40 Fun Facts About Black Rhinoceros

The black rhinoceros and its so-called white cousin are actually both which colour?

Grey is the real colour of both African rhinos. The black rhino probably got its name as a contrast to the white rhino, or from the dark mud that dries on its skin.

About half of all male black rhinos are thought to die from which cause, a record among mammals?

Fighting each other is thought to kill about half of all males, the highest rate of mortal combat recorded for any mammal.

Which unusual position, studied in an Ig Nobel-winning experiment, is used to airlift black rhinos by helicopter?

Hanging upside down by the feet looks alarming, but it lets crews fly rhinos into rugged country with very few roads. The study that checked its safety won a 2021 Ig Nobel Prize.

The red-billed oxpecker, which rides on black rhinoceroses, has a Swahili name with which meaning?

The rhino's guard earns its name. In one study, black rhinos carrying oxpeckers noticed an approaching human every time, against 23 percent of those without the birds.

Black rhino horn is made of keratin, the protein found in which parts of the human body?

Hair and fingernails are built from the same keratin as rhino horn, and there is no good evidence that swallowing any of it has health benefits.

Male rhinos are bulls and females cows, but a group of black rhinos goes by which collective noun?

A crash is the collective noun for rhinos, though you will rarely see one: adult black rhino bulls spend most of their time alone.

Running on its toes, a one-tonne black rhinoceros can charge at roughly what top speed?

34 mph, or 55 km/h, is the top speed on record, and a black rhino at full tilt can change direction quickly and run straight through scrub.

As odd-toed ungulates, black rhinos count tapirs and which other animals as their closest living relatives?

Horses, zebras and asses share the order Perissodactyla with rhinos and tapirs, although a horse runs on one toe per foot and a rhino walks on three.

Which feature, used for grasping twigs, gives the black rhinoceros its alternative common name?

A hooked upper lip works like a finger for plucking food, hence the name hook-lipped rhinoceros. The white rhino's mouth is square instead, for cropping grass.

Black rhinos spend the hottest hours of the day rolling in mud, which coats their skin with what?

Sunblock and bug repellent in one: a mud coat shields a black rhino's skin from the sun and from biting insects, while the wallow itself cools the animal down.

Africa's Big Five, a hunters' list, includes the black rhino, the lion and which other cat?

Leopard is the other cat on the list, which big-game hunters coined for the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot.

Adult black rhinos have few natural enemies, but lions and which other predators sometimes take calves?

Hyenas and lions occasionally take young black rhinos, and a calf stays with its mother for two to three years.

An adult black rhino normally fears no predator, but which reptile has occasionally killed one?

Crocodile attacks are the rare exception. An adult black rhino's size, thick skin and deadly horns otherwise leave it with no natural predators.

Rooted in the skin at its base, a black rhino's horn does what throughout the animal's life?

Keeps growing: a rhino's horn never stops, adding as much as three inches a year, and the longest have reached about five feet.

The white rhino, the black rhino's cousin, is said to take its name from an Afrikaans word meaning what?

Wide, or wyd, described the white rhino's broad, square mouth. English speakers are said to have heard it as white, and the other African rhino became black by contrast.

For much of the 20th century, the black rhino held which distinction among the world's rhino species?

The most numerous rhino on Earth still numbered about 70,000 in the late 1960s, before demand for horn cut the population by 96 percent between 1970 and 1992.

A black rhino's tube-shaped ears pick up sounds over vast distances because they can do what?

Rotate in all directions is the trick: each ear swivels freely to track a sound, and with an excellent sense of smell it gives a black rhino early warning of danger.

Asian rhinos cross rivers with ease, but the black rhino avoids deep water for which reason?

They swim poorly and can drown in deep water, so African rhinos cool off in a mud wallow instead of taking a dip.

The word rhinoceros, as in black rhinoceros, comes from two Ancient Greek words that together mean what?

Nose horn is the literal meaning, from the Greek rhis and keras, and the name has been in use since the 14th century.

Black rhinos snort when angry and scream when scared, but which noise does their alarm call resemble?

A sneeze is what the alarm call sounds like, while a relaxed black rhino makes a contented noise usually written as mmwonk.

Because it eats twigs and shrubs rather than grass, the black rhino is classed as which type of feeder?

Browser is the term for an animal that feeds on bushes and trees, and a black rhino's bite leaves woody stems cut at a clean angle, as if by pruning shears.

Black rhinos have been recorded eating up to 220 plant species but show a preference for which African trees?

Acacia species are a favourite, along with plants of the spurge family, and black rhinos tend to choose their food for quality over quantity.

Black rhinos often walk to water holes along the same trails used by which larger animals?

Elephants and black rhinos follow the same wide trails between food and water, and they compete for food too: beside elephants, black rhinos shift their diet.

After its numbers collapsed by 96 percent between 1970 and 1992, the black rhino holds which IUCN Red List status?

Critically Endangered has been the black rhino's listing since 1996, even though numbers have more than doubled from a low of about 2,400.

In the 1970s, Middle Eastern demand for black rhino horn exploded because it was carved into handles for what?

Ceremonial daggers called jambiyas were the prize, and Yemen was the major source of demand for rhino horn through the 1970s and 1980s.

The western black rhinoceros, declared extinct in 2011, was last seen in the north of which country?

Cameroon held the last western black rhinos: only ten remained there in 2002, and a 2006 survey of their range failed to find a single one.

Which naturalist named the black rhinoceros in 1758, probably working from a doctored Indian rhino skull?

Carl Linnaeus called it the double-horned rhinoceros, apparently from a one-horned Indian skull to which a collector had added a second horn.

Which country, home to Etosha National Park, holds Africa's largest free-roaming black rhino population?

Namibia's black rhinos roam unfenced communal land in the arid north-west, where local conservancies earn tourist income from keeping them alive.

Ol Pejeta Conservancy, the largest black rhino sanctuary in East Africa, lies on the equator in which country?

Kenya is home to Ol Pejeta, a cattle ranch turned wildlife conservancy that recorded the birth of its 100th black rhino in 2013.

In 2017, eastern black rhinos were moved to Akagera National Park, returning the species to which country?

Rwanda had lost its last black rhinos by 2007, so 18 animals were brought from South Africa, and five more later made a 30-hour journey from European zoos.

Shared dung piles, where black rhinos sniff out who else is in the area, are known by which name?

Middens work as a message board: the dung and urine left there tell other black rhinos an animal's age, sex and identity.

Because diet alters the chemistry of black rhino horn, investigators can test a seized horn to learn what?

Where the animal lived shows up in the chemistry of its horn, which helps law enforcement trace poached horn to its origin and penalise poachers more often.

Black rhinos kept in zoos can suffer a harmful build-up of which mineral in the liver, lungs and spleen?

Iron overload strikes because black rhinos are adapted to taking in little of the mineral in the wild, so a captive diet can supply more than their bodies can handle.

A study of a black rhino's retina found the supposedly short-sighted animal sees about as well as which creature?

A rabbit has similar visual resolution, and the researchers reckoned a black rhino could pick out a person about 200 metres away against the right background.

The BBC series Africa overturned a myth about black rhinos by filming them doing what at a waterhole?

Gathering to socialise was the surprise: the footage showed a group of black rhinos meeting at the water, upsetting the belief that the species is strictly solitary.

Ancient Chinese craftsmen prized rhino horn, now the black rhino's curse, for making which luxury items?

Wine cups were made from the horn, while rhino skin went into belts and soldiers' armour.

Black rhinos from South Africa were sent to Zakouma National Park to restore the species to which country?

Chad lost its black rhinos in the 1970s, and the animals sent to Zakouma are meant to found the northernmost population of the species.

In 1992, nine black rhinos from Zimbabwe were brought via Cocos Island to found a herd in which country?

Australia took in the nine animals, and after the males of the group died naturally, four more bulls were brought over from the United States.

Which rare oddity do some black rhinoceroses develop?

A third horn, smaller than the usual pair, sometimes develops. The front one is normally the longest, at around 50 centimetres.

In 2014, the Dallas Safari Club auctioned a permit to hunt one elderly black rhino for what sum?

$350,000 was the winning bid for a bull past breeding age, and the money went to the issuing government's anti-poaching work.