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  The New Paper 29 Nov 06
Zookeeper on rhino's mystery death: I'm so sad...
I haven't seen him since he attacked me last month
By Teh Jen Lee

LESS than two months after he charged at and knocked down a zookeeper at the Night Safari, Quilon the rhinoceros is dead. The two-tonne animal died on 20 Nov of an infection, the cause of which is still unknown.

Ms Fanny Lai, executive director of the Singapore Zoo and Night Safari, told The New Paper: 'We are very sad to say Quilon succumbed to an infection. The lab and necropsy results will be out in about a month.' A necropsy is a post-mortem examination done on an animal.

Ms Ernie Ismail, 24, who was attacked by Quilon on 5 Oct, apparently had not been told about his death. When we called her last night, she said: 'Nobody gave me a call, maybe because they didn't want me to get upset. 'I am still on medical leave. I have not seen Quilon since the attack.'

The incident took place when Ms Ernie was feeding the rhino at night and he got frightened by some camera flashes going off. The petite zookeeper, who has been with the Night Safari since 2002, was left with a broken left thigh bone. She said she missed Quilon, the rhino she had taken care of for over a year, as the injury had put her out of action for at least three months. Now she will never get to see him again.

Said Ms Ernie: 'Of course, I feel sad. But I know that everything that has life will die someday.'

Quilon, a greater Asian rhino, had been 13 years old.

LETHARGIC

Born in a Swiss zoo, he came to the Night Safari in 1995 as part of a breeding loan. After the attack on Ms Ernie, Quilon was taken out of public display.

It seems he had not been himself for a few days before he died. He had not been eating well and had been lethargic.

Dr Michael Hutchins, the executive director of The Wildlife Society and a professor at the University of Maryland in the US, told The New Paper that the rhino could have died from disease, a congenital condition, cancer or other factors. 'The post-mortem will take some time. Before the results are out, there is no way to draw any conclusions.

'Even with a necropsy, sometimes you can't determine what went wrong. Animal health is complicated, like human health. Animals can die for no reason at all, no matter how good the care given,' he said.

Dr M S Thayaparan, a programme officer at SOS Rhino, an international foundation dedicated to rhino conservation, said rhinos can live up to 35 years in captivity. But there have been previous cases of sudden deaths among captive rhinos, such as the 2001 case of five rhinos dying in the Sungei Dusun Rhino Conservation Centre in Selangor.

LESS ENDANGERED

'We don't have a lot of information about rhinos so it's possible for the animal to be sick but we don't know,' said Dr Thayaparan, who is based in Sabah.

While he was saddened by Quilon's death, these animals have been doing well in recent years. Greater Asian rhinos have become less endangered in the past 10 years, thanks to enforcement against poaching. A decade ago, there were only 600 of them in the wild, but now the number is around 2,700.
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