![]() Only to become critically endangered soon after people invented guns. In the time since (around 4 million years), humans and their ancestors have spanned the globe, wiping out all mega beats they could find, and surviving those killed by climate changes.Īmong the handful that was left were the rhinos.Īnimals who have survived countless ecological disasters including the expansion of humanity. Giant armadillos, mastodons, and… modern rhinos emerged around this time, as speciation between the grazing white rhino and the browsing black rhino occurred. How many black rhinos are left today? Numbers are on the rise again, but with only 5,500 remaining, they’re still at great risk.īack in the Pliocene, early hominids shared a space with sabre-toothed tigers and sloths the size of busses. Numbers dropped to 2,500 individuals and established the black rhino as critically endangered. In the 20th Century, European hunters and settlers set to work wiping out rhino populations for sport. ![]() The demand for rhino horn isn’t just in Vietnamese medicine. However, this has not stopped poachers from receiving $20,000 per kilo for African rhino horns. Rhino horn is made of simple keratin – the same protein as your fingernails – and contains nothing of medicinal value. The use of rhino horn in traditional medicines is a perfect example of how alternative ‘medicine’ is a useless waste of money at best and immensely dangerous and destructive at worst. In fact, it’s entirely false, has no scientific merit and is a dangerous and ignorant myth. Rhino horn is believed to be a powerful medicine used to treat feverĪt least, that’s what a lot of traditional Chinese and Vietnamese healers will claim. In contrast, the black rhino has a hooked, pointed upper lip that’s really great for picking at shrubs of different heights and selecting different parts of plants to eat. The close cousin of the black rhino, the white rhino, has a wide mouth for doing just this, and its name is derived from the Afrikaans for wide. Animals who clip grasses and forbs from the ground are grazers. Large herbivores can be loosely separable into two types of feeding behaviour. They’re not actually blackĪlthough the black rhinoceros is referred to as ‘black’, its colours actually vary from brown to grey. They are closer in size to the Javan rhino.Ī huge amount of money is being fed into their protection, but unfortunately, a whole lot more is being made on their exploitation. While huge in size, the black rhino is smaller than the white rhino, which is the largest of all rhino species. They’re phenomenally powerful and aggressive animals and can grow to 3.8m (12.5ft) in length and weigh as much as 2,900 kg. Black rhino are herbivorous and like to diet on over 30 species of leafy plants, as well as branches, roots and fruit. These animals diverged from their white cousins around 4 million years ago and took to browsing branches with their well-adapted lips. Males are known as bulls, while females are known as cows. ![]() They are solitary creatures, only coming together when mating, or when a mother is raising her calf. The variation of black rhino is of some debate by researchers, but there’s generally accepted to be between 7-8 subspecies, with 3 sadly already extinct. Sadly, they’re hard to find nowadays, on account of being hunted almost to near extinction for their protective horn. The black rhino is one of five species of rhinoceros still living today that are native to Eastern and Southern Africa.īlack rhinos are cute and playful when they want to be, but they can pack a serious punch. Of the two, the black rhino is significantly more threatened with extinction. The iconic Loxodonta elephants, the bizarre and elongated giraffes, and the quietly declining black and white rhinos. Of all the giant African mammals that roamed the plains, a mere handful remain.
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