Abby: Here are a few amazing animal facts for you. Giraffe have excellent eyesight and they
can spot predators like hyenas or lions from far away. Pretty handy, right? And when rhinos feel
threatened their instinct is not to run away, but to run directly at whatever has scared them. Can
you even imagine? Let's go meet these magnificent plant eaters here at the Blank Park Zoo.
[Music]
Anne Shimerdla: Hi, my name is Anne and I'm from the Blank Park Zoo and with me I have my very special friends,
the eastern black rhinos. This is Ayana and her baby Kamara. Did you know that Kamara just
turned 1 this past April? These guys are called eastern black rhinos because
they roll in dark soil and dark mud that gives them kind of that black look,
it doesn't have anything to do with their skin color, it has to do with
the soil that they roll and they wallow in. And they're a little bit different than a white rhino
because the soil color is a little bit different in the region where the white rhinos live.
Something else that you'll really notice about them, which is cool, if you look at their
top lip, if you look at Ayana's top lip it is pointed and that is called a prehensile lip.
And that lets her grab leaves and branches and fruit in the wild and eat it. And she
is called the browser because she goes after those branches and those leaves.
A white rhino, their top lip would be flat because they're grazers and they like to eat
grass. So that is one of the ways that you can tell the difference between a white rhino and a
black rhino. Other cool things about them, look at their size. Ayana is about 2500 pounds.
That is the size of a car. And her baby, her baby right now at 1 year old is just
under 1000 pounds. And at birth she weighed 100 pounds which is the size of an elementary student.
[Music]
Anne: Look at her horns. See how they're nice and big? Those horns are made of keratin
and it's a fibrous material and it helps protect them. So when a rhino gets startled in the wild,
the first thing they'll do is they charge and then they'll investigate later. So that
is how they get their reputation, they're actually quite docile animals by nature, but
just don't startle them because that is when they will start to charge.
The other cool thing you can notice about is their ears. See how their ears are moving back
and forth? That's listening for any kind of danger or predators. So their ears will rotate all around
just like satellite dishes catching up sound all around them to see what is going on. And the mom,
Ayana, she is very aware of everything going on so that she can protect her baby, Kamara.
Anne: Look at their feet. Do you see how they have it looks like almost toes on their feet
and when they walk those toes, the pads flatten out on the ground and that helps them from sinking
into the ground when they are walking. And of course they have little tails too. And if you
look at their tails, just like on a horse, they'll use their tail to swat away bugs and flies.
Did you know that rhinos are very intelligent animals and at the zoo we can actually train them
to do different behaviors to help in their animal welfare and their care?
They also make little sounds. So the babies when they're young if they get
nervous or if they get scared they'll make a little call calling for their mom. And then
mom, who is on high alert, knows that they need to go over and protect their young.
[rhino call]
Anne: You might be wondering, how much does the zoo feed these animals every single day?
So we feed them about 50 pounds of food a day. So if you think about that, that is like 200
cheeseburgers. So 50 pounds of food. Now, of course, rhinos don't eat cheeseburgers,
they prefer leaves and branches and we feed them special pellets made just
for rhinos and then lots of vegetables and hay or different kinds of grasses.
Something else that is really cool about them is they can live to be between 45
and 50 years old. So Ayana right here, the mom,
she's only going to be 10 this year so she hopefully has a long life ahead of her. And
the little baby just turned 1. They have a long time to live with us and be with us at the zoo.
Rhinos in the wild are endangered. They're being hunted over and over again for their horns.
Their horns really do not have a lot of value. Some people think they can be used for medicine.
Some people like to make like handles for daggers out of them as a sign of wealth.
But really, they do not have any medicinal value to them at all and we want to make sure that
these rhinos are protected. So at the Blank Park Zoo we work with the International Rhino
Foundation and we help protect those animals in the wild so they can build up their populations.
And right now our baby rhino, every rhino counts because a baby is only born
every two to three years. So the mom could be pregnant for 15 months, which is over a year.
So they do not have babies very often. So that is why we have to really protect them
and the Blank Park Zoo helps in doing that by having these guys over here.