Chemical castration of bull elephants fast becoming an option
Veterinarians have developed a testosterone-suppressing treatment that could help manage elephant numbers and their ‘problem’ members
How do you castrate an elephant? With great difficulty‚ because its testes are hidden deep within its abdomen.However, thanks to the efforts of a team of South African veterinary scientists‚ chemical castration is now an option. Experiments on 17 African bull elephants with hormone treatment used on dogs‚ pigs‚ bulls, horses and buck found that a series of injections shrank their testes by 60%‚ and sperm production plummeted."Although African elephant populations are under pressure‚ in southern Africa fertility control is warranted as capacities in smaller‚ fenced game reserves are exceeded‚" said researchers from the University of Pretoria’s Onderstepoort faculty of veterinary science and the National Zoological Gardens of SA.The testosterone-suppressing hormone treatment could also be used to deal with "problem" elephants‚ they wrote in the journal Plos One. "Wild African elephants are reportedly more likely to raid crops and break fences compared to females."The course of injecti...
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