Scientists in Berlin have achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.
Key points
- The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites.
- It offers hope for saving the critically endangered northern white rhino subspecies from extinction.
- The white rhinoceros includes two distinct subspecies, northern and southern.
- Northern white rhinos, which despite their name are actually grey, used to roam freely in several countries in east and central Africa, but their numbers fell sharply due to widespread poaching for their horns.
- The last male northern white rhino died in 2018. Now only two rhinos remain: two females, Najin and her daughter Fatu.
- Both of the former zoo animals are kept under tight security at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Neither are able to carry a calf to term.
- Southern white rhinos are more abundant. The scientists used in-vitro fertilization to harvest the eggs of female northern white rhinos and using sperm from dead male rhinos (before they died) of the subspecies to produce embryos that eventually will be transferred to southern white rhino surrogate mothers.
- By way of proof of concept, the scientists said they transferred the embryo of a southern white rhino into a surrogate mother of that subspecies at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya on Sept. 24, 2023.
- Neither of the last two surviving northern whites can carry a pregnancy because of a combination of age and health problems. So instead the embryo will be implanted into the womb of a surrogate southern white rhino.
