World's Last Rhino Of His Kind Comes Running When Called

[Surya Gayatri]

It has to be one of the sweetest and most unique relationships on earth.

Sudan, the last male northern white rhino on earth, is guarded 24 hours a day from harm by a special team at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

New footage shows the incredible bond this rarest rhino and his guards share.



Sudan, and the female northern white rhinos Sudan lives with, enjoy the playful friendship they have with their constant companions.

"When we call his name, he will respond by coming," one of Sudan's guards said. "Sudan feels comfortable when he is being scratched under the belly and behind the ears and he feels very relaxed."

Sudan, at age 42, has an amazing life story. Captured as a young rhino in the wild, Sudan spent 35 years in captivity at a zoo in the Czech Republic before he was brought to Ol Pejeta to live out his days in his natural environment.

Sadly, Sudan is getting older. And once Sudan is gone, there's no hope left for the northern white subspecies of rhino, despite attempts to get these rarest rhinos to breed. Rhinos everywhere are being slaughtered for their horns because of a stubborn superstition that believes rhino horn has medicinal properties.

https://www.thedodo.com/rhino-guards-friendship-1252010835.html

___________________________

Going extinct before our very eyes. What a superb, noble beast. All alone.



Words fail.

[MADem]

1. There is a GOFUNDME at the end of the YOUTUBE to try and help save the species.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=26&v=r_Fd9es_B6Y

[Surya Gayatri]

2. Thanks for posting this, MADem. What a heartbreaking, tragic story.

RIP the Northern White Rhino.

[TexasBushwhacker]

15. Their subspecies is past saving unfortunately

You can't come back from a population of 5.

[MADem]

21. They are saying that a combo of frozen sperm, crossbreeding and cellular manipulation

may be the key.

[Warpy]

3. Rich old men with limp dicks are who buy the horns

It doesn't work except by placebo effect. You'd think the selfish old bastards would have discovered Viagra by now, but nothing is harder to eradicate than a stupid belief.

There is an anti poaching program that dyes the horns an unpleasant color of pink and another one producing synthetic horns that can't be told from the real thing by physical examination. Both are too late for this old fellow.

[Surya Gayatri]

4. Yeah, aphrodisiac, my ass.

[Surya Gayatri]

5. On some especially vulnerable game reserves, their horns are just preemptorily sawed off.

It doesn't hurt and could save their lives.

[Rex]

6. Holyshit he is acting like a domesticated horse or dog!

He wants to play! I swear, all the life on this planet that we have lost to industrial robber barons is a crime of such magnitude that there is no word to describe it.

6th mass extinction cycle and nobody cares. They are scared of words (how many decades will people live in irrational fear of the intangible as if the Cold War never ended) and have no time for real life. Wild life. Rhino life. Planet life. No life. I guess baren wastelands are what he and we have to look forward to.

Playing. Having fun at 42. Horeplaying with the fellas.

Amazing, goodbye godslayer there will never be others of your kind. We made sure of that. And that makes me cry inside and die inside a little.

[Surya Gayatri]

7. Playing. Having fun at 42. Horseplaying with the fellas.

That makes me cry inside and die inside a little, too.

[hunter]

8. Exactly.

I imagine they were all like that at heart, except we were trying to kill them.

The whalers talked about how dangerous gray whales were and called them "devil fish." Well duh, they were defending themselves!

When we stopped hunting them, they stopped attacking our boats.

Now tourists pay money to see the whales gently going about their ordinary whale business.

[Rex]

11. I've loved sy-fi since a wee young boy, yet it horrifies me to see

some of the more...dire...storylines come to real life right before our very eyes. Global warming is going to kill US off, but that might actually spare the other millions of species we work so hard to deny existence.

IMO, planet earth knows what to do with pests. It's just pathetic that we are now pests and not Good Shepard's. We had forever to be Good Shepard's of the earth.

[SunSeeker]

20. There may be something to the biblical prediction that "the meek shall inherit the Earth."

Especially if "the meek" does not necessarily mean humans.

[beam me up scottie]

22. YES!

He reminds me of my big goofy gelding.

It breaks my heart to see what's happened to his species.

[n2doc]

9. It just makes me very sad

Poor guy. At least he gets to be out for his last years.

[Surya Gayatri]

10. Back in the land of his birth--only to expire as the last of his kind.

Mother Earth and her non-human lifeforms will have the last word.

And, we won't like it very much.

[hatrack]

12. Stupid fucking humans . . . . I like people, by and large, but as a species . . . .

Oh, and FUCK CHINESE TRADITIONAL "MEDICINE".

[Surya Gayatri]

13. Many of their snake-oil remedies for "flaccidity" are positively lethal for the animal world.

[Hoyt]

14. Keep him away from the Trump sons.

[catbyte]

16. We are such a despicable species.

[Maraya1969]

17. If some belief was started years ago it can be stopped with some creativity

Little well placed articles about a man taking this medication and his penis went limp forever.

People know how to spread rumors. This one would have to believable, maybe those horns do corrupt a man's penis because of their content and it just seems that it is good because you do not see the harmful effects until later.

Or for areas that believe in VooDoo get a high priest to put a curse on anyone who kills a rhino or elephant that they will lose all secual function and develop pain.

If the republican party can get almost 1/2 the voting country to believe that Mitt Romney would have been a great president than anything can happen.

[CharlotteVale]

18. Sad and infuriating beyod words.

[SunSeeker]

19. K & R for exposure. nt

[Enthusiast]

23. Kicked and recommended to the Max!