White Rhino

(Ceratotherium simum) 

It is the biggest extant species of rhinoceros. Their length can reach up to 4 meters, and other 70 centimetres of tail must be added. They can reach up to 1.86 meters to the shoulder. Males are bigger than females, and also heavier, as the first ones’ weight can be up to 2.3 tons, while females reach a maximum of 1.7 tons.

There are two subspecies recognized:

-Southern white rhinoceros (C.s. simum), spread along grasslands and savannas in southern Africa, from South Africa to Zambia. More than the 98% of its population can be found in five countries: South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Uganda. It is nowadays classified as “Near threatened” by the IUCN. At the beginning of the 20th, this subspecies was about to disappear, as it was reduce to just 20 individuals in a South African reserve. Since then, they recover slowly, and by 2015, the population estimated was about 21,000 individuals. They have also been introduced in so many areas and there are future projects to increase this activity in many other countries. The subspecies is still threatened by habitat loss and poaching, as their horns are still highly demanded as traditional medicine in China.

-Northern white rhinoceros (C.s. cottoni), formerly spread along Central and East Africa. Its population is reduced to only two individuals, both of them located in Kenya, which makes the subspecies “functionally extinct”, even though the IUCN has classified them as “Critically endangered”. Some research organisms are developing programs of assisted reproduction, using pluripotent stem cells.

Published by Juan Alferez