Sudan, the last of world’s male northern white rhinoceros, died in Kenya on Monday after defying all the odds including harsh weather previously, according to the sources his species are one step closer to extinction now, even a group of experts have undertaken the unprecedented task to try to keep this species from vanishing.
Sudan, which was the name of the deceased rhino, was 45 years old, he was unwell for few weeks after a very severe leg infection. In a press release, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy claimed that his condition had worsened so the authorities had to euthanize him after a long discussion.
When he was 2-year-old he was captured in Sudan in 1975, was taken to Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic, he was relocated to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, in Laikipia County, Kenya,along with two northern white rhino females named Najin and Fatu when Dvůr Králové Zoo fell into financial crisis.
The scientists were of the view that in a place closely resembling their homeland, they would survive. These species of the white rhinos were commonplace in the vicinity of Uganda, Chad, southwestern Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some 2,000 of them existed in 1960, according to the World Wildlife Fund. The prolonged wars and the poachers that funded the clashes played notorious role to extinct them.
Joseph Thaida, used to lookafter Sudan at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy since 2012, he remembers him to be very adorable and kind who had his pictures taken with tourists. Sudan became very famous when he got his own Tinder profile last year to bring attention to the plight of his subspecies and to generate funds to be directed to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy for research and technological implication for the betterment of rhinos.
“Whenever he hears people talking, he loves to come close, because he knows he’s gonna be scratched,” Thaida told NPR last year.
Sudan finally learned to become a complete rhino at the conservatory after few years of hard-work, Thaida believed. But he with two female rhinos failed to reproduce.
Dr. Steve Ngulu, the veterinarian who was in charge of Sudan said, “But then, as far as their propagation is concerned, we are happy that at least we collected some sperm from him and the other males.”
The major difficulty today the scientists are faced with is the two remaining female northern white rhinos cannot conceive the new babies — one is being sterilized and the other is physically incapable of carrying a calf to the time of its birth.
“So, natural reproduction cannot take place, artificial insemination is not possible, so the only other option that we have to have a pure northern white rhino baby is to retrieve or to do something we call ovum pick-up, collect eggs from the females,” Ngulu said.
The fertilized eggs then would be implanted in a white rhino that would carry the calf until due time. However, the truth is eggs-taking from a rhino was never done before. If the scientists ever took that risk, the chances are that might be fatal to females— resulting in the extinction of species.
Comments 0