Sumatran Rhino Photographed in Malaysia
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 3rd, 2007
Maybe those footprints photographed in February 2006, were significantly those of a Sumatran rhino and not a Johor Bigfoot or Orang Dalam, as it turns out.
A Sumatran rhinoceros has been photographed in peninsular Malaysia in the first sighting for more than a decade, raising hopes the animal can avoid extinction, a report said Sunday.
The New Straits Times said the image, captured by a camera trap, snapped just a small part of the rhino but experts declared the wrinkly and folded thigh was unmistakable.Rhino footprints were last found in southern Johor state in 2001 but it was only in 1994, when a stray animal wandered out of a forest in northern Perak, that the animal was last sighted in the wild, according to the newspaper.
The report did not reveal where the rhino was snapped, but said the photo was taken in a wildlife corridor targeted by the Wildlife and National Parks Department which also spotted elephants, sun bears and the bison-like gaur.
“We’re going back to areas where the rhinos were once recorded, looking for more signs and taking samples,” said Siti Hawa Yatim, head of the department’s biodiversity conservation division.
“We’re also looking for doomed animals — individuals alone in a vast area which cannot survive without companions.”World Wildlife Fund Malaysia announced earlier this year that it had captured video footage of the extremely rare Borneo sub-species of the critically-endangered Sumatran rhino.
The footage, taken in a forest in Malaysia’s Sabah state on Borneo island, showed a rhino eating, peering through jungle foliage and sniffing the automatic video camera equipment used to shoot it.
The Sumatran rhinoceros is one of the world’s most endangered species with only small numbers left on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Sabah and peninsular Malaysia, according to the WWF.The Bornean sub-species is the rarest of all rhinos, distinguished from other Sumatran rhinos by its relatively small size, small teeth and distinctive shaped head.
WWF says scientists estimate there are only between 25 and 50 of the Bornean sub-species left.AFP source
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
HI Loren, Great news! Lets hope that those who are in power to do so will help save this animal! If there are only 25 to 50 left, I hope time is not wasted…i.e. put politics aside and save a very important, rare creature.
You just talked about wanting to see Sumatran Rhinos in malaysia in NYC, OOOOOOOOOOH the Irony.
Great News, Loren!!!
Let’s keep our fingers crossed!!!
YAY! Let’s hope the powers that be do all they can to save this precious animal.
I remember seeing that picture awhile ago, and was able to find a copy through Google that seems to have a date from back in April on it. I think this story is a repeat.
The Javan and Sumatran rhino appear to be critically endangered in Thailand and other countries in SE Asia.