State Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said they will continue the work so long as they are able to harvest eggs from Iman.

“Yes, it failed (the in-vitro fertilisation). But, hopefully, we can work with Indonesia as soon as possible to get quality sperm from their healthy male rhinos for this programme,” he told FMT.

An egg cell was recovered from Iman, the last female rhino in Malaysia, last Sept 30 and it was later injected with thawed sperm from Tam, its mate that died last May. Experts managed to retrieve the sperm and freeze it before the rhino died.

While the overall process went through without a hitch, sources familiar with the treatment disclosed that the cell failed to divide and degenerated.

The enthusiasm that resulted from obtaining the egg cell was crushed after no embryo formed.

Previous attempts using Tam’s sperm had also failed. It is believed the sperm was not healthy.

“I haven’t received a detailed report on the reason it failed. The scientists who performed the procedure should be able to answer better as they have the technical knowledge,” Tuuga said.

The extraction of the egg cell on Sept 30 was performed by Prof Thomas Hildebrandt and his team from the Leibniz Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, in collaboration with the local Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora) team.

The cell was later taken to the Reproductive Innovation Centre for Wildlife and Livestock at the Faculty of Sustainable Agriculture, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, in Sandakan, for the in-vitro fertilisation process.