The new view charts the ebb and flow of long-ago rhino populations, while identifying specific gene variants that flesh out how well the animals had been adapted to the cold – putting them at a disadvantage when the climate warmed. But in a new report in Current Biology, DNA data from preserved rhinos open a window into the past onto climate change. The prevailing view of the extinctions blamed overhunting by humans, a scenario that once roughly fit broad timelines. Several large animal species (“megafauna”) vanished with the last ice age, including woolly rhinos and mammoths, huge armadillos, cave lions, and sabertooth tigers. He died at age 45, not 46.Two views of the forces behind extinction of the woolly rhino elegantly illustrate how scientific thinking shifts to embrace new knowledge – a phenomenon that reverberates as new findings about COVID-19 pour in.
Asian species of rhino have suffered even more, with 3,500 Indian one-horned rhinos left in Nepal and India, fewer than 100 Sumatran rhinos ( known for their long hair), and only about 60 Javan rhinos left in the world.Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this post misstated Sudan’s age. The smaller black rhino remains critically endangered, with about 5,000 left. Poaching has ravaged all five rhino species.
The southern white rhino, found in southern Africa, was on the brink of extinction but has recovered, with the current herd numbering around 21,000. The last 20 that remained in the Garamba national Park in the DRC were killed in the war that gripped the country until the early 2000s. Native to the grasslands around Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan, Chad, and northeastern DRC, the square-lipped northern white rhino nearly went extinct in the 1990s. In Africa, their species was wiped out by poaching that spiked in the 1970s and carries on today. The last four northern white rhinos came to Kenya in 2009 from the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic. “The estimated cost of IVF-from the development of the method, to trials, implantation and the creation of a viable breeding herd of northern whites-could be as much as US$9 million,” WildAid said. Acknowledging the risks, researchers believe this is the only option left, after pairing the females with a male southern white rhino failed. For the first time, researchers plan to harvest the females’ viable eggs and fertilize them with the semen of now deceased northern white male rhinos, using a southern white rhino as a surrogate. Both females are unable to conceive naturally, and only one is viable for in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Sudan’s death prompts a desperate need to develop “artificial reproductive techniques” for the animals, said a statement by NGO WildAid. Sudan’s loss leaves just two female white rhinos left on the planet: his daughter Najin and granddaughter Fatu. The other male northern white rhino, Suni, died of natural causes in 2014. Sudan even joined Tinder last year, as the zoo tried to raise awareness about his threatened species and raise money for reproductive research. Wild Aid/Kristen Schmidt (Supplied) Yao Ming and Sudan raising awareness.