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Ohio Zoo Attempts To Mate Female Rhino With Her Brother For Species Survival
An anonymous reader writes "Unfortunately for the Sumatran rhino the fate of the species may boil down to a plan by the Cincinnati Zoo to breed their lone female with her little brother. 'We absolutely need more calves for the population as a whole; we have to produce as many as we can as quickly as we can,' said Terri Roth, who heads the zoo's Center for Research of Endangered Wildlife. 'The population is in sharp decline and there's a lot of urgency around getting her pregnant.'"
It's come to this!
I hate humans...
If it was good enough for the pharaohs, it's good enough for the rhinos.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Put your sister to the test!
but was ignominiously rejected.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Just being good Christians.
Roth, who began working on the rhino project in 1996, said it took years just to understand their eating habits and needs and decades more to understand their mating patterns. The animals tend not to be interested in companionship, let alone romance.
Oh. I think I see the connection to Slashdot now.
I have a biology degree from one of the area's universities. Over the course of my *ahem* 5 years there I attended several talks given by people associated with the CREW (Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife) Program at the Cincinnati Zoo. In most talks the anecdote used as an icebreaker was the story of "manual manipulation of the bull black rhinoceros to collect semen." Apparently, the best way to distract him during the whole embarrassing affair was to present him with a rather large basket of produce. Yes, CREW biologists jerked off the rhino while he gorged himself. Pretty much any man's dream, right?
Why can't they just trade rhino sperm with another zoo? Cows, horses, chickens, etc are fertilized with sperm, why not rhinos?
or Myrcella if it's a girl.
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), normally a species.
Just give her alcohol, seems to work for us.
That's the nature of man - mess up everything and then at the last possible moment do unnatural things to try making situation better. Ehh, I'm having dual feelings about this.. First impression after reading this - "ew, gross", but still, not saying it shouldn't be done.
Sounds like Cincinnati to me.
"news for nerds" [x] Check.
"stuff that matters" [ ] Not so much.
Can be the backup plan if incest doesn't work. The only disadvantage would be that a viable eliphino would make the joke less funny.
Don't complain to me when it has one tooth, misshapen eyes, plays the banjo, and loves bad moonshine.
I ask as a person who cares about the environment. I strongly feel humans should have a smaller footprint and stop damaging the environment.
However, we seem to be spending a small fortune on the last few members of a species. Whatever ecological roles the rhinos might have played would have been filled (or the entire ecosystem would have changed faster than usual, possibly not-in-a-good-way).
Shouldn't we be spending that money for conservation where the damage isn't this extensive? In a while, maybe by cloning or using frozen sperms/eggs, we might be able to revive the species.
are there literally no other rhino's left?
with most livestock artificial insemination is fairly trivial and the 'product' can be shipped frozen great distances..
The procedure can't be that different from cows or horses you just need a bigger sturdier dummy, clear
Not one comment that wasn't a joke. Not that they weren't funny, but...
Forgive me, but I'd like to ask a reasonable, well thought-out question. From looking at the other threads, I feel it may be out of place here. Anyway...
Do rhinos breed with siblings in the wild? I know some mammals do, and some don't.
If rhinos do, then I don't see any problem with doing the same in captivity. They would be evolved to better handle the results of inbreeding.
If they don't, then it seems not only unlikely to work (unless done artificially), but also unlikely to be a viable way to propagate the species.
Lannisters have been doing this for ages!
Obviously they are going to need help from the outside, I suggest going to nearby West Virginia where there are plenty of people well versed in how to impregnate relatives.
Monstar L
How people who are so thrilled with the idea of Darwinian survival are so concerned about extinction.
The two are inextricably linked.
If anyone should embrace the ramifications of evolution, it should be biologists.
And not just when convenient.
Mass extinctions have occurred before. Most kinds of life that has ever existed doesn't any more -- what's the problem here but that some zoologist is worried about his pets? Rather than try to change the natural course of things, shouldn't these people adopt a healthier attitude toward these "circle of life" affairs? Death is a thing. It happens to a lot of animals. Get over it.
For that matter, it happens to the human sort, too, but we learned a few things about the wisdom of eugenics along the way (including that it would, indeed, be a boon to us as a species if only we could find a morally acceptable way to implement the knowledge...).
Before human cluttered up the island(s), a low(ish) interest in breeding may have been a positive survival trait preventing overpopulation of a limited range.
Anyone know if the small tigers there successfully hunt other than immature rhinos?
Now that humans have seriously reduced the range even further, it's probably best to just let them go extinct, since they'll never be successfuly re-introduced to the wild.
Throwing little puppies out of windows?
Evil lies even when it tells the truth.
Based on this (and your many other bizarre posts), can we assume you're a relative of Yogi Berra?
After all, Yogi apparently said "Half of the lies they tell about me aren't true."
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Can't we just let natural selection do it's work and let it go extinct? The species would have probably eventually gone extinct anyway.
What a mess. I'm not a biologist, but I reckon at this point the species is genetically doomed. Sad to see that humanity has taken another species to this point.
And meanwhile, not much here but jokes about incest and old books.
Several species have "successfully been conserved in captivity" up to the point that no zoo wants any more of them. They are effectively killing animals and doing global birth control on these species in captivity, while the natural population is so small that they lack even genetic diversity to be viable enough to reliably survive extinction. Given these fact, you'd say they would reintroduce captive bread animals in the wild. This never happens and never will, unless they are going to change a lot of things. First of all, captive release is extremely costly, nobody wants to foot the bill for a reintroduction program of Black's Rhino. Second of all, captive animals may have diseases that could in theory threaten wild animals, even animals of different species. For that reason, nobody will permit these animals to be released in the wild, or have them interbreed with wild animals.
Zoos are nothing but the living equivalent of a postage stamp collection. All these breeding programs are nice for fellow stamp collectors, but will never ever help wild populations with genetic diversity or just plain extra animals. That doesn't mean they don't have a purpose. If we and our kids can't actually go to a zoo and watch these poor caged animals, we wouldn't give enough about them to actually fund some (often rather futile) attempts of saving the habitat of the wild version of what we just fed a bag of peanuts.
Unless the above changes and animals are actually released in the wild on a regular basis, incestuous cross breeding Sumatran rhinos in a Zoo won't help the extinction of these animals a single bit. I suggest we find a solution for this first, before we risk Down Syndrome Rhinos in our Zoos.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Well, this is Cincinnati, which while it is in Hamilton county Ohio is right across the river from Kentucky (hence the unofficial nick name Hamiltucky).
So, this program will fit right in with our human families in the area that have titles like 'Uncle Dad'.
But then again, am I a rhino ?
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
We can save the rhino population just in time to watch them all die from the same congenital defect!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Why is this tagged Kentucky? Cincinnati is in Ohio, not in Kentucky. If you want incest jokes, go see West Virginia...
Sex with his sister!
Where do you think all those hillbillies in Cincinnati come from? West Virginia and Kentucky are just breeding pools for future 'Buckeyes'.
The Tea Party is just the GOP with a bag over its head.
The theory is supposed to be that the captive animals prevent total exinction should the wild populations die out, which the Sumatran rhinos haven't yet. It would be better to harvest sperm from a wild rhino in Sumatra or Borneo so as to get some genetic variation back into that zoo family.
I'm betting that the offspring will look like Jim Carrey.
Very, very OK with it if you know what I mean.
He'd do the rhino. Heck, he did Hillary and a Sumatran Rhino is definitely a step up in looks!
http://abstrusegoose.com/156
If the Cincinnati Zoo is in Kentucky?
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
Rhinos in KY are protesting for equal rights to do the same.
They warned us this would happen when the Supreme Court repealed DOMA. Why didn't we listen!?
Soon the rhinos will have to deal with an arrogant rhino king with blonde hair.
I tried this with my older sister.