Rhino - The Colossal Mammal / Documentary (English/HD)

Our planet is blessed with a vast variety of exotic animals. While the sea is filled with our planet’s largest creatures, on land, some mammals also grow to incredible sizes and amass so much weight. Among these are the elephant being the heaviest and then the rhinoceros coming in second place. Being the two heaviest land animals, it is not uncommon to find these two sometimes at loggerheads. Another common sight is seeing a rhino vs. a hippo or group of buffaloes fighting over watering holes.

A rhino is so massive to the extent that it can attack and easily flip a car and its occupants. By the way, do you know that hippos cause more human deaths per year than rhinos? You would be shocked at the wide margin, but that is a discussion for another section of this video. The rhinoceros has a distinctive physical characteristic from which it derives its name. Having its origin in Latin and Greek, the name literally means ‘nose horn’.

Massive and intimidating, the rhino has a large head with one or two horns depending on the species. Supported by four short legs, it has a thick hairless skin which is like body armor in areas such as its shoulders and thighs. While this barrel-shaped beast looks like ancient creatures such as the extinct triceratops dinosaur, surprisingly, its closest living relatives however, are horses and tapirs. There are five species of rhinos all of which are categorized based on skin color and where they may be found. We’ll talk more about that later in this video, for now; let’s examine just how massive these gigantic horned mammals can get.

Of the five species of rhinos, the Sumatran rhino is the smallest as it would often measure 5 feet/1.5 meters tall at shoulder level and 8 feet/2.4 meters in length. The largest species however is the White Rhino which could grow to lengths measuring 13 feet/4 meters and stand tall at 6.5 feet / 2 meters at the shoulder level.

In terms of weight, the rhinoceros equally packs a robust weight that is commensurate with its lumbering large appearance. A fully grown rhino weighs between 3 and 4 tons! That is indeed, a respectable weight to carry around on those short, sturdy legs!

Before we consider habitats and locations where the rhinoceros can be found, there is the need to fulfill the earlier promise of naming all five species of the rhinoceros. These are: the White Rhino which is also known as the ‘square-lipped rhino’, the Black Rhino which is also known as ‘hook-lipped rhino’, the Indian Rhino also known as Greater One-Horned Rhino, Javan Rhino, and Sumatran Rhino. These five species can be found on only two continents of the world – Africa and Asia.

The Black and White Rhino are also sometimes called African Rhinos as they are predominantly found in the African continent in countries such as Ethiopia, Angola, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa where the largest population of all Rhino species can be found. The Greater One-Horned Rhino also known as the Indian Rhino is native to India and Nepal, while the Javan and the Sumatran Rhino are both found in Indonesia and Malaysia.

In these various countries and continents, the rhinoceros prefer floodplains, grasslands, rainforests, and swamps or marshes. Interestingly, Europe also had a certain kind of wooly Rhino which became extinct during the Pleistocene.

Narrator: Larry G. Jones

Видео Rhino - The Colossal Mammal / Documentary (English/HD) канала Jinzo X