Clementina, a 30 years old bottlenose dolphin, gave birth to a female calf on March 15, 2012 at Mundo Marino. The new calf was conceived through artificial insemination, and the sire is a male dolphin from a SeaWorld park. The calf was also sex-selected, because Mundo Marino needs females due to the fact that most of the dolphins that have been born there, are males. This is the fist dolphin that was born through A.I in South America. Link (in spanish) with a picture: http://www.pionerodiario.com.ar/noticia.php?id=18405&edicion=2012-03-26 13:39:31
Has the sex selection technology been used in other species? I was wondering because with A.I. in elephants male offspring are predominantly produced.
No idea about the other species. SeaWorld developed the sex selection technology some years ago, and SW has been using it with bottlenose dolphins since then. Mundo Marino and SeaWorld have been working together with Mundo Marino's male orca (SeaWorld obtained semen from him),so, as part of the agreement SW gave sex-selected semen to Mundo Marino, which needs more female dolphins because very few have been born there. Mundo Marino now has a new female dolphin whose sire is an unrelated male. Another dolphin was also inseminated but there've not been news yet.
There are some rumors that some SW orcas, which were artificially inseminated with Kshamenk's semen (Kshamenk is the male orca from Mundo Marino) are pregnant. However, nothing is confirmed yet. So far, the only confirmed fact is that SW has Kshamenk's semen, and that they are willing to use it some day. But SW has semen samples from different orcas, so if a calf is born (assuming that the pregnancies' rumors are true), we will have to wait until SW announces who the father is, to really know if Kshamenk's semen was used.
This is really interesting. There are a whole host of species where the ability to pre-determine gender using semen from unrelated stock could prove a Godsend. Amongst mammals, Gaur and Banteng immediately spring to mind, with highly inbred European populations and tight restrictons on bringing in animals from outside the EEA (European Economic Area).
Clementina's calf has been named "Uma". The name was chosen in an on-line poll, the other options were "Alfa" and "Nahia".
