Rhinoceros - African Vacations and African Safaris

The Rhinoceros - The Big Five in Africa

The rhinoceros (commonly called rhino for short) is any of five surviving species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. All five species are native to South Africa or Asia. Rhinoceros is also one of the genera in this family.

The family is characterised by: large size (one of the few remaining megafauna animals surviving today) with all of the species capable of reaching one tonne or more in weight; one or two horns on the centre of the forehead, and when two, aligned one in front of the other (not side by side); herbivorous diet; and a thick protective skin, 1.5-5 cm thick, formed from layers of collagen positioned in a lattice structure. Rhinoceros also share acute hearing and sense of smell, but poor eyesight over any distance. Most rhinoceros live to be about 40 years old. A male rhinoceros is called a bull, a female a cow, and the young a calf; a group of rhinoceros is called a "crash".

Rhinoceros, despite being herbivorous, are dangerous animals. In India and Nepal, the Indian rhinos cause the greatest number of human deaths each year, surpassing those caused by tigers and Leopards. They have been known to charge even working elephants carrying tourists through the jungles.

Several rhinoceros species became extinct within geologically recent times, notably the Giant Unicorn and the Woolly Rhinoceros in Eurasia; the extent to which climate change or human predation was responsible is debated. Current evidence indicates that they probably had survived many climate changes when modern man arrived.

Rhinoceros-like animals first appeared in the Eocene as rather slender animals, and by the late Miocene there were many different species. Most were large. One, Indricotherium weighed about 30 tons and (so far as is known) was the largest terrestrial mammal that ever lived. Rhinos became extinct during the Pliocene in North America, and during the Pleistocene in northern Asia and Europe.

The five living species fall into three tribes:

• The critically endangered Sumatran Rhinoceros is the only surviving representative of the most primitive group, the Dicerorhinini, which emerged in the Miocene. The extinct Woolly Rhinoceros of northern Europe and Asia was also a member of this tribe.

• There are two living Rhinocerotini species, the endangered Indian Rhinoceros and the critically endangered Javan Rhinoceros.

• The two African species, the White Rhinoceros and the Black Rhinoceros, diverged during the early Pliocene but the Dicerotini group to which they belong originated in the middle Miocene. The main difference between black and white rhinos is the shape of their lips. White rhinos have broad flat lips for grazing and black rhinos have long pointed lips for eating foliage. The name White Rhinoceros was actually a mistake for wyd (wide) because of their lips.

The African Bush Elephant shows a special aversion towards Rhino, to the point that elephants will attack them on sight. This behaviour is mostly observed with male elephants, especially the younger ones, and there have been cases of adolescent elephants who seem to enjoy this kind of fight.

A subspecific hybrid white rhino was bred at the Dvurkralv Zoo (Zoological Garden Dvur Kralove nad Labem) in the Czech Republic in 1977. Interspecific hybridisation of a Black and White rhinoceros has also been confirmed.

Rhinoceros Horn:

The most obvious distinguishing characteric of the rhinos is a large horn above the nose. The word rhinoceros comes from the Greek words rhino (nose) and keros (horn). Rhinoceros horns, unlike those of other horned mammals, consist of keratin, densely compacted hair.

Rhinoceros horns are used in traditional Asian medicine, and for dagger handles in Yemen and Oman. None of the five rhinoceros species have secure futures; the White Rhinoceros is perhaps the least endangered, the Javan Rhinoceros survives in only tiny numbers (estimated at 60 animals in 2002) and is one of the two or three most endangered large mammals anywhere in the world.

Rhino protection campaigns began in the 1970s, but rhino populations have continued to decline dramatically. Trade in rhinoceros parts is forbidden under the CITES agreements, but poaching is a severe threat to all rhinoceros species.

Big Five Game Lion, Rhinoceros, Buffalo, Leopard and Elephant