Thank you, Zazu, for providing a good rhino quote. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want a rhino sitting on top of you either, especially if you were just a little bird like Zazu. See, the rhinoceros family is characterized by its large size. All of the members of this family are able to reach one tonne or more in weight, which is more than enough to easily squash poor Zazu. But they're thick-skinned, having protective skin up to 5 cm thick, so they'll be able to withstand Zazu's frustrated curses. There are two species of rhino native to Africa, and three to southern Asia. The African species are the white and the black rhinoceros, and the Asian species include the Indian, Javan, and Sumatran rhinos. Because I will be going to Africa and not to Asia, I will be focusing on the Black and White Rhinos.
The white rhino has huge body, large head, a short neck, and a broad chest. It can weigh over 7,700 pounds, stand up to 6.6 feet at the shoulders, and have a head-body length of 11-15 feet. The largest white rhino on record was a whopping 10,000 pounds. It has two horns on its head, with the front horn being larger than the rear horn and averaging about 35 inches, although it can reach up to 60 inches. They have only three toes on each foot and no knees! Its color ranges from yellowish brown to slate gray. As you may have noticed, those aforementioned colors are not white. It is thought that the name "white rhino" may come from a mistranslation from the Dutch word "wijd", which means wide and refers to the wide width of the rhino's mouth. White rhinos live in grasslands and savannas. They are herbivore grazers and prefers to drink twice a day if possible, even though it can go up to five days without water. It spends half of its day eating, one third resting, and the rest just doing rhino things like wallowing in mudholes to cool down. Even though it looks clunky and slow, it can actually run up to 31 miles per hour. White rhinos lives in herds called "crashes" that contain up to 14 animals, most of which are female because adult bulls tend to be solitary.
There are two subspecies of the white rhino, the Southern white rhino and the Northern white rhino. The Southern white rhino has a population of about 14,500. The Southern white rhino lived mostly in southern Africa, including South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Uganda. The Northern white rhino, on the other hand, is down to as few as four animals left in the wild. Complete extinction has been a real possibility since June of 2008, and only six are known to be held in captivity. The white rhino's sad decline is due mostly to habitat loss and poaching. Rhinos are poached only for their horns, which are bought and sold on the black market.
Wallowing!
The black rhino is native to Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Angola. It is not actually black, and differs from the white rhino in lip shape more than in color. Its lip is pointed, whereas the white rhino has a wide, square lip. It stands up to 71 inches at the shoulder and can be up to 12 feet in length. It weighs in at up to 6,000 pounds. It also has two horns on its skull, and the longest known black rhino horn was nearly 4.9 feet long! A third smaller horn sometimes develops. These horns are used mainly for defense, intimidation, and digging for food. It uses its long, pointed upper lip to grasp leaves and twigs when feeding, whereas the white rhino uses square lips for eating grass. Black rhinos are mostly solitary animals, although mothers and calves will sometimes congregate for short periods of time. The Black rhino is known for being very aggressive, having the highest rates of mortal combat recorded for any mammal: 50% of males and 30% of females die from combat-related enemies. There are four subspecies of the black rhino, including the South-central, South-western, East African, and West African rhino. The West African Rhino is extinct in the wild. Like the white rhino, the black rhino suffers from illegal poaching and from habitat loss. The sad part about all of this is that the life expectancy of a black rhino in the wild WITHOUT poaching pressure is up to 50 year, and they have no real natural predators once they are full grown. So they really shouldn't be in this much trouble...
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