PITTSBURGH (AP) — In the last decade in Africa, ivory poachers have eliminated some 70 percent of the wild elephant population. In zoos around the world, natural reproduction and artificial insemination are difficult. But at zoos in Austria and England, two baby elephants were artificially fathered with sperm gathered from South African wild elephants in a project spearheaded by international partners including the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. For the first time, elephant genetic material gathered in the wild was frozen and used to artificially inseminate captive cow elephants that delivered calves. In the past, attempts to freeze elephant semen samples for artificial insemination was...
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