Sex, science and satisfaction: A heady brew

Genus-specific reproductive processes and strategies displayed by equids, camelids and elephantids are compared and contrasted to illustrate the amazing diversity of reproductive physiology between genera and the equally surprising conservation of reproductive processes across a genus in the face of other dramatic phenotypic modifications and adaptation to prosper in the prevailing environment. From intrauterine conceptus mobility and chorionic gonadotrophic secretion by specialised invasive trophoblast cells in equids, through induced ovulation, an asymmetrical uterus and an almost absurdly short dioestrous interval in camelids, to intrabdominal testes, the testosterone-driven expression of musth and a very tenuous intrauterine attachment of the placenta in elephantids, reproductive physiology remains a discipline of great fascination and academic merit with much yet to be discovered and understood across the whole mammalian kingdom.