Black Rhino (Diceros bicornis): Facts, Habitat and Diet

What does a black rhino look like?

Despite its name, the black rhino is not black. Its thick, almost hairless skin is gray to brownish, and it often looks reddish, yellowish or dark depending on the mud and dust it has rolled in. The only hair is a fringe on the ears and the tip of the tail.

The best identification feature is the mouth. The upper lip is pointed and prehensile, meaning it can grasp like a short finger to pluck leaves and twigs. That is why the species is also called the hook-lipped rhinoceros. The head is shorter than a white rhino’s and is usually held higher, the ears are rounded and the back is more saddle-shaped, without the hump on the neck that white rhinos have.

Black rhinos have two horns made of keratin, the protein in hair and fingernails, not bone. The front horn is usually the longer one, typically about 42–128 cm (17–50 in), while the rear horn measures about 20–50 cm (8–20 in). Some individuals grow a small third horn. Females often have longer, thinner horns than males. See What are rhino horns made of?

How big is a black rhino?

Adult black rhinos weigh about 800–1,400 kg (1,800–3,100 lb), stand 1.4–1.8 m (4.6–5.9 ft) at the shoulder and measure 3–3.75 m (9.8–12.3 ft) in head-and-body length. Males are only slightly larger than females. Unusually large bulls have been reported at well over the normal range.

The black rhino is the smaller of Africa’s two rhino species. The white rhino is the largest rhino of all and can weigh twice as much. For a full breakdown of how the two differ, see white rhino vs black rhino.

Where do black rhinos live?

Black rhinos once ranged across much of sub-Saharan Africa outside the Congo Basin rainforests, from Chad and Sudan through East Africa to the Cape. Today they survive in scattered, mostly fenced or heavily guarded reserves. The great majority live in four countries: South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Zimbabwe, with smaller populations in Tanzania and several other countries.

Conservationists have moved rhinos to restock places where they had been wiped out, including Malawi, Botswana, Zambia, Rwanda’s Akagera National Park and Chad’s Zakouma National Park.

Black rhinos live in a wide range of habitats where there are plenty of shrubs and small trees: dense bushland, thickets, savanna woodland, forest edges and even the near-desert of northwestern Namibia, where a desert-adapted population survives on very little water.

Subspecies

Scientists usually recognize three living subspecies:

• Eastern black rhino (D. b. michaeli), mainly in Kenya and Tanzania.
• South-central black rhino (D. b. minor), the most numerous, from South Africa and Zimbabwe north to Tanzania.
• South-western black rhino (D. b. bicornis or D. b. occidentalis, depending on the authority), adapted to the arid lands of Namibia.

The western black rhino of West and Central Africa was declared extinct by the IUCN in 2011, after surveys in Cameroon failed to find any survivors. The north-eastern black rhino of the Horn of Africa disappeared even earlier.

What do black rhinos eat?

Black rhinos are browsers. They feed on leaves, twigs, shoots, bark, fruit and herbs, using the hooked lip to pull branches into the mouth and their cheek teeth to snip off woody stems. They eat a remarkable range of plants, more than 200 species in some studies, including thorny acacias and euphorbias whose sap or spines would deter many animals. They eat little grass.

They feed mostly in the cool of the morning, evening and night, and rest in shade or wallow in mud during the hottest hours. They usually drink every day when water is available but can go several days without drinking in dry areas. More on this in What do rhinos eat?

Behavior

Black rhinos are mostly solitary. The strongest bond is between a mother and her calf. Adults live in home ranges that vary from a few square kilometers in rich habitat to more than 100 km² (39 sq mi) in dry country. Ranges overlap, but dominant bulls can be territorial toward other bulls.

Rhinos communicate largely by smell. They spray urine on bushes and deposit dung in shared piles called middens, which they scrape and kick through so their feet carry their scent along their trails. Other rhinos sniff these sites to learn who is around.

Their eyesight is often described as poor, and they rely heavily on their keen senses of smell and hearing; their tube-shaped ears swivel to catch sounds. Black rhinos have a reputation for a short temper: when surprised, they may run off snorting or charge toward the source of the disturbance, sometimes at vehicles, trees or even termite mounds. Fights between rhinos, especially bulls, are a significant natural cause of death. See Are rhinos dangerous?

Oxpeckers, egrets and other companions

Black rhinos are often seen with oxpeckers, small birds that ride on large mammals and pick off ticks and other parasites. The birds also give loud alarm calls when people or predators approach, which may help warn a rhino with limited eyesight. The relationship is not purely helpful, though: oxpeckers also peck at wounds and feed on blood, so scientists debate how much the rhino really gains. Cattle egrets follow rhinos to catch insects disturbed by their feet.

Rhinos also shape their surroundings. By browsing heavily on shrubs and small trees, they help keep bushland open, and their dung middens become feeding sites for dung beetles and other insects. Black rhinos often follow paths made by elephants to travel between feeding areas and water holes, adding their own narrower trails through the bush.

Reproduction and lifespan

Black rhinos breed throughout the year. Pregnancy lasts about 15 months, one of the longest of any land mammal, and a female gives birth to a single calf weighing roughly 20–50 kg (45–110 lb). The calf can follow its mother within days, is weaned at about 18 months to 2 years and usually stays with her until the next calf is born, two to four years later. Black rhino calves tend to walk behind their mother, while white rhino calves usually walk in front.

Females first breed at about 5–7 years and males at 7–8 years. In the wild, black rhinos typically live 30–35 years, and in zoos they can live into their forties. The oldest known black rhino, a female named Fausta in Tanzania, lived to about 57.

Predators and threats

Adult black rhinos have almost no natural predators, although lions and spotted hyenas sometimes kill calves. The great threat is people. Rhino horn has been in demand for centuries, for carved dagger handles in Yemen and the Middle East and in traditional medicine in East Asia, even though there is no scientific evidence that it has any medicinal effect.

Black rhinos were the most numerous rhino species in the world during much of the 20th century. An estimated 70,000 or more lived in Africa in the late 1960s. Poaching then exploded: between 1970 and 1992 numbers fell by about 96 percent, reaching a low of around 2,400 in the mid-1990s.

Conservation status

The black rhino is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, and international trade in rhino horn has been banned under CITES since 1977. Strict protection, armed anti-poaching teams, intelligence work, community conservation and the careful movement of rhinos to new safe areas have allowed numbers to recover slowly. Recent counts by the IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group put the population at roughly 6,000–7,000, and the overall trend is increasing.

The recovery is fragile. Poaching still kills rhinos every year, especially in South Africa, and the species depends on expensive, constant protection. Some reserves have removed rhinos’ horns under sedation (dehorning) to make them less attractive to poachers.

Myths and facts

• Myth: rhino horn is made of compressed hair. Fact: it is solid keratin, the same protein as hair and nails, but it grows as a dense mass of keratin fibers rather than glued-together hairs.
• Myth: rhino horn cures disease. Fact: tests have found no medicinal effect; chemically it is similar to fingernails.
• Myth: black rhinos are black and white rhinos are white. Fact: both species are gray. The names do not describe their color.
• Myth: rhinos are nearly blind. Fact: their eyesight is weaker than that of many grazing animals and they depend mainly on smell and hearing, but they can see moving objects at moderate distances well enough to react to them.

Black rhinos and people

For centuries, travelers and hunters described the black rhino as one of the most dangerous animals of the African bush, and colonial-era hunting removed it from large areas. Today, the black rhino has become one of the best-known symbols of the fight against wildlife crime. Rangers who guard rhinos around the clock, sometimes at the cost of their own lives, are central to its survival.

Watching black rhinos in the wild is a highlight of many safaris, but they are shy, mostly active at dawn, dusk and night, and often hidden in thick bush. The best chances are at floodlit water holes in Etosha National Park in Namibia, in the open grassland of the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, and in parks and conservancies in Kenya and South Africa. Visitors should stay in vehicles or follow armed guides on foot, keep their distance and never share rhino locations on social media, since poachers can use such information.