The Rhinoceros: A Most Frightful-Looking Veghead

When I first had the great privilege of seeing rhinoceroses in the game parks of Kenya and Tanzania in the 1970s, with their huge, bulky bodies and fearsome-looking horns, they seemed terribly frightful creatures. But although rhinos sometimes charge without apparent reason, their poor eyesight usually prevents them from successfully attacking humans or other animals. Besides, rhinoceroses are vegetarians. But rhino charges are truly impressive because of their size, amazing agility, and speed, which can reach 30 miles an hour. And those horns can potentially gore or strike a powerful blow on an unwitting victim.

Named for its large horns (from Greek “rhis” or nose plus “keras” or horn), which are actually outgrowths of thick, matted hair, the rhinoceros has been around since the Miocene era. Like the elephant, it is a pachyderm (which means “thick-skinned”). It once roamed through Eurasia, as evidenced by European cave paintings.

Since I first observed wild rhinos in Africa, their numbers have declined by a shocking 90% worldwide. Why? They’re very easy prey for poachers, and their horns command large prices in Asia when ground into powder as aphrodisiacs or fever reducers, or as decorative objects in the Middle East. And their habitats have been greatly reduced through illegal logging. All five species of rhino are endangered. Rhinos have no predators except for humans. It’s not difficult to kill rhinos at waterholes, where they go to drink each day, largely because of their poor vision. All rhinos now need the protection of national parks and reserves to survive.

Rhinos are odd-toed ungulates (with three toes per foot). Wherever rhinos roam, oxpeckers, also known as tickbirds, hitch a ride. As their name implies, tick birds eats the ticks on the rhino’s skin and also conveniently warn it of approaching danger. Egrets also like to snack on rhino parasites. The home ranges of rhinos often overlap, and they often share waterholes. Rhinos tend to be bad-tempered, maybe because they can’t see well, but they have excellent senses of smell and hearing. They communicate through snorts, bellows, grunts, squeaks and growls.

Female rhinos are very attached to their calves, in a close relationship that lasts up to four years. Eventually the calves leave their mothers behind, sometimes joining up with other females and their young, where they are treated with tolerance until they go off to live on their own.

Rhinos mark their territory with dung deposits. They are mostly nocturnal, resting during the heat of the day and gathering at waterholes in the evening, night and early morning. They can sleep both standing and lying down and love to mud wallow, which helps rid them of external parasites.

Where do rhinos live? They are found in Africa except for the north, and in south and southeast Asia. In Africa two species still (barely) survive, the white or square-lipped rhino and the black or hook-lipped rhino. African rhinos have two horns, and Asian rhinos have one.

“White” is a misleading name that comes from the Dutch “weit” or wide, and refers to the wide, square muzzle the white rhino uses to graze. Distinguishing features of the white rhino include a virtually hairless gray to yellow-brown hide with a pronounced neck hump and a long face. It lives in savannas in central and southern Africa that have shade and water holes or mud wallows, where it grazes on grasses. It is quite gregarious. Male whites can weigh over 1600 pounds. There are two subspecies of white rhino, the northern and the southern. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), only about four northern white rhinos survive in Democratic Republic of Congo because of the violence and political instability of the region as well as poaching. The southern almost disappeared in the early 20th century, but thanks to the protection of special farms and reserves, it was reintroduced and is now listed as Near Threatened, and is doing much better than the northern with a population of approximately 14,500.

The black rhino is smaller than the white rhino, with a less pronounced neck hump and a hairless, gray or brown colored thick hide. Unlike the white rhino, it is a loner. It prefers areas that have dense vegetation in eastern, western, central and southern Africa, where it browses with a prehensile upper lip specially adapted to eating leaves, buds, bushes, trees and plant shoots. Of the four subspecies of black rhino, three are Critically Endangered and one is Probably Extinct, according to the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). The WWF estimates that there are less than 4,000 wild black rhinos in existence, but happily, their population is slowly increasing.

Asian rhinos include the Javan and Sumatran, forest dwellers that are Critically Endangered, according to the IUCN. A third species, the Indian rhino, is doing only slightly better and listed as Endangered. Like African rhinos, Asian rhinos have been hunted throughout history for their horns, and their survival is also threatened by illegal logging and poaching.

In September 2006 a rare wild male Sumatran rhinoceros made the international news when it was photographed on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia. It was the first sighting in that area of a rhino after ten years of tracking by a Chicago-based conservation group called SOS Rhino. A Sumatran rhino is hairy and the smallest of all rhino species. It may also be the rarest rhino species on earth, with only about 400 known survivors in Malaysia and Indonesia. Sumatran rhinos are very difficult to breed in captivity, although there was one successful birth in 2000 at the Cincinnati Zoo of a rhino named Emi.

I didn’t realize, back in the 70s, just how rare the wild rhinoceros would become in the ensuing decades. Because of my unforgettable experience at that time viewing rhinos and other wild animals in their natural habitat, it’s clear to me that because of its curious appearance, the rhinoceros is a great tourist magnet. And tourism creates jobs for locals and helps discourage poachers and illegal loggers, so it’s a win-win situation. Fortunately, because of continuing conservation and anti-poaching efforts that include encouraging ecotourism by various international organizations such as the WWF and AWF (African Wildlife Foundation), a few African and Asian rhino populations are stabilizing and even increasing. But the rhinoceros is still in grave danger. As a “flagship” species, the rhinoceros desperately needs to be saved, because its survival will also help other endangered animal and plant species continue to exist in the complex ecosystems it shares with them.

www.wwf.org
www.awf.org