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A blessed event, complete with hooves and a horn

Emi the rhino is expecting - and that's happy news for those trying to save her endangered species.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 18, 2006

CINCINNATI - Emi the Sumatran rhino is pregnant again, and that's big news for conservationists from Ohio to Indonesia who are trying to save the endangered species.

Experts say they think fewer than 300 Sumatran rhinos survive in Southeast Asia. Emi is the only one to give birth twice in captivity; her first delivery in 2001 was the first by a Sumatran rhino bred in captivity since the 19th century.

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden said Saturday that Emi is 173 days into a 16-month pregnancy, adding hope to efforts to save the species.

"We have a long, long way to go, but we do see some glimmers of hope," said Terri Roth, who heads the zoo's Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife.

The center has relied on close monitoring of hormone levels, use of ultrasound and years of patient observation and trial-and-error to learn how to successfully mate the Sumatran rhinos.

"The real significance is that it's taken them a long time, but both through really great science and perseverance, they've got the technique down," said John Lukas, president of the International Rhino Foundation.

Oblivious to the historic nature of her condition, Emi chomped on handfuls of chopped bananas, apples, and sweet potatoes while undergoing an ultrasound. Scientists say they think Emi will give birth to a male.

With big dark eyes, the snub-nosed, two-horned Sumatran rhinos, which stand 3- to 5-feet tall and weigh from 1,300 to 2,000 pounds, can be "like big puppy dogs," said Roth, who's been working with Emi and the male Ipuh for 10 years now.

The breeding program grew out of an international recognition in the early 1980s that the Sumatran rhinos were disappearing at a rapid pace, their rain forest habitat being lost to logging and other development while poachers hunted them for horns that can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars for medicinal uses.

But little was known about caring for the Sumatran rhinos in captivity, let alone their mating habits and reproductive cycles. Of seven rhinos brought to U.S. zoos, only three survived by 1995. With breeding efforts in Malaysia and Indonesia also stalled, Emi, who came to the Los Angeles Zoo in 1991 from Indonesia, was relocated to join Ipuh here.

In 1997, Emi became pregnant and the word spread quickly among conservationists. But the first of five miscarriages soon followed.

In the next pregnancy, Emi was given daily doses of the hormone progesterone, also used for human females with histories of miscarriages. Emi took hers soaked into slices of bread. On Sept. 13, 2001, she gave birth to a male calf, named Andalas.

But for the long-term goal of repopulating the breed, Roth didn't want to rely on hormones, so Emi's next pregnancy went normally without it and she delivered a female, named Suci, on July 30, 2004.

The zoo hopes to breed Emi, believed to be about 18 years old, at least four more times. Meanwhile, plans are in the works for her first offspring to go to Indonesia to get its breeding program moving. Andalas is at the Los Angeles Zoo, the only other U.S. zoo with a Sumatran rhino.

[Last modified June 18, 2006, 05:55:19]