In Upper Laos, the people know two species: the H?t, large like a buffalo, like javanensis; and the Sou, much higher, thicker, like an elephant, and a skin much more folded. That can only be the one-horned rhinoceros of India.
In the roof of the communal house of the village Dak Rao, I had noticed a small wooden casque. After several visits to the village, the people at last told me that it contained the skull of a rhinoceros. That was correct. the animal had been killed in 1933 by a villager. Only the skull remained, because the elders had given a sacrifice to appease the geniuses and after the sacrifice the skull must remain on the spot. The young hunter received a nice bull buffalo instead. But the sale of the horn, hide and bones bring at least six times as much to the people in Laos.
I believe that it was around 1930 that the small female rhinoceros died in the region of Chup, which was the last rhinoceros killed by a white person in Indochina.
A generation ago, a professional hunter from Laos went to live south of Mam Ray in Plei Kodil. He shot six rhinoceroses there.
Het
Sou
