Only two northern white rhinos remain alive on Earth, a mother and daughter living under armed guard in Kenya who cannot carry a pregnancy. A scientific consortium has produced 39 laboratory embryos using frozen sperm and eggs, but six surrogate transfers have yielded no lasting pregnancies.
The effort to pull the northern white rhinoceros back from the brink of extinction rests entirely on two female animals: Najin, born at a Czech safari park on 11 July 1989, and her daughter Fatu, born on 29 June 2000. Both animals live under permanent armed protection at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where they are watched round the clock by armed rangers.
Neither animal can ever be returned to the wild, and neither can carry a calf due to severe genital pathology diagnosed in 2014. That diagnosis, which involves infertility frequently seen in female rhinoceroses that have not bred for long periods, means that any future offspring must rely on advanced reproductive technology and surrogate mothers.
Laboratory Embryos and the Avantea Laboratory
Facing the imminent extinction of the subspecies, an international consortium has spent years collecting oocytes from Fatu and Najin to fertilize them in a laboratory setting. The first collection of eggs from the two females took place on 22 August 2019. Over the subsequent years, Fatu became the program’s sole egg donor after Najin was retired from collections following three procedures that yielded no embryos.
The eggs travel from Kenya to Italy, where they are matured and fertilized using frozen sperm collected from northern white rhino bulls that are already dead. According to the reporting, the Avantea laboratory in Cremona serves as the central facility for this work, recognized as the only laboratory to have generated viable rhinoceros embryos. A collection procedure at the beginning of 2026 brought the running total to 39 pure northern white rhino embryos produced in the laboratory.
Producing embryos in glass dishes is only the first hurdle; transferring them into surrogate mothers presents an entirely different set of challenges. Because neither Najin nor Fatu can carry a pregnancy, the consortium relies on the closely related southern white rhino—a subspecies whose population in South Africa numbers approximately 20,000—to provide surrogate wombs.
Out of the 39 laboratory embryos created so far, six have been placed into surrogate mothers. A proof of concept was achieved at the end of 2023 using a southern white rhino embryo, while the first pure northern white rhino transfers followed in July 2024, December 2024, and May 2025, alongside subsequent attempts in the second half of 2025. None of those six transfers have resulted in a lasting pregnancy. While a recipient uterus developed mucus after the December 2024 transfer, subsequent analysis was inconclusive and failed to confirm northern white rhino DNA.
Documenting the Last Guardians at Ol Pejeta
The desperate conservation effort unfolds against a backdrop of human dedication. Photographer Mital Patel documented the final two northern white rhinos and the unglamorous daily labor required to keep them alive, capturing images that formed an online exhibition titled The Caretakers on All About Photo.
Photo: Yahoo
Patel’s work shifts focus from pure sorrow to the rangers and staff stationed alongside the animals, featuring scenes of foot patrols carrying rifles and tracking dogs, and quiet moments beside a stone memorial bearing an inscription for Sudan, the last male northern white rhino.
“Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, 1973 to 2018,”
Najin and Fatu: the last two remaining northern white rhinos on Earth
Inscription on stone memorial, via Yahoo
That history traces back decades. The northern white rhino once ranged across parts of north-western Uganda, southern Chad, South Sudan, the eastern Central African Republic, and the north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hunting for horn, compounded by widespread war that shattered protection and conservation work, decimated the wild population. The last four wild individuals were spotted in Garamba National Park in the DRC in August 2005.
In December 2009, four northern white rhinos—two males and two females—were transferred from the Safari Park Dvur Kralove in the Czech Republic to Ol Pejeta in the hope that a natural habitat would encourage breeding. One male, Suni, died of natural causes in October 2014. The other male, Sudan, who served as Najin’s father and Fatu’s grandfather, died of old age on 19 March 2018, leaving the subspecies with its current two surviving females.
