Your next Tinder match: Sudan the northern white rhino
Dating app gets a surprising new addition in fundraising effort to prevent animal's extinction

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
Dating app Tinder has a horny new male for users to swipe right: Sudan, the last surviving male northern white rhinoceros.
Sudan is appearing on the app to raise money for the Ol Pejeta conservation park in Kenya where he lives and to raise awareness of the precarious position of the northern white rhino.
His profile reads: "I don't mean to be too forward, but the fate of my species literally depends on me.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"I perform well under pressure. I like to eat grass and chill in the mud. No problems. 6ft tall and 5,000 pounds if it matters."
Conservationists hope to raise £7m to pay for Sudan's sperm to be used to fertilise eggs provided by the last two surviving female northern white rhinos, Fatu and Najin.
Any resulting embryo would then be implanted in a southern white rhino to gestate, because vets believe neither Fatu nor Najin is able to reproduce. The southern white is a more common species with around 20,000 left in the world, according to recent estimates.
Sudan is certainly popular on the dating site - users who swiped right to find out more about his plight contributed to a spike of hits for the Ol Pejeta website which caused it to crash shortly after the Tinder profile went live.
Sudan is 43 – "ancient" for a rhino, according to Sky News – and as a result, his sperm count is very low, another problem for the species.
Poaching has brought the northern white rhinos to the brink of extinction. Their horns are sold for up to £50,000 a kilo on the black market and are used in Asian medicine and to make the scabbards for traditional Arab daggers.
Sudan is protected around the clock by a team of armed guards at Ol Pejeta.
Conservation boss Richard Vigne said the Tinder promotion was the "last option to save the species after all previous breeding attempts proved futile".
He added: "The plight that currently faces the northern white rhinos is a signal to the impact that humankind is having on many thousands of other species across the planet."
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
Libya floods: death toll set to rise with 10,000 reported missing
More than 6,000 people reported dead, with hundreds of bodies still washing ashore
By Arion McNicoll Published
-
Thousands feared dead in catastrophic Libya flooding
Speed Read A powerful Mediterranean storm pummeled Libya's northeast coast, wiping out entire neighborhoods
By Peter Weber Published
-
Huge earthquake on Turkey-Syria border leaves thousands dead
feature Rescue teams in both countries are continuing to search for survivors after second quake hits
By Asya Likhtman Published
-
World population hits eight billion: why the milestone matters
feature Estimates on how many people can live sustainably on the planet ‘vary widely’
By Arion McNicoll Published
-
1.5C global warming threshold to be passed within a decade
Speed Read Scientists are ‘alarmed’ by acceleration to ‘hotter, hellish future’
By Chas Newkey-Burden Published
-
UK and Europe’s unseasonably warm weather
feature The continent is still seeing higher than average temperatures amid fears over climate change
By Fred Kelly Published
-
Climate activists arrested after throwing mashed potatoes at Monet painting
Speed Read
By Brendan Morrow Published
-
Climate protesters throw tomato soup on Van Gogh painting
Speed Read
By Brendan Morrow Published