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Where Do Wolf Babies Come From?

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A standout science student in high school, Asa went on to major in zoology and psychology at the University of Wisconsin, where she would earn a Ph.D. in endocrinology and reproductive physiology in 1981. After studying Sechura desert foxes in Peru, she did postdoctoral work in Minnesota with L. David Mech, a giant in the field who has authored ten books on wolves and has spent the better part of 45 years studying them in the wild.

"She was a wonderful worker when she was here," Mech says from his office at the University of Minnesota. "She was involved in behavioral studies that had to do with using urine and feces for marking territories. You know how a dog urinates on a fire hydrant? That's territorial marking, and wolves do a lot of that as well."

"I'd been interested in wolves for a long time, but that absolutely took it to a new level," Asa says of her experience working with Mech. "I was always more interested in carnivores, because I see them as being more clever and intelligent than the animals that they eat: You have to be smarter to hunt than to run away."

She went on to do electron microscopy of sperm cells at the Rockefeller University in New York City, then moved to rural Nevada, where she lived in a tent for a couple of years while working to apply contraceptive techniques to feral horses.

"I vasectomized the harem stallions," she says, growing animated. "The question had been whether the bachelor stallions on the periphery that don't have a harem: whether they were ever successful in siring young, or whether the dominant stallion in the harem really did all the mating."

Turned out the studs "did a very good job of protecting their mares from the outside males," Asa reports.

The Saint Louis Zoo's Endangered Species Research Center is housed in a squat brick building on a quiet corner of the zoo grounds in Forest Park. Asa's staff of three full-time scientists and four graduate students, all of them women, share the building with the zoo's veterinary hospital.

At first glance Asa's domain looks like any other lab one might find in a university biology department. But on closer inspection you might notice the semen-analysis system, the machine that does nothing but shake vials filled with fecal matter, and the seven containers of frozen semen, each about the size of a half-barrel of beer.

Animal sex humor pervades the décor, from a postcard on the wall of a bull humping a trailer to a cartoon of a zoo panda complaining about his line of work. ("You heard me, I work at a federal facility where they force me to perform sexual acts against my will.") Asa herself can be counted on for a humorous yarn every now and again, as well.

Ever hear the one about the fennec fox in the children's zoo who couldn't get the job done?

"For some reason he couldn't intermit," Asa begins in her habitual jargonese. "It was really sad, because he would mount the female and try to copulate over and over. Her sides lost fur from being rubbed so much. After a while she would just get disgusted and try to get away from him, but this would be after a day or more of this.

"He had normal sperm, so I went up and sat and watched when there was a mating," Asa goes on. "And you could see that when he tried to penetrate, his penis would just go off to the side: It was running along her hip rather than intermitting. Which must have been driving them both crazy! So it was clear why they weren't getting her pregnant: He had a crooked penis."

Ha!

Besides teaching classes in animal behavior at Washington University and endocrinology at Saint Louis University, Asa is the author of more than 100 scientific papers. Over the years she has found time to establish a conservation project, located on the border of Nicaragua and Honduras. She travels there once a year, journeying by canoe to a nature reserve where she studies whether the indigenous residents are engaged in sustainable living and hunting practices.

She's so successful in her field that others sound almost bewildered in their praise.

"She's amazing to work with," ventures the Canid Center's Kim Scott. "I have no idea how she actually accomplishes everything she does. She's a part of so many committees, research projects, she has countless students. Her energy is boundless."

Asa was hired by the zoo as a reproductive biologist in 1988, at a time when American zoos were shedding their reputations as ersatz circus sideshows and solidifying their efforts to work together in regard to animal conservation. Of course, merely capturing endangered animals from the wild and giving them a safe place to live isn't enough. They have to breed -- or be bred. And while Asa's goals are almost universally lauded, her techniques aren't.

"PETA is opposed to holding animals captive in zoos, period, so we're certainly opposed to all the convoluted and manipulative efforts that are made in order to breed the animals," says Lisa Wathne, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "If the only way that Mexican grays are going to survive is if we are manipulating them in this way, then I'd say humans certainly don't deserve to have them around. Efforts to save endangered species need to be focused on preserving habitats of animals in the wild, and stopping poaching."

Asa believes the zoo's mission is compatible with the well-being of endangered species. "We are simply doing the best we can with the resources and knowledge available to us to preserve species that have been endangered by human activities," she maintains. "We believe it's the least we can do."

Though not specifically familiar with Asa's work, Wathne takes issue with the use of electrified probes to stimulate ejaculation. "Electro-ejaculation is not a pleasant procedure for these animals," the animal-rights activist argues. "It's not a procedure that most human males would subject themselves to, and to do it to any other species is abominable."

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