Hello There

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Why is the White Rhinocerous not White?

As you can see from this picture of a White Rhino and her calf, they aren't really white they're sort of grey. So where does the "white" part of the name come from?
Well, the real name is "Square Lipped Rhino" because their mouths are sort of square. The original Dutch Settlers called them "Wijd Rhino", meaning Wide Rhino because of the shape of the mouth. And the English of course misunderstood the "wijd" to mean "white" and so the myth was born.
Another common myth about Rhinos is that they are short-sighted. That is also not true, Rhinos have quite good eyesight. But since their eyes are on the sides of their heads they don't have binocular vision, and they can't really see what is in front of them. So you could stand like one metre in front of a Rhino and it wouldn't see you (but it would most probably smell you), whereas if you're standing 50 metres to the side it would most definitely see you. I find it incredible that in this day and age Rhinos are still being poached to provide some old fool with a supposed cure for his impotency. That is why I really like reading stories like this one wherein three hapless poachers get ambushed by angry animals, and one of them ends up being poached by lions.

For more rhino pictures, check out my Rhino page
Next: The Leopard

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home