Death of White Rhino Leaves Four Animals In Species Past Point of No Return
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The entire White Rhino species consisted of just six members last fall when one one of the last six members and one of only two males in the world, died yesterday at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, apparently of old age. Now, with the death of a northern white rhino in a Czech zoo, there are just four of the animals left in a species already past the point of no return.
Nabire, a 31-year-old female, died Monday in the same zoo where she was born; she was unable to produce offspring because she suffered from uterine cysts, one of which ended up killing her, Live Science reports.
“The pathological cyst inside the body of Nabire was huge. There was no way to treat it,” said the zoo’s rhino curator in a statement. “Her death is a symbol of the catastrophic decline of rhinos due to a senseless human greed,” the zoo’s director said, per AFP. “Her species is on the very brink of extinction.”
With the death of Nabire, the only remaining northern white rhinos are three females who are unable to breed—an elderly female at the San Diego Zoo and two in Kenya—and the last surviving male, who’s also at the Kenyan conservancy, where a last-ditch breeding effort to save the species failed, the AP reports.
In a Facebook post, the San Diego Zoo offered its condolences to the Czech zoo and said that instead of giving up on the species, it’s collecting genetic material so the rhino’s genome can be preserved.
The Czech zoo removed Nabire’s healthy left ovary after her death, and the zoo’s statement notes that the ultimate goal would be to generate northern white rhino embryos and transfer them into a closely related surrogate: the southern white rhino.
Unfortunately scientists have not yet developed IVF procedures that work for rhinos, Live Science notes. (A cougar has come off the endangered species list—for a very bad reason.)
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So very sad. Soon they will all be gone.
I’m off somewhere no phone, no internet to deal with this week. Just saw a graphic photo of what that asshole did to that magnificent lion Cecil and have been in tears for over an hour, for an animal I don’t know from Adam. I will never understand the mind of someone who needs rhino horn, which is just hard fingernail, because they cannot get a hard on going. Lions, giraffes, rhinos the list is just endless this week on bad news for the animals and I cannot deal with it at all.
Same here Jess. I went on a bad animal news tear today because there was so much of it. My heart is also broken over Cecil the Lion. Poor, poor creatures….