213 Lynx, n. s. (Praha), 51: 213–218 (2020). ISSN 0024-7774 (print), 1804-6460 (online) Earless Diceros bicornis in the Etosha National Park, Namibia (Perissodactyla: Rhinocerotidae) Ušíprostí nosorožci černí (Diceros bicornis) v Národním parku Etoša, Namibie (Perissodactyla: Rhinocerotidae) Petr BENDA 1,2,3 , Jaroslav ČERVENÝ 3 , Seth J. EISEB 4,5 & Marcel UHRIN 6 1 Department of Zoology, National Museum (Natural History), Václavské nám. 68, CZ–115 79 Praha 1, Czech Republic; petr.benda@nm.cz 2 Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Viničná 7, CZ–128 44 Praha 2, Czech Republic 3 Department of Game Management and Wildlife Biology, Czech University of Life Sciences, Kamýcká 1176, CZ–165 21 Praha 6, Czech Republic 4 Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia 5 National Museum of Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia 6 Department of Zoology, Institute of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, P. J. Šafárik University, Šrobárova 2, SK–041 54 Košice, Slovakia received on 15 November 2020 Abstract. The syndrome of ear pinnae absence was recorded in three individuals of the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) among 71 observed (4.2%) in the Etosha National Park, Namibia, during eight visits in 2013–2020. In two cases, the syndrome comprised bilateral absence of the pinna and certain damage of the tail, while in one case, only unilateral lack of the ear pinna was recorded without any damage of the other pinna and tail. Key words. Black rhinoceros, syndrome of ear pinnae absence, southern Africa. The black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis (Linnaeus, 1758) is an iconic representative of the highly endan- gered organisms. Its numbers in the wild dropped significantly during a few decades before 1990, just to a critical minimum enabling the survival of the species (berger 1994). Due to effective protection measures, the slowly recovering populations of the black rhino in the wild have recently exceeded 5,000 individuals (knight 2018); about a third of the global number of this rhino and its most viable wild populations occur in Namibia. The core area of this occurrence is in the Etosha National Park, where the number of black rhinos approaches one thousand (although the exact number is not freely published due to security reasons). The indigenous Namibian populations of the black rhinoceros used to be considered parts of the south- African taxa (groves 1967, du toit 1987, hillman-smith & groves 1994, emslie & adcock 2013), either of the nominotypical form D. b. bicornis (Linnaeus, 1758) described from the Cape of the Good Hope, or of the subspecies D. b. minor (Drummond, 1876), described from Zululand (zukowsky 1964). However, these populations are currently regarded to be a subspecies of its own, D. b. occidentalis (Zukowsky, 1922), doi: 10.37520/lynx.2020.014