Checking whether an animal is pregnant will be not be as simple as asking to pee on a stick and tranquilising it causes excessive stress on the animal. To make the process easy, Madhya Pradesh’s Nanaji Deshmukh Veterinary University (NDVU), Jabalpur, is making research to develop a special pregnancy detection kit for wildlife. Researchers believe that this kit may become a vital tool for reproductive management and reliable pregnancy diagnosis in wildlife. This kit may not require rescue of tranquilising of the animal while information will be collected through urine or stool. Even their accurate days of pregnancy will be calculated through the kit. The research is being led by senior scientists Dr Aditya Mishra and his team. When research work gets complete, it will help to increase the population of big cats and other wildlife in the country. Scientists Dr Aditya Mishra said that this kit will be helpful to check pregnancy duration of lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah and other big cat species.

 

His team has collected sample of animals from Mukundpura Safari and Van Vihar, Bhopal, for further testing. His team is researching on sample of animals for several months. He said that pregnancy kit will inform about pregnancy of wildlife and their duration of pregnancy. He said when he was given project to develop the kit, he was worried about collection of animal’s urine and stool. Then Mukundapur, Rewa and Van Vihar, Bhopal was selected for the same. He said animal also go through hormonal changes in their body and litter during pregnancy. After collecting sample from Mukundara and Van Vihar, they preserved the urine and stool on 20 degree Celsius of temperature and then started study on it.

 

Dr Aditya said, after making study it was found that big cats body reacts just opposite to human being during pregnancy. General human being develops a particular harmon in body in large amount during pregnancy while big cats reduces the quantity of particular harmon during pregnancy. While human being shows higher rate of harmon in body, big cats shows reduced level of harmon in their body during pregnancy. He said when a female big cat become expecting mother, her harmon level reduces all of sudden in 25 to 26 days. Big cats have total pregnancy period of 110 to 120 days and the first 25 days are important same like human being have first trimester important.