Rare Captive Rhino Is Pregnant

Jan. 30 -- The birds do it, the bees do it, but it's awfully hard to get a Sumatran rhino to do it.

In fact, if the timing isn't right, the highly endangered animals, which can reach up to 1,800 pounds in weight, tend to get violent — not amorous — with each other.

"They're very solitary," explains Dr. Terri Roth, director of the Cincinnati Zoo's Center for Research of Endangered Wildlife. "When you put them in close contact, if the female is not receptive, usually the male will chase after the female, there's sometimes biting and it can get pretty hairy."

That's why the eight-month pregnancy of Emi, a, 11-year-old female Sumatran rhino on loan to the Cincinnati Zoo, is hailed as rare reproductive success. Emi has carried five unsuccessful pregnancies before, none of which lasted longer than three months. But this pregnancy is the longest yet and looks to be most promising.

If the baby is carried and successfully delivered after a full 16-month pregnancy, it would be the first Sumatran rhino bred and born in captivity since 1889 in the Calcutta Zoo.

Long Time Trying

"It's an extremely significant event," says Tom Foose, director of the International Rhino Foundation, which helped fund the effort. "We've been trying since the mid-1980s to reproduce this rhino in captivity. The fact that we're now half way through a pregnancy after so many frustrations and failures, is miraculous."

The birth would also help boost prospects for waning populations of the rhino. Only 16 Sumatran rhinos exist in captivity and less than 300 remain in the wild. Roth hopes that trainers at rhino sanctuaries in Malaysia and Indonesia might be able to apply what the Cincinnati team learned to help encourage more births.

"Clearly this single calf won't save the species," says Roth. "But what we learn may help in our collaborative work with conservationists in Malaysia and Indonesia."

Over the last 10 years wild populations of the Sumatran rhino, also known as the hairy rhino for its long, shaggy hair, have declined from rain forests of Malaysia and Indonesia by more than 60 percent. Most of the decline is due to poachers who hunt the solitary animals for their prized two horns.