ing me that the foal had been born. I couldn’t wait to see her! This is a major accom­plish­ment, and we hope our suc­cess will stim­u­late more inter­est in study­ing and con­serv­ing endan­gered equids around the world.”

Anne, the mother, was born at SCBI and is the daugh­ter of a mare imported from Europe and the most genet­i­cally valu­able Prze­wal­ski stal­lion in the U.S. The filly’s father, Agi, also lives at SCBI. The Przewalski’s horse (Equus ferus ssp. prze­wal­skii) is con­sid­ered Endan­gered since 2011 accord­ing the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™, but it was listed as Extinct in the Wild from the 1960s until 1996. Sup­pos­edly the last wild horse sub­species on the planet, it is often mis­taken for a breed of domes­tic horse, the Nor­we­gian Fjord. Lit­tle is known about wild equids despite the exten­sive knowl­edge of domes­tic horses, Equus cabal­lus.

The use­ful­ness of arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion is that it does not require both ani­mals to be together for a suc­cess­ful mat­ing. The trans­port of ani­mals to dif­fer­ent loca­tions can be dif­fi­cult, dan­ger­ous, costly and poten­tially stress­ful to the indi­vid­ual. By con­trast, the col­lec­tion of semen can be safely accom­plished under the super­vi­sion of vet­eri­nary staff and sig­nif­i­cantly improves the effi­ciency of man­ag­ing small pop­u­la­tions of endan­gered species. The birth of Anne and Agi’s filly required hor­monal treat­ments for induc­ing ovu­la­tion in a mare, spe­cialised animal-​handling facil­i­ties, con­di­tion­ing Anne to pro­vide urine sam­ples for hor­mone mon­i­tor­ing and rou­tine ultra­sounds. This accom­plish­ment val­i­dates the impor­tance of inte­grat­ing ani­mal man­age­ment in the research and devel­op­ment of assisted repro­duc­tive tech­nolo­gies for endan­gered species.

Using ultra­sound tech­nol­ogy, Pukazhen­thi con­firmed the preg­nancy approx­i­mately 35 days after the insem­i­na­tion. The mare’s preg­nancy was mon­i­tored closely for 11 months mea­sur­ing uri­nary hor­mone lev­els and visual keys (grow­ing belly).

Przewalski horse foal and mother“Anne is a young, first-​time mother,” said Dolores Reed, super­vi­sory biol­o­gist at SCBI. “She had a nor­mal preg­nancy that lasted 340 days, and the foal­ing lasted less than 10 min­utes. I’ve raised a lot of foals and other hoofed stock over the years, but this filly feels like an extra-​special tri­umph for us and her species.”

This work is part of SCBI’s, The Wilds’s and Auburn University’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ters for Species Sur­vival (C2S2), a group of large con­ser­va­tion facil­i­ties in North Amer­ica ded­i­cated to coop­er­a­tive breed­ing and research for the advance­ment of species con­ser­va­tion. Estab­lished in 2005, C2S2 applies its unique resources for the sur­vival of species with spe­cial needs, espe­cially those requir­ing large liv­ing areas, nat­ural group sizes, min­i­mal pub­lic dis­tur­bance and sci­en­tific research. SCBI and The Wilds are mem­bers of C2S2, along with Fos­sil Rim Wildlife Cen­ter, White Oak Con­ser­va­tion, San Diego Zoo Global and Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.

In 2008, vet­eri­nar­i­ans at the Zoo, in coop­er­a­tion with a human fer­til­ity expert from St. Louis, per­formed the first suc­cess­ful vasec­tomy rever­sal on a Przewalski’s horse. This was the first pro­ce­dure of its kind to be per­formed on an endan­gered equid species. SCBI sci­en­tists were also the first to pro­duce two Per­sian onager foals via arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion, a land­mark event since no other wild equid had been pro­duced via arti­fi­cial insem­i­na­tion to date.

The Przewalski’s horse is a species native to China and Mon­go­lia that was declared Extinct in the Wild in the 1960s, but since 1996 it moved up the lad­der of IUCN’s con­ser­va­tion sta­tus (IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species™) via Crit­i­cally Endan­gered to the Endan­gered sta­tus. Today, approx­i­mately 1,500 Przewalski’s horses reside at zoo­log­i­cal insti­tu­tions world­wide, car­ry­ing genes from only 14 orig­i­nal ani­mals. Due to hunt­ing, harsh cli­mate, loss of habi­tat and loss of water sources, fewer than 500 of this species are left in the wild. Cur­rently, most live in Mon­go­lia, China and Kaza­khstan. SCBI sci­en­tists are work­ing in remote areas of China using radio col­lars and Geo­graphic Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem tech­nol­ogy to map the move­ments of these horses, which were rein­tro­duced by Chi­nese col­leagues into their for­mer habi­tat. Com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing this species and equid research in gen­eral, SCBI works to main­tain breed­ing pop­u­la­tions that serve as a source of ani­mals for reintroduction.

(Source: Smith­son­ian news release, 01.08.2013; IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species)

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