page_title: White rhinoceros
section_title: Northern white rhinoceros
hierarchical_section_title: White rhinoceros / Taxonomy and evolution / Northern white rhinoceros
caption_attribution_description: Ceratotherium simum cottoni English: One of four Northern White Rhinos translocated to Ol Pejeta Conservancy now living in a semi-wild state. Keepers and armed security watch over him 24hrs a day. The enclosure is 700acres. Image is part of the documentary series called Ol Pejeta Diaries for Oasis HD Canada, Digital Crossing Productions INC.
context_page_description: The white rhinoceros or square-lipped rhinoceros is the largest extant species of rhinoceros. It has a wide mouth used for grazing and is the most social of all rhino species. The white rhinoceros consists of two subspecies: the southern white rhinoceros, with an estimated 19,682–21,077 wild-living animals in the year 2015, and the much rarer northern white rhinoceros. The northern subspecies has very few remaining individuals, with only two confirmed left in 2018, both in captivity. Sudan, the world's last known male northern white rhinoceros, died in Kenya on 19 March 2018.
context_section_description: The northern white rhinoceros or northern square-lipped rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is considered critically endangered and possibly extinct in the wild. Formerly found in several countries in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara, this subspecies is a grazer in grasslands and savanna woodlands.
  Initially, six northern white rhinoceros lived in the Dvůr Králové Zoo in the Czech Republic. Four of the six rhinos (which were also the only reproductive animals of this subspecies) were transported to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where scientists hoped they would successfully breed and save this subspecies from extinction. One of two remaining in the Czech Republic died in late May 2011. Both of the last two males capable of natural mating died in 2014 (one in Kenya on 18 October and one in San Diego on 15 December). In 2015, the Kenyan government placed the last remaining male of the subspecies at Ol Pejeta under 24-hour armed guard to deter poachers, but he was put down on 19 March 2018 due to multiple health problems caused by old age, leaving just two females alive which reside at the Ol Pejeta complex.  Staff hope to inseminate the remaining females with the last male's semen, although the semen is not preferable due to the age of the rhino.
  Following the phylogenetic species concept, recent research has led to the hypothesis that the northern white rhinoceros is a different species, rather than a subspecies of white rhinoceros as was previously thought, in which case the correct scientific name for the former should be Ceratotherium cottoni. Distinct morphological and genetic differences suggest the two proposed species have been separated for at least a million years. However, the results of the research were not universally accepted by other scientists.
caption: A northern white rhinoceros crosses the equator during translocation to Ol Pejeta Conservancy
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