The white rhino is grey, and nobody really knows where its name came from
White rhinos range from yellowish brown to slate grey, so the name clearly has nothing to do with colour. A popular tale blames English settlers mishearing the Dutch word for wide, a nod to its broad grazing mouth. Scholars have largely discredited that story, yet no better explanation has replaced it, and the label stuck.
Whatever its name means, the animal itself is enormous. Among living land mammals only the three elephant species outweigh it, and it is heavier on average than a hippo. Bulls weigh around 2,000 to 2,300 kilograms and measure up to four metres from head to rump, with a hump on the neck and a front horn averaging about 60 centimetres. Despite that bulk it can sprint at 64 kilometres an hour for short bursts and hold about 48 for a good while. It is also the most sociable rhino, using that square upper lip to crop short grass. The scientific name, coined by John Edward Gray in 1868, translates roughly as flat-nosed horned beast.
The species splits into two very different stories. The southern subspecies is a conservation success: roughly 16,000 lived in the wild in 2021, more than every other rhino subspecies put together, and South Africa alone held nearly 13,000. Reintroduced herds now roam Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Uganda and elsewhere.
The northern subspecies, once spread across East and Central Africa, is effectively gone. Four breeding animals were moved from a Czech zoo to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya in the hope they would breed. They did not. The last two bulls able to mate naturally died in 2014, and Sudan, the final male, was kept under armed guard against poachers until he was put down in March 2018 because of old age. Two females, Najin and Fatu, remain.
Some researchers argue the northern animals are a separate species altogether, parted from their southern cousins for at least a million years. The oldest definite white rhino fossils come from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, dating back about 1.8 million years.
Source: White rhinoceros
