The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

Posted on Sat, Jun. 26, 2004
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/living/9013017.htm?1c

Birds do it, bees do it...

At the Kansas City Zoo, not even monkeys in the trees are doing it 
without protection
By EDWARD M. EVELD The Kansas City Star


"In some regards, it's easier to breed animals in captivity than to 
keep them from breeding."
Kirk Suedmeyer, director of animal health at the Kansas City Zoo


Gazing at the chimpanzee hill at the Kansas City Zoo, visitors see 
chimps doing chimp things, climbing on trees, grooming each other, 
roughhousing.

It looks so natural, and that's the point.

What visitors might not realize is that the chimp boys and girls are 
allowed to hang out together in captivity because of something 
unavailable in the wild: contraception.

In February the zoo celebrated the birth of an eastern black 
rhinoceros, the first baby rhino at the zoo in 3 1/2 years. Much 
celebration and a naming contest followed. Such hoopla might lead one 
to think zoos were working overtime to get their animals to breed.

Mostly, the opposite is true.

"In some regards, it's easier to breed animals in captivity than to 
keep them from breeding," said Kirk Suedmeyer, director of animal 
health.

Zoos are getting better and better at the latter. They are tweaking 
human-style birth control, including the pill and hormone implants. 
They're trying out birth-control vaccines. And they're helping to 
develop other methods, such as contraception-laced feed for the 
hooved animals.

To make it possible for the lions at the Kansas City Zoo to stay 
together in one big happy pride, Suedmeyer performed tubal 
cauterizations on the two females, Donna and Jean. The pride, led by 
Dumisani, includes Jean's three offspring: Nala, Mufasa and Simba. 
The idea is that the procedures could be reversed if more lion babies 
were ever needed.

The idea and the hope, that is. As with many animal contraception 
methods, there are many unknowns.

"It's a technique developed for people, and we're applying it to 
animals," Suedmeyer said. "Sometimes it's not the same."

Birth control wasn't a big issue when animals were kept in cages. But 
zoos now prefer naturalistic exhibits, allowing animals to display 
behaviors typical in the wild. With more social interaction among the 
animals, the contraception challenge grew.

For one thing, zoos can't accommodate lots of extra babies.

"There's only so much space," said Liz Harmon, the Kansas City Zoo's 
general curator.

Methods such as neutering and spaying are discouraged because they're 
irreversible, can alter behavior and have side effects. Zoos still 
use gender separation as a means of birth control, especially for 
species in which contraception has been less successful.

In some situations, birth control simply isn't needed. The giraffes 
in the Kansas City Zoo's Africa area are all females. The gorillas 
are males.

The chimpanzees, however, are good candidates for birth-control pills 
or implants. In the Kansas City troupe, seven chimps are on the pill 
and one has a contraceptive implant. When the implant expires, 
Suedmeyer said, that female will be switched to pills.

The implants are effective but pose some problems. Suedmeyer places 
the implant in a chimp's back, so the animal won't bother the sutures 
needed to close the incision. But troupe mates sometimes find the 
sutures and try to pull them out. The same has happened with a pair 
of tamarins, with the male monkey trying to take the implant out of 
the female.

Suedmeyer has inserted a few extra stitches elsewhere, away from the 
implant incision, as a distraction.

"We tried to outwit them a little bit, but it doesn't work," he said.

The pill isn't foolproof either. Chimps are crafty at hiding a pill 
under their tongues and spitting it out later. Or, if the pill is 
added to their food, it can be difficult to know that they've eaten 
it all and received a full dose.

The St. Louis Zoo got a shock last month when keepers discovered that 
Merah, an orangutan on daily birth control pills, was pregnant.

Ironically, the zoo in St. Louis is the national headquarters for 
animal contraception.

"Yeah, I was pretty proud," said Ingrid Porton, co-director of the 
Wildlife Contraception Center, which serves the more than 200 
accredited zoos in the American Zoo and Aquarium Association.

Porton suspects the pregnancy was not a failure of the pill but a 
"delivery failure." Typically a staff member crushed the pill in 
yogurt or honey and watched Merah put it in her mouth. Then she was 
given a chaser, more yogurt or a drink, to ensure everything got 
swallowed. It's possible, though, that she shared some of the food 
with her youngster.

"My suspicion was that she didn't get the full dose every day," Porton said.

While the pill and implants are highly effective, they are not 100 
percent. Porton said that a chimp in North Carolina named Ruthie is 
famous in animal contraception circles for getting pregnant no matter 
what method keepers try.

"She has proved them all worthless for her," she said.

The Wildlife Contraception Center collects data on methods and 
results from zoos around the country. Based on that data and other 
research, the center makes recommendations as specific to a species 
as possible.

New birth control measures are being explored and others, practiced 
in some places for years, are being put to the test through research 
trials. One recent success, Porton said, is a reversible vasectomy 
done on bushdogs, small, stocky dogs from South America.

Gaining attention is an implant called Deslorelin, which represses 
the production of reproductive hormones. Zona pellucida is a vaccine 
that produces antibodies to keep sperm from penetrating eggs. It has 
been used in feral horses and wild elephants in Africa, but questions 
remain about proper dosages and how often booster shots are needed, 
Porton said.

To study the long-term effects of contraception, a pathologist in 
California is examining the reproductive tracts of female zoo mammals 
that die. Comparing the animals that have been on birth control and 
those that have not will yield more clues about the safety of various 
methods, she said.

Generally, the contraception methods are geared toward mammals, a 
complicated enough endeavor considering the hundreds of species. With 
other animals, such as birds, limiting offspring is more of a 
management issue. Nests can be removed or dummy eggs inserted, Harmon 
said.

"They will sit on them and not lay any more," she said.

Finite exhibit space isn't the only reason to keep animals from 
getting pregnant. Genetic diversity is also a biggie.

With a fairly fixed number of animals at the nation's zoos, officials 
want to avoid inbreeding. Successive inbreeding can produce genetic 
mishaps, which can result in health problems and death.

"Very few animals come in from the wild now," Harmon said.

Computerized records keep the history of captive animals and their 
ancestors. Family trees are developed to show the relationships among 
animals.

By controlling who's breeding with whom managers can increase 
offspring among family lines poorly represented in the zoo population 
and reduce offspring from animals already well represented.

The goal is not to leave parenting to chance.

"We have to have family planning," Porton said.

So the next time the zoo celebrates a new offspring in one of its 
rare or endangered species, like the rhino, celebrate. It's a great 
success for the zoo staff and for animal conservation.

But, as it turns out, so is most every avoided pregnancy.

To reach Edward M. Eveld, features writer, call (816) 234-4442 or 
send e-mail to eeveld AT kcstar.com.