Sumatran Rhinoceros

The Sumatran rhinoceros is a critically endangered rhinoceros and the smallest living rhinoceros species, though still a large mammal, standing 112 to 145 centimetres at the shoulder and covered in reddish-brown hair unlike its hairless relatives. It is the only living species in its genus, Dicerorhinus, and like the African rhinoceroses it carries two horns, a longer nasal horn typically 15 to 25 centimetres and a shorter, often stub-like second horn. Once ranging across rainforest, swamp and cloud forest from India and Bhutan through mainland Southeast Asia into southwestern China, it now survives in only a handful of small wild populations in Sumatra and Borneo, with an estimated total of fewer than 80 mature individuals remaining after the species was declared extirpated from Malaysia in 2019. It is mostly solitary and the most vocal of the rhinoceros species, communicating through calls as well as by marking soil and twisting saplings, and conservationists have pursued a decades-long captive-breeding program aimed at preventing its extinction.