Zoo Vet a Roaring Success as Elephant Midwife

Hanging on the wall in Dennis Schmitt’s office is a picture of two elephants snuggling, their trunks intertwined.

A sign below it reads, “Getting things done around here is like 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, the veterinarian at Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, is in charge of one of the most aggressive elephant breeding programs in the country. When he isn’t grading papers or teaching veterinary medicine at Southwest Missouri State University, he is traveling the globe, assisting zoos and circuses with the breeding and birthing of pregnant pachyderms.

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

“I prefer reproductive specialist,” Schmitt says, without cracking a smile.

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

“Most Asian elephants in captivity are past their reproductive age. If we don’t increase the birth rate considerably in the next 20 years, we won’t have any animals left that can reproduce,” he says.

His latest feat--assisting in the first successful birth of an artificially inseminated elephant--has earned him a reputation as one of the leading elephant reproductive specialists in the world.

“The work Schmitt has done in the world of breeding has been critical to the understanding of the biology of elephants and utilizing artificial reproduction techniques,” said Michael Hutchins, director of conservation and science for the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. in Maryland. “He has brought the field to a new level.”

Becoming an excellent breeder starts with developing an eye for good mothers. Teenagers and twentysomethings usually make the best candidates, Schmitt says, since elephants older than 30 have a tendency to develop tumors and ovarian cysts that make them unable to birth calves.

“Are their reproductive tracts in good physical shape? Are their blood cycles regular? Are they socially mature enough to handle becoming a mother? These are types of things we are looking for in a good mom,” he says.

Schmitt learned most of what he knows growing up on a dairy farm outside Springfield, where his father wasted no time teaching him the finer points of breeding large animals. His interest in reproductive science led him to veterinary school and later to a reproductive practice in nearby Republic, where he worked nearly 20 years perfecting breeding techniques with cattle.

In the early 1980s, Dickerson Park Zoo asked Schmitt to take part in a six-month project to develop a technique for freezing and moving embryos from the horned oryx, a member of the antelope family.

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

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

One of the biggest challenges facing elephant breeders is that few zoos have the capacity to house adult males, which are so aggressive they require special holding pens. Transporting males is costly and difficult, and doing so with females disrupts their reproductive cycles.

Veterinarians had tried unsuccessfully since the mid-1980s to solve the problem by impregnating elephants through artificial insemination, but they ran into difficulties determining the female breeding cycle in captivity.

Finally, Schmitt and his team at Dickerson had luck with an Asian mother named Moola. On Nov. 28, Moola gave birth to a 378-pound miracle named Haji, the world’s first Asian elephant born through artificial insemination.

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

A few months later, he flew to the Indianapolis Zoo to help deliver the first baby African elephant resulting from artificial insemination.

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

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

Schmitt’s team at Dickerson is working on techniques for freezing the semen for travel and influencing the gender of the calf.

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

With the success of the breeding program at Dickerson, Schmitt has become a very busy man consulting with other zoos and circuses across the country. On most weekends, he finds himself on a plane to such places as New York or Indiana--often with a container of bull semen at his side--to inseminate an awaiting elephant or to perform an ultrasound.

In his travels, he is finding the old saying about an elephant’s memory is true.

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

That isn’t always a good thing. Ultrasounds can be uncomfortable procedures for elephants and, occasionally, Schmitt says, he is greeted by the mother raising her tail and defecating when he walks into a room.

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