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Scientists may be poised to bring the northern white rhino back from the very brink of extinction having successfully created another viable embryo which will be transferred to a surrogate mother.
A lot of work remains to be done to save the species, but eggs extracted from the last two remaining female rhinos - Najin, 30, and her daughter Fatu, 19 - have been successfully inseminated with frozen sperm from dead males.
The embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen before they will be implanted into a southern white rhino in the coming months as neither Najin or Fatu are able to carry a pregnancy.
Image:Najin is the oldest northern white rhino left at 30
"It's amazing to see that we will be able to reverse the tragic loss of this subspecies through science," said Kenya's wildlife minister, Najib Balala.
The groundbreaking procedure
carried out in Kenya last year
harvested 10 eggs from the pair of rhinos. Seven were **successfully matured
** , and three artificial inseminations of Fatu's eggs have proved viable
According to the researchers, the ultimate goal would be to create a herd of at least five animals which could be returned to their natural habitat in Africa, but that could take decades.
"Now the team will make every effort to achieve the same result for the 30-year-old Najin before it is too late for her," said Thomas Hildebrandt with the Leibniz Institute for Zoo & Wildlife Research in Germany.
Selecting a female southern white rhino from Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy to be the surrogate is the next step, according to Mr Balala.
Image:Elite anti-poachers protect the surviving white rhinos around the clock
The two remaining rhinoceros are protected at all hours of the day by armed guards as intense poaching reduced the wild population from around 2,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 15 in the 1980s.
Conservation efforts saw the wild population grow to 36 around the turn of the century, but as of 2007 there are not believed to be any more rhinos alive outside of captivity.
Rhinoceros horns are valued as part of Chinese folk medicine, which traditionally imagines the horns to contain healing properties, as well as being used as a carving material.
The final male of the subspecies, a 45-year-old named
Sudan
, died from "age-related complications" in March 2018 after his condition "worsened significantly" and left him unable to stand.
Sudan gained fame in 2017 when he was listed as "The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World" on the dating app Tinder as part of a fundraising campaign.
His death left the northern white rhino classified as "functionally extinct".
Sudan, Najin and Fatu were among a group of four fertile northern white rhinos moved to the Ol Pejeta site from a zoo in the Czech Republic, with hopes that they could breed in an environment similar to their native habitat.
The other male, Suni - one of the bulls whose frozen sperm was used last week - died of natural causes in October 2014.
