Sumatran Rhino

My only photos of the pair, I was not vey successful in getting them near each other

There are those who think that they were kept together too often. Or maybe "Meranti" was past breeding age anyway. Sad; I doubt if most people in Europe will get the opportunity to see Sumatran Rhino again.

I am pretty sure both the females they had were too old to breed anyway.

Seeing these for the first time was possibly my most memorable zoo experience ever as I had waited a very long time to see this species. I don't expect to do so again.

What year(s) were the Sumatran rhinos at Port Lympne? Would this have been the early 1990s?

The male ‘Torgamba’ arrived at Port Lympne in 1986 and was sent back to Indonesia in 1998.

The female ‘Meranti’ arrived at Port Lympne in 1988 and died there in 1994.

There was also another female ‘Subur’ who arrived at Port Lympne in 1986 but, sadly, only lived a couple of months.

Thanks much Tim.

Not a real succes-story but I realy didn't understand anyway why the Rhinos were sent to the UK with it's not so optimal climate. Instead it had maybe better to sent them to a zoo in Florida or California with a much more better climate !

There were Sumatran rhinos at the Los Angeles and San Diego Zoos and the White Oak Plantation in Florida. None of them were any more successful than the ones in England sadly, and the only reproduction occurred in Cincinnati, Ohio so climate didn't seem to matter much.

I know about the Sumatran Rhinos in the USA but I mean that in a warm climate they can spend more time in the larger outdoor-enclosure instead of staying most of the time in smaller indoor-stables.

John Aspinall was extremely keen to acquire Sumatran Rhino. When I met him he could talk of nothing else and it was clear to me he was already lobbying to be part of the proposed zoo-breeding scheme for the species. Given their excellent track record with breeding Black Rhino, there was no reason to suppose they wouldn't succeed with Sumatrans as well. Of course now we know differently but at the time, while the US zoos were having major problems just keeping them alive (the male Ipuh at Cincinnati was literally starving to death before just in the nick of time they discovered he would eat Ficus leaves) Port Lympne seemed to be having no such problem in keeping them in good condition, while (particularly) their indoor housing catered to their every need.

The 'What if' question is could they have bred them if they had received a reproductively viable female? We will never know but I think, quite probably, the answer would have been yes.