With his wide mouth planted squarely on the dusty floor, it is almost as if Sudan understands his plight.

A photograph of the last male northern white rhino has gone viral after being posted on Twitter in order to illustrate the meaning of extinction, reports The Telegraph.

Sudan is the only surviving male of the species and lives with the last two females on a wildlife conservancy in Kenya as scientists race to develop IVF techniques that might keep their lineage alive.

His image was posted on Twitter by Daniel Schneider, a biologist from Boston, who frequently highlights endangered species.

The message has been retweeted more than 39,000 times. Sudan was already the most famous rhino in the world.

He was featured in a BBC documentary, Sudan: The Last of the Rhinos, which was broadcast in June.

And he took to Tinder earlier this year to raise money for more research into using Assisted Reproductive Techniques to save the species.

“I don’t mean to be too forward, but the fate of my species literally depends on me,” read his profile.

The 44-year-old and his companions have failed to breed, not least because of their advanced ages.

The species was wiped out in the wild, killed by hunters, poachers and wars that extended across their natural habitat of Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Uganda.

Sudan was shipped with three other rhinos from a zoo in the Czech Republic to Kenya in 2009, in the hope that they would find it easier to breed on African soil.

They live under armed guard on the Ol Pejeta Conservancy.