Last Male Northern White Rhino Sudan featured on Google Doodle, know why

On Sunday, December 20, Google Doodle celebrated Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros in the world. The stunning illustration looks back on this day, in 2009, when Sudan and three other white rhinos arrived at their new home at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a wildlife sanctuary in Kenya. Before these rhinos were moved, the species had been declared extinct in the wild. Read on to know more about Sudan.

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Is the Northern White Rhino extinct?

A report in The Ecologist reveals that poachers hunted the northern white rhinos to the brink of extinction in the 1970s and 1980s. The giant grazers’ horns were harvested for use in traditional Chinese medicine. They were also used in making ornamental dagger handles for the booming Yemeni market for sharp, stabby status symbols. 

The ground-up rhino horn is exactly the same stuff as ground-up fingernails, and studies later revealed that it’s not actually a useful medicine. However, Sudan was one of the luckiest white rhinos. Not only did he live to old age but also fathered two daughters. 

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However, life in the wild had not been very easy for Sudan, another report in Forbes Magazine, reveals that he had dodged the poachers’ bullets mostly because, in 1976, conservationists whisked him from the wilds of southern Sudan to a zoo in what was then Czechoslovakia. Back home in Sudan, the northern white rhinos fell by the thousands. Sudan returned to Africa from Czechoslovakia 23 years later, on December 20, in 2009. He was accompanied by his daughter and granddaughter, along with an unrelated male rhino, were the last of their kind in the world. However, Sudan passed away in 2018.

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Sudan's death: How did Sudan Die?

The Forbes report reveals that after coming back to his homeland, Sudan lived out the rest of his days at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy wildlife sanctuary in Kenya. The elderly rhino even outlived his younger male companion, Suni, who died in 2014. However, by 2018, Sudan’s bones and muscles were too weak to hold him up. He also had a collection of skin wounds that refused to heal. Hence, the veterinarians decided the most humane option was to euthanize him. Sudan’s euthanisation only left only Najin and Fatu, Sudan’s daughter and granddaughter respectively, as the last northern white rhinos ever to walk the Earth. Sudan was put to sleep and he passed away at the old age of 45.

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