Scientists produce embryos in race to save northern white rhino

Scientists working to save the northern white rhino from extinction have produced two more embryos of the world’s most endangered mammal, increasing the number of viable embryos produced so far to five.

There are no known living males and neither of the two remaining northern white rhinos on earth — a mother and her daughter living in Kenya — can carry a calf to term.

Scientists hope to implant embryos made from the rhinos’ egg cells and frozen sperm from deceased males into surrogate mothers from a more abundant rhino species.

The five embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen at a laboratory in Cremona, in Italy’s Lombardy region, waiting to be transferred into a surrogate mother.

The team hopes to be able to deliver its first northern white rhino calf in three years and a wider population in the next two decades.

The northern white rhino used to live in several countries in east and central Africa, but its numbers fell sharply due to poaching.