Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

^{Figure 6.10 A descendant of the Halle flock of Karakul at the Sidi Mesri experiment station in Italian-occupied Libya, 1937.}

^{(Report on Karakul husbandry in western Libya, Archivio Istituto Italiano per l’Oltremare, fasc. 529)}

^{Figure 6.11 A product of experimentation with Karakul at the Sidi Mesri experiment station, 1937.}

^{(Report on Karakul husbandry in western Libya, Archivio Istituto Italiano per l’Oltremare, fasc. 529)}

Bonadonna reported results from his experiments with Karakul, which involved about a thousand ewes inseminated by a single ram in a year. If these numbers proved accurate, the 50 rams Maiocco promised to deliver to the African colonies would thus be able to inseminate 50,000 ewes in a year. In Libya the first experiments to establish the conditions for the use of the technique in the climate of Cyrenaica began in 1939 with local barbaresca ewes and several sperm concentrations from three Karakul pureblood rams. A total of 1,592 barbaresca ewes were inseminated, and the results were encouraging.[111] The four basic steps of artificial insemination—collecting, diluting, conserving, and inseminating proper—were to be undertaken under strictly standardized procedures. The main task facing experimenters was in fact to establish standards. If, for example, tropical conditions favored the collection of semen, with high temperatures avoiding thermal shock, they were nevertheless problematic for conserving semen at 0ºC. Ice wasn’t easy to obtain in Cyrenaica. And once again, it is important to notice that the status of Karakul in such experiments was double: it was an organism whose reproduction was being industrialized to increase profits from its production; but it was also a model organism standing for other organisms in exploring the general usefulness of artificial insemination.

Experiments were also conducted to investigate the possibility of shipping rams’ sperm via airplane from Milan to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. As Bonadonna emphasized, this was to be considered the first shipment of sperm from Europe to African territories.[112] The experiment confirmed that changes in pressure had little effect on the motility or fertility of semen stored at 0ºC.[113] In line with the Italian push for the use of airplane as a tool of empire, Bonadonna put forward a vision of sperm from pureblood origin being distributed to the most remote areas of the empire. If airplanes had been decisive in Italy’s victory over the army of the Negus in Abyssinia, as well as in Cyrenaica over the Sanusi, Bonadonna now explored the possibility of using them to drop bottles containing bulls’ and rams’ sperm on parachutes in order to sustain productive animal husbandry operations.[114] Fascist Italy’s infatuation with aviation is a well-known subject, but its potential as a distributor of superior sperm in colonial dominions has never been appreciated. Mussolini liked to brag about the role of aviation as bringing a new order to the chaos of politics through its view from above, and he probably would have been equally proud of its ability to distribute higher forms of life to the vast territories of Grande Italia.[115]