UC San Diego Robotic Snake Tasked with Getting Female Rhinos Pregnant

It’s no secret that rhinos are facing extinction due to habitat loss, ecosystem changes, and most notably, poaching. More so, for the northern white rhino species, which are known to have just two left in existence — both female, and the last male succumbing to infection and old age. As if that information wasn’t bad enough, those two females are not reproductively viable, and even though there is northern white rhino male sperm on hand, it can’t be used for reproductive purposes.

To get around those issues (literally), engineers from UC San Diego have collaborated with researchers from the San Diego Zoo to help get those last two females pregnant, sort of. Female rhinos have a ‘twisted’ reproductive system- meaning they have a long (8 to 12-inches) cervix that twists and turns on its way to the uterus.

In a recent Wired interview with the director of reproductive science at San Diego Zoo Barbara Durrant, the scientist states, “It’s composed of a number of interlocking ridges or rings that makes it look like a number of S’s connected to each other for 8 to 12 inches. It’s like Lombard Street in San Francisco, where it’s just back and forth, back and forth.”

The UC engineers have come up with a novel solution to navigate the rhino’s complex cervix and deposit an embryo (or sperm) directly in the uterus — a robotic snake, or rather, ‘robotic catheters.’

The robotic catheters aren’t really robotic, but instead, look to be more closely aligned with endoscopes with knobs that twist and flex the ‘snake’ to navigate complicated geometries. The length can also be adjusted depending on the application. The robots will be deployed on southern white rhinos (a close cousin of the northern species) first for testing purposes, and if all goes well, will be used on the northern species. The problem here is that the northern females no longer produce eggs, so scientists plan on creating their own using a technique successful in mice.

The aim is to take skin cells from the rhinos and realign them by biochemically manipulating different genes, and rendering them pluripotent- meaning they can be turned into many different cell types — in this case, young rhino embryos, which can then be fertilized and implanted. The process is still in development, and UC San Diego is currently crowdfunding their robotic endeavor to put their plan into action.