Indian rhinoceros

Indian rhinos eat mostly grass.

They also eat leaves, fruit and water plants. They even dive under water to eat!

Indian rhinos are mainly grazers. They eat mostly grasses, but also leaves, branches of shrubs and trees, fruit and plants that grow in the water. Save the Rhino counts up to 183 different kinds of plant in their diet.

They are very good swimmers and can dive and feed under water. Their bendy upper lip helps them grab food. Sometimes they leave the parks to eat farmers' crops, which can cause problems for people living nearby.

The diet is dominated by grasses but varies strongly with the season, taking in fruit, leaves and branches of trees and shrubs, submerged and floating aquatic plants and agricultural crops; Save the Rhino records up to 183 plant species. Daily intake averages about 1 percent of body weight.

A prehensile upper lip, like the black rhino's, helps with foraging, and the animals swim and dive to feed. Because many protected areas have reached the number of rhinos they can support, rhinos increasingly leave them to forage in surrounding villages, which WWF identifies as a growing source of human-rhino conflict.

Indian rhinos usually live alone.

They love to swim and roll in mud. Many rhinos sometimes meet at a mud pool.

Indian rhinos usually live alone, except for mothers with young calves. But when there is lots of food, several may graze close together, and mud wallows work a bit like meeting places, where rhinos gather for a while and then go their separate ways.

Rhinos share big dung piles, called middens, that can grow up to 5 meters wide. After using one, a rhino scratches its feet in the dung and leaves a smelly trail behind it. They talk with snorts, honks and roars.

The species is mostly solitary apart from females with calves, though animals graze near one another where food is plentiful and gather temporarily at wallows. Save the Rhino describes adult males holding loosely defined, overlapping territories that shift with the seasons, and fights between males can be fatal; WWF describes the home ranges as not well defended.

Communal middens up to 5 meters wide and 1 meter high mark trails and boundaries. After defecating, rhinos scrape their hind feet through the dung, spreading their scent along paths, which are also marked by glands on the feet. Researchers know of 12 commonly used calls, including snorts, honks and roars.

Long ago, there were very few Indian rhinos left.

People in India and Nepal worked hard to protect them. Now there are many more!

By about 1900, hunting had left only around 200 Indian rhinos in the wild. Then India and Nepal gave them strict protection in national parks, and their numbers began to climb. By March 2025 there were 4,075.

Poaching for rhino horn is still the biggest danger, and as numbers grow, the rhinos need more space. Rangers guard the parks, local volunteers help watch over rhinos, and conservation groups are restoring habitat so rhinos can spread to new areas.

Hunting for sport and horn and killing as crop pests reduced the species to around 200 animals by the start of the 20th century. Strict protection by Indian and Nepalese wildlife authorities has driven one of Asia's notable conservation recoveries: IUCN and TRAFFIC report 4,075 greater one-horned rhinos by the end of March 2025, up from 2,565 in 2007. The IUCN's 2018 assessment, with 2,100 to 2,200 mature individuals and an increasing trend, lists it as Vulnerable.

Poaching for horn, which has no proven medical value, remains the biggest threat, alongside habitat loss and crowded protected areas. Responses include anti-poaching patrols, community programs around reserves, restored habitat and corridors that let rhinos reach higher ground during floods. Since 2011, WWF reports, Nepal has had four separate 365-day periods in which no rhinos were poached.