Eastern Black Rhinoceros

The eastern black rhinoceros is a three-toed mammal with a beaklike upper lip, and thick, plate-like skin around the shoulders, haunches, and parts of the head. The powerfully built animal has two horns on its head, with the front thinner and longer. The horns grow throughout the rhino’s lifetime and are used for diverse purposes including display, greeting, and defence. Despite the animal’s name, the black rhino’s skin is grey. Black rhinos are among the world’s largest land animals, measuring up to 3.75 metres from head to base of tail, and weighing up to 1,400 kilogrammes. Females are smaller than males.

Black rhinos occupy habitats from desert to wetter forested regions, with the largest populations in savannahs and valleys with abundant woody growth. Once ranging through much of central, eastern, and southern Africa, they are now scattered in tiny, highly fragmented populations in eastern and southern Africa, and Cameroon. Diceros bicornis michaeli has more curve to its horn, is leaner, and is the rarest of the three living subspecies of black rhinos. The black rhino is the last of two rhino species that have occupied the Serengeti region. The white rhino of central and southern Africa, the largest and most abundant rhino species in Africa, is thought to have gone extinct in the Serengeti about 3,000 years ago.

Behaviour

Black rhinos are browsing animals, using their prehensile lips to feed on the leaves, twigs, and fruits of low-growing leguminous herbs and shrubs such as Acacia. The rhino’s horns are sometimes used to uproot plants and break branches that are too high to be eaten directly. Rhinos are usually found within a day’s walking distance of water. However, if their food is moist, they can go for several days without drinking. Rhinos rely on their excellent hearing and sense of smell more than their reportedly poor eyesight.

The northern black rhino is most active early and late in the day, wallowing in mud and dust during the hottest part. Adult males are solitary, while females sometimes form small groups with calves and subadults.

Rhino Conservation

One challenge for rhino conservation is the animal’s slow reproductive cycle. A single calf is born after a gestation of 15 to 16 months. Intervals between offspring are two to three years or longer. Males and females can reproduce at five years old, but males usually cannot successfully compete for mates until they are at least ten. Rhinos can live 35 to 40 years.

In common with much African wildlife, threats to black rhinos include habitat loss and fragmentation. From a conservation perspective, the rhino’s most prominent feature, its horns, is also its least fortunate. The poaching of horns for ornaments such as handles for daggers, or use in Asian traditional medicine, has driven the black rhino close to extinction.

In the mid 1970s, the black rhino population in Serengeti National Park was estimated at about 700 animals. By 1993, after a dramatic rise in the price of rhino horns, there were an estimated five rhinos in the park. Since then, a few animals have emigrated to the park from Ngorongoro, aerial surveillance for monitoring and anti-poaching has intensified, and the Serengeti Rhino Repatriation Project has imported rhinos that were bred in South Africa. There are currently about 35 rhinos in Serengeti National Park—not enough to make the rhino a common sight, but, hopefully, enough to begin a recovery.