There are only two northern white rhinos left in the world, but we reported on a fertility breakthrough that offered hope for saving the species.
Scientists achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.
The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites which still number in the thousands, and took 13 attempts to accomplish.
The mother eventually died of an infection, but a post-mortem revealed that the 6.5cm male foetus was developing well and had a 95% chance of being born alive, showing that a viable pregnancy through rhino IVF is possible.
There are 30 precious northern white rhino embryos in existence. The next step would be repeating the success with some of these embryos.
