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Believe it or not, we don’t actually observe all of the breeding that occurs at the Cincinnati Zoo! So, what do we do when we think a female may be pregnant, but aren’t sure? Run a pregnancy test of course!

But it is not as simple to diagnose pregnancy in wild animals as it is humans. We need a longitudinal profile – a profile that shows us what is happening over time, not just one time point.

In a lot of the animals, we use fecal hormone monitoring – a fancy way of saying we measure the hormones that come out in their poop. Using this method with Tessa, we were able to tell that Tessa was pregnant well before we were able to get the fun ultrasound images. We were able to see a half “hump” and a full “hump” in her fecal hormones which indicate reproductive cycles, then the hormone starts to increase and continues increasing, indicating a pregnancy!