“Our current success also shows the great potential that zoos have in saving endangered species.” By mastering this step, we can now use a northern white rhino embryo for the first time in embryo transfer. “As always, first we wanted to prove that our approach works with southern white rhino genetic material, as it is more available. Jan Stejskal, the BioRescue project coordinator at Safari Park Dvur Kralove, said: “With this successful embryo transfer, the BioRescue team has fully opened the way to the first northern white rhino calf to be born through artificial reproduction. The team expects to transfer a northern white rhino embryo soon and hope to have calves within the next two to three years. An autopsy showed that the pregnancy had lasted 70 days and produced a well-developed 6.4cm long male embryo.Įxperts are now carrying out vaccination programmes and quarantine measures to protect the rhinos from the bacteria. However, Curra died just 70 days into the pregnancy after becoming infected with clostridium bacteria spores, following unusually heavy rains. The eggs were fertilised in a laboratory before being transferred to Curra after they had developed into blastocysts. The eggs were retrieved from Elenore, a southern white rhinoceros living in the Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium, while the sperm came from a male named Athos from the Zoo Salzburg in Hellbrunn, Austria. In the new project, scientists and vets transferred two southern white rhino embryos into Curra, a southern white rhinoceros, selected as a surrogate mother. Since the 1960s, the population has fallen from 2,000 individuals to just two remaining females today, mother and daughter Najin and Fatu, who are currently protected at Ol Pejeta Conservancy near Mount Kenya. Northern white rhinos are the most endangered mammal on Earth and all conservation efforts to save them have been thwarted by poaching, civil war and habitat loss. “It is bitter that this milestone is confirmed under such tragic circumstances with the death of the surrogate Curra and her unborn calf, but I am certain that this proof of concept is a turn of the tide for the survival of the northern white rhino.” It took many years to get it right and we are overwhelmed that we now have proof that this technique works perfectly. “But for rhinos, it has been completely uncharted territory. Thomas Hildebrandt, BioRescue project head at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, who developed the technique to find the location of where to insert the embryo said: “The embryo transfer technique is well established for humans and for domesticated animals such as horses or cows. Since 2019, the BioRescue conservation science programme has cryopreserved 30 northern white rhino embryos, but has been unwilling to transfer them until they knew the procedure would succeed. Now in a major breakthrough an international group of scientists and conservationists has successfully transferred an embryo into a southern white rhino surrogate.Īlthough the mother named Curra died within a few months of conception it marks a proof of concept which opens the door to transferring northern white rhino embryos. Northern white rhinos are functionally extinct, with just two females remaining after the last male died in 2018. The world’s first pregnancy in a rhinoceros through IVF could save the most endangered species on the planet, scientists hope.
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