This is what extinction looks like...
THE world’s most eligible bachelor is dead.
Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros, was a celebrity in the animal world who, in recent years, had enjoyed a pampered retirement, cared for 24/7 by a team of keepers and under armed guard to protect him from poachers.
He was, after all, the final hope of an entire species whose numbers were destroyed by poachers seeking a lucrative trade in rhino horn.
Now that hope is gone. The 45-yearold rhinoceros, kept since 2009 at the Ol Pejeta conservation project in Laikipia National Park in Kenya, was put down on Monday after his condition deteriorated. It was a miserable end to a sad, captive life that started in southern Sudan in 1973.
At just a few months old, Sudan was snared and sold to a Czech zoo.
Conditions at Dvur Kralove zoo near the Polish border were unconventional to say the least. Seven rhinos were kept in a pen with stone walls, and keepers wandered among them freely.
Despite questionable methods, Vagner a breeding scheme seemed at first to be working. Sudan was mated with Nasima, and their first calf, a male called Nabire, was born in 1983 but died at the zoo just three years ago. The second, a female called Najin, is now 40 years old.
Today we know that northern white rhinos cannot thrive in zoos and need space if they are to breed happily. But
Liz Hurley even flew out to pose with him
that knowledge came too late.
In 2009, Sudan and the only other surviving northern whites, his daughter Najin and grand-daughter Fatu (father unknown), were shipped to Africa. The hope was that in the Kenyan heat and a more natural habitat, the old male might feel like one last attempt at mating. But that ambition was at least a decade too late.
Sudan was fertile but no longer had the strength to perform.
After the death of the only other male northern white in 2014, fundraisers at Ol Pejeta saw an opportunity and signed Sudan up to dating app Tinder, posting his photo and declaring him ‘the most eligible bachelor in the world’ in his brief biography. Tinder users could swipe across his picture, not to arrange a date but to donate money. The stunt made him a global star. Actress Liz Hurley even flew to Kenya to pose with him.
Ultimately, the only hope for Sudan and his species lay with IVF treatment, which was tried in 2016 but failed. Clinging to a hope of future IVF or cloning success is to ignore his poignant legacy. What happened to his species can happen to any.