White Rhinos Return: How Scientists Rescued a Nearly Extinct Species

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When the world's last northern white rhinoceros passed away last March, the tragic news was reported by nearly every major publication around the world. A rhinoceros named Sudan lived for 45 years and died without leaving any offspring. He was survived by two females, none of whom could have children. It seemed that this was all - we were witnessing the disappearance of another species of animals. And then science came to the rescue.

Talk about a possible solution to the catastrophic situation with northern white rhinos has been going on for several years. However, it all came down to the financial issue and the fact that no one had ever performed such manipulations before. One solution was to use Sudanese sperm and fertilize their closest relative, a female southern white rhinoceros. However, in this case, the species, although it would have a chance to preserve, could no longer be considered fully unique. The remaining two females were unable to bear offspring on their own: one of them has a damaged uterus, and therefore, in principle, cannot become pregnant, and the second has serious problems with the hind legs, and these problems make pregnancy too risky.

And now, as reported by the Smithsonian magazine, things have finally moved and the hope of reviving the nearly extinct species has become much more real. At the end of August, a rather complicated operation was performed, which took two hours, and 7 eggs were removed from both female northern white rhinoceros - Naijin and Fatu, 4 from Fatu and 3 from Naijin. The eggs were frozen and sent to Italy, where frozen semen from four different males of the same species has been stored for several years.

The next step is to fertilize these eggs and implant them in the female southern white rhinoceros. Thus, scientists plan to preserve the genetic code of the northern white rhinos. Pregnancy in a rhinoceros lasts 14 months, so you will have to wait even more than a year before the little rhinoceros are born.

Although, in fairness, scientists do not dare to promise that in this way it will be possible to restore this species of rhinoceros. There is still the possibility that the female southern white rhino will not be able to bear another species of fruit inside. There is also the possibility that even if offspring are produced, they may be sterile and never reproduce on their own. And most importantly, scientists have a very limited amount of biological material, and all of it is taken from a very small number of individuals, one way or another genetically related to each other.

Scientists are well aware of all these risks and are trying to decide how they can be minimized. For example, a group of scientists from the BioResuce Project is trying to use genetic material from the frozen skin of 12 other northern white rhinos in order to expand the genetic diversity of this species. If they succeed, it will give hope for the restoration of not only rhinos, but also other endangered or even extinct animal species.

The story of the northern white rhinoceros is very revealing. Back in 1960, there were 2,360 individuals in the wild in Sudan and Uganda. Due to poaching, by 1984 there were only 15 of them. Then various communities were involved in order to preserve the population, and by 2003 there were 30 rhinos, and three years later there were no more rhinos in the wild - all adults were killed by poachers for their horns.

Since then, all rhinos of this species were only those that lived in zoos or national parks, and they were all either too old or with some kind of physical defect that did not allow them to have offspring. Two years ago, when Sudan was still alive, we talked about this story in more detail … In the meantime, on September 11, scientists reported that they managed to get 2 embryos of the northern white rhinoceros.