Her death came months after Tam, Malaysia’s last male Sumatran rhino, died after suffering organ failure. She was 25, and had cancer, which was starting to cause her pain because a tumor was putting pressure on her bladder. Iman died at BORA’s Borneo Rhino Sanctuary last year, where she had been kept and cared for since her capture in 2014. Last year, scientists successfully fertilized in-vitro embryos collected from the two remaining females with sperm from dead males, which was celebrated as a major step forward in saving the subspecies. A Kenyan conservancy houses the only two northern white rhinos left worldwide, Fatu and Najin, who are both female. There are a number of ways this could go wrong the fertilization could fail, and even if it doesn’t, the pregnancy could fail once the embryo is implanted.īut there are signs of hope from similar projects around the world. The team is still in the preliminary stages next, they need to analyze the cells to create a genomic database, differentiate the stem cells, and work with zoos and conservancies to find a suitable surrogate female. Scientists created embryos to save the animal from extinction There are 2 northern white rhinos left worldwide. Najin lives at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Northern white rhino keeper, James Mwenda, checks on Najin, one of the last two northern white rhino on the planet. The surrogate will likely be another rhino, either a Sumatran rhino from another country or another species. The first is to develop these stem cells into an egg and sperm, to create an embryo that will be implanted into a surrogate mother. Crucially, the team collected stem cells – basically, raw material from which cells with specialized functions can be generated. The cells came from the rhinos’ hearts, lungs, brains and kidneys. Here’s how the process works: In collaboration with the Borneo Rhino Alliance (BORA), the researchers collected cells and tissue from the last three Sumatran rhinos at BORA’s sanctuary – including Iman – before each died. But now we have a living thing that we can use.” “If you don’t have any cells, or if we just had tissue that aren’t living anymore, we can’t do anything with that. “Before the three rhinos (the last survivors in Malaysia) died, we got their cells, and the cells are still alive – which is why I’m quite confident,” Dr. The last Sumatran rhino in Malaysia has died and there are less than 80 left in the world Sabah Deputy Chief Minister's Office via AP Iman was the last living Sumatran rhino in Malaysia.
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