Meet the rarest animal in the world — with only two of them still alive

Indian Express

01-08-2025

In a world of over eight million species, the idea that some animals exist in numbers you can count on one hand is both fascinating and heartbreaking. Among them, one holds a particularly tragic title. The Northern White Rhino is a creature that has become the global symbol of how close we are to losing parts of nature forever.
Once roaming across central Africa, the Northern White Rhino is now functionally extinct. Only two females remain — Najin and Fatu — under constant armed guard in Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy. The last male, Sudan, died in 2018, closing the door on natural reproduction. What's left of the species now rests in labs, where scientists race against time using in-vitro fertilisation techniques to try and bring new life from frozen cells and harvested eggs. The odds are slim. The hope, however, remains.
Yet the Northern White Rhino isn't the only species walking this tightrope between existence and extinction. Around the world, a handful of animals live lives so hidden, or in numbers so tiny, that they rarely make it to headlines but face similar fates.
Take the Vaquita, a small porpoise found only in Mexico's Gulf of California. With perhaps fewer than 20 individuals alive today, their future is darkened by accidental deaths in illegal fishing nets. Despite international bans, conservation efforts often feel like a race against poachers and time itself.
Then there's the Saola, sometimes called the 'Asian unicorn.' Discovered only in 1992 in the Annamite Mountains of Laos and Vietnam, it has rarely been seen since. With sightings so scarce, many locals and even scientists believe they've slipped into folklore. But evidence of their survival keeps hope alive.
The Javan Rhino is no less extraordinary, and endangered. With a population estimated at about 74 individuals, all living in a single national park in Indonesia, their entire species could be wiped out by a single natural disaster or disease outbreak. What stands between them and extinction is a thin veil of dense jungle and tight conservation controls.
And then, in the oceans, is perhaps the rarest marine mystery of them all: the Spade-Toothed Whale. No living specimen has ever been recorded. Scientists know of its existence only through a handful of dead whales that washed ashore over decades. The spade-toothed whale is a stark reminder that even in an age of satellites and deep-sea exploration, some creatures remain almost entirely unknown to us.
Each of these species, whether living in remote forests, oceans, or surviving under armed guard, tells a story of a planet on edge. The Northern White Rhino might be the face of extinction, but it shares this haunting stage with many others.
They are nature's rarest survivors and perhaps, in their struggle, they are the loudest call we have to protect what's left of our world.