This puts them at risk, says Prof Thomas Hildebrandt, the director of reproduction at Leibniz IZW.

“If you have a very narrow gene pool, a virus, for example, can jump from one individual to the other because each individual is the same and the immune system acts like the same,” he explained.

Southern whites in zoos, on the other hand, have more diversity because of the way their breeding is carefully planned.

“We’re trying to apply this new technology to rescue Zanta’s genes and bring them back to Africa, so that we have a wider gene pool for the future,” he says.