WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.567 --> 00:00:03.747
They're the last of their kind:

2
00:00:03.747 --> 00:00:06.652
Najin and Fatu, 
two female Northern White Rhinos.

3
00:00:06.652 --> 00:00:10.648
When they die, 
their species will disappear forever.

4
00:00:10.648 --> 00:00:12.528
This is the story of how scientists

5
00:00:12.528 --> 00:00:16.377
are trying to to rescue these 
enormous animals from extinction.

6
00:00:16.377 --> 00:00:18.662
In it, sperm, egg cells, 
and frozen embryos

7
00:00:18.662 --> 00:00:21.390
travel around the world. 
And there's some good news!

8
00:00:21.390 --> 00:00:22.950
"We awaited this for a long time.

9
00:00:22.960 --> 00:00:24.977
All the work we put in now

10
00:00:24.977 --> 00:00:29.310
has a real sense and can make 
a difference for the species."

11
00:00:29.310 --> 00:00:32.640
Susanne Holtze is part of
an international team that's trying

12
00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:34.670
to rescue the Northern White Rhino.

13
00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:38.200
And for that, they needed to take
a detour over a close relative:

14
00:00:38.550 --> 00:00:39.700
the Southern White Rhino.

15
00:00:39.710 --> 00:00:42.050
And that's now raising high hopes.

16
00:00:42.347 --> 00:00:44.737
"We achieved the first
successful embryo transfer in

17
00:00:45.247 --> 00:00:47.540
a rhinoceros ever."

18
00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:51.600
And that’s quite
a novel, big step for us."

19
00:00:52.950 --> 00:00:55.700
The rhino baby
unfortunately won’t be born.

20
00:00:55.710 --> 00:00:57.160
But we’ll get to that.

21
00:00:58.400 --> 00:01:02.400
So, this pair of Northern White
Rhino cows are the only two left on

22
00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:05.450
the planet -- and they're
protected around the clock.

23
00:01:06.270 --> 00:01:09.750
Unlike their southern relatives,
Northern White Rhinos once roamed

24
00:01:09.750 --> 00:01:11.420
parts of Central Africa.

25
00:01:11.440 --> 00:01:14.950
But poaching and civil war has
had a devastating impact, and now

26
00:01:14.950 --> 00:01:17.140
the species is extinct in the wild.

27
00:01:17.160 --> 00:01:19.560
And that's left an ecological gap.

28
00:01:19.670 --> 00:01:23.950
"The Northern white rhino is
a keystone species in Central

29
00:01:23.950 --> 00:01:27.910
Africa, or it was until it
got eliminated from its natural

30
00:01:27.910 --> 00:01:28.500
habitat.

31
00:01:28.510 --> 00:01:33.350
It keeps open spaces of short grass
that other species can feed on,

32
00:01:33.350 --> 00:01:36.569
some species struggle
with longer grass.

33
00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:41.600
And also by creating these
short grass areas or zones,

34
00:01:41.600 --> 00:01:46.310
they contribute to
having fire protection.

35
00:01:46.310 --> 00:01:50.670
Ecosystems are extremely complex
and I think only when animals or

36
00:01:50.670 --> 00:01:53.670
species disappear from
them we understand how

37
00:01:53.670 --> 00:01:55.530
interlinked everything was."

38
00:01:55.670 --> 00:01:58.220
Only a handful of
Northern White Rhinos have ever

39
00:01:58.230 --> 00:01:59.420
survived in captivity.

40
00:01:59.430 --> 00:02:01.770
Four in a zoo in
the Czech Republic.

41
00:02:01.910 --> 00:02:05.310
To help these two rhino couples
breed they were brought to Kenya in

42
00:02:05.310 --> 00:02:08.790
2009, where they could
graze on the native grasses in

43
00:02:08.790 --> 00:02:10.419
their native climate.

44
00:02:10.430 --> 00:02:11.940
But those hopes were dashed.

45
00:02:11.950 --> 00:02:14.830
No rhino babies were
born, and both bulls died.

46
00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:18.830
Leaving behind the two females as
the last chance for the species.

47
00:02:18.990 --> 00:02:20.090
How could that work?

48
00:02:20.230 --> 00:02:23.380
Part of the answer lies frozen
in these containers at the Leibniz

49
00:02:23.389 --> 00:02:26.660
Institute for Zoo and
Wildlife Research in Berlin.

50
00:02:26.660 --> 00:02:30.350
Together with cells from
more than 300 other species.

51
00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:36.990
"Here we also store semen samples of
Northern White Rhinos and embryos

52
00:02:36.990 --> 00:02:38.340
of Northern White Rhinos.

53
00:02:38.350 --> 00:02:42.190
We split them between Italy
and Germany to have a backup.

54
00:02:42.190 --> 00:02:47.389
In case some catastrophic event
happens, at least one bank is safe."

55
00:02:48.790 --> 00:02:52.310
30 Northern White Rhino embryos
are now slumbering in the cold.

56
00:02:52.990 --> 00:02:56.270
Scientists had harvested
semen from several rhino bulls

57
00:02:56.270 --> 00:02:57.730
before they died.

58
00:02:58.710 --> 00:03:02.389
Every few weeks, the scientists
harvest egg cells from one of

59
00:03:02.389 --> 00:03:04.330
the two female rhinos.

60
00:03:05.550 --> 00:03:09.710
The eggs are then flown directly to
the lab in Italy, where the sperm

61
00:03:09.710 --> 00:03:11.977
and the egg meet.

62
00:03:13.110 --> 00:03:16.550
And develop into an embryo
that’s frozen for the future.

63
00:03:18.070 --> 00:03:21.550
This entire process is also being
carried out with one of their close

64
00:03:21.550 --> 00:03:24.050
relatives -- the
Southern White Rhino.

65
00:03:24.669 --> 00:03:28.150
Their population is quite a bit
larger, so they're a good test case

66
00:03:28.150 --> 00:03:30.290
for the rhino embryo transfer.

67
00:03:30.510 --> 00:03:33.830
The entire process had to be
reconfigured for rhinos - to

68
00:03:33.830 --> 00:03:36.290
the point of
even inventing new tools.

69
00:03:36.390 --> 00:03:40.310
Rhinos are so large and their skin
is so thick that the only way to

70
00:03:40.310 --> 00:03:45.980
reach the uterus, it
turns out, is … through the rectum.

71
00:03:45.980 --> 00:03:50.100
"We have to go one and a half meter
inside of the animal and bring

72
00:03:50.100 --> 00:03:53.660
a needle next… puncture the wall
of the rectum into the uterus and

73
00:03:53.660 --> 00:03:57.260
then deposit our
embryos inside of the uterus.

74
00:03:57.260 --> 00:04:01.460
As far as I know, no other
embryo transfer has ever been

75
00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:03.160
done this way."

76
00:04:03.740 --> 00:04:07.220
It's a long journey until an
embryo reaches a rhino uterus.

77
00:04:07.580 --> 00:04:10.900
In the most recent transfer,
the Southern White Rhino egg cells

78
00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:13.330
came from Belgium, and
the sperm from Austria.

79
00:04:13.340 --> 00:04:15.720
The fertilization took
place in Italy.

80
00:04:15.830 --> 00:04:19.470
The embryo was frozen, and
sent to Kenya to be implanted into

81
00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:22.300
the surrogate mother, Curra.

82
00:04:25.700 --> 00:04:29.420
Unfortunately Curra fell ill
and died during the pregnancy.

83
00:04:31.010 --> 00:04:34.170
But for the first time ever,
a transferred rhino embryo had

84
00:04:34.170 --> 00:04:35.710
grown into a fetus.

85
00:04:36.170 --> 00:04:39.370
"So when when we
saw the fetus, it was really a

86
00:04:39.370 --> 00:04:41.080
perfect little creature.

87
00:04:41.089 --> 00:04:42.920
It looks already like a rhino.

88
00:04:42.930 --> 00:04:47.410
You can see the base of the
horn, you can see the ribs, count

89
00:04:47.420 --> 00:04:49.310
the ribs through the skin.

90
00:04:49.490 --> 00:04:51.790
You could clearly see it's a male."

91
00:04:52.010 --> 00:04:53.190
"That’s a penis."

92
00:04:54.070 --> 00:04:59.310
"At this stage actually 99% of
the pregnancies continue to live

93
00:04:59.310 --> 00:05:00.000
birth.

94
00:05:00.190 --> 00:05:04.070
So, all it had to do was to
grow further inside of the womb of

95
00:05:04.070 --> 00:05:07.870
this mother, unless she died,
which unfortunately happened."

96
00:05:09.230 --> 00:05:13.903
But the scientists had shown
that the idea was a viable one.

97
00:05:15.870 --> 00:05:20.750
"To move forward, especially to save
the Northern White Rhino, this is

98
00:05:20.750 --> 00:05:23.870
a crucial prerequisite that we
can really - with the embryos we

99
00:05:23.870 --> 00:05:29.110
created - we can go to the next step
and create new life from them."

100
00:05:29.870 --> 00:05:33.190
There's another problem, though -
the semen and egg cells come from

101
00:05:33.190 --> 00:05:34.900
only three Northern White Rhinos.

102
00:05:34.910 --> 00:05:37.910
A very small genetic pool to draw on.

103
00:05:37.910 --> 00:05:42.182
One hope: skin cells the team earlier took 
from a dozen of the animals.

104
00:05:42.182 --> 00:05:45.234
The idea is to cause them to revert 
to a kind of “baby stage”

105
00:05:45.234 --> 00:05:46.577
so-called stem cells.

106
00:05:46.577 --> 00:05:51.415
Then to make those stem cells develop 
into new egg and sperm cells.

107
00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:55.200
Experiments are ongoing in labs 
in Germany and Japan.

108
00:05:55.463 --> 00:05:57.536
Once it works, we can produce
a lot of embryos

109
00:05:58.680 --> 00:06:02.200
and the great thing about this is that we can cross

110
00:06:02.343 --> 00:06:06.093
whoever we want with whoever we want
in the petri dish.

111
00:06:06.720 --> 00:06:07.720
And combine rhinos, which in

112
00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:09.896
normal life would be extremely challenging

113
00:06:09.896 --> 00:06:14.451
 because you have to bring them together 
and they have to live at the same time

114
00:06:14.451 --> 00:06:16.162
and they have to like each other.

115
00:06:16.162 --> 00:06:23.651
But in this approach we can really choose 
who we want to breed with whom

116
00:06:23.651 --> 00:06:30.879
and these embryos we can transfer 
into surrogates and then create a 
herd with optimal genetic diversity.

117
00:06:32.140 --> 00:06:35.860
The methods we develop are
extremely important for the future

118
00:06:35.860 --> 00:06:37.529
of many species, I think.

119
00:06:37.540 --> 00:06:41.180
For example, also the Sumatran
rhino, that we have been called now

120
00:06:41.180 --> 00:06:45.500
to work with and we are already
starting to apply our technologies

121
00:06:45.500 --> 00:06:47.080
to this species as well."

122
00:06:47.580 --> 00:06:50.900
The plan calls for transferring
the first Northern White Rhino

123
00:06:50.900 --> 00:06:53.690
embryo in summer 2024.

124
00:06:53.700 --> 00:06:58.180
If all goes well, about 16 months
later a baby will take its place

125
00:06:58.180 --> 00:07:01.160
alongside the two
Northern White Rhino cows.

126
00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:04.470
Because to grow up as a proper
Northern White Rhino, the baby

127
00:07:04.480 --> 00:07:06.720
needs to be part of a rhino clan.