White rhino baby born in US zoo

A baby white rhino was born in Zoo from San Diego, in United States — and conservationists hope its birth could signal good news for its endangered cousins.

The unnamed rhino calf was born Aug. 6 to first-time mother Livia and father J Gregory, according to a press release from the San Diego Zoo.

The baby is “healthy, confident and full of energy”, says zoo staff, adding that “Livia is an excellent mother, very caring and protective of her child”.

There are two subspecies of white rhino: southern and northern. The baby is a southern white rhino, listed as “near endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). There are around 10,000 southern white rhinos in the wild, according to the IUCN.

But it’s a very different story for cousins ​​to the north, whose population has been devastated by the poaching of their horns and other body parts. Only two northern white rhinos remain, a mother-daughter couple who live on a reserve in Kenya. None were able to carry a pregnancy to term.

That’s where Livia – the mother of the newborn calf at the San Diego Zoo – comes in. Her successful pregnancy means she could be a candidate to carry a northern white rhino embryo in the future.

“Livia is now among the female rhinos at the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center that could serve in the future as a surrogate for a northern white embryo,” the statement reads.

The San Diego Zoo’s Northern White Rhino Initiative hopes to use cutting-edge reproductive technology to try to save the species on the brink of extinction . The institution also houses the so-called frozen zoo, a cryobank that stores reproductive cells and embryos from nearly 1,000 species, including 12 northern white rhino strains.

Someday, these cell lines could be used to create sperm and eggs from northern white rhinos, leading to embryos that can be implanted in surrogate mothers like Livia, the press release says.

“All rhino births are significant,” the zoo adds.