Animals in the Womb

Using ultrasound, a battery of cameras and computer graphics, imaging experts have created unprecedented television pictures of animals still in the womb.

 

Fetal dolphins are, apparently, easy to get on camera, but for elephants the procedure is rather more convoluted and involves shoulder-length rubber gloves.

 

The pictures of live animal fetuses were created for broadcast at Christmas on Channel 4 in Britain and the National Geographic Channel in the US.

 

They were recorded from the point of fertilisation through to birth, and the elephant can be seen growing from a single cell to a 118kg newborn.

 

One of the world’s leading ultrasound experts, Thomas Hilderbrandt, was brought in by the producers to record four-dimensional images from inside the wombs of dogs, dolphins and elephants.

 

The dogs would lie down for the procedure and the dolphins were trained to swim against the ultrasound equipment, but the elephants had to be given an enema before a probe was pushed up the rectum to get close enough to the fetus to generate images.

 

Jeremy Dear, of Pioneer Productions, which made the 90-minute program, said the star sequence was a computer-generated scene of the elephant fetus moving down the birth canal, before switching to a live exterior shot of an elephant birth.

 

“It gets an ‘ahhh’ every time,” he said. “It’s anthropomorphism gone mad, but it’s very effective.