51. Day 17 (Sep 1) – Rhinoceros

The most elusive member of the big 5 on our safari turned out to be the rhinoceros.  By the end of our first full day of game drives (and thus 3 drives, two afternoon-evening and one morning drive we had seen four of the big five (cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, and lion).  Only the rhinoceros remained to be seen to give our safari a rousing success (sarcasm warning).  And it wasn’t until the afternoon of our last full day of rides (#5) that our driver and spotter pulled out all the stops and drove us to a good sighting of the rhinoceros.  My own theory is that they knew where the rhinos were all the time – they just wanted to give some drama to our game drives and keep us interested (ysr).

The rhino is a most improbable animal.  There are five different rhinoceros species currently with two of them in Africa and three in Asia.   We’ve all seen them in zoos but I’ve never before thought of what it takes to get them to a zoo.  If you want a wonderful story about that, and about conservation efforts generally for the rhinoceros in Nepal (involving one of the Asian Rhinoceros species) read The Soul of the Rhino by Hemanta R. Mishra.  You will never be able to see a rhinoceros in a zoo again without thinking of the amazing efforts it takes to provide the zoo with that animal.

The rhinoceros is a very large animal (we’ll talk about size variations later) with two horns on its face between the eyes, and moves in a fairly slow gait.  Look at this video for a sense of that.

Link to video: http://youtu.be/0zEEf-jrtJI

The slow ambling gait they have in zoos is not simply a factor of them being confined to a small area (small in comparison to the vastness of the game reserves and parks in which they are found in the wild).  They do tend generally to walk quite slowly.  This is a factor principally of their enormous size.  Another aspect of this is that a rhinoceros that has been anesthetized (for such purposes as being fitted with tracking devices) has to be turned every 7 minutes or so to prevent destruction of internal organs.  However, the rhinoceros can (and does) charge at a fair fast rate of around 35 miles per hour.  The charge, however, is not as dangerous as might otherwise be thought because the rhinoceros also has very poor eyesight. 

The animal we saw in South Africa was the so-called Black Rhinoceros, whose color is mainly brown or grey, just like the White Rhinoceros.  And while they are not typically territorial, they usually are found only in fairly small groups or solitarily.

Rhino Group - 1

Rhino Group - 2

The principal difference between the black and the white rhinoceros is their jaw and their size.  The guide books say the small black rhino is hook-lipped while the large white rhino is square lipped.  These rhinos that we saw had hooked lips – when viewed from the side – that’s the skin that is hanging over – or so we were told.  The difference in lips also makes for a difference in diet.  Black rhinos feed by browsing while white rhinos feed by grazing and thus the black rhino holds its head higher than the white rhino.  This distinction, though, can only be made if you have the two species together, which we did not.

While we’re on the subject of skin, the rhino’s skin is quite tough, thickly layered, and fairly loose.  The thick skin protects the rhino from thorns and sharp grasses but does provide a nice habitat for mites and ticks.  Apparently you can sometimes see a bird on the back of a rhino, eating these parasites.  In the photo below of the seemingly posing rhino, observe what appear to be two nearly vertical very short shadows, one about half way from the head and the other another ¼ of the way towards the rear. 

Rhino Posing with ????

If you enlarge the photo you can see that these are shadows caused by birds, and the photo below, taken a minute or so earlier, clearly shows a bird on the back of the rhino.

Rhino with Birds

While baby rhinos and very young adults are subject to being attacked by lions and crocodiles, the adult is only very rarely attacked by a crocodile and not at all by lions.  So, you might ask, what animal does attack the rhino?  Unfortunately it is only one species, the not-so-wise homo sapiens sapiens.  Is it because rhino meat is so delicious?  No.  It’s because of the horn.

The horn of the rhino, one of the common features in each of the species, is unique among mammals, in that it has no boney core but consists entirely of keratin, a family of fibrous structure proteins that makes up the outer layer of human skin as well as hair and nails.  While some rhino horns find their way into dagger handles in Yemen and Oman, their principal “use” is in traditional Asian medicine.  The common misconception is that it is an aphrodisiac but rather it is prescribed in powdered form, for fevers and convulsions.  It is considered by many practitioners as a life-saving medicine although there are no studies that confirm this.

A horn can fetch close to $250,000.  This, of course, leads to poaching and often the rhinos are killed only for the horn – the rest of the carcass is just left.  There are many efforts made to stop poaching including removing the horn from rhinos in the wild, thereby rendering them undesirable to poachers.  And an ingenious system aimed at stopping poaching was described in the following article.  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/dye-and-poison-stop-rhino-poachers/  However it now appears that this method doesn’t really work.  

Of course one of the questions that arises with rhinos is where does a 1 to 3 ton mammal hide.  And as you can see in this picture, they actually can be fairly difficult to spot in the bush.

Rhino Semi-Hidden

Link to Full Resolution Photos/Videos

Next up: Lions (no tigers and no bears)