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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.'"
I hate humans...
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.
CREW biologists jerked off the rhino while he gorged himself. Pretty much any man's dream, right?
I'm just spitballing here, but you wouldn't happen to be a woman would you?
A University Of Sarcasm Diploma.
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.
How people who are so thrilled with the idea of Darwinian survival are so concerned about extinction.
The two are inextricably linked.
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?