Veterinarians, hoping to artificially breed the Sumatran rhino, have come away disappointed after failing to recover any eggs from the ovaries of Puntung, one of three Sumatran rhinos in the country.
Puntung was euthanised on Sunday as her skin cancer was deemed untreatable, even after top veterinarians from elsewhere flew in to assist in what initially appeared to be a bad case of tooth infection.
“No oocytes (egg cells) were found in the ovarian cortex. It was very unfortunate,” The Star quoted Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga as saying about efforts to preserve Puntung’s bloodline.
The report said scientists had hoped to artificially inseminate Puntung’s egg cells with frozen sperm obtained from the sole captive male rhino in the country called Tam, in a bid to reverse the fate of Sumatran rhinos, considered extinct in Malaysia since 2015.
Immediately after Puntung was euthanised, veterinarians removed her ovaries and flew them to the Agro-Biotechnology Institute in Serdang, Selangor, for the egg harvesting process, The Star reported.
However, tissue samples of Puntung are being kept in several Malaysian institutions so that her genome can still be preserved.
With Puntung’s demise, the sole remaining captive female Sumatran rhino is Iman. Previous attempts to get Iman and Puntung to mate with Tam were unsuccessful as their uteruses were lined with cysts, the report said.
It quoted Borneo Rhino Alliance executive director Dr John Payne as having said in December that advanced reproductive and cellular technologies could be the only methods left to ensure the survival of the Sumatran rhino in Sabah.
It is estimated that there are only several dozen Sumatran rhinos left in the world, all in Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kalimantan.