White Rhinos are on the brink of extinction, especially when the last male white rhino died almost three years ago. Unfortunately, neither of the two last white rhinos, a mother and daughter called Najin and Fatu, can carry a calf in full term. However, scientists started producing embryos in 2019 from the eggs of two females and the frozen sperm from a deceased male white rhino.
Scientists announced this year that they have successfully produced two more embryos, making the total number to five embryos. The team plans to implant the embryos into a surrogate mother this March in hopes of bringing back the white rhinos from the brink of extinction.
According to a report, the plans of the BioRescue team were hampered last year by the coronavirus pandemic when countries have implemented travel ban restrictions, which delayed some key procedures of the project. BioRescue leader Thomas Hildebrandt from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany said, “2020 was really a hard test for all of us, but giving up is not the mentality of any true scientist”. But last Christmas, they received a timely present when they produced two embryos.
The news outlet reported that the five embryos are now kept inside the liquid nitrogen in a laboratory in Cremona, in the Lombardy region of Italy before they could transfer it into a surrogate mother. Moreover, the team hopes to deliver the first northern white rhino calf in three years and hopefully produce a wider population in the next two decades.
Hildebrandt said that they are under time constraints to save the white rhino population. He added, “We are under a time constraint because we want really a transfer of the social knowledge from the last existing northern white rhinos to a calf”.