Species Name Diceros bicornis

Family Rhinocerotidae

Order Perissodactyla

Distribution

The black rhinoceros can be found in Central and Southern Africa.

Habitat

The black rhinoceros lives in densely wooded areas with a lot of shrubs. It likes to exist near plenty of water and swampy land.

Numbers

The numbers of this animal are reducing. They are endangered because poachers hunt them for their horns and then sell them on the black market. By the late 1970s less than 30,000 black rhinos remained, and by 1984 this number had fallen to 9,000 and continues to decline with several populations now extinct.

Related Species

The white African rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simus) also has two horns but has no miniature ┐trunk┐, and therefore the lip is called square to differentiate it from that of the black African rhinoceros. The Indian (Rhinoceros unicornis) and the Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus) are also related but have only one horn.

Interesting Facts

Chinese people have long believed that the ground horns and the dried blood of the rhinoceros make useful medicine. One specific use for them was to increase sexual desire. The author, Rudyard Kipling, suggested that rhinoceroses have wrinkled skin because long ago someone played a joke on them as they went to swim. After they had taken off their skin so it would not get wet when they went in the water, cake crumbs were put into the loose skin as it was hanging on a bush. When the rhinoceros had finished swimming it put its skin on quickly. When the cake crumbs felt itchy, it rubbed against tree trunks and rocks until the skin became stretched and wrinkled, as it is today.