China just leveled up its wildlife conservation game! 🌍 The China Three Gorges Corporation announced this week it successfully bred third-generation Chinese sturgeon through fully artificial propagation – a first for this “living fossil” species. Talk about science flex! 💪
Over 112,000 baby sturgeon (called fry) hatched in November 2025 at the Yangtze River Rare Fish Conservation Center. Researchers prepped the parent fish – both second-gen lab-raised sturgeon – with months of specialized diets and environment simulations. The result? A 95% fertilization success rate! 🎉
“This proves our second-gen sturgeon can thrive and reproduce in controlled conditions,” said conservation expert Jiang Wei. With this breakthrough, scientists can now scale up breeding programs to save the endangered species from extinction.
Fun fact: These ancient fish have swum Earth’s waters for 140 million years – outliving dinosaurs! China first bred captive sturgeon in the 1980s, with second-gen success in 2009. Now the third-gen milestone could help repopulate wild sturgeon through new “artificial-plus-natural” systems. 🐟→🌊
