“Monitoring Electroejaculation in the Rhinoceros with Ultrasonography” is the title of a research study published in 1996. The study is notable – deserves and perhaps demands attention – for at least two reasons. First, because of its subject.
The main author, Nan Schaffer, is a Chicago-based vet. Dr Schaffer published this report in the same year she founded a non-profit organisation called SOS Rhino. The group tries to keep the world’s five rhinoceros species from becoming extinct. Dr Schaffer was, and is, one of the foremost researchers in the field of rhinoceros reproduction. The field receives little public acclaim.
In the rhinoceros, reproduction occurs, if at all, through a two-part process. First, a male produces semen. Then the semen is transported into a female. The process often goes awry….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.