Spectacular up-close rhino sighting

I usually don’t like posting about our rhino sightings, because rhinos are so endangered, and so threatened (not ours in particular, but all rhinos in general).

Our anti-poaching protection units are very vigilant though, and as you can see, they have been de-horned (which we do very regularly), so this makes them totally worthless to poachers. This is a sad fact these days, but given that (Chinese) buyers have pushed rhino horn prices so high that rhino horn is now, on a per gram basis, worth more than gold, and gold isn’t particularly cheap these days, there isn’t any other choice.

So here a couple of beautiful pictures that Uyai took during this sighting, just amazing, just a couple of days ago.

See below also a video, showing a male … well, let’s call it defecating for lack of a better word, and spreading the dump around. This is a territory-marking behavior, and rhino males are VERY territorial indeed. They are known to fight for territories to the death, and young rhino bulls with their mums are in great danger, so mother rhinos keep their male little ones away from them, to keep them from harm’s way. Nature is not for the weak, that’s for sure. Both sightings happened the same day, so this was an amazing rhino day.

On the photos they seem to be of “cow-like” size, but trust me, these animals are absolutely massive. They weigh as much as a pickup truck! So you can imagine their size. A rhino in the wild is a sight to be seen! It has everyone’s jaws dropping.

Up-close rhino encounter
Up-close rhino encounter
You can see here that they are all de-horned...
You can see here that they are all de-horned…

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