The world’s last male northern white rhino died on March 19, with the news shared by Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy early on March 20.
The 45-year-old male rhino called Sudan “was being treated for age-related complications that led to degenerative changes in muscles and bones combined with extensive skin wounds.” The decision was made to euthanise him after he was “unable to stand up and was suffering a great deal.”
This made the species “functionally extinct,” though two females remained alive.
Scientists and conservationists, including a team from Safari Park Dvůr Králové who provided this footage, have now created “hybrid embryos” from southern white rhino eggs and northern white rhino sperm using “assisted reproduction techniques.”
This is the first work of its kind on rhino embryos, according to a statement from the team. It was seen as a first step towards saving the northern white rhino species.
The statement reads: “These are the first in vitro produced rhinoceros embryos ever. They have a very high chance to establish a pregnancy once implanted into a surrogate mother,” says Prof Thomas Hildebrandt, Head of the Department of Reproduction Management at the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in Berlin. An international team of researchers successfully managed to adapt reproduction techniques used in horses to the special circumstances of rhino species, opening up the potential to bring back NWR from the brink of extinction. This would be achieved by adopting the procedure pioneered here, to oocytes to be collected from the last two living NWR females.” Credit: Andrea Jirousova/Safari Park Dvùr Králové via Storyful
