Rhinoceroses of Beauval

White Rhino at ZooParc de Beauval

Every animal in Beauval Zoo is mesmerising, few more so than the rhino, a huge, lumbering, creature.

Rhino’s thick, hairless, skin hangs in folds, its massive barrel like body rests on short thick legs and dainty feet. Each foot has three toes, each toe ends in a hoof which leaves a footprint resembling the ace of clubs. Then there’s that gigantic head with its disproportionately tiny eyes and huge horn.

Beauval has critically endangered white rhinos from Africa and vulnerable greater one-horned rhinos from India. The white rhino has two horns, a large one in front, a small one behind. The Indian rhino has one horn.

No-one knows why it’s called the white rhino. One theory is that early English-speaking settlers in South Africa misinterpreted the Dutch ‘wijd’ (wide) for "white". It should perhaps be called the square-lipped rhinoceros. The upper lip is very wide. That and the hard, horny ridge on its lower lip makes for easy grazing. White rhinos graze on grass, walking with their enormous heads lowered to the ground. It needs up to eighty pounds in weight of food a day.

The rhino with a narrow pointed mouth is called the black rhino, maybe because it wallows in mud. Neither are black or white. Both are grey.

Beauval Zoo’s Indian rhino family is made up of a male, Sahib, two females, Saathie and Henna and little Anjali born in 2019. Sahib has deep folds on the shoulders and thighs, reminiscent of armour. Its resemblance to the triceratops is a red herring. Its closest relative is not the dinosaur, it’s the tapir and the horse.

An Indian rhino can move very quickly when aroused. Their charges have been clocked at thirty miles an hour. Despite their bulk, they are nimble and can jump or change direction quickly.

Dürer’s rhino woodcut

It’s almost impossible to see an Indian rhino without thinking of Dürer’s incredible woodcut. Even more incredible is that he had never seen a rhino. He worked from the description of someone who had.

Rhinos are prone to sunburn which is why they are often seen submerged in water. Sunburn! Considering its natural habitat, you can’t help thinking nature slipped up there.

As annoyed as we are when bitten, the rhino is happy when a bird lands on its back to pick off pesky parasites.

What characterises a rhino? Its horn. A rhino is barely a rhino without its horn. An adult white rhino has the longest horn of any rhino species in the world. It can reach five feet and can grow three inches a year.

Although its evolution is a mystery, today, horns are used for protecting calves, for foraging and for digging for water. Males use their horns during disputes over territory and dominance. Its removal means a bull has no status.

For starters, it’s not a horn. A horn is bone. The rhino’s is not bone, it’s keratin, which, like human nails, grows out of the skin. Whatever it is, it’s a liability that’s for sure. Rhinos have been hunted for thousands of years for the mythical magical powers people believe their horns possess.

The rhino’s only predator is man. Horns fetch up to £50k per kilo on the black market, more than gold. Vietnam is the largest market. People grind horns to dust believing erroneously it is an aphrodisiac or has therapeutic qualities. They might just as well eat human toe nails. South Africa banned the sale of rhino horn in 2009 but sadly, the ban was overturned in a court case in 2017.

Rhinos are easily poached. They are killed while they drink at water holes. Even in captivity, zoos have to be vigilant. In 2017, in Thoiry Zoo, not far from Paris, poachers shot a four year old white rhino and removed his horn with a chainsaw.

In 1994 Jean-Marie Chauvet and his two caving friends felt a slight breeze coming out of a hole in the rocks and unblocked an entrance to a cave which they found out later had been covered by a landslide 29,000 years ago.

They descended by ladder and found themselves in a vast chamber with a very high roof and walls covered with paintings of animals including a pair of woolly rhinoceroses butting horns. The world’s first artists painted the world’s first paintings 37,000 years ago. You can see some of these paintings on the Chauvet-Vallon Pont-d'Arc Cave, Ardèche Unesco website.

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