Diet is presumed to be similar to other hornbills namely fruit,seeds, insects and small mammals and reptiles.

[5] The Visayan hornbill was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.

[6] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.

[7] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Buceros panini in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.

Cooperative breeding, wherein immature birds from previous seasons help out in feeding the female and chick has not been observed with this species so far.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature assessment from the year 2000 estimates that there are 1,200 individuals remaining in the wild.

Negros Island is one of the most deforested areas in the country due to its sugar industry and logging with most of its forests being totally lost before the 21st century.

However, there is conflicting data as the Philippine Biodiversity Conservation Foundation has counted 3,584 hornbill just on the island of Negros.

[16] The subspecies ticaensis was described as "abundant" in 1905, but almost the entire forest on the island was replaced by plantations and settlements in the 20th century.

It also occurs in the proposed Central Panay Mountain Range Park which contains the largest block of remaining forest in the Western Visayas, and the tourist destination of Twin Lakes (Mount Talinis).

[18] Talarak Foundation based on Negros has bred multiple pure blooded Visayan hornbills.