How do rhinos use their horns

If there are not enough grasses available for the white rhinoceros, they use their horn to dig for roots or unearth small plants with edible roots. If no roots are around, they dig to gain access to shorter grasses. When desperate for water, the rhinoceros digs in dry riverbeds to find an underground supply. Female rhinoceroses use their horns to steer their young and guide them until they are capable of navigating on their own.

Male rhinoceros sometimes use their horns to move their excrement into piles that demarcate the border of their territory. The Honolulu Zoo reports that white rhinoceroses use their horns and front feet to test the thickness of a mud hole before entering to cool down. If the mud is too thick, they will not risk becoming stuck. Born and raised in West Virginia, Megan Hippler has been writing environmental articles since Her work has appeared on the websites of various state government departments.

Hippler has a Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies from Hollins University. How Do Seals Defend Themselves? How Do Giant Pandas Survive? Adaptations of Lemurs. Other rhinos such as the black rhino or the southern white rhino are in better shape, but some Asian species are almost as badly off as Sudan. Like elephants, rhinos are under constant threat from poaching and habitat loss. How did things reach this point?

The problem is the willingness of unscrupulous people to pay unlimited amounts for horns. In , a single African rhino horn could be worth up to half a million dollars , making rhino horn much more lucrative, and easier to transport, than narcotics. More recently, the rise of disposable income in certain Asian countries has led a resurgence in rhino and elephant poaching.

In South Africa, a black market trade is fueled by prosperous customers in Vietnam who mix powdered horn with wine as a hangover cure. More generally, rhino horns are sold for use as an aphrodisiac it does not work and ornamental dagger handles. With such vast sums of money available, wildlife authorities have resorted to desperate measures to protect the remaining rhinos.

Sudan, for example, has been deprived of his horn, giving poachers less reason to target him. Wildlife authorities have tried large scale dehorning, but the possible solution to one problem only leads to new ones. Rhinos, it turns out, need their horns. Rhino mothers whose horns had been removed were unable to defend their infants from predators.

These horrific figures indicate the urgent need for both proactive and preventative measures to curtail the rhino poaching crisis. At a first glance, it would appear that by simply removing the horn the problem is solved; rhinos should be worthless to poachers.

However, the issue is a lot more complicated than it first appears. Namibia was the first country to use dehorning to protect rhinos from poaching. Between and the early s, dehorning coupled with rapid improvements in security and funding for anti-poaching was perceived by stakeholders to have contributed significantly to reducing poaching losses. In Namibia, not a single dehorned rhino was poached. There have been several other successful cases across Africa. Rhinos dehorned in recent years in certain Zimbabwe Lowveld conservancies appear to have However, there are numerous cases where dehorning has proved insufficient to prevent rhinos from falling victim to poachers.

For example, in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe during the early s, the majority of de-horned rhinos were killed just months after being dehorned. For dehorning to be effective, it must be coupled with extensive anti-poaching security and monitoring efforts. With an absence of security, rhinos may continue to be poached regardless of whether they have been dehorned.

So why do poachers continue to target hornless rhinos? This is often attributed to the stub of horn that is left after removal.

If the horn is cut too close to the germinal layer, this could damage the horn base and lead to deformed horn re-growth. So during any dehorning exercise a stub of horn will remain: although poaching is made less profitable, the sad reality is that poachers will still kill for a horn stub due to its high value.

Poachers may also kill dehorned rhinos out of vengeance. In Hwange NP, it was thought that poachers killed dehorned rhinos, to avoid tracking them again.

Furthermore, if there is thick bush or hilly terrain poachers may not see if the rhino has an intact horn prior to shooting. Horns grow back over time, with recent studies claiming that the re-growth of dehorned rhino horn appears faster than growth in non-dehorned rhinos. With the current severe poaching threat, experts recommend that rhinos should ideally be dehorned every months in order to be an effective deterrent.