As I am sure you have gathered by now the rhino is my favourite of all the living creatures. Living where we do I am fortunate enough to be able to see them as often as I want. Sadly the plight of the rhino has become extreme with poachers steadily destroying any chance of this species survival with their greed and the constant demand from the Far East for rhino horn.

This painting is of a black rhinoceros or hook-lipped rhinoceros. (You can see in the painting his mouth is shaped almost like a beak). The Black Rhino is native to eastern and southern Africa including Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini (Swaziland), Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Although the rhinoceros is referred to as black, its colours vary from brown to grey. Black and white rhino’s are different not in colour, but in lip shape and temperament. The black rhino also tends to be a little more grumpy and curmudgeonly than that of the white rhino. The black rhino has a pointed upper lip, while its white relative has a squared lip. The difference in lip shape relates to the animals’ diets. Black rhinos are browsers that get most of their sustenance from eating trees and bushes. They use their lips to pluck leaves and fruit from the branches, while white rhinos graze on grasses, walking with their enormous heads and squared lips lowered to the ground.

Except for females and their offspring, black rhinos are solitary. Females reproduce only every two and a half to five years. Their single calf does not live on its own until it is about three years old. Black rhinos feed at night and during the twilight hours of dawn and dusk. Under the hot African sun, they take cover by lying in the shade. Rhinos are also wallowers. They often find a suitable water hole and roll in its mud, coating their skin with a natural bug repellent and sun block. Rhinos have very sharp hearing, and a keen sense of smell, but not very good sight.

Black rhinos have two horns, the foremost more prominent than the other. Rhino horns grow as much as three inches a year, and have been known to grow up to five feet long. Females use their horns to protect their young, while males use them to battle attackers. The prominent horn for which rhinos are so well known has also sadly been their downfall. Many animals have been killed for the hard, hairlike growth, which is valued for medicinal uses in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The horn is also prized in North Africa and the Middle East as ornamental dagger handles.

Black Rhinoceros
Acrylic on canvas
100 X 100 cm