Heidi Riddle or Elephant Wildlife Sanctuary has recently sent to us at OBGYN.net Ultrasound two very special ultrasound images. They are transrectal images of an early elephant gestation! (See below).

Riddle's Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary was established by Scott and Heidi Riddle in 1990 on 330 acres in the Ozark Mountain foothills in Arkansas as a non-profit [IRS 501(C)(3)] home for any elephant that needs one for any reason.  This is the only internationally recognized sanctuary which accepts any elephant regardless of species, gender, or disposition. Tonga, an elephant resident at the sanctuary is in currently pregnant. The following is a brief account of the intricacies of performing an obstetric ultrasound on an elephant:

Sais Heidi Riddle: "With elephants the ultrasound examination of the internal reproductive tract is done trans-rectally. (The veterinarian holds the probe inside the elephant's rectum.) Yes, it is very messy (the feces have to be manually removed from the tract and the elephant needs a water enema with a hose at least to visualize some of the organs such as the ovaries (or testes on the males - which are internal in the elephant) so the veterinarian is well suited up and uses shoulder length gloves. The procedure does not seem to bother the animals much. Our elephants are very tractable and have been conditioned to this procedure, so they stand very well while restrained simply by a rope or chain around the leg. We have not needed to use any sort of sedative drugs. This procedure has been done on a fair number of elephants now, and appears to be a very viable technique for imaging elephants internally - and one that the animals seem comfortable with. As you can imagine, x-rays of most of the head, chest, abdomen or hip area are not possible on a full-grown elephant due to their size. With ultrasound, the vet can also image organs such as heart or liver, but due to the size you can imagine that the whole organ does not appear in the field of view! Using ultrasonography with elephants is a very recent study project (about 5 years) and was mainly developed by 2 veterinarians at the Institute for Zoo Biology in Berlin, Germany - Drs. Thomas Hildebrandt and Frank Goeritz. The veterinarian that does the ultrasound at our facility is Dr. Dennis Schmitt from Springfield, Missouri and he learned from and collaborates with the German veterinary team. It was through the use of ultrasound that Dr. Schmitt succeeded in artificially inseminating an elephant for the first time ever in early 1998. The resulting calf was born in November 1999 at the Dickerson Park Zoo in Missouri. These 3 veterinarians have since successfully inseminated 3 other elephants. The second birth occurred at the Indianapolis Zoo in March 2000 and the next one (also in Indianapolis) is due next month. The 4th successful insemination is in an elephant at the Vienna Zoo in Austria. The pregnancy in our female is unique because this female had not cycled for several years (referred to as flatliner) but then in 1996 she began to cycle irregularly. This is the first time in captive elephants that a known flatliner has become pregnant. We had seen breeding mid-April, and in late June were hosting the first ever Elephant Ultrasound Workshop for veterinarians when the pregnancy was confirmed by ultrasound. It is unusual to get such good images of an early pregnancy in an elephant. I hope some of this background information helps and would be glad to answer any other question you may have!"

For more information, please visit Riddle's Elephant and Wildlife Sanctuary homepage.