New infra-red footage released on Thursday captures hitherto unseen images of elusive Javan rhinos, the most endangered mammal in the world with less than 60 individuals believed to remain alive.

The grainy video was released by environmental group WWF which has been monitoring the rhinos for about 20 years in the rugged Ujung Kulon National Park on the southern tip of Indonesia’s Java island.

They show mothers and calves and a single large male wallowing in various mud holes, revealing behaviour researchers had never seen before and helping with the identification of individual animals.

In one clip shot at night, a female rhino chases a wild pig away from her mud hole.

“These rhinos are very shy. In the last 20 years our team has only seen rhinos two or three times with their own eyes,” WWF Asian rhino coordinator Christy Williams said.

He said WWF had previously operated still cameras in the dense jungle but the rhinos were often frightened by the shutter and fled the area or attacked the cameras.

Under an expanded project to film the animals, 34 cameras with infra-red triggers which take video every time they sense movement in the forest have been painstakingly installed in likely rhino haunts.

Bureau Report
Photo AFP