The uplifting science stories that turned heads in 2024

There are only two northern white rhinos left in the world, but we reported on a fertility breakthrough that offered hope for saving the species.

Scientists achieved the world’s first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.

The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites which still number in the thousands, and took 13 attempts to accomplish.

The mother eventually died of an infection, but a post-mortem revealed that the 6.5cm male foetus was developing well and had a 95% chance of being born alive, showing that a viable pregnancy through rhino IVF is possible.

There are 30 precious northern white rhino embryos in existence, and the next step is to try IVF using these.