Northern white rhino habitat how to#
Northern white rhino habitat skin#

The park was established to protect the last remaining of their kind and it’s estimated that maybe 20-50 individuals were only left to reproduce and now, nearly 20,000 remaining southern white rhinos are currently alive. There was a huge bottleneck at the beginning of the 19th century, or around 1900, they were hunted almost to extinction and they were actually one of the first conservation projects. There were some genetic studies from our cooperation partners from San Diego Zoo who found actually that the genetic diversity in these last cell lines we have still from northern white rhinos is actually at least as big, if not greater, than genetic diversity that is present currently in the living southern white rhino population, and southern white rhinos are actually doing quite well. How many, realistically, could you make? Would it be enough to rebuild the population or…? SH: The plan would be to create these induced pluripotent stem cell lines on as many founders as we have in our storage and to create embryos from them, probably with the natural sperm and artificial oocytes or vice versa, and then to create a new generation of northern white rhinos by planting them into the uterus of a southern white rhino surrogate. What does the future look like? You’re planning on implanting these embryos in the future into southern white rhinos – is that the goal? So far it has only worked in mice, but he has been starting to work with other cooperation partners from the Max Delbrück Centre, Sebastian Diecke and Vera Zywitza, on creating induced pluripotent stem cells of good quality of northern white rhinos and they have gone pretty far also in terms of developing gametes in the future, we hope it will work soon.

Northern white rhino habitat skin#

So in use, pluripotent stem cells can be created from a normal skin cell and this can, again, one of our core operation partners from Japan, Katsuhiko Hayashi, was capable to differentiate induced pluripotent stem cells again to create all sets in a petri dish.

So we have to find other options, include more founder individuals into the gene pool, and one of them has come along with the finding of Yamanaka, which was actually prized with the Nobel Prize, that skin cells or any kind of differentiated cell can be transplanted back into the state of pluripotency. Still, this genetic diversity will be too limited to create a new population that’s sustainable in the long run. We managed to create embryos of her and different bulls that we have in our cryostorage. They are actually also mother and daughter so we do not lose so much genetic information by only focusing on the younger one. So, we really hope to keep this continuity to make this happen but in the long run, apparently, we only have these two right now because we retired the older one that never produced any embryos of quite advanced age so now we are only harvesting oocyte sets of the younger one.

Northern white rhino habitat how to#

SH: Yes, so one of these approaches to have a baby in the near future, which we really hope to achieve also because most likely northern white rhinos have their own vocalizational repertoire and they have their own culture, and the last two of their kind, we hope, will still teach the next generation of modern white rhinos how to behave as a northern white rhino. And we believe that you are trying to turn skin cells into sperm cells and that sort of thing. With these embryos that you have, this genetic material has come from long-deceased male rhinos and sperm that you have collected from them. They are actually listed as a sub-species, not a different species, so they should be close enough to make it work. There was even a report of a hybrid, so we are quite hopeful that the uterus will be compatible between the two. SH: Luckily, they have a very closely related sister taxon, the southern white rhino, and this is also an endangered species actually, but there’s many more of them still left on the planet and these southern white rhinos can serve, hopefully, as the surrogate mothers. If you’re not going to use the last two rhinos that we have left, what is the future looking like for those embryos?

While the older one was actually mated by quite heavy bulls and her Achilles tendons are not in good shape, so she could not carry the extra weight of her pregnancy, so we would not try to use her as a surrogate for embryos.

She had some inflammation, or we don’t really know what happened, but in the ultrasound examinations, you can see clearly that her endometrium is cystically altered and is not capable to carry a pregnancy.

So the younger one, Fatu, has an issue with her uterus. SH: No, both of these females unfortunately are not capable to carry a pregnancy to term. Would you then transfer these embryos that you have stored back into this female?