The story of one rhino’s identity

THE Royal Irish Academy’s journal Biology and Environment doesn’t carry detective stories but there’s a fascinating one in its current edition.

The plot concerns a long dead rhinoceros and the attempts of forensic pathologists to discover its true identity.

In 1864 Charles Trevelyan, finance minister in India, presented a rhino to Dublin Zoo. The historian Catherine de Courcy described what happened next. The animal was transported from Calcutta (now Kolcata) to London Zoo and, in due course, sent on to Dublin.