In vitro fertilization isn’t a weird concept anymore. It helps people have children, from your next door neighbor to Kim Kardashian.
But now, IVF is helping out another section of our great animal kingdom: dogs.
Cornell University researchers just successfully delivered their first litter of puppies conceived via IVF.
The puppies are mostly the offspring of beagle parents, with two of the puppies being from a beagle mother and cocker spaniel father.
Believe it or not, scientists have been trying to conceive puppies via in vitro for several years, to little success.
One part of the challenge was retrieving an egg from the female dog’s oviduct (the dog equivalent of a Fallopian tube.”
They made the mistake of trying to use eggs that were in the same stage of maturation as other animals, but dog eggs are so different that they failed to fertilize.
They discovered that leaving the egg in the oviduct for slightly longer—just one more day—allowed the eggs to become more fertile. They also added magnesium to cell cultures.
Why would they try and figure this out in dogs?
“The reason for doing things like this is that it will lead to the preservation of species that are almost lost. Canid types—wolves, foxes—certain sub-species. There are many different types. They may not be facing extinction just yet but they are running into a crisis,” said Dr. Margaret Casal of Penn Vet.
“If some virus comes along that has mutated, it can essentially wipe out the population. This gives the ability to freeze embryos and perform IVF later to revive a species that may have been brought to extinction.”
It can also be used to rid some dog species of genetic disease.
“Yes, this is a very big deal,” said Casal. “It’s pretty spectacular to get that to work.”
