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‘The most eligible bachelor in the world’

Sudan is the last surviving male northern white rhino. Joe Shute meets the filmmaker sharing his lonely plight

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There is a small dusty patch of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya that is marked by 18 rocky headstones. On a plaque bolted to each is the name of a rhino that has been killed by poachers.

Nearby, past watch towers manned 24 hours a day by armed guards, stands – or, these days, more often sits – a mammoth two-ton herbivore munching the grass. He is Sudan, the last surviving male northern white rhino, and quite possibly the most famous animal on the planet.

Sudan is now 43 (or 100 in rhino years) and it is feared only has months left to live. As the last male of his species, he receives 40,000 visitors a year from all over the globe, Elizabeth Hurley and Leonardo DiCaprio reportedly among them.

Photo by AFP PHOTO / TONY KARUMBATONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images

Sudan is also a star of Instagram and boasts his own hashtag #lastmalestanding as well as a Tinder account, where he is described as the “most eligible bachelor in the world” and, inevitably, “horny”. Such is the interest in him that competing film crews are restricted to one visit a day.