Rhinoceros
The rhinoceros is one of several kinds of large pachydermatous herbivorous mammals of Africa and Asia, equipped with one or two nasal horns, actually composed of compressed hair.
Rhinoceroses have poor vision but good senses of smell.
Five sorts are in existence today, but all with greatly diminished ranges; all are threatened with extinction due to poaching, as their horns command enormous prices, being believed to have aphrodisiac properties. The legend of the unicorn is believed by some to have been based on seeing some sort of rhinoceros.
- White or square-lipped rhinoceros (2-horned, Africa) is the largest variety.
- Black rhinoceros (2-horned, Africa), renowned for its pugnacity.
- Indian rhinoceros (1-horned, India and Nepal).
- Sumatran rhinoceros (2-horned, Sumatra, Indo-China and Indonesia) is the smallest variety, and unlike the others has a hairy pelt.
- Javan rhinoceros (1-horned, Java and Vietnam) is the rarest large land mammal in the world; less than sixty survive.
A number of extinct varieties are also known, notably the woolly rhinoceros of the Ice Age, which cohabited with the Woolly Mammoth. Several frozen corpses of this animal have been discovered in the Siberian permafrost.
