The first successful embryo transfer in a southern white rhino paves way for using technique to save rarer northern cousins
The critically endangered northern white rhino could be saved from the brink of extinction after scientists performed the first successful embryo transfer in white rhinos.
After the last male northern white rhino, Sudan, died in 2018, the disappearance of the species looked imminent. Just two infertile female northern white rhinos – Fatu and Najin – remain, and are under 24-hour armed protection at a conservation reservation in Kenya. But a new scientific advancement means the mother and daughter may not be the last of their kind.
An international team of researchers from BioRescue – a consortium, backed by the German government, which aims to halt extinctions – has performed the first successful embryo transfers in southern white rhinos, paving the way for the technique to be used for their rarer northern counterparts.
Is it actually saving them from extinction or just delaying the inevitable?
There’s zero genetic diversity at this point so any future generations would either be inbred and full of genetic disorders, or crossbreed with other species and not actually white rhinos anymore.
Plus we haven’t corrected the circumstances that caused them to die off in the first place.
Poaching, right?
There’s actually quite a bit of DNA preserved apparently so it’s possible.
For me, the question should be whether they’re actually a species because currently most of the experts seem to think southerns and northerns are actually not distinct enough.
Precisely, hopefully there’s adequate genetic material in those horns or elsewhere, but it’s gonna take a lot more work than this to do the job. Probably better to spend the resources banking genetic diversity while un-extinction tech cooks.
Probably better to actually test this tech so it can be used earlier on other species with less genetic stress.
Granted, not saying it’s not worthy, just it’s better to store diversity as that’s what’s going first.