The last male Northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) died this Monday; there are now only females left of the subspecies
Good morning everyone. Today I'm going to be sharing the sad news that Sudan - the last living male Northern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is officially dead, and the subspecies of White rhinoceros is now closer to extinction than ever.
Image by Michael Dalton-Smith, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
If you've been reading my post for a little while, then I'm sure you remember that I posted about him a few weeks ago, when it was discovered that he had an infection in his leg. At that point it was considered to only be a matter of time before he would cave in, and this is just what happened this Monday (March 19th).
Sudan was 45 years old at the time of death, which is actually pretty old for a rhino, so he lived a lot longer than most rhinos do. He died from his leg infection that he got about three weeks ago, which did not respond very well to treatment, possibly due to his old age.
This Monday his veterinary team decided to euthanize him in order to stop his pain, and thus putting the entire subspecies so much closer to extinction.
A male northern rhino that died in 2014. Note; this is not Sudan. Image is Public Domain.
The two remaining Northern white rhinoceros
There are now officially only two Northern white rhinoceros left in the entire world, and they are both female. One of them, Najin, is the daughter of Sudan, while the other one, Fatu, is his granddaughter.
Before Sudan died, scientists had collected sperm samples from him in order to possibly bring the subspecies back to life at a later time, but both the females are also pretty old, so it's unlikely that they will be used. Instead it looks like they might consider artificially fertilizing a collected egg and use a Southern white rhino as a host species for the offspring.
If you are interested in learning more about the Southern white rhinos and their road to extinction, then check out the post I wrote a few weeks ago.
Thanks for reading
This is not really such a long or good post, but I figured that you guys might be interested in a follow-up to the two-week old post about him. While it's very sad news, at least he no longer suffers from the pain of his infection.
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Hi @Valth
Where did Sudan live? Ws it in the country Sudan or in another place in Afrika?
Hi @gyldenhorn.
He was born in (what is now) South-Sudan, but was caught by a zoo when he was young. So he spent the most of his life in a zoo in the Czech Republic, but was later moved to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya - a huge private area where conservation groups attempted to save the sub-species. You can actually visit the park and go for a safari there, if you're ever in Kenya :)
Thank you so much for this information! i saw it in the morning, but couldn't write back then. I somehow missed your previous article about Sudan, so i'm glad i read this one. Although it is very upsetting :( The only positive fact i guess is that he died among people who cared about him (i saw his photos somewhere on the internet) and not hunted by some asshole.
Yeah, that's a good thing. He was pretty well-guarded for most of his adult life, so no hunter had the chance to poach him.
With the human population of the African continent projected to double in the next few decades, we can expect that the already dwindling populations of other species to be pushed closer to extinction as a result. The well known victims will include the African elephant, rhinoceros, lion, cheetah, and leopard, along with numerous lesser known species and sub-species. It is appalling and reprehensible that we are allowing this to occur in our lifetime seemingly without regard to the ancient bloodlines these fellow inhabitants of our planet embody. Their ancestry is longer than ours in many cases and most will abruptly cease to exist because of our exclusive dominance over the resources of the earth.
A doubling in the African population will certainly lead to lots and lots of problems for many species, like the ones you mention. I guess we really need to make some good plants for the conservation of these species if we want to prevent their extinction.
Im not sad that Sudan died bc he is simply has to die like everyone he deserves to rest bt im sad of what happened to their race. :(
If the female white rhinos are too old to reproduce they might want to consider using another female rhino of the same genus?. Maybe they could come up to an offspring carrying dominant genes 🤔
Yes, that's the plan. But it's even better than just a genus - the northern white rhino is a subspecies, not its own species, so they can use another subspecies of the same species (southern white rhino). And they also have both eggs and sperm from the northern white rhinos, so they can potentially just borrow a uterus from a female southern white rhino :)
Really sad news...Sudan can be the last of his kind...
Its too early to pin hopes on the remaining 2 females survivors...
So tragic indeed!!!
Yeah, it's such a tragic story about how we lost such a cool subspecies of rhino.
Fuck buyers
They are the ones that fuel the poaching& make it profitable.
Only way to end poaching is to end the buying (esp china, viatname & other asian countries). Till the ppl r paying huge profit there is someone having his life in risk...
Hi @Chetan9,
That makes sense, stop buying. We always hear about the massive efforts done to protect the endangered animals in Africa. But have someone tried to educate the potential customers of that "magical powder"? Am I ignorant and naive if I think that the buyers would stop buying if they had realized what they're purchases caused? I can't imagine someone want to have a "hard one" on the behalf of the last rhino?
Cheers, Erlend
Hi @erlendgroseth. Lots of organizations and people have tried to convince Chinese and Asian buyers to stop purchasing products made from rare animals, but it seems to be pointless. This medicine is just too heavily influenced by their culture, and the current grown-up generation does not seem willing to change at all. Right now it all kind of depends on whether or not the youth generation will keep this cruel thing going or not..
Yes, I completely agree with you. Most people believe that the problem are the poachers themselves, but the buyers are the real problem. If we stop the buyers, then no one will poach animals, but if we stop the poachers, new ones will just take their place.
Again... next beautiful creature extinct, because of what? Money? How long people can do this... Thanks for your post, i hope people after reading this sit down and think for a while.
Yes, it pretty much has to do with money. Some Chinese people love using rhino horns for "medicine", which does not even work.
Superstitions are worse than devil, i heard long time ago... I'm glad people stop beleving that eating human flesh makes you stronger and faster .
That's a good saying. It's time to get enlightened and let common sense and science lead the way to a better world.
@valth thats terrible news!!
lets hope they managed to secure the sperm to start the surrogate or insemination program
Yeah, it's indeed terrible news. I hope so as well, @robmenzies!
Hay @valth I have read in several articles about the death of the white rhinoceros, the dead are the only white rhinoceros. What if we already have no longer the white rhinoceros in the world?
There are still two female norther white rhinos left, as well as many from the other subspecies :)
But according to what I read yesterday, it was the last male white rhinoceros.
Oh no, that's wrong. It was the last male of the subspecies Northern white rhino. There are still many males from the Southern white rhino subspecies left.
Oh, I think that's the last of the whole world.
I remember reading the post about this a few weeks ago. It is incredibly sad that the animals get poached for seemingly no reason. I wish we were more aware of our surroundings. Hopefully they can bring this animal back from basically extinction.
Yeah, this is very sad indeed..
That would be amazing, but things are not looking too bright right now with only females left. Let's see how the artificially breeding with another subspecies will turn out :)
I guess they save some sperm from a male, but I am not sure if they saved any eggs from a female? I guess they could try and take one from one of the two left living, but I don’t know how risky that would be. Also, I am not sure how that would affect genetics since they are offspring I believe of Sudan.
They actually got eggs from the females a while back. They are not really in very good conditions since the remaining females are pretty old, so it's not certain that they will even work. But some scientists believe that they can use a Southern white rhino as a host womb, so at least they got that going.
But yeah, the genetics are another problem entirely, and in total there are so many issues that needs to be solved before this subspecies can be brought back.
This is going to be interesting! I really hope they can pull off this dire situation!