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Lovelorn rhinoceros is the last hope for his species
Published: 27 April 2007
Andalas the rhino is on a mission. He has been sent from Los Angeles Zoo to the wilds of Sumatra to defend his male honour and do what it takes to propagate his endangered species. In other words, he has been taken to the rhino equivalent of a singles bar and left to follow his natural desires.
It sounds like a simple mission, but of course rhinos aren't quite like the lounge lizards who inhabit sleazy Hollywood pick-up joints. The world's zoologists are, in fact, on tenterhooks. A special rhino sanctuary set up in the wild in Sumatra has failed to produce a single rhino baby since it opened in 1995. Efforts to get the species to reproduce in zoos has been, for the most part, an abject failure - something about being behind bars seems to kill a rhino's sex drive stone dead.
And so Andalas's mission is close to a last chance for the world's Sumatran rhinos, whose numbers - desperately depleted by logging and poaching - have dwindled to about 300. He was shipped to Indonesia in February and nothing has happened yet, largely because he is suffering from a monumental dose of jetlag.
He spent 52 hours on aeroplanes and another 12 hours on a truck being shipped out to the sanctuary. Two months later, he still isn't quite himself, according to a lengthy reportage in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.
Finding him a mate has also not been easy. The authorities at the rhino sanctuary have identified a female called Ratu, who almost came to grief a couple of years ago when she wandered out of the enclosed area and into a village where terrified elders mistook her for a mythical pig-man believed to be responsible for raping their women and tried to kill her. Police and sanctuary officials chased Ratu for hours, finally recapturing her after she fell into a sewage pit.
If that doesn't sound like a promising back story to the rhino romance of the century, Andalas's own background is fraught with its own fragility. His parents were among 18 rhinos taken from Sumatra to zoos in the West in what turned out to be a near-disastrous attempt to get them to reproduce.
When Andalas's father, Ipuh, arrived at Cincinnati zoo, he stopped eating, lost 260 pounds in six months and was considered 24 hours away from death when he suddenly expressed an interest in ficus leaves, which restored him to health.
Andalas, now five years old, will have to undergo a dangerous mating ritual if he wants to get close to Ratu. Marcellus Adi Riyanto, the site manager of the Sumatran sanctuary, told the LA Times there was a risk that Ratu will bite him with her razor-sharp canines and inflict serious wounds. "If the timing is bad, they fight when they meet," he said. "They might even kill each other."
Even under the best of circumstances, Ratu will goad Andalas into a fight. "If the male is strong enough, he will chase her," Mr Riyanto explained. And, at that point, she might just turn amorous and give in to his advances.
That assumes he'll even be in the mood to start with. The LA Times piece hinted darkly that Andalas's keepers will have to give a "guiding hand" to awaken his libido. It also described Andalas exchanging kisses with his male guardians - raising questions about his sexual orientation that it might be best not to ask.
No species likes to achieve pregnancy under pressure, and it seems Sumatran rhinos - the smallest rhino species in the world - are no different. But failure for Andalas's mission would have very serious consequences, not least because donors to the Sumatran sanctuary are growing impatient and ever more reluctant to part with their money.
"This is a second chance and probably also the last chance, to be honest," Nico Van Strien of the International Rhino Foundation told the LA Times. "If this does not work, I think it's going to be extremely difficult to convince the donors to keep on providing funds for the sanctuary."
Facing extinction
* The Sumatran Rhino, the smallest of all rhinoceros species, is found in Malaysia and on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra
* It eats young saplings, along with leaves, fruits, twigs and shoots. The rhinos consume up to 50kg of food a day
* Destruction of their habitat and poaching has killed 70 per cent of the population, leaving just 300 animals in the wild
* The WWF lists the species as critically endangered. Without successful breeding programmes, the Sumatran Rhino will be extinct within 10 years
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