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World’s first rhino IVF pregnancy could save species that has only 2 living animals remaining
There are just two northern white rhinos left in the entire world – and they’re both female. But now, their species has a chance at survival, as researchers have for the first time achieved an IVF rhino pregnancy.
BioRescue Project, a reproduction technology nonprofit focused on saving threatened species, announced on Wednesday that the company saw the “world’s first successful embryo transfer in rhinos.” Achieving the feat, the company says, “paves the way for saving the northern white rhinos from extinction.”
White rhinos as a whole have seen declining numbers, largely due to poaching, the International Rhino Foundation says. There are two subspecies – the southern white rhino and the northern white rhino – the latter of which is considered extinct in the wild. Just two northern white rhinos remain in the world and reside in a 700-acre enclosure at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where they have 24-hour armed security.
The embryo was not placed in one of the northern white rhinos. Instead, a southern white rhino embryo was produced and transferred into a southern white rhino surrogate mother at the conservancy. The embryo was placed on Sept. 24, BioRescue Project said, adding that they confirmed a pregnancy of “70 days with a well-developed 6.4 cm long male embryo.”
“The successful embryo transfer and pregnancy are a proof of concept and allow to now safely move to the transfer of northern white rhino embryos,” the group said on Facebook, “a cornerstone in the mission to save the northern white rhino from extinction.”
BioRescue uses an in-vitro approach called advanced assisted reproduction technologies (aART), which the group says is “the only option to create offspring for the northern white rhinoceros.” The group previously said that it performed 65 aART procedures from 2015 to 2022, and in a study published in the scientific journal “Reproduction,” they found that aART, which also includes retrieving immature egg cells from animals’ ovaries, “proved to be a guarantee for successful production of white rhino embryos.”
The group said its use of the procedures did not produce any indications of adverse effects on the health of animals subject to the procedures. Instead, they said there were “clear indications of health benefits.”
One of the northern white rhinos, Fatu, had a pathological cystic ovarian structure decrease from 50 milimeters to 15 milimeters in diameter over the course of three years and 10 egg retrievals, the group said, adding that they have not found any signs of the procedures hampering natural reproduction methods among animals.
“The health and wellbeing of the southern white rhino surrogate mother Curra and male southern white rhino teaser bull Ouwan was carefully monitored throughout the process,” the Ol Pejeta Conservancy said on Instagram. “Both healthy rhinos showed no complications or adverse effects of the procedure.”
However, in November, both parent rhinos were found dead, they said.
“It was discovered that extremely heavy, climate change-related rains led to a flooding of the surrogate enclosure and set free dormant Clostridia bacteria spores which had infected and killed both rhinos,” the conservancy said. “…Quick action prevented any further rhino deaths.”
While researchers continue to monitor the developing embryo, the conservancy said the hope is to eventually complete an embryo transfer with a northern white rhino, allowing scientists to save the species.
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Trump ally Nigel Farage heckles his hecklers as his far-right Reform UK Party makes gains in U.K. election
The Labour Party and its leader, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, undoubtedly won the U.K. general election, but as he set to work building his new cabinet, there was another politician keen to crow about his party’s election windfall, much smaller though it was. Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform UK party and long one of Britain’s most divisive politicians, was heckled by a series of protesters as he took the stage to deliver a speech in London on Friday.
He smiled through the interruptions, and even heckled his hecklers back, loudly chanting “boring!” as they were removed from the hall.
Reform UK grabbed only four seats in the British Parliament’s 650-seat House of Commons in Thursday’s national election. But that’s four more than it had before.
Carlos Jasso/Bloomberg/Getty
Farage argues that the U.K.’s first-past-the-post voting system makes it difficult for smaller parties to match their overall share of the votes with their share of seats won in the Commons, and he vowed on Friday to push for an end to the current system. But the real success for Farage was in the overall vote tally, not the four seats his party won, which included his own first election to the parliament.
To the consternation of the long-ruling Conservative Party, from which it pilfered a huge amount of support, the anti-immigration Reform UK, whose leader and policies had long been relegated to the fringes of British politics, took about 15% of the vote, with just over 4 million ballots in total.
That gave Reform UK the third-highest overall vote count among all the parties that competed for the parliamentary seats, overtaking even the Liberal Democrats, who, despite getting about half a million fewer votes, emerged on Friday with a record 71 seats in the Commons.
Dan Kitwood/Getty
Farage, 60, won the seat in his home constituency of Clacton, in southeast England, after seven previous failed attempts. His Reform UK party, founded initially in 2018 as the Brexit Party, advocating for a complete and uncompromising break with the European Union, has always campaigned on cutting immigration to Britain.
The Englishman is often compared to his transatlantic ally former U.S. President Donald Trump, for both his brash political style and his nationalist rhetoric, and he’s appeared at events with the Republican in the U.S. and met with him in Britain, too.
“Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success. Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country!” Trump wrote on his own social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday. Mr. Trump made no mention of the Labour Party’s landslide election victory, or Starmer becoming the new prime minister.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Farage’s campaign was marred by a number of 11th-hour controversies, mostly involving racist or sexist comments attributed to Reform UK candidates, and on election day he vowed to “professionalize” his party.
“Those few bad apples that have crept in will be long gone and we will never have any of their type back in our organization,” Farage told his supporters, along with the British public and his keenly observing political opponents.
Speaking to CBS News’ Emmet Lyons on Friday morning as the election results were finalized, the Labour Party Mayor of London Sadiq Khan acknowledged the rise of “popular nativist, nationalist movements,” and said Starmer would govern “in the national interest, show humility, be magnanimous and be humble over the course of the next three, four, five years.”
“We’ve got to earn the trust of those that voted Labour, but also try and win the confidence of those that didn’t,” he said.
That will undoubtedly be one of the chief missions of both the Labour and Conservative Parties in the years ahead.
They’ll both be eager to craft political strategies ahead of the next national election that can stop voters following the trend to the far-right seen across Europe in recent years – a trend which, despite their minimal presence in Parliament, was also demonstrated by Reform UK’s share of the votes this week.
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