

Substitute agents have been found, particularly pig bone and water buffalo horn, but rhinoceros horn commands tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram in Asian markets. Powdered rhinoceros horn has been a highly sought commodity in traditional Chinese medicine-not as an aphrodisiac, as is often widely reported, but as an antifever agent. The rhinoceros’s horn is also the cause of its demise. The African species, in contrast, lack these long tusklike incisors and instead fight with their horns. In Indian rhinoceroses such teeth, or tusks, can reach 13 cm (5 inches) in length among dominant males and inflict lethal wounds on other males competing for access to breeding females. The three Asian species fight with their razor-sharp lower outer incisor teeth, not with their horns. White rhinoceroses ( Ceratotherium simum). The feet of the modern species have three short toes, tipped with broad, blunt nails. Aside from the Sumatran rhinoceros, they are nearly or completely hairless, except for the tail tip and ear fringes, but some fossil species were covered with dense fur. All rhinos are gray or brown in colour, including the white rhinoceros, which tends to be paler than the others. Rhinoceroses are noted for their thick skin, which forms platelike folds, especially at the shoulders and thighs. Modern rhinoceroses are large animals, ranging from 2.5 metres (8 feet) long and 1.5 metres (5 feet) high at the shoulder in the Sumatran rhinoceros to about 4 metres (13 feet) long and nearly 2 metres (7 feet) high in the white rhinoceros. Rhinoceroses are characterized by the possession of one or two horns on the upper surface of the snout these horns are not true horns but are composed of keratin, a fibrous protein found in hair. Rhinoceroses today are restricted to eastern and southern Africa and to subtropical and tropical Asia. Today the total population of all the rhinoceros species combined is probably fewer than 30,000. The precarious state of the surviving species (all but one are endangered) is in direct contrast to the early history of this group as one of the most successful lineages of hoofed mammals. sondaicus), and the Sumatran rhinoceros ( Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) live in Asia.

The white rhinoceros and the black rhinoceros ( Diceros bicornis) live in Africa, while the Indian rhinoceros, the Javan rhinoceros ( R. Only African and Asian elephants are taller at the shoulder than the two largest rhinoceros species-the white, or square-lipped, rhinoceros ( Ceratotherium simum), which some divide into two species ( northern white rhinoceros and southern white rhinoceros ), and the Indian, or greater one-horned, rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros unicornis). Rhinoceros, (family Rhinocerotidae), plural rhinoceroses, rhinoceros, or rhinoceri, any of five or six species of giant horn-bearing herbivores that include some of the largest living land mammals. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.Britannica Beyond We’ve created a new place where questions are at the center of learning.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.
RHINOCEROS SPEED HOW TO
