Bid to breed Sumatran rhino by IVF fails
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s hope for the survival of the critically endangered Sumatran rhino dimmed after an in-vitro fertilisation attempt failed.
Informed sources said the egg cell obtained from Sabah’s last female rhino Iman was injected with thawed sperm.
Wildlife reproductive experts said the overall process was smooth with the thawed sperm taken from a male rhino. However, it failed to divide and degenerated during three days of incubation.
The same sources explained that it was sad that there would not be an embryo that could herald a step towards the conservation of the species in Sabah.
Similar in-vitro attempts had failed previously and they suspect the quality of the sperm of the last male Sumatran rhino Tam was not fertile enough.
They are still hoping Indonesia will be able to assist in providing fresh male rhino sperm in efforts to conserve the Sumatran rhino. Less than 100 are known to exist in Indonesia.
On Oct 1, scientists managed to harvest an egg cell (oocyte) from Iman that would be matched with thawed frozen sperm from Tam, the male rhino that died in May.
The procedure was done at Reproductive Innovation Centre for Wildlife and Livestock at the Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture, Universiti Malaysia Sabah in Sandakan.
The extraction was performed by Prof Thomas Hildebrandt and his team from Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, in collaboration with the local Borneo Rhino Alliance team.
Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga confirmed that the IVF treatment attempt had failed.