Your next Tinder match: Sudan the northern white rhino

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.

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"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."