Interesting facts

The Black Rhino is a species full of interesting facts. For one, the rhino horn isn’t made of bone but much rather of the protein keratin, which makes up a humans hairs and fingernails. People believe the rhino horn to have magical healing properties if eaten, even though their hair is made of the same material, but people haven’t started eating their hair…yet.

95152

Someone just Eatin’ some hair

The closest relatives in the animal community to the Black Rhino are horses, zebras and tapirs. All of theses animals are united by their key feature of being perissodactyls, which means they have an odd number of toes.

black_rhino_feet_by_heatherae-d5wae99

A Rhino’s three towed foot

In southern Austria during the 1500’s in the city of Klagenfurt, a giant statue of dragon was erected. It is believed that the sculptures unearthed an extinct woolly rhino skull from the last ice age and believed it to be the head of a dragon. Many other statues were built around southern Austria based off of the rhino skull.

The famous dragon statue in Klagenfurt

The famous dragon statue in Klagenfurt

Rhinoceros derives from two greek words. The first word is rhino, which translates to nose. The second word is ceros, which translates to horn. And for those curious, World Rhino Day is September 22nd

One thought on “Interesting facts

Leave a comment