Rome (AFP)
Two embryos of the northern white rhinoceros were created to try to save this species from extinction, the scientists who participated in the project announced in Cremona, northern Italy, on Wednesday.
"Using the oocytes of the last two females and the frozen sperm of the dead males," an international team of scientists managed "to successfully create two embryos of the northern white rhinoceros," says a joint statement from the various participants in the project.
"The embryos will be kept in liquid nitrogen" at very low temperature "to be transferred to a surrogate mother in the near future," the source said.
These embryos represent the last hope for the northern white rhino - one of two white rhinoceros subspecies - after the death last year at the age of 45 of the last male, called Sudan, in the Kenyan Reserve. from Ol Pejeta (center).
The two females, Najin, 30, and her daughter Fatu, 19, are the last individuals of their species and live in Ol Pejeta.
None of them is able to carry a pregnancy to an end: Fatu suffers degenerative lesions in the uterus and Najin a fragility of his rear end incompatible with a reach.
"We brought Kenya 10 oocytes, five of each female," said Professor Cesare Galli, director of Avatea, a Cremona company highly specialized in animal reproduction.
"After incubation (...) seven oocytes were selected suitable for fertilization, four of Fatu and three of Najin," said the expert.
Of these seven oocytes, four were inseminated by the sperm of one rhinoceros and three by the sperm of another, "and after 10 days of incubation two Fatu oocytes developed into embryos that will be preserved for future transfer. ", added Mr. Galli.
- Impossible 5 years ago -
Scientists now need to develop a technique for implanting these embryos into surrogate mothers, in this case southern white rhino females.
"The whole team took years to develop and plan these procedures," said Prof. Thomas Hildebrandt of the Leibniz Institute for Zoological and Animal Research in Berlin.
He recalled three weeks ago, when collecting the oocytes in Kenya, that "the method (sampling) and equipment were both designed from scratch".
"Five years ago, the production of a northern white rhinoceros embryo seemed an impossible goal to achieve, but today we have achieved it," said Jan Stejskal of Czech zoo Dvur Kralove, where Najin and Fatu were born before being transferred to Kenya.
"In the coming months we will have to optimize the process of embryo transfer and development in surrogate mothers," he said.
"This is an important step forward in our efforts to save the northern white rhinos," said Richard Vigne, General Manager of Ol Pejeta.
"We still have a long way to go (...) and human behavior in general needs to change dramatically if we want to learn from Northern white rhinos," Vigne concluded.
The so-called medicinal virtues attributed to their horn in Asia in the 1970s and 1980s led to relentless poaching that largely decimated the Northern White Rhinoceros in Uganda, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and in the present South Sudan.
These traditional territories of the Northern White Rhinoceros have long been subject to conflict and therefore conducive to criminal activity, including poaching. In 2008, the Northern White Rhino was already considered extinct in the wild.
© 2019 AFP