San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
TWO CHEETAHS BORN BY IVF FOR FIRST TIME
For the first time, a pair of cheetah cubs were born after an in vitro fertilization procedure to a surrogate cheetah, with help from scientists at the National Zoo.
Zoo officials said the cubs were born Feb. 19 at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio to 3-year-old Izzy. The cubs’ biological mother is 6-year-old Kibibi.
Experts at the National Zoo in the District of Columbia said in a statement that “cheetahs naturally have low genetic diversity due to a near extinction at the end of the last ice age.” For about 20 years, scientists have been trying to boost the cheetah population through IVF and embryo transfers.
Officials said the embryo transfer was done by scientists at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va., and the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. The zoo waited until Monday to announce the births due to the high infant mortality rate in cheetahs
— about 25 percent.
Kibibi has never given birth but was unlikely to reproduce on her own. “Her valuable genes were at risk of never being passed on,” the zoo said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Izzy is “less genetically valuable,” and scientists had recommended she not be bred. Izzy was hand-raised as a cub and comfortable with keepers, making her a good candidate for surrogacy, officials said.
The semen for the cheetah cubs came from a cheetah at the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Texas. Eggs were harvested from Kibibi at the Columbus Zoo in November, and they underwent in vitro fertilization in a lab.
The fertilized embryos were then transferred to Izzy.
Officials said it was the third time scientists had attempted the procedure worldwide and it was the first time it worked.
Pierre Comizzoli, a reproductive biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and one of the scientists who performed the embryo transfer, said the birth makes cheetahs the second large cat to successfully be born from in vitro fertilization. The first was the tiger in 1990.