In A Race Against Time, Scientists Race To Produce The Embryo Of The Northern White Rhino

White Rhino. (Wikipedia Commons / Zigomar)

JAKARTA - Scientists continue to make efforts to conserve the North White Rhino. In a race against time, scientists must rack their brains to save the Northern White Rhino from extinction.

Currently there are only two female white rhinos in Kenya, namely Najin and daughter Fatou. Both of them could no longer bear children. On a daily basis, the two of them look for food, guarded by the Kenyan security forces so that they are not targeted by poachers.

Meanwhile, the only male remaining died in Kenya on 19 March 2018. Practically, scientists now can only rely on conservation efforts using the embryo system.

The good news is, according to Reuters, the number of Northern White Rhino embryos is now increasing after scientists who are researchers at the conservation of the Northern White Rhino who are members of BioRescue managed to add two new embryos at the end of last year.

Scientists hope to implant embryos, made from rhino eggs and frozen sperm from deceased males, into surrogate mothers from a more abundant rhino species. A total of five embryos are now viable for production.

This is good news, because over the past year a number of research agendas and procedures that were supposed to be carried out by BioRescue were hampered by restrictions on international travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

White Rhino. (Wikipedia Commons / Hein Waschefort)

"2020 has been a really tough test for all of us, but giving up is not a true scientist mentality," BioRescue leader Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoos and Wildlife Research in Germany told Reuters.

“Christmas gave us a present: two embryos. And we are very happy about that. "

The five embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen at a laboratory in Cremona, in the Lombardy region, Italy, waiting to be transferred to a surrogate mother.

The team hopes to give birth to the first northern white rhino calf in three years and a wider population in the next two decades.

"We are under a time constraint, because we really want to transfer social knowledge from the last available Northern White Rhino to the child," said Hildebrandt.

Unlike the South White Rhino brothers, which are still a lot. The Northern White Rhino currently has only two females left. In the past, the Northern White Rhinoceros was abundant in eastern and northern Africa. Poaching practices that target rhino horn, make this animal is now endangered.