rhinoceros

rhinoceros, (family Rhinocerotidae), any of five or six species of giant horn-bearing herbivores that include some of the largest living land mammals. Only African and Asian elephants are taller at the shoulder than the two largest rhinoceros species—the white, or square-lipped, rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum), which some divide into two species (northern white rhinoceros [C. cottoni] and southern white rhinoceros [C. simum]), and the Indian, or greater one-horned, rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis). The white rhinoceros and the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) live in Africa, while the Indian rhinoceros, the Javan rhinoceros (R. sondaicus), and the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) live in Asia. The precarious state of the surviving species (all but one are endangered) is in direct contrast to the early history of this group as one of the most successful lineages of hoofed mammals. Today the total population of all the rhinoceros species combined is probably fewer than 30,000. Rhinoceroses today are restricted to eastern and southern Africa and to subtropical and tropical Asia.

Rhinoceroses are characterized by the possession of one or two horns on the upper surface of the snout; these horns are not true horns but are composed of keratin, a fibrous protein found in hair. Modern rhinoceroses are large animals, ranging from 2.5 metres (8 feet) long and 1.5 metres (5 feet) high at the shoulder in the Sumatran rhinoceros to about 4 metres (13 feet) long and nearly 2 metres (7 feet) high in the white rhinoceros. Adults of larger species weigh 3–5 tons. Rhinoceroses are noted for their thick skin, which forms platelike folds, especially at the shoulders and thighs. All rhinos are gray or brown in colour, including the white rhinoceros, which tends to be paler than the others. Aside from the Sumatran rhinoceros, they are nearly or completely hairless, except for the tail tip and ear fringes, but some fossil species were covered with dense fur. The feet of the modern species have three short toes, tipped with broad, blunt nails.

Most rhinoceroses are solitary. Individuals usually avoid each other, but the white rhinoceros lives in groups of up to 10 animals. In solitary species the home territory is crisscrossed with well-worn trails and often marked at the borders with urine and piles of dung.

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Rhinoceroses have poor eyesight but acute senses of hearing and smell. Most prefer to avoid humans, but males, and females with calves, may charge with little provocation. The black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) is normally ill-tempered and unpredictable and may charge any unfamiliar sound or smell. Despite their bulk, rhinoceroses are remarkably agile; the black rhinoceros can attain a speed of about 45 km (30 miles) per hour, even in thick brush, and can turn around rapidly after missing a charge. Like elephants, rhinoceroses communicate using infrasonic frequencies that are below the threshold of human hearing. The use of infrasonic frequencies is likely an adaptation for rhinoceroses to keep in touch with each other where they inhabit dense vegetation and probably for females to advertise to males when females are receptive to breeding.

Rhinoceroses are by far the largest of the perissodactyls, an order of hoofed mammals that also includes the horses and zebras. One of the features of very large body size in mammals is a low reproductive rate. In rhinoceroses, females do not conceive until about six years of age; gestation is long (16 months in most species), and they give birth to only one calf at a time. The period of birth between calves can range from 2 to 4.5 years. Thus, the loss of a number of breeding-age females to poachers can greatly slow the recovery of rhinoceros populations. However, an Indian rhinoceros female will conceive again quickly if she loses her calf. In this species tigers kill about 10–20 percent of calves. Tigers rarely kill calves older than 1 year, so those Indian rhinoceroses that survive past that point are invulnerable to nonhuman predators.

The three Asian species fight with their razor-sharp lower outer incisor teeth, not with their horns. In Indian rhinoceroses such teeth, or tusks, can reach 13 cm (5 inches) in length among dominant males and inflict lethal wounds on other males competing for access to breeding females. The African species, in contrast, lack these long tusklike incisors and instead fight with their horns.

The rhinoceros’s horn is also the cause of its demise. Powdered rhinoceros horn has been a highly sought commodity in traditional Chinese medicine—not as an aphrodisiac, as is often widely reported, but as an antifever agent. Substitute agents have been found, particularly pig bone and water buffalo horn, but rhinoceros horn commands tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram in Asian markets. Today poaching remains a serious problem throughout the range of all species of rhinoceros.

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The term rhinoceros is sometimes also applied to other, extinct members of the family Rhinocerotidae, a diverse group that includes several dozen fossil genera, among them the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis). Early rhinoceroses resembled small horses and lacked horns. (Horns are a relatively recent development in the lineage.) The largest land mammal ever to have lived was not an elephant but Indricotherium, a perissodactyl that was 6 metres (20 feet) long and could browse treetops like a giraffe.