The northern white rhino, which originally appeared in the Congo, Uganda and Sudan, among other places, has been on the brink of extinction for years. The last male specimen died three years ago at a wildlife sanctuary in Kenya. Leave a daughter and granddaughter. To our knowledge, these survivors and fatu are the only living specimens of their kind.
In a final effort to save the northern white rhino from extinction, scientists at BioRescue, a German government-backed international research team created specifically for this purpose, are using a type of artificial insemination treatment. They make embryos in the lab from frozen sperm cells of a deceased male rhinoceros and the eggs of a survivor and fatu.
To obtain survivor and fatu eggs, scientists have developed a special skewer that they can use to reach into the ovaries. Fatu eggs are said to have produced 12 embryos of the northern white rhino so far. This was not yet possible with the ten eggs collected from two survivors.
Egg donation pension
Therefore, after an “ethical risk assessment,” BioRescue researchers decided that two survivors Send an egg donation pension. The health of the female rhinoceros played a major role in this decision: many small and benign neoplasms were recently discovered on the cervix. Moreover, with a 32-year-old, Ngin is already very old.
“Removing an animal from an animal conservation program for reasons of animal welfare is not usually a long-term issue,” said Chief Veterinarian Frank Goretz and Stephen Ngolo. “But when that animal makes up 50 percent of your population, you think about that decision many times over.”
According to BioRescue, she will remain an “ambassador” for the preservation of her species. For example, researchers hope that a survivor will pass her “social knowledge and behavior” on to her future offspring, who will be primarily her grandchildren. The researchers will also continue to take pieces of skin from them for stem cell research.
Southern white rhino as surrogate mother
By the way, Naagin and Fatu are not able to complete the pregnancy on their own. That is why scientists want to insert such an embryo into the abdomen of a southern white rhino, who is destined to give birth to a rhino baby as a surrogate mother.
The population of the southern white rhino is improving worldwide. A century ago, the subspecies almost became extinct, and now there are more than twenty thousand individuals, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which live mainly in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
This breeding is also perilous for the southern white rhino shown last month at the Wildlands Emmen Zoo. The 19-year-old male Limpopo arrived there as part of the European EEP Breeding Program, who had already given birth to three offspring. But when introducing Limpopo to unicorn sisters Elena and Zahra An error has occurred. “Instead of showing him his place together, they both ran away,” the zoo wrote on its website. After a fifteen-minute chase, Elena slipped, landed in a watering hole and drowned.
