The Habitat of a White Rhinoceros

Geographic Distribution

• The white rhinoceros lives in only a handful of small areas across the grasslands of southern Africa. Endangered because of poaching, the numbers of wild rhinos in 1895 sank to around 100 living in a tiny portion of Natal, South Africa. Conservation efforts are seeing the numbers steadily increase, although they are still considered endangered.

  Before being discovered by poachers who hunted the rhinos for the horns thought to have medicinal uses, white rhinos could be found throughout southern Africa south of the Sahara. Now, the white rhino population lives entirely in protected areas such as national parks and preserves.

Habitat and Diet

• The areas of Africa that are home to the white rhinoceros are largely grasslands, both long and short. These large, flat areas provide plenty of room for the giant animals to graze. Unlike the black rhino, which feeds from trees and shrubs, the white rhino grazes from grasses on the ground. The flat shape of its upper lip -- one of the ways to tell the two species apart -- allows it to grab and pull the stubborn grassland grasses. There's a lot of food needed to fuel the large body of the rhino, who walks with her head to the ground grazing as she travels.

Habitat and Lifestyle

• The flat terrain of the grasslands allows the white rhino to easily get up to full running speed -- around 30 miles per hour -- if need be. The large amount of food found in these open areas encourages the social lifestyle of the white rhino. Not as territorial as the black rhino, these can often be found living in groups of several females and a male. Territories of some groups have been found to overlap peacefully.

  Most will stay near a water source, although they can go four to five days without drinking. The water source is important for wallowing as well as for drinking; in order to relieve some of the heat from the hot African sun, they will commonly wallow in the mud to create a cool, protective barrier from both the sun's rays and the bugs.

Ancestral Habitat

• The white rhino is one of five surviving species of rhinoceros. Fifty million years ago, more than 200 different species of rhino roamed the world; some, like the woolly rhinoceros, traveled as far north as Europe. It is these woolly rhinos that today's white rhino is descended from, diverging to evolve separate from its northern companion about 5 million years ago. The woolly rhino appeared throughout Europe up until about 10,000 years ago; now, only those that adapted to warmer southern climate survive.

  The largest ancestor of the modern white rhino, the Indricothere, weighed between 12 and 15 tons and walked the plains of Mongolia. Their grazing habits and need for a warm climate is shared with their descendants; the Indricothere died out when climate change cooled the planet.