Critically Endangered
Black rhinoceros
Diceros bicornis
Black rhinoceros is a mammal in the family Rhinocerotidae (order Perissodactyla) — Diceros bicornis, recorded as Critically Endangered.
Appearance
Two horns on the skull are made of keratin with the larger front horn typically 50 cm (1.6 ft) long, exceptionally up to 135.9 cm (4.5 ft). The longest known black rhinoceros horn measured nearly 1.5 m (4.9 ft) in length. Sometimes a third, smaller horn may develop.
An adult black rhinoceros stands 1.32–1.8 m (4.3–5.9 ft) high at the shoulder and is 2.8–3.75 m (9.2–12.3 ft) in length.
Published measurements include mass about 36.
Range and habitat
As with many other components of the African large mammal fauna, black rhinos probably had a wider range in the northern part of the continent in prehistoric times than today. Unquestionable fossil remains have not yet been found in this area and the abundant petroglyphs found across the Sahara desert are often too schematic to unambiguously decide whether they depict black or white rhinos. Petroglyphs from the Eastern Desert of southeastern Egypt relatively convincingly show the occurrence of black rhinos in these areas in prehistoric times.
In 1992, nine black rhinos were brought from Chete National Park, Zimbabwe to Australia via Cocos Island. Parks and reserves have been made for protecting the rhinos with armed guards keeping watch, but even still many poachers get through and harm the rhinos for their horns.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Black rhinos are generally thought to be solitary, with the only strong bond between a mother and her calf. The adults are solitary in nature, coming together only for mating.
Courtship behaviors before mating include snorting and sparring with the horns among males. Another courtship behavior is called bluff and bluster, where the black rhino will snort and swing its head from side to side aggressively before running away repeatedly. Breeding pairs stay together for 2–3 days and sometimes even weeks.
In crisis
The species overall is classified as critically endangered (even though the south-western black rhinoceros is classified as near threatened) and is threatened by multiple factors among them poaching and habitat reduction. The IUCN estimates that 3,142 mature individuals remain in the wild. In the early 1990s the number dipped below 2,500, and in 2004 it was reported that only 2,410 black rhinos remained.
According to the International Rhino Foundation—housed in Yulee, Florida at White Oak Conservation, that breeds black rhinos—the total African population had recovered to 4,240 by 2008 (that suggests that the 2004 number was low). By 2009 the population of 5,500 was either steady or slowly increasing.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Black rhinoceros is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Black rhinoceros, Wikidata item Q95036. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
