A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Ceratotherium simum
#2000 Baby white rhino and mother work their way around our safari vehicle. We started out a nice respectful distance, and baby brought his mama, closer and closer to us. At one point he started to mock charge and snort at us, and needless to say mama got upset. Fortunately she was too close for an effective charge. http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/177... After some tense moments with our guide telling her to "shoo-aah," they backed off enough for him to rev the engine and hightail us out of there! Mama had been dehorned only about two weeks before to discourage poachers. This was our last day at this location and nearly our last spotting of the day. Even the huge bull giraffes who surrounded our vehicle didn't top this
I have enough pictures that this is part one - before they moved over to my side of the vehicle
Spotted on Dec 21, 2013
Submitted on Feb 24, 2014
15 Comments
Thank you Antonio!
Congrats on the 2000th,great choice for the occasion and thanks for sharing such a great spotting page
I can remember the San Diego Zoo, Wild Animal park's landmark breeding program, which returned a few of these guys to the wild.
The southern white rhino was thought to have been hunted to extinction in the late 19th century. In 1895 a small population was discovered in South Africa, and after more than a century of protection, the population currently numbers around 20,000. It is classified as Near Threatened, making it the only non-endangered rhino species.
Sadly, its Northern cousin has not fared so well, with only 4 northern white rhinos now remaining in the wild, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Efforts to protect the few remaining Northern rhino have been severely disrupted because of the ongoing civil war, and poaching activity driven by a growing market for rhino horn, which is highly prized in traditional Asian medicine. https://upload.facebook.com/projectnoah/...
Congrats on the 2000!
Thank you, Malcolm!
Congratulations on #2000, a worthy subject.
Both spottings are now up
Thank you, Ashley, I was just scrolling through to do just that and you brought it to the top!
Please don't forget the scientific name so your spotting can be considered complete and identified, thanks!
;)
A fine addition to the mission! Thank you Karen. I look forward to the rest!
I thought you'd especially like this. I will be putting up the sequel. The shots leading up to our having to abandon the area. From those you can see just how close baby worked them to us(and I didn't take the final closeups for fear of making a wrong move!)
Love love love love love! And congratulations on 2000 spots!!!
Thank you. It was breath taking.
We were there for three days and only saw them on the last. During our time there the tracker explained that female rhino dung has a sweet smell and male somewhat acrid. We passed her dung on more than one occasioin, and tracked the males into a grove of acacia
Beautiful ♥