Nature (1982–…): Season 36, Episode 11 - The Last Rhino - full transcript
Sudan is the very last male Northern White Rhino. His amazing story is told through the global cast of people involved in Sudan's life of 43 years. He was aged 2 when snatched from his mom's side in Central Africa and became a prized exhibit in a zoo behind the Iron Curtain while the rest of his kind was poached to extinction. Now Sudan is the focus of an 11th hour battle to save his sub-species.
♪♪
This is the remarkable
story of an animal
who's the very last of his kind.
You look at that great,
big, lumbering dinosaur
and you think, "Hey,
what did we do wrong?
Why did we end up
in this crazy situation?"
Sudan is a northern white rhino,
one of just 3 left in the world.
Northern whites were
once plentiful here.
Now, they've vanished from
their Central African homeland.
As the last male
of this subspecies,
Sudan has become
an animal celebrity,
protected by
personal bodyguards.
♪♪
And, now, an international
team of scientists
are carrying out a dramatic
eleventh-hour rescue plan
to save Sudan's
kind from extinction
before it's too late.
It's audacious, but
we can't simply sit back
and just let these last
remaining animals die.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
Every morning, rhino
keeper Zac Mutai
wakes up the most
precious animal in his care.
Sudan. Come on, boy.
♪♪
♪♪
Sudan is a northern white rhino
and he's the very last male
of his kind on the whole planet.
♪♪
He lives in OI
Pejeta Conservancy
in Kenya, East Africa.
♪♪
Sitting directly on the equator,
this enormous,
90,000-acre reserve
is home to a variety
of African wildlife.
All the tourists here
have an opportunity
to meet the conservancy's
most valuable resident.
Sudan receives around
40,000 visitors a year,
curious to witness the
last of a subspecies.
♪♪
It's amazing for us
to have him here.
He's really popular. I
mean he's like a little
star, you know,
a Hollywood star.
This is the last male.
People all over the world
have written about him
and people are
coming here to film him;
people are coming
here to photograph him.
We have a calendar for Sudan
because we don't want to have
more than one film
crew or one journalist
coming to visit him during a
day because he needs to rest.
He's got followers on
Facebook and Instagram,
you know, he's got
his own hashtag.
So if you search for
#lastmalestanding on Twitter,
you will see that
he's quite popular.
I will go as far as saying that
he's the most popular rhino
on the planet.
A lot of people have
heard about Sudan
because of what's
happening to the species.
♪♪
We come from the States
and we're used to seeing animals
in a small
enclosure, like a zoo,
and coming out here to see
where they're, they're from and,
and their native environment
and, and those that work so hard
to protect them,
it's really moving.
This is not a Kodak moment.
Tsk. Oh!
It was really powerful, I think,
to think about what we've,
we've done on this planet.
That we have to come to a
last of one species on Earth
is a really sad statement.
OI Pejeta Conservancy
is run by Richard Vigne.
He's the man ultimately
responsible for Sudan's welfare.
Sadly, the majority of people
who want to come and see Sudan,
as he's attained his kind
of, um, celebrity status,
are coming because he is
the only northern white rhino
left on the planet
and they want to have
a photograph taken
with the last remaining
northern white
rhino on the planet.
Así. Uno...
In a perverse sort of a way,
they're celebrating the fact
that he's the last
northern white rhino left
and they've got
a picture with him.
And it's just a great
shame that this interest
which is now being
shown in that species
didn't start to happen
a long time ago.
♪♪
There are five species
of rhino in the world.
Sudan's subspecies,
the northern whites,
were once abundant
in Central Africa.
♪♪
The story of how they
disappeared from the planet
begins 43 years ago,
when Sudan was just a baby.
♪♪
He was born in 1973,
in the Shambe game
reserve, South Sudan,
a sparsely populated
savannah wilderness
on the banks of the White Nile.
♪♪
There's no picture,
photograph, of Sudan as a baby.
But, like all baby rhinos,
he would've stuck
close to his mother.
♪♪
When it was really hot,
he might've been sheltering
under her, to be in the shade,
or they would both be sitting
under a tree or,
you know, by a bush.
♪♪
He'd be very close
to her everywhere,
going everywhere,
very close with her.
♪♪
At his age, he would've
been going between the grass,
but his mother would've been
holding her head
over the grass...
♪♪
And they call to each other,
little "Mew! Mm! Mm!
Mm! Mm!"
Little mews that, that
rhinos call to each other with
as a contact call,
so they don't get lost.
♪♪
Hello, big boy.
Hello, big boy.
Pete Morkel is a
wildlife veterinarian
who works with
rhinos in the wild
and has known
Sudan for many years.
It's the one time
in a rhino's life
when they are hugely
vulnerable is when they're small.
Probably their biggest threat
are hyenas, number one;
number two, probably lion;
and, of course, human beings.
That little fellow, all he wants
to do is just be with his mum
and he knows that's
his only chance.
Gets separated
from his mum, he's...
He's terribly stressed out.
♪♪
Around the time
of Sudan's birth,
teams of animal catchers
were coming to Africa.
♪♪
They were in search
of exotic creatures
to stock the new Safari parks
opening up all over
America and Europe.
In 1974, a team from England
headed to South Sudan,
hoping to find some
northern white rhinos.
We had to find the right size.
Something that's
definitely weaned,
but not too grown, either,
so that they were pretty
easy to shape, you could say.
They would tame down and,
and adjust easier
to a different life.
♪♪
We kept a very strict rule:
never to chase an animal
more than 2 minutes.
If you chase them
too much, they,
they stand to get
a, a heart failure.
We had a rope with
a noose at the end
to put round the
neck of the animals
and the other end of the rope
was fastened in your vehicle.
So then you could slow
down, so that you didn't
strangle the animal,
but made it stop.
♪♪
The whole process
needed to be done very fast.
So you sort of surprised them.
♪♪
Sudan was 2 years old.
He was the youngest of
the whole lot that we caught.
Sudan was destined for a new
and very different
life in captivity.
♪♪
You have to
remember: in those days,
there was so much
wildlife around.
Herds of 1,000
and more elephants
was not uncommon at all.
I don't think anybody
sees that many elephants
in one herd today,
so it was like,
sure, you take a few
individuals to go to safari parks,
so people in Europe
can see these animals
and appreciate them.
Today, in OI Pejeta,
Sudan has reached
the grand old age of 43,
older than most
rhinos live to be.
Boy, Sudan.
To keep him
comfortable and safe,
Sudan has his own,
private living quarters:
a wooden enclosure, known
as a boma, where he sleeps.
One of Zac's daily jobs
is to make Sudan's bed
by raking away any large stones.
♪♪
♪♪
Twice a day, Zac feeds Sudan
a specially formulated diet,
which includes
vitamin supplements,
and he records every
detail of his activities
in a daily journal.
So, right now, Sudan
has a wonderful life.
He gets looked
after and pampered
by his keepers on a daily basis.
He's living the life of
a retired old grandee
and enjoying it in the process.
♪♪
Sudan also receives
regular checkups
from the conservancy's
onsite vet, Stephen Ngulu.
♪♪
His health is good,
despite his age.
Sudan may be the only
male northern white rhino left
on the planet,
but there are two
remaining females
also being cared for at
OI Pejeta Conservancy.
♪♪
Naijin and her daughter
Fatu live next door to Sudan.
Although they roam around
a much larger enclosure,
Zac still tends to
their daily needs.
♪♪
While tourists can visit Sudan
on foot, and even pet him,
those traveling up to
Naijin and Fatu's enclosure
must stay in their vehicles,
as the females aren't
quite as tame as Sudan.
The mother and daughter
live peacefully together
in the same enclosure,
but Sudan has to be kept
separate, for his own safety.
♪♪
♪♪
Sudan's old age
doesn't just stop him
from socializing
with the females.
Crucially, he's unable
to mate with them.
♪♪
And something is being done.
Around the world,
scientists are working
on the reproduction
of endangered species.
From the San Diego Zoo
to the Liebnitz Institute,
here in Berlin,
rhinos are a priority.
The main goal of our activities
is to understand
reproduction in wildlife,
♪♪
Professor Hildebrandt
is an expert in the field
and he's leading
an international effort
to try and save
Sudan's subspecies.
Professor Hildebrandt's
rescue plan
will use a cutting-edge
fertility treatment
that's never been successfully
attempted on rhinos before.
In a special lab,
stored in liquid nitrogen,
at a constant temperature
of 310° below zero,
are sperm samples taken
from three northern white rhinos
who are now dead.
These cryogenically stored
remains are the backbone
of the highly ambitious
plan to save this subspecies.
♪♪
First, the team
will harvest eggs
from the two remaining
female northern white rhinos,
fertilize them with
northern white rhino sperm...
and then transfer the embryos
into a herd of surrogates,
from the closely related,
but less threatened,
southern white rhinos.
If successful, the
resulting calves
could begin a new generation
of northern white rhinos.
This is going to be a high-risk
procedure for Naijin and Fatu
because rhino IVF has never
been successfully performed before.
In vitro fertilization
and embryo transfer
in cattle and horses
is a regular occurrence.
The problem is it's
never actually been done
in rhinos, as a species.
So, whilst,
technically speaking,
in principle, it's possible,
practically speaking,
there are problems, based
on the construction of a rhino,
which make it
more difficult to do
in that species than in cattle.
Professor Hildebrandt has
come to Kenya to present the plan
to a gathering of
international rhino experts.
♪♪
So, everybody,
welcome to this meeting.
We are very, very
privileged to have
very, very expert
people at this table.
There are veterinarians here;
there are conservationists here.
There are reproductive
experts here,
whose technology
is going to be used
to improve the future of the
northern white rhinoceros.
Performing in
vitro fertilization
on an animal as
large as a rhino is...
challenging.
Naijin and Fatu
each weigh 2 tons
and their ovaries
are difficult to locate.
- Sudan.
- Sudan
- also has a role to play.
- Sudan.
Although Professor
Hildebrandt already has a supply
of northern white rhino
sperm stored in a deep freeze...
Yeah, he looks
quite active, yeah.
If he needs any more,
Sudan is the only living donor.
Sudan.
- 43?
- 43.
Good, good job.
Good job there.
No, that's, uh...
And can I see the testicle?
Sudan.
Sudan.
What are you checking for, Tom?
♪♪
We're trying to find
a way of making sure
that these animals
continue to exist.
We're racing against time
because there's only three
animals left on the planet,
of which only two are females,
and Sudan is an old rhino;
he could die tomorrow.
♪♪
Sudan is 43
and Naijin is nearing the
end of her fertile years,
so the scientists
must act quickly.
Professor Hildebrandt
is due to return to operate
in just a few months.
♪♪
It's audacious, but the truth
is we can't simply sit back
and just let these last
remaining animals die.
We feel, certainly,
at OI Pejeta,
that it's morally
incumbent upon us
to try to do something to,
to save that, that species.
♪♪
The ancestry of the
northern white rhino
dates back 7 million years,
but it's taken just 50
years of human activity
to bring them to
this crisis point.
Back in 1974, Sudan's
childhood in the wild
was cut brutally short
when he was taken by a
team of animal catchers
working for
European safari parks.
The Africa he left behind
was becoming an increasingly
dangerous place for rhinos.
Poaching was on the rise.
All the countries where
the Northern white rhino
unfortunately naturally
occurred were incredibly unstable
And instability and
civil war, et cetera,
means increased poaching
and poaching, it makes
money to keep the war going.
What makes the rhinos such
a prime target for poaching
is their horn,
long believed to have medicinal
qualities in the Far East.
Rhino horn is actually made
of keratin, just like fingernails,
and has no known
health benefits.
Nevertheless, By the 1980s,
the northern white rhino
population had been wiped out.
Except for a small
stronghold in Garamba,
nearly 2000 square
miles of national park
in the north of the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
♪♪
Thirty years ago,
zoologist Kes Hillman-Smith
was handed the task of
protecting the tiny population
of just 15 northern white
rhinos left in the wild.
Today, she's returned to Garamba
to tell her part in this
extraordinary story.
If I was looking for
rhinos, we used to go out
and survey the
whole of this area
and, if I saw anything,
circle round over them,
come down close
to them, to identify
which ones they were,
and I'd mark it all on maps.
♪♪
To protect these precious
rhinos from poachers,
Kes trained locals
from nearby towns.
♪♪
Once the park rangers
had control of Garamba,
the small population
of rhinos flourished,
doubling their
numbers in 10 years.
♪♪
Kes and her team discovered
the complex mating rituals
that allowed these
wild animals to thrive.
What I found was that,
like with every
African rhino species,
the dominant males fight
for and, and hold a territory
and they defend that against
other dominant males...
and you would get fighting
between males at that stage.
With all rhino, the
dominant male,
basically, he's got to
strut his stuff, hold his area.
All of this competition
is terribly important
to fire them up.
Their testosterone levels are
up and they're good for breeding.
The males will leave dung
and urinate around their,
their territory so
another male coming in
will think, "Mm,
dear, he's here.
I'd better stay away, or
I'd better be wary, or..."
And a female would,
"Mm! He's here, you know.
Let's go in there."
♪♪
In Garamba, it was just
a very healthy situation
and they were just
producing babies all the time.
That was wonderful.
Whenever you see, you know,
see a new calf, "Oh, so-and-so's
had a baby," you know,
and we'd decide what
we were gonna call it.
♪♪
When we actually started
in '84, there were 15;
and, by 1995,
they had more than
doubled: there were 31.
♪♪
Kes was hugely successful.
These animals were
now safe in Garamba.
You know, this is
where they'd evolved;
this is where they'd
always, you know, done well.
The white rhino
were in paradise.
But the paradise that
Kes had helped create
for the northern white
rhinos was not to last forever.
In 2004, civil war
in the neighboring
country of South Sudan
brought a fresh wave of heavily
armed poachers into the park.
The rhinos didn't
stand a chance.
We did a survey
in, in July that year,
and we could only find
14 rhinos, at that
stage, in the park.
By December, I
did another survey
and could then
only find 9 rhinos.
And then, in 2008, they
didn't actually see any.
♪♪
We didn't quite get
it right in Garamba.
♪♪
I know that we did the best
we could, that circumstances
that were not usually
conservation issues,
they were political
and power issues,
were what generally
caused the problems,
and that's so often,
so often, the case.
It's been the story across
Africa in the last 30, 40 years,
how wildlife populations
have been decimated
as a result of
political instability.
And they were all killed?
They were all
killed. There are no
northern white rhino left in,
in Garamba, that's for sure.
♪♪
Sudan may have escaped the fate
of the rest of his
kind in Garamba.
But, today, even at OI Pejeta,
he's not immune to
the threat of poaching.
♪♪
As darkness falls and the
keepers finish their shift,
a team of armed
bodyguards comes out
to protect Sudan,
Naijin, and Fatu.
♪♪
What you've got to understand
about those animals is
that they're semi-domesticated.
Or, at least, they're habituated
to the presence of human beings.
So they're easily approachable
and we've certainly had people
coming into the northern
white rhino enclosure
looking to kill a rhino.
♪♪
It's not just the three
precious northern whites
that are at risk here.
The conservancy is also
home to a large number
of other species of rhino,
making it an attractive
target for poachers.
♪♪
Rhinos across the
planet are threatened
as a result of
demand for their horn.
Rhino horn, in the Far
East is considered to be
of medicinal use.
Increasingly, in
places like Vietnam,
it's becoming a sort
of status symbol,
whereby, if you're a rich
person closing a business deal,
your ability to provide somebody
with some ground-up rhino horn
in their final drink
of the evening
after dinner
confirms your status
to the people
you're dealing with.
To make them less
appealing to poachers,
the conservancy often removes
and destroys the rhinos' horns.
♪♪
The point being is that one
set of horns, for a poacher,
is probably worth between
$20,000 and $25,000,
and that is a huge
amount of money
and that's what's driving the
poaching pressure against this,
this particular species.
♪♪
Every evening at OI Pejeta,
an armed, 40-man security
team begins the night shift.
♪♪
They're very well-trained;
they're very well-equipped.
They have night
operations capability.
And they have a dog section.
♪♪
They are the kind of teeth
of our security operation.
♪♪
We're spending somewhere in
the region of between $1.5 million
and $2 million dollars
a year, we estimate,
just to protect our rhinos.
The team patrols on foot,
tracking through open
bush populated by predators.
♪♪
♪♪
The people we employ
have to be bush-savvy.
In other words, they need
to know how to operate
in the bush and if
you... If you've been born
and brought up in this
kind of an environment,
then you know what
you're looking for
and you know how to
keep yourself out of trouble.
Operating at night obviously
makes it even more complex,
but well-trained
people can do it.
♪♪
The security team is
responsible for patrolling
over 140 square miles
of the conservancy.
♪♪
Overseeing the
night's operations
is Head of Security
Daniel Mwaniki.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
- 2 - hours into their shift,
a report comes
through on the radio.
A vehicle has been
seen speeding away
from the boundary
of the conservancy.
♪♪
In the last six months,
we've had a bad time.
We've lost four, four rhinos.
There's been one particular gang
that's been operational
around us, um,
the last incident of their
killing a rhino resulted in us
managing to catch up with them,
so five of them
are now in prison.
Over the years,
18 rhinos have lost their
lives to poachers at OI Pejeta
and most are buried in the
conservancy's rhino cemetery.
♪♪
♪♪
Poaching has been
responsible for wiping out
the northern white
rhinos in the wild.
But Sudan was taken
from Africa back in 1974
and what happened to him and
the northern whites in captivity
would seal the fate of
this entire subspecies.
After they were captured,
Sudan and five other rhinos
were taken by train to
the port of Mombasa.
From here, they endured
a 2-month journey
round the Cape of
Africa to their new home,
in the Communist Bloc
country of Czechoslovakia.
♪♪
They were an order for
a charismatic zookeeper
called Josef Vágner.
He'd built up a large collection
of African animals for his zoo
in the small town
of Dvur Králové.
The six rhinos, two
male and four female,
were to be the start of a
whole new captive population
and their new owner
was very proud of them.
This is a wide-lipped rhinoceros
and it's got this wide mouth
because it eats lots of grass.
We don't have a fence.
It's much nicer when you
can look them in the eyes.
Of course, there has to
be some kind of protection,
because otherwise the
rhinos could kill the visitors.
But, our aim is not only
to display these animals,
but also to breed them.
♪♪
At first, Sudan
and his companions
adapted well to their
new life in captivity.
♪♪
And this concrete,
Northern European zoo,
where it snowed for
four months of the year,
couldn't have been more
different from their life
on the open savannahs of Africa.
But they tamed down well,
allowing their keepers
to feed them, stroke them,
and even shower them.
Don't get me wrong.
Certainly, the folk
who had the northern
whites in captivity,
you know, they're good people
and they tried terribly hard to,
to give them as natural an
environment as, as possible,
but, unfortunately they
never could give them
what they had in the wild.
And that is one
of the huge issues
about what happened
to the northern whites.
Although all Sudan's needs
were catered to in the zoo,
his natural instincts
seemed to vanish.
No matter how many times he
was paired with a female for mating,
he didn't quite
get the hang of it.
♪♪
♪♪
Eventually, the
keeper stepped in
and gave him a helping hand.
♪♪
After some gentle encouragement,
Sudan did sire two calves.
♪♪
The trouble was, all
the babies were coming
from just one female rhino.
And in 1992,
she died unexpectedly.
All attempts to get a pregnancy
from the other females failed
and, after two
decades in captivity,
the 7 rhinos had only
produced 3 young.
♪♪
By that stage,
Sudan had spent almost
20 years in captivity.
Who knows what went on in
his mind? We'll never know.
♪♪
Physiologically, I think there
must be something negative
happening, something,
you know, less than perfect.
It must've taken a long
time to make peace with,
with this different
environment he's in.
♪♪
You know, they're in
concrete enclosures
and, of course, they would
be leaving dung in those areas
and then going back and
another one would be coming out
and, you know, so it was
quite confusing for the rhinos.
They seemed to develop the
most peculiar-shaped horns
'cause they can't rub
them in the same way
that they do in the wild.
It's a very unnatural
situation for them.
By the mid-'90s,
even Josef Vágner, the
man who'd brought the rhinos
to Czechoslovakia,
began to lose hope.
VáGNER: I'm no
longer very optimistic.
They're just vegetating here.
They're living in
conditions which look good,
but don't provide for
their biological needs.
I think we understand
now that some animals
just don't do very well
in a zoo environment,
that they probably
shouldn't be there.
You know, safety from being
poached, but not breeding,
ultimately, it's, it's
as lethal, essentially,
as having them
in the wild with the,
with the threat of poaching.
In 2009,
it was decided that a
radical solution was needed
for the shrinking population
of northern white rhinos.
♪♪
Time was running out, you know.
These five animals
in captivity are now
some of the last representatives
of this subspecies in the world.
The Czech zoo agreed to send
four of their five remaining
rhinos back to Africa.
After 34 years in captivity,
Sudan was going home.
It was sort of my idea to see
if putting the four
most healthy ones
back in a natural environment
would improve the breeding.
Of course, I was
anxious, you know.
Incredibly valuable animals,
three of them pretty old.
Um, not ideal
conditions, long trip,
but we just had to get
them out and give them a go.
♪♪
♪♪
Transporting this precious
cargo across the world
was a huge operation.
But Sudan was a
very relaxed traveler
and enjoyed the
benefits of in-flight service.
♪♪
On the 20th of December 2009,
Sudan; another
male, called Suni;
and the two females,
Naijin and Fatu,
arrived in their
new African home.
Sudan's dramatic
repatriation was watched
by news crews around the world.
Oh, he was very sweet.
Just pleased to be
out of the crate and...
I, I wouldn't be surprised
if, if, if he still had
some, some memories of,
of you know being
a youngster in Africa.
♪♪
The keepers from
the Czech Republic,
had this sort of crazy
Czech language, you know,
and the keeper's talking to them
and, hey, you know,
somewhere along the line,
I guess old, old, Sudan
had learned Czech.
♪♪
You could just see happy rhinos.
You could see definitely an
improvement in their health,
their whole sort of demeanor.
They had more freedom
and, and a lovely climate here
and things were
looking very positive.
It... we might just
have pulled it off.
♪♪
Sudan.
♪♪
Sudan.
It's now been 8 years
since the rhinos returned,
and no babies have been born.
Instead, there have
been two major setbacks.
♪♪
In 2014, the other
breeding male, Suni,
died suddenly of a heart attack;
and the two females were
found to have fertility problems.
It appeared that,
because they spent so long
in captivity without breeding,
they were no longer
able to conceive naturally,
leaving artificial reproduction
as the only way to try
and save this subspecies.
In Germany,
Professor Hildebrandt
is putting the rescue
plan into practice.
♪♪
♪♪
As IVF has yet to be
successful on rhinos,
Professor Hildebrandt's
team has come to do a trial run
in a zoo in Northern Germany.
That, that's the female we do.
♪♪
A captive southern
white rhino, named Carla,
has been selected as a
giant guinea pig for this test.
The first part of
the IVF procedure
will involve removing
the eggs from her ovaries.
In any other animal,
this procedure's
pretty straightforward,
but in a rhino, being
so large and long and,
and it's, it needs all
this special equipment
which makes the whole
procedure very, very difficult.
Carla is her name, Carla.
Do you think that she's nervous?
Oh, I think we are more nervous.
♪♪
Before the scientists
can get close enough
to operate on Carla,
this 2-ton beast must
be safely sedated.
♪♪
Normally, you use
very potent drugs
which are dangerous
for humans also
and we developed a
cocktail of four different drugs,
which we hope
makes the rhino cooperative
for our procedure today.
♪♪
We take the mounted
ultrasound probe
about a meter inside the animal
and then, inside the animal,
you have to find the ovary
and then hold it
at the right position
for Thomas to go with a needle
into the ovary,
aspirating the oocyte out.
Professor Hildebrandt
is using a long needle
to carefully remove the
eggs from Carla's ovaries.
He's working perilously
close to a large blood vessel
which, if punctured,
would be fatal.
Good!
♪♪
The eggs, also known as oocytes,
have been removed.
♪♪
The more they extract,
the greater chance there
is of creating an embryo,
so they are carefully
counted under a microscope.
♪♪
We'll send them off to a lab
and then they enter
sperm, they inject the sperm,
- Okay.
- And we'll know more
in about 3 days,
whether this works or not.
♪♪
The first part of the
process has been a success.
Okay.
But in order to operate
on the last northern whites...
The scientists must now prove
they can create a rhino embryo.
In the lab, Carla's eggs
will be fertilized with sperm
and should start dividing.
Within days, they'll
grow into a bundle of cells
known as a blastocyst.
Only at this stage have they
got a good chance of growing
into a healthy baby rhino.
♪♪
Sadly, none of Carla's
eggs developed correctly.
Undeterred by this setback,
Professor Hildebrandt
has recruited
more southern white
rhinos to practice on,
from zoos across Europe.
♪♪
♪♪
My understanding is they've
had some limited success
in getting egg cells out,
but they haven't
yet been successful
at maturing those egg
cells to produce embryos.
It will happen eventually, but
the chances of it happening
as quickly as we would've
liked are probably remote.
♪♪
Back in OI Pejeta,
Sudan has taken
a turn for the worse.
Hello, big boy.
Hello, big boy.
Hello, big fella.
Hello, big fella.
Hello, big chap.
Hello, fellow.
Hello, big fella.
Hello, big chappie chap.
Hello, boy. Hello, boy.
Hello, big fella.
What you thinking, big chap?
Maybe having some
small dreams of when
he was a little fellow in
Sudan all those years ago.
He's definitely a bit
more rickety on his legs.
He's definitely
a bit more frail.
He struggles to get up in the
morning, his back leg hurts him,
so, you know, yeah,
he's an old man.
We'll have to expect that
he will die sometime soon.
But I'm just afraid now,
if the other leg starts
to become weak,
the right leg becomes weak, tsk,
we've got a problem.
Either what'll happen is
he'll have a heart attack
and he'll fall over,
dead; or he will,
if he gets into a position
where he can't move,
which brings lots
of complications
for big-bodied animals,
then eventually you'd
have to think of euthanasia.
You'd have to put
him out of his misery
just like you would
do a, an old dog.
♪♪
The day Sudan
goes, it's going to be...
It's going to be
hectic, you know,
in terms of media and, and
people are gonna want pictures
and they're gonna wanna
write about him and stuff like that,
so I'm afraid to
say that we already,
we've got a press release
ready just for the day he goes,
just because we
need to be, you know?
I don't know if the zoo is
gonna want his bones back,
to be honest, because, you know,
in the end, he is their animal.
And if we're not allowed
to keep his bones,
then we would definitely
put a headstone for him
at the rhino cemetery.
♪♪
You know,
♪♪
- Sudan.
- Sudan will continue
to be cared for at OI
Pejeta Conservancy
until the end of his life.
But his story will live
on as a cautionary tale,
reminding us that,
while we have the power
to drive entire species
to the brink of extinction,
we may not have the
power to bring them back.
♪♪
♪♪
To learn more about what you've
seen on this "Nature" program,
♪♪
This is the remarkable
story of an animal
who's the very last of his kind.
You look at that great,
big, lumbering dinosaur
and you think, "Hey,
what did we do wrong?
Why did we end up
in this crazy situation?"
Sudan is a northern white rhino,
one of just 3 left in the world.
Northern whites were
once plentiful here.
Now, they've vanished from
their Central African homeland.
As the last male
of this subspecies,
Sudan has become
an animal celebrity,
protected by
personal bodyguards.
♪♪
And, now, an international
team of scientists
are carrying out a dramatic
eleventh-hour rescue plan
to save Sudan's
kind from extinction
before it's too late.
It's audacious, but
we can't simply sit back
and just let these last
remaining animals die.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
Every morning, rhino
keeper Zac Mutai
wakes up the most
precious animal in his care.
Sudan. Come on, boy.
♪♪
♪♪
Sudan is a northern white rhino
and he's the very last male
of his kind on the whole planet.
♪♪
He lives in OI
Pejeta Conservancy
in Kenya, East Africa.
♪♪
Sitting directly on the equator,
this enormous,
90,000-acre reserve
is home to a variety
of African wildlife.
All the tourists here
have an opportunity
to meet the conservancy's
most valuable resident.
Sudan receives around
40,000 visitors a year,
curious to witness the
last of a subspecies.
♪♪
It's amazing for us
to have him here.
He's really popular. I
mean he's like a little
star, you know,
a Hollywood star.
This is the last male.
People all over the world
have written about him
and people are
coming here to film him;
people are coming
here to photograph him.
We have a calendar for Sudan
because we don't want to have
more than one film
crew or one journalist
coming to visit him during a
day because he needs to rest.
He's got followers on
Facebook and Instagram,
you know, he's got
his own hashtag.
So if you search for
#lastmalestanding on Twitter,
you will see that
he's quite popular.
I will go as far as saying that
he's the most popular rhino
on the planet.
A lot of people have
heard about Sudan
because of what's
happening to the species.
♪♪
We come from the States
and we're used to seeing animals
in a small
enclosure, like a zoo,
and coming out here to see
where they're, they're from and,
and their native environment
and, and those that work so hard
to protect them,
it's really moving.
This is not a Kodak moment.
Tsk. Oh!
It was really powerful, I think,
to think about what we've,
we've done on this planet.
That we have to come to a
last of one species on Earth
is a really sad statement.
OI Pejeta Conservancy
is run by Richard Vigne.
He's the man ultimately
responsible for Sudan's welfare.
Sadly, the majority of people
who want to come and see Sudan,
as he's attained his kind
of, um, celebrity status,
are coming because he is
the only northern white rhino
left on the planet
and they want to have
a photograph taken
with the last remaining
northern white
rhino on the planet.
Así. Uno...
In a perverse sort of a way,
they're celebrating the fact
that he's the last
northern white rhino left
and they've got
a picture with him.
And it's just a great
shame that this interest
which is now being
shown in that species
didn't start to happen
a long time ago.
♪♪
There are five species
of rhino in the world.
Sudan's subspecies,
the northern whites,
were once abundant
in Central Africa.
♪♪
The story of how they
disappeared from the planet
begins 43 years ago,
when Sudan was just a baby.
♪♪
He was born in 1973,
in the Shambe game
reserve, South Sudan,
a sparsely populated
savannah wilderness
on the banks of the White Nile.
♪♪
There's no picture,
photograph, of Sudan as a baby.
But, like all baby rhinos,
he would've stuck
close to his mother.
♪♪
When it was really hot,
he might've been sheltering
under her, to be in the shade,
or they would both be sitting
under a tree or,
you know, by a bush.
♪♪
He'd be very close
to her everywhere,
going everywhere,
very close with her.
♪♪
At his age, he would've
been going between the grass,
but his mother would've been
holding her head
over the grass...
♪♪
And they call to each other,
little "Mew! Mm! Mm!
Mm! Mm!"
Little mews that, that
rhinos call to each other with
as a contact call,
so they don't get lost.
♪♪
Hello, big boy.
Hello, big boy.
Pete Morkel is a
wildlife veterinarian
who works with
rhinos in the wild
and has known
Sudan for many years.
It's the one time
in a rhino's life
when they are hugely
vulnerable is when they're small.
Probably their biggest threat
are hyenas, number one;
number two, probably lion;
and, of course, human beings.
That little fellow, all he wants
to do is just be with his mum
and he knows that's
his only chance.
Gets separated
from his mum, he's...
He's terribly stressed out.
♪♪
Around the time
of Sudan's birth,
teams of animal catchers
were coming to Africa.
♪♪
They were in search
of exotic creatures
to stock the new Safari parks
opening up all over
America and Europe.
In 1974, a team from England
headed to South Sudan,
hoping to find some
northern white rhinos.
We had to find the right size.
Something that's
definitely weaned,
but not too grown, either,
so that they were pretty
easy to shape, you could say.
They would tame down and,
and adjust easier
to a different life.
♪♪
We kept a very strict rule:
never to chase an animal
more than 2 minutes.
If you chase them
too much, they,
they stand to get
a, a heart failure.
We had a rope with
a noose at the end
to put round the
neck of the animals
and the other end of the rope
was fastened in your vehicle.
So then you could slow
down, so that you didn't
strangle the animal,
but made it stop.
♪♪
The whole process
needed to be done very fast.
So you sort of surprised them.
♪♪
Sudan was 2 years old.
He was the youngest of
the whole lot that we caught.
Sudan was destined for a new
and very different
life in captivity.
♪♪
You have to
remember: in those days,
there was so much
wildlife around.
Herds of 1,000
and more elephants
was not uncommon at all.
I don't think anybody
sees that many elephants
in one herd today,
so it was like,
sure, you take a few
individuals to go to safari parks,
so people in Europe
can see these animals
and appreciate them.
Today, in OI Pejeta,
Sudan has reached
the grand old age of 43,
older than most
rhinos live to be.
Boy, Sudan.
To keep him
comfortable and safe,
Sudan has his own,
private living quarters:
a wooden enclosure, known
as a boma, where he sleeps.
One of Zac's daily jobs
is to make Sudan's bed
by raking away any large stones.
♪♪
♪♪
Twice a day, Zac feeds Sudan
a specially formulated diet,
which includes
vitamin supplements,
and he records every
detail of his activities
in a daily journal.
So, right now, Sudan
has a wonderful life.
He gets looked
after and pampered
by his keepers on a daily basis.
He's living the life of
a retired old grandee
and enjoying it in the process.
♪♪
Sudan also receives
regular checkups
from the conservancy's
onsite vet, Stephen Ngulu.
♪♪
His health is good,
despite his age.
Sudan may be the only
male northern white rhino left
on the planet,
but there are two
remaining females
also being cared for at
OI Pejeta Conservancy.
♪♪
Naijin and her daughter
Fatu live next door to Sudan.
Although they roam around
a much larger enclosure,
Zac still tends to
their daily needs.
♪♪
While tourists can visit Sudan
on foot, and even pet him,
those traveling up to
Naijin and Fatu's enclosure
must stay in their vehicles,
as the females aren't
quite as tame as Sudan.
The mother and daughter
live peacefully together
in the same enclosure,
but Sudan has to be kept
separate, for his own safety.
♪♪
♪♪
Sudan's old age
doesn't just stop him
from socializing
with the females.
Crucially, he's unable
to mate with them.
♪♪
And something is being done.
Around the world,
scientists are working
on the reproduction
of endangered species.
From the San Diego Zoo
to the Liebnitz Institute,
here in Berlin,
rhinos are a priority.
The main goal of our activities
is to understand
reproduction in wildlife,
♪♪
Professor Hildebrandt
is an expert in the field
and he's leading
an international effort
to try and save
Sudan's subspecies.
Professor Hildebrandt's
rescue plan
will use a cutting-edge
fertility treatment
that's never been successfully
attempted on rhinos before.
In a special lab,
stored in liquid nitrogen,
at a constant temperature
of 310° below zero,
are sperm samples taken
from three northern white rhinos
who are now dead.
These cryogenically stored
remains are the backbone
of the highly ambitious
plan to save this subspecies.
♪♪
First, the team
will harvest eggs
from the two remaining
female northern white rhinos,
fertilize them with
northern white rhino sperm...
and then transfer the embryos
into a herd of surrogates,
from the closely related,
but less threatened,
southern white rhinos.
If successful, the
resulting calves
could begin a new generation
of northern white rhinos.
This is going to be a high-risk
procedure for Naijin and Fatu
because rhino IVF has never
been successfully performed before.
In vitro fertilization
and embryo transfer
in cattle and horses
is a regular occurrence.
The problem is it's
never actually been done
in rhinos, as a species.
So, whilst,
technically speaking,
in principle, it's possible,
practically speaking,
there are problems, based
on the construction of a rhino,
which make it
more difficult to do
in that species than in cattle.
Professor Hildebrandt has
come to Kenya to present the plan
to a gathering of
international rhino experts.
♪♪
So, everybody,
welcome to this meeting.
We are very, very
privileged to have
very, very expert
people at this table.
There are veterinarians here;
there are conservationists here.
There are reproductive
experts here,
whose technology
is going to be used
to improve the future of the
northern white rhinoceros.
Performing in
vitro fertilization
on an animal as
large as a rhino is...
challenging.
Naijin and Fatu
each weigh 2 tons
and their ovaries
are difficult to locate.
- Sudan.
- Sudan
- also has a role to play.
- Sudan.
Although Professor
Hildebrandt already has a supply
of northern white rhino
sperm stored in a deep freeze...
Yeah, he looks
quite active, yeah.
If he needs any more,
Sudan is the only living donor.
Sudan.
- 43?
- 43.
Good, good job.
Good job there.
No, that's, uh...
And can I see the testicle?
Sudan.
Sudan.
What are you checking for, Tom?
♪♪
We're trying to find
a way of making sure
that these animals
continue to exist.
We're racing against time
because there's only three
animals left on the planet,
of which only two are females,
and Sudan is an old rhino;
he could die tomorrow.
♪♪
Sudan is 43
and Naijin is nearing the
end of her fertile years,
so the scientists
must act quickly.
Professor Hildebrandt
is due to return to operate
in just a few months.
♪♪
It's audacious, but the truth
is we can't simply sit back
and just let these last
remaining animals die.
We feel, certainly,
at OI Pejeta,
that it's morally
incumbent upon us
to try to do something to,
to save that, that species.
♪♪
The ancestry of the
northern white rhino
dates back 7 million years,
but it's taken just 50
years of human activity
to bring them to
this crisis point.
Back in 1974, Sudan's
childhood in the wild
was cut brutally short
when he was taken by a
team of animal catchers
working for
European safari parks.
The Africa he left behind
was becoming an increasingly
dangerous place for rhinos.
Poaching was on the rise.
All the countries where
the Northern white rhino
unfortunately naturally
occurred were incredibly unstable
And instability and
civil war, et cetera,
means increased poaching
and poaching, it makes
money to keep the war going.
What makes the rhinos such
a prime target for poaching
is their horn,
long believed to have medicinal
qualities in the Far East.
Rhino horn is actually made
of keratin, just like fingernails,
and has no known
health benefits.
Nevertheless, By the 1980s,
the northern white rhino
population had been wiped out.
Except for a small
stronghold in Garamba,
nearly 2000 square
miles of national park
in the north of the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
♪♪
Thirty years ago,
zoologist Kes Hillman-Smith
was handed the task of
protecting the tiny population
of just 15 northern white
rhinos left in the wild.
Today, she's returned to Garamba
to tell her part in this
extraordinary story.
If I was looking for
rhinos, we used to go out
and survey the
whole of this area
and, if I saw anything,
circle round over them,
come down close
to them, to identify
which ones they were,
and I'd mark it all on maps.
♪♪
To protect these precious
rhinos from poachers,
Kes trained locals
from nearby towns.
♪♪
Once the park rangers
had control of Garamba,
the small population
of rhinos flourished,
doubling their
numbers in 10 years.
♪♪
Kes and her team discovered
the complex mating rituals
that allowed these
wild animals to thrive.
What I found was that,
like with every
African rhino species,
the dominant males fight
for and, and hold a territory
and they defend that against
other dominant males...
and you would get fighting
between males at that stage.
With all rhino, the
dominant male,
basically, he's got to
strut his stuff, hold his area.
All of this competition
is terribly important
to fire them up.
Their testosterone levels are
up and they're good for breeding.
The males will leave dung
and urinate around their,
their territory so
another male coming in
will think, "Mm,
dear, he's here.
I'd better stay away, or
I'd better be wary, or..."
And a female would,
"Mm! He's here, you know.
Let's go in there."
♪♪
In Garamba, it was just
a very healthy situation
and they were just
producing babies all the time.
That was wonderful.
Whenever you see, you know,
see a new calf, "Oh, so-and-so's
had a baby," you know,
and we'd decide what
we were gonna call it.
♪♪
When we actually started
in '84, there were 15;
and, by 1995,
they had more than
doubled: there were 31.
♪♪
Kes was hugely successful.
These animals were
now safe in Garamba.
You know, this is
where they'd evolved;
this is where they'd
always, you know, done well.
The white rhino
were in paradise.
But the paradise that
Kes had helped create
for the northern white
rhinos was not to last forever.
In 2004, civil war
in the neighboring
country of South Sudan
brought a fresh wave of heavily
armed poachers into the park.
The rhinos didn't
stand a chance.
We did a survey
in, in July that year,
and we could only find
14 rhinos, at that
stage, in the park.
By December, I
did another survey
and could then
only find 9 rhinos.
And then, in 2008, they
didn't actually see any.
♪♪
We didn't quite get
it right in Garamba.
♪♪
I know that we did the best
we could, that circumstances
that were not usually
conservation issues,
they were political
and power issues,
were what generally
caused the problems,
and that's so often,
so often, the case.
It's been the story across
Africa in the last 30, 40 years,
how wildlife populations
have been decimated
as a result of
political instability.
And they were all killed?
They were all
killed. There are no
northern white rhino left in,
in Garamba, that's for sure.
♪♪
Sudan may have escaped the fate
of the rest of his
kind in Garamba.
But, today, even at OI Pejeta,
he's not immune to
the threat of poaching.
♪♪
As darkness falls and the
keepers finish their shift,
a team of armed
bodyguards comes out
to protect Sudan,
Naijin, and Fatu.
♪♪
What you've got to understand
about those animals is
that they're semi-domesticated.
Or, at least, they're habituated
to the presence of human beings.
So they're easily approachable
and we've certainly had people
coming into the northern
white rhino enclosure
looking to kill a rhino.
♪♪
It's not just the three
precious northern whites
that are at risk here.
The conservancy is also
home to a large number
of other species of rhino,
making it an attractive
target for poachers.
♪♪
Rhinos across the
planet are threatened
as a result of
demand for their horn.
Rhino horn, in the Far
East is considered to be
of medicinal use.
Increasingly, in
places like Vietnam,
it's becoming a sort
of status symbol,
whereby, if you're a rich
person closing a business deal,
your ability to provide somebody
with some ground-up rhino horn
in their final drink
of the evening
after dinner
confirms your status
to the people
you're dealing with.
To make them less
appealing to poachers,
the conservancy often removes
and destroys the rhinos' horns.
♪♪
The point being is that one
set of horns, for a poacher,
is probably worth between
$20,000 and $25,000,
and that is a huge
amount of money
and that's what's driving the
poaching pressure against this,
this particular species.
♪♪
Every evening at OI Pejeta,
an armed, 40-man security
team begins the night shift.
♪♪
They're very well-trained;
they're very well-equipped.
They have night
operations capability.
And they have a dog section.
♪♪
They are the kind of teeth
of our security operation.
♪♪
We're spending somewhere in
the region of between $1.5 million
and $2 million dollars
a year, we estimate,
just to protect our rhinos.
The team patrols on foot,
tracking through open
bush populated by predators.
♪♪
♪♪
The people we employ
have to be bush-savvy.
In other words, they need
to know how to operate
in the bush and if
you... If you've been born
and brought up in this
kind of an environment,
then you know what
you're looking for
and you know how to
keep yourself out of trouble.
Operating at night obviously
makes it even more complex,
but well-trained
people can do it.
♪♪
The security team is
responsible for patrolling
over 140 square miles
of the conservancy.
♪♪
Overseeing the
night's operations
is Head of Security
Daniel Mwaniki.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
- 2 - hours into their shift,
a report comes
through on the radio.
A vehicle has been
seen speeding away
from the boundary
of the conservancy.
♪♪
In the last six months,
we've had a bad time.
We've lost four, four rhinos.
There's been one particular gang
that's been operational
around us, um,
the last incident of their
killing a rhino resulted in us
managing to catch up with them,
so five of them
are now in prison.
Over the years,
18 rhinos have lost their
lives to poachers at OI Pejeta
and most are buried in the
conservancy's rhino cemetery.
♪♪
♪♪
Poaching has been
responsible for wiping out
the northern white
rhinos in the wild.
But Sudan was taken
from Africa back in 1974
and what happened to him and
the northern whites in captivity
would seal the fate of
this entire subspecies.
After they were captured,
Sudan and five other rhinos
were taken by train to
the port of Mombasa.
From here, they endured
a 2-month journey
round the Cape of
Africa to their new home,
in the Communist Bloc
country of Czechoslovakia.
♪♪
They were an order for
a charismatic zookeeper
called Josef Vágner.
He'd built up a large collection
of African animals for his zoo
in the small town
of Dvur Králové.
The six rhinos, two
male and four female,
were to be the start of a
whole new captive population
and their new owner
was very proud of them.
This is a wide-lipped rhinoceros
and it's got this wide mouth
because it eats lots of grass.
We don't have a fence.
It's much nicer when you
can look them in the eyes.
Of course, there has to
be some kind of protection,
because otherwise the
rhinos could kill the visitors.
But, our aim is not only
to display these animals,
but also to breed them.
♪♪
At first, Sudan
and his companions
adapted well to their
new life in captivity.
♪♪
And this concrete,
Northern European zoo,
where it snowed for
four months of the year,
couldn't have been more
different from their life
on the open savannahs of Africa.
But they tamed down well,
allowing their keepers
to feed them, stroke them,
and even shower them.
Don't get me wrong.
Certainly, the folk
who had the northern
whites in captivity,
you know, they're good people
and they tried terribly hard to,
to give them as natural an
environment as, as possible,
but, unfortunately they
never could give them
what they had in the wild.
And that is one
of the huge issues
about what happened
to the northern whites.
Although all Sudan's needs
were catered to in the zoo,
his natural instincts
seemed to vanish.
No matter how many times he
was paired with a female for mating,
he didn't quite
get the hang of it.
♪♪
♪♪
Eventually, the
keeper stepped in
and gave him a helping hand.
♪♪
After some gentle encouragement,
Sudan did sire two calves.
♪♪
The trouble was, all
the babies were coming
from just one female rhino.
And in 1992,
she died unexpectedly.
All attempts to get a pregnancy
from the other females failed
and, after two
decades in captivity,
the 7 rhinos had only
produced 3 young.
♪♪
By that stage,
Sudan had spent almost
20 years in captivity.
Who knows what went on in
his mind? We'll never know.
♪♪
Physiologically, I think there
must be something negative
happening, something,
you know, less than perfect.
It must've taken a long
time to make peace with,
with this different
environment he's in.
♪♪
You know, they're in
concrete enclosures
and, of course, they would
be leaving dung in those areas
and then going back and
another one would be coming out
and, you know, so it was
quite confusing for the rhinos.
They seemed to develop the
most peculiar-shaped horns
'cause they can't rub
them in the same way
that they do in the wild.
It's a very unnatural
situation for them.
By the mid-'90s,
even Josef Vágner, the
man who'd brought the rhinos
to Czechoslovakia,
began to lose hope.
VáGNER: I'm no
longer very optimistic.
They're just vegetating here.
They're living in
conditions which look good,
but don't provide for
their biological needs.
I think we understand
now that some animals
just don't do very well
in a zoo environment,
that they probably
shouldn't be there.
You know, safety from being
poached, but not breeding,
ultimately, it's, it's
as lethal, essentially,
as having them
in the wild with the,
with the threat of poaching.
In 2009,
it was decided that a
radical solution was needed
for the shrinking population
of northern white rhinos.
♪♪
Time was running out, you know.
These five animals
in captivity are now
some of the last representatives
of this subspecies in the world.
The Czech zoo agreed to send
four of their five remaining
rhinos back to Africa.
After 34 years in captivity,
Sudan was going home.
It was sort of my idea to see
if putting the four
most healthy ones
back in a natural environment
would improve the breeding.
Of course, I was
anxious, you know.
Incredibly valuable animals,
three of them pretty old.
Um, not ideal
conditions, long trip,
but we just had to get
them out and give them a go.
♪♪
♪♪
Transporting this precious
cargo across the world
was a huge operation.
But Sudan was a
very relaxed traveler
and enjoyed the
benefits of in-flight service.
♪♪
On the 20th of December 2009,
Sudan; another
male, called Suni;
and the two females,
Naijin and Fatu,
arrived in their
new African home.
Sudan's dramatic
repatriation was watched
by news crews around the world.
Oh, he was very sweet.
Just pleased to be
out of the crate and...
I, I wouldn't be surprised
if, if, if he still had
some, some memories of,
of you know being
a youngster in Africa.
♪♪
The keepers from
the Czech Republic,
had this sort of crazy
Czech language, you know,
and the keeper's talking to them
and, hey, you know,
somewhere along the line,
I guess old, old, Sudan
had learned Czech.
♪♪
You could just see happy rhinos.
You could see definitely an
improvement in their health,
their whole sort of demeanor.
They had more freedom
and, and a lovely climate here
and things were
looking very positive.
It... we might just
have pulled it off.
♪♪
Sudan.
♪♪
Sudan.
It's now been 8 years
since the rhinos returned,
and no babies have been born.
Instead, there have
been two major setbacks.
♪♪
In 2014, the other
breeding male, Suni,
died suddenly of a heart attack;
and the two females were
found to have fertility problems.
It appeared that,
because they spent so long
in captivity without breeding,
they were no longer
able to conceive naturally,
leaving artificial reproduction
as the only way to try
and save this subspecies.
In Germany,
Professor Hildebrandt
is putting the rescue
plan into practice.
♪♪
♪♪
As IVF has yet to be
successful on rhinos,
Professor Hildebrandt's
team has come to do a trial run
in a zoo in Northern Germany.
That, that's the female we do.
♪♪
A captive southern
white rhino, named Carla,
has been selected as a
giant guinea pig for this test.
The first part of
the IVF procedure
will involve removing
the eggs from her ovaries.
In any other animal,
this procedure's
pretty straightforward,
but in a rhino, being
so large and long and,
and it's, it needs all
this special equipment
which makes the whole
procedure very, very difficult.
Carla is her name, Carla.
Do you think that she's nervous?
Oh, I think we are more nervous.
♪♪
Before the scientists
can get close enough
to operate on Carla,
this 2-ton beast must
be safely sedated.
♪♪
Normally, you use
very potent drugs
which are dangerous
for humans also
and we developed a
cocktail of four different drugs,
which we hope
makes the rhino cooperative
for our procedure today.
♪♪
We take the mounted
ultrasound probe
about a meter inside the animal
and then, inside the animal,
you have to find the ovary
and then hold it
at the right position
for Thomas to go with a needle
into the ovary,
aspirating the oocyte out.
Professor Hildebrandt
is using a long needle
to carefully remove the
eggs from Carla's ovaries.
He's working perilously
close to a large blood vessel
which, if punctured,
would be fatal.
Good!
♪♪
The eggs, also known as oocytes,
have been removed.
♪♪
The more they extract,
the greater chance there
is of creating an embryo,
so they are carefully
counted under a microscope.
♪♪
We'll send them off to a lab
and then they enter
sperm, they inject the sperm,
- Okay.
- And we'll know more
in about 3 days,
whether this works or not.
♪♪
The first part of the
process has been a success.
Okay.
But in order to operate
on the last northern whites...
The scientists must now prove
they can create a rhino embryo.
In the lab, Carla's eggs
will be fertilized with sperm
and should start dividing.
Within days, they'll
grow into a bundle of cells
known as a blastocyst.
Only at this stage have they
got a good chance of growing
into a healthy baby rhino.
♪♪
Sadly, none of Carla's
eggs developed correctly.
Undeterred by this setback,
Professor Hildebrandt
has recruited
more southern white
rhinos to practice on,
from zoos across Europe.
♪♪
♪♪
My understanding is they've
had some limited success
in getting egg cells out,
but they haven't
yet been successful
at maturing those egg
cells to produce embryos.
It will happen eventually, but
the chances of it happening
as quickly as we would've
liked are probably remote.
♪♪
Back in OI Pejeta,
Sudan has taken
a turn for the worse.
Hello, big boy.
Hello, big boy.
Hello, big fella.
Hello, big fella.
Hello, big chap.
Hello, fellow.
Hello, big fella.
Hello, big chappie chap.
Hello, boy. Hello, boy.
Hello, big fella.
What you thinking, big chap?
Maybe having some
small dreams of when
he was a little fellow in
Sudan all those years ago.
He's definitely a bit
more rickety on his legs.
He's definitely
a bit more frail.
He struggles to get up in the
morning, his back leg hurts him,
so, you know, yeah,
he's an old man.
We'll have to expect that
he will die sometime soon.
But I'm just afraid now,
if the other leg starts
to become weak,
the right leg becomes weak, tsk,
we've got a problem.
Either what'll happen is
he'll have a heart attack
and he'll fall over,
dead; or he will,
if he gets into a position
where he can't move,
which brings lots
of complications
for big-bodied animals,
then eventually you'd
have to think of euthanasia.
You'd have to put
him out of his misery
just like you would
do a, an old dog.
♪♪
The day Sudan
goes, it's going to be...
It's going to be
hectic, you know,
in terms of media and, and
people are gonna want pictures
and they're gonna wanna
write about him and stuff like that,
so I'm afraid to
say that we already,
we've got a press release
ready just for the day he goes,
just because we
need to be, you know?
I don't know if the zoo is
gonna want his bones back,
to be honest, because, you know,
in the end, he is their animal.
And if we're not allowed
to keep his bones,
then we would definitely
put a headstone for him
at the rhino cemetery.
♪♪
You know,
♪♪
- Sudan.
- Sudan will continue
to be cared for at OI
Pejeta Conservancy
until the end of his life.
But his story will live
on as a cautionary tale,
reminding us that,
while we have the power
to drive entire species
to the brink of extinction,
we may not have the
power to bring them back.
♪♪
♪♪
To learn more about what you've
seen on this "Nature" program,
♪♪