Sumatran Rhinoceros - Taxonomy and Naming

Taxonomy and Naming

The first documented Sumatran rhinoceros was shot 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) outside Fort Marlborough, near the west coast of Sumatra, in 1793. Drawings of the animal, and a written description, were sent to the naturalist Joseph Banks, then president of the Royal Society of London, who published a paper on the specimen that year. It was not until 1814, however, that the species was given a scientific name, by Johann Fischer von Waldheim, a German scientist and curator of the State Darwin Museum in Moscow, Russia.

The scientific name Dicerorhinus sumatrensis comes from the Greek terms di (δι, meaning "two"), cero (κέρας, meaning "horn"), and rhinos (ρινος, meaning "nose"). Sumatrensis signifies "of Sumatra", the Indonesian island where the rhinos were first discovered. Carolus Linnaeus originally classified all rhinos in the genus Rhinoceros; therefore the species was originally identified as Rhinoceros sumatrensis. Joshua Brookes considered the Sumatran rhinoceros, with its two horns, a distinct genus from the one-horned Rhinoceros, and gave it the name Didermocerus in 1828. Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger proposed the name Dicerorhinus in 1841. In 1868, John Edward Gray proposed the name Ceratorhinus. Normally the oldest name would be used, but a 1977 ruling by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature established the proper genus name as Dicerorhinus.

The three subspecies are:

D. s. sumatrensis, known as the western Sumatran rhinoceros, has only 170 to 230 rhinos remaining, mostly in the national parks of Bukit Barisan Selatan and Gunung Leuser in Sumatra. Around 75 may also live in Peninsular Malaysia. The main threats against this subspecies are habitat loss and illegal poaching. There is a slight genetic difference between the western and eastern Sumatran rhinos. The rhinos in Peninsular Malaysia were once known as D. s. niger, but were later recognized to be similar to the rhinos on western Sumatra.

D. s. harrissoni, known as the eastern Sumatran rhinoceros or Bornean rhinoceros, was once common throughout Borneo; now only about 50 individuals are estimated to survive. The known population on Borneo lives in Sabah. There are unconfirmed reports of animals surviving in Sarawak and Kalimantan. This subspecies is named after Tom Harrisson, who worked extensively with Bornean zoology and anthropology in the 1960s. The Bornean subspecies is markedly smaller than the other two.

D. s. lasiotis, known as the northern Sumatran rhinoceros, once roamed in India and Bangladesh, but has been declared extinct in these countries. Unconfirmed reports suggest there may be a small population still surviving in Burma, but the political situation in the country has prevented verification. The name lasiotis is derived from the Greek for "hairy-ears". Later studies showed their ear-hair was not longer than other Sumatran rhinos, but D. s. lasiotis remained a subspecies because it was significantly larger than the other subspecies.