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IVF could bring 'extinct' rhino back: Vets harvest sperm from deceased males and eggs from last two surviving females

The northern white rhino was thought to be doomed forever when Sudan, the planet’s last male, died in Kenya in March 2018

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A Jurassic Park-style plan to bring back an “extinct” species has moved a step closer after eggs were successfully harvested from the world’s last two northern white rhinos.

The procedure on the females, called Najin and Fatu, who live on a wildlife reserve in Kenya, saw scientists recover 10 eggs which will be frozen and transferred to a southern white rhino surrogate.

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“We are very happy that after this first procedure on Najin and Fatu that they have recovered very smoothly and they are doing really well and fine today just 24 hours after this first procedure,” Dr. Robert Hermes, of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), said Friday.

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The ultimate goal is to create a herd of up to 15 animals that would be returned to their natural habitat in Africa. That could take decades but researchers hope to produce living offspring within three years.

The northern white rhino was thought to be doomed forever when Sudan, the planet’s last male, died at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya in March 2018.

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It was survived by a 28-year-old daughter Najin and its 18-year-old offspring Fatu, who live under 24-hour armed guard in the same reserve but are both unable to become pregnant.

The eggs that will be used to raise the species from the dead will be artificially inseminated with frozen sperm from four deceased males.

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It has not been tried before and it will take time for scientists perfect the technique. “I am pretty sure we will overcome that hurdle. But even if we are able to have those frozen embryos and store them for 3,000 years or longer, we can say we have saved the whole organism for future generations,” said an IZW spokesman.

The IZW describes the project, which also involves the Italian biotech laboratory Avantea, the Dvur Kralove zoo in the Czech Republic, and the Kenya Wildlife Service as an “attempt to push the boundaries of what is medically and technically feasible.”

With no natural predators, northern white rhinos once roamed in their thousands across the grassy plains that stretch along the southern edge of the Sahara desert, touching on countries including Uganda, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Chad.

But demand for rhino horn for use in Chinese medicine and dagger handles in Yemen fuelled a poaching crisis that saw large numbers wiped out in the Seventies and Eighties.

They were considered extinct in the wild in 2008 after a wide ranging animal population survey failed to find any specimens.

The last sighting in the wild was made by Russian helicopter pilots who saw three rhinos thought to be northern whites while flying over a remote part of Sudan in 2010, but none have been seen since.

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