40 Fun Facts About Javan Rhinoceros

With no natural salt licks in Ujung Kulon, Javan rhinoceroses have been seen drinking what instead?

Seawater seems to give Ujung Kulon's rhinos the minerals that salt licks supplied elsewhere in their old range. Salt is an essential part of the species' diet.

The Javan rhinoceros has the smallest horn of any living rhino, but which animals normally grow one?

Only males carry the horn. Females are the only living rhinos that stay hornless as adults, growing at most a bump an inch or two high.

Which volcano's 1883 eruption emptied Ujung Kulon of people, leaving the Javan rhinoceros a refuge?

Krakatoa's eruption and tsunami wrecked the peninsula's settlements, which were never fully rebuilt. The rhinos moved back in while people stayed away, creating a haven for wildlife.

In which mainland country was the last Javan rhinoceros outside Indonesia shot by poachers in 2010?

Vietnam lost its final rhino in Cat Tien National Park, where the animal was found with its horn removed. The species was confirmed extinct there the following year.

When a Javan rhinoceros attacks, it thrusts its head upward and stabs with which body part?

Sharp lower teeth, long dagger-like incisors, are the real weapons of a Javan rhino. The horn is used for pulling down plants and pushing through thick vegetation, not for fighting.

Which is the only living species besides the Javan rhinoceros to have one horn rather than two?

Indian rhino and Javan rhino share a genus, which is why the Javan is also called the lesser one-horned rhinoceros. The other three living species all have two horns.

A Ta Prohm temple carving, possibly a Javan rhinoceros, is often claimed to show which dinosaur?

Stegosaurus believers point to plate-like shapes along its back, which are more likely leaves carved behind an animal such as a rhino. Its neighbours on the column are ordinary local wildlife.

Which big cat, now extinct on Java, shared Ujung Kulon with the Javan rhinoceros until the mid-1960s?

Tiger numbers dwindled until the Javan tiger died out altogether. Adult rhinos in the park now have no natural predator except people.

Bacuya, a shy young Javan rhinoceros, was the mascot of a 2023 youth World Cup in which sport?

Soccer's 2023 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Indonesia starred Bacuya, who wore the national team's red and white shirt. The name is short for Badak Cula Cahaya.

Like all rhinos, the Javan rhinoceros smells and hears well, but which of its senses is very poor?

Vision is the weak point: a Javan rhino is short-sighted and relies on its nose and ears. It is also skittish, retreating into dense forest whenever people come near.

Where does the IUCN Red List place the Javan rhinoceros, the rarest of the five living rhinos?

Critically Endangered is the last category before extinction in the wild. With the whole species confined to one small area, a single disease outbreak could be catastrophic.

The horn of a Javan rhinoceros is not bone but which protein, also found in human fingernails?

Keratin is the stuff of hair and nails, and there is no good evidence that rhino horn has any health benefit. Poachers kill for it all the same.

In which country has the horn of the Javan rhinoceros and other rhinos been traded for over 2,000 years?

China has prized rhino horn for its supposed healing powers for more than two millennia. Poaching to feed that trade is the main reason the Javan rhino declined.

Which daily habit keeps a Javan rhinoceros cool and rids its skin of parasites and insects?

Wallowing in mud fills a large part of a Javan rhino's day. It rarely digs its own pit, preferring to enlarge an existing hollow with its horn and feet.

Too rare and shy to follow, Javan rhinoceroses are studied mainly with which hidden devices?

Camera traps let rangers recognise each rhino without disturbing it. In 2012 conservation groups added 120 more to the 40 already watching the park.

The word rhinoceros in Javan rhinoceros joins terms for nose and horn from which classical language?

Greek supplied both halves: ris for nose and keras for an animal's horn. Only two living species carry Rhinoceros as their genus name.

Ujung Kulon protects Java's largest remaining area of which habitat, home to the Javan rhinoceros?

Lowland rainforest is dense, but the rhinos feed mostly in its sunny clearings, where saplings and shrubs grow within reach.

Javan rhinoceroses rarely gather, but which collective noun describes a group of rhinos?

Crash is the term, though this species seldom forms one: adults keep to themselves and only now and then gather in small groups.

As odd-toed hoofed mammals, Javan rhinoceroses share a group with horses and which other animals?

Tapirs, horses and rhinos are the only three living families of odd-toed ungulates. Rhino ancestors split from the horse line around 50 million years ago.

Which European country's colonial rulers made the Javan rhinoceros a protected species in 1931?

Netherlands officials in the East Indies granted the protection as the species neared extinction on Sumatra. The rhino has kept that legal status ever since.

Which long, pointed feature does a browsing Javan rhinoceros use to grasp leaves, shoots and twigs?

Upper lip is the tool: prehensile like a finger, it grips food after the rhino has pushed a sapling over to bring the foliage within reach.

Ujung Kulon, last refuge of the Javan rhinoceros, gained which international designation in 1991?

World Heritage Site status came from UNESCO a year before the area was formally declared a national park.

Roughly how much plant food is a single Javan rhinoceros estimated to eat every day?

About 50 kg (110 lb) of shoots, twigs, young leaves and fallen fruit go down daily, drawn from hundreds of different plant species.

The last Javan rhinoceros kept in a zoo died in 1907 at which zoo, shown under the wrong name?

Adelaide Zoo had exhibited the animal as a different, better-known rhino species. No Javan rhino is recorded as giving birth in captivity, and the oldest captive lived only to 20.

On a Javan rhinoceros, skin folds across the back of the neck and shoulders form which shape?

A saddle over the shoulders is one way to tell this species from its larger one-horned cousin, whose neck folds are heavier. The skin's mosaic pattern adds a scale-like look.

Which wildlife treaty has banned international trade in Javan rhinoceros products since 1975?

CITES placed the species on Appendix I, its strictest list, from the day the convention came into force. That outlaws cross-border sales of the animal and anything made from it.

Which temple built under King Suryavarman II has reliefs thought to show the Javan rhinoceros?

Angkor Wat has at least three rhino carvings, including one attacking the damned in a panel of heaven and hell. The species once lived in Cambodia.

Until 1908, Javan rhinoceroses were still being sighted in which tidal forest region of Bengal?

Sundarbans sightings ran from 1630 to 1908, though only six animals were thought to survive there by 1892.

Which wild cattle species competes with the Javan rhinoceros for feeding grounds inside Ujung Kulon?

Banteng feed in the same shrinking clearings, and as open feeding areas were lost the two species were pushed into closer competition. That rivalry may hold rhino numbers down.

A Javan rhinoceros's grey skin looks almost black when wet, but which colour shows inside its folds?

Pink skin lines the deep folds that circle the body behind the front legs and ahead of the hind legs.

Some forest peoples of mainland Southeast Asia thought Javan rhinoceros hide was an antidote to what?

Snake venom was the supposed target, giving the animal's skin a value of its own alongside the far more famous trade in horn.

Historically, hide from rhinos such as the Javan rhinoceros was made into what for soldiers?

Armor of rhino hide equipped imperial soldiers in East Asia, fitting for an animal whose own folded skin looks like plating.

Javan rhinoceros bulls mark territory by spraying urine and leaving piles of what?

Dung heaps work as message boards, yet Javan rhinos do not scrape their back feet through them as some other rhinos do. Scent is thought to spread poorly in wet forest.

The scientific name of the Javan rhinoceros refers to which island group including Java and Borneo?

Sunda Islands is the meaning behind sondaicus, the second half of Rhinoceros sondaicus. The species is sometimes simply called the Sunda rhinoceros.

What does Ujung Kulon, name of the Javan rhinoceros's last stronghold, mean in the local language?

Western End suits the place, a peninsula at the far tip of Java. The name is also translated as Point West.

The Javan rhinoceros appears on the coat of arms of which Indonesian province, home to Ujung Kulon?

Banten treats the rhino as its official identity animal, and on the provincial arms it stands for the people's persistence in upholding truth.

In medieval temple reliefs, a likely Javan rhinoceros serves as the mount of which Hindu fire god?

Agni riding a rhinoceros is a pairing unique to Khmer art, where the animal serves as the fire god's vahana, or divine mount.

Which rare ape, found only on Java, shares the forests of Ujung Kulon with the Javan rhinoceros?

Silvery gibbon troops live in the canopy above the rhinos, in a park that also shelters dholes, Javan lutung monkeys and the tiny Java mouse-deer.

Adult Javan rhinoceroses have no natural predators, but which spotted cat may take an unguarded calf?

Leopard attacks on untended calves are the main wild risk left on Java, though saltwater crocodiles are a rare danger too.

A Javan rhinoceros's horn is said to have the same structure as which part of a horse?

Hooves and rhino horn share one structure, built from the same material as hair and nails rather than from bone.