Advertisement

Test tube likely last hope for dwindling white rhino species

Southern white rhinos were thought to be extinct by the end of the late 1800s, but a small herd of 20 was rescued and bred. There are now nearly 20,000.

By Brooks Hays
With Angalifu, the male northern white rhinoceros that died at San Diego Wild Animal Park this week, now gone, there are only five left in the world. Photo by Sheep81/CC.
With Angalifu, the male northern white rhinoceros that died at San Diego Wild Animal Park this week, now gone, there are only five left in the world. Photo by Sheep81/CC.

SAN DIEGO, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- With this week's news that the San Diego Zoo had lost one of its two northern white rhinos, the pressure to save the species from extinction became even greater. As natural reproduction is unlikely -- near impossible, in fact -- producing a test tube baby may be the only way to save the northern square-lipped rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni).

There are now only five specimens left on planet Earth, and researchers around the world are scrambling to figure out a way to prolong the species' existence -- and hopefully jumpstart a breeding program. Four of the five left are females -- one in San Diego, one in the Czech Republic and two in Kenya. The last two are joined at Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy by the world lone male northern white rhino.

Advertisement

None of the five rhinos are wild in any traditional sense. But the three remaining Kenyan rhinos did adopt some of the behaviors of their wild (late) relatives -- like nocturnal feeding -- after they were moved to the preserve in 2009 from their previous home in the Czech Republic. Two years after the move, two of the then four rhinos were seen mating. But the pregnancy didn't take.

Advertisement

Scientists have considered in-vitro fertilization, but the process of artificially inseminating a massive mammal would be dangerous and expensive -- with little guarantee of success.

"You're dealing with semi-wild, what, two ton animal?" Richard Vigne, the CEO of Ol Pejeta, told NPR. "Which is very different than dealing with completely domesticated cattle."

The last option is the test tube. Researchers are now thinking of fertilizing an extracted white rhino egg with with frozen northern white rhino sperm. The impregnated egg would then be implanted in the surrogate womb a southern white rhino, a genetically unique subspecies.

The southern white rhino was once endangered too. Like the northern white rhino, it is wanted by poachers for its horn, which is ground into a powder and sold as a sort of magic elixir in Asia -- used to treat all sorts of remedies, from nosebleeds to strokes.

Southern white rhinos were thought to be extinct by the end of the late 1800s, but a small herd of 20 was located in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa in 1895. The rhinos, immediately collected and protected, rebounded thanks to an international breeding program. Today, there are nearly 20,000.

But while southern white rhinos were essentially taken right off the savannah and into protected preserves, the remaining northern white rhinos have been living in the confined and artificial habitats of international zoos. Vigne says he thinks females shut down their reproductive capabilities after a prolonged period confinement.

Advertisement

Researchers are expected to meet in Kenya in January to further discuss the feasibility of in-vitro and test tube fertilization.

Latest Headlines