In your opinion should animals have artificial insemination.

Should we do AI inseminations on animals in zoo

  • Total voters
    27
  • Poll closed .
Zoo adventures

Zoo adventures

Well-Known Member
Some people think that AI insemination is cruel and abusive. They say the animals are being forced to be pregnant. This website called "In defense of animals" says "repeatedly forcibly inseminating females" and "Artificial insemination is an unnatural, invasive and likely traumatic experience for elephants". I personally think that AI working on animals is great because it helps females get more chances to be pregnant, which can help the population grow. For example, they could bring the sperm of a wild elephant male in Africa and then use it on female elephants in zoos. That could help have new valuable genetics. So what do you feel about AI on animals? So should zoos continue working with AI on animals or not? I want to get people's opinion on this. The poll will close in 7 days but the thread will be still active.
10 Worst Zoos for Elephants 2019
 
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Like most things where campaigners are involved, reducing it to extremes doesn't allow for any nuance.

I can't see much evidence for 'many' people thinking the practice is cruel and abusive. Loud shouting by campaigners doesn't make them numerous, it just makes them loud. I wouldn't pay much attention to them myself, they mostly exist in an echo chamber.

Id say the correct use of AI depends. What works for one animal may not work for another. If we say we don't like this random campaign group who don't like AI do we then have to like 'repeatedly forcibly inseminated' animals? Factory farmers might, I can't say I am a fan.

AI is something that it appears logical to have as an option if used in the right way. I can't see a reason to prohibit it, in the right circumstances, supervised and approved by management teams and vets etc. But throwing it around where other options are available doesn't seem a very good idea either.
 
Wait, I have a question

Since male cats have "certain attributes" that, during mating, induce the females into ovulation, how does one replicate this in AI?
 
tigris115 said:
Wait, I have a question

Since male cats have "certain attributes" that, during mating, induce the females into ovulation, how does one replicate this in AI?
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I read about inducing cattle to ovulate, they use Gonadotropin-releasing hormones to stimulate LH surge. I think that they usually give them hormones to stimulate ovulation. For domestic cats, also use different hormones to do the job. For big cats, I do not know, I am not an expert on artificial insemination.
https://extension.psu.edu/ovulation...eatment in timed,LH surge and cause ovulation.
 
While I’ll agree it’s invasive sometimes it is the only way to breed animals just see what Indy has done with elephants
 
Spike said:
While I’ll agree it’s invasive sometimes it is the only way to breed animals just see what Indy has done with elephants
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Can you explain the situation, I do not understand. Is it the elephants calves death or the baby boom elephant there?
 
Zoo adventures said:
Some people think that AI insemination is cruel and abusive. They say the animals are being forced to be pregnant. This website called "In defense of animals" says "repeatedly forcibly inseminating females" and "Artificial insemination is an unnatural, invasive and likely traumatic experience for elephants". I personally think that AI working on animals is great because it helps females get more chances to be pregnant, which can help the population grow. For example, they could bring the sperm of a wild elephant male in Africa and then use it on female elephants in zoos. That could help have new valuable genetics. So what do you feel about AI on animals? So should zoos continue working with AI on animals or not? I want to get people's opinion on this. The poll will close in 7 days but the thread will be still active.
10 Worst Zoos for Elephants 2019
Click to expand...
That site is such a crock. They compared this to the Me Too movement. Truly a low comparison.
 
Generally speaking, I prefer allowing animals to breed naturally over using artificial insemination. From a welfare perspective, allowing animals choice and control is extremely important, and allowing the opportunity to choose whether or not they breed can be a big part of that. That said, I am open to the use of AI as a tool in limited circumstances, such as using frozen sperm to add much-needed genetic diversity and/or new founders into struggling populations. Balancing the needs of individual animals, individual zoos, and populations/genetic management is always a very difficult balancing act, however, so I really don't think whether to use AI or not is a clear-cut decision, especially if balancing the individual animals' welfare. So while I voted for "yes", if there was a third option for "under limited circumstances", then that's what I would've chosen.
 
AI is a powerful tool that opens up a ton of possibilities for zoos to both better manage breeding programs and to keep animals safe. Though I do agree with the sentiment that animals should be given choice as to whether or not they breed, I don't think it's a bad thing to artificially inseminate animals. Especially when breeding can be dangerous, like large hoofstock; especially when genetic diversity is important and transferring live animals is too stressful/costly/etc.

People who compare it to rape not only grossly misunderstand what artificial insemination is, but they are wildly disrespecting actual rape victims when they compare the two.

Elephants seem to be the main point of discussion here, so I'll link to two youtube videos I found on the topic. This one here from 2008 shows the artificial insemination of Edie at the Knoxville Zoo. I struggled to find info on if this actually took and if she gave birth at any point- most of the news articles I was able to find detailed her move to a sanctuary in 2023 as part of her EOL care. Somewhat interestingly she was the elephant involved in the (non-aggressive, wholly accidental) death of a keeper in 2011.

This video discusses the artificial insemination of Tamar at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo in 2004- the footage shown is not the insemination itself, but the ultrasound. I'm pretty certain the fetus shown is Gabi, who currently lives in the Gaziantep Zoo in Turkey. He is their only elephant. I think. Their website is confusing and maybe not functional and I cannot read Turkish. In any case both mama and baby are still alive.

Anyway. I agree with others saying that there's no reason to ban artificial insemination or to dissuade it as a practice, though it is perhaps best practice to do it only when there are either notable risks in typical animal intercourse, or if there is a genetic basis behind doing so (i.e. importing sperm to widen the gene pool without moving animals around). Any comparison to sexual assault or rape is frankly disgusting.
 
Zoo adventures said:
Some people think that AI insemination is cruel and abusive. They say the animals are being forced to be pregnant. This website called "In defense of animals" says "repeatedly forcibly inseminating females" and "Artificial insemination is an unnatural, invasive and likely traumatic experience for elephants". I personally think that AI working on animals is great because it helps females get more chances to be pregnant, which can help the population grow. For example, they could bring the sperm of a wild elephant male in Africa and then use it on female elephants in zoos. That could help have new valuable genetics. So what do you feel about AI on animals? So should zoos continue working with AI on animals or not? I want to get people's opinion on this. The poll will close in 7 days but the thread will be still active.
10 Worst Zoos for Elephants 2019
Click to expand...
I don't mind it, though it should be used as a last resort preferably, not used over safely allowing the animals to mate naturally.
Quote 'They say the animals are being forced to be pregnant.'
However, I have to disagree [with the above point]. Animals try hard to find a mate, reproduce and pass on their genes in the wild. Unlike humans, no animal will voluntarily not reproduce, if they get a chance to. Reproduction is one of the main goals in an organisms life. The animals who don't mate are the ones who don't get a chance, due to various causes like fragmentation of habitat and the resulting unavailability of mates, or simply not being fit enough to win fights between competitors that reward the victors with chance to mate. The animal will want to have or sire as many young as possible, to have its own genes well-represented in the gene pool.
 
Tapirus Lar said:
Unlike humans, no animal will voluntarily not reproduce, if they get a chance to.
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This is blatantly untrue. In many female animals, mate choice is a really important factor in mating decisions, to the point that many behavioral scientists spend their entire careers only looking at mate choice. If an available male isn't deemed "high quality" enough by the female, then they would absolutely opt to not reproduce when given the chance. Many animals will also opt to not put energy into reproducing when resources are scarce, and instead will wait to reproduce in a more resource-rich time when there's a better chance of offspring surviving (this is taken to the next level in species with various forms of delayed implantation).

Furthermore: any sentence that starts with "unlike humans, no animal" is almost certainly untrue. Beyond the fact that humans are animals, it's far past time we get off our high horse and start to acknowledge that there's less separating us from other species (especially in the realm of cognition) than previously thought.
 
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