Animal
White rhinoceros
The white rhino is a huge gray animal with two horns on its nose. It eats grass with its wide, flat lips.
The white rhinoceros is the largest rhino and one of the biggest animals on land. It is not really white: its name may come from its wide, square lips, perfect for mowing grass. Careful protection has brought it back from the edge.
Ceratotherium simum, the white or square-lipped rhinoceros, is the largest living rhino and a specialist grazer of African grasslands. The southern subspecies recovered from near extinction to become the most numerous rhino; the northern subspecies is down to two females. The species is Near Threatened.
Photo: Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the white rhino
The white rhino is very big and very strong.
It has thick gray skin and two horns on its nose. It is not white at all! It is gray, like the black rhino.
The white rhinoceros is the biggest of the world's five kinds of rhino. A grown male can weigh 1,800 to 2,500 kilograms, about as much as two small cars, and stands up to about 2 meters at the shoulder.
Despite its name, the white rhino is gray, just like its cousin the black rhino. Its other name, square-lipped rhinoceros, describes its wide, flat mouth. It has two horns, with the front one usually much longer than the back one.
Ceratotherium simum is the largest of the five living rhinoceros species, with an average head-and-body length of about 3.35 to 3.77 meters and males weighing about 1,800 to 2,500 kilograms. Rhinos are perissodactyls, the odd-toed hoofed mammals, related to horses and tapirs, and each foot has three toes around a soft, elastic sole.
The 'white' and 'black' rhinos are both gray; the names are long established in common use. Scientists recognize two subspecies, the southern white (C. s. simum) and northern white (C. s. cottoni), though some anatomical and DNA studies suggest they could be separate species.
Quick facts
- Group
- Mammal
- Length
- 3.35 to 3.77 m
- Height
- up to 2 m
- Weight
- 1,800 to 2,500 kg
- Top speed
- up to 40 km/h
Where white rhinos live
White rhinos live in Africa.
They like grassy places with water nearby. Most of them live in South Africa. People keep them safe in parks.
White rhinos live in the grasslands and open savannas of Africa, where there is short grass to eat, a few bushes for shade and water nearby for drinking and mud baths.
Most wild white rhinos live in South Africa, the only country where they never disappeared. Over many years, people have carefully moved rhinos from South Africa to parks in other countries, such as Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Kenya, to start new herds.
The IUCN's 2020 assessment lists South Africa as the only country with surviving original populations. Southern white rhinos have been reintroduced to Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda and Zimbabwe, and introduced outside the historical range (assisted colonization) in Kenya and Zambia.
The northern subspecies once lived in northwestern Uganda, southern Chad, southwestern Sudan, the Central African Republic and northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is extinct in the wild in those countries, though IUCN still lists the DRC and South Sudan as 'possibly extinct'. The map's separate layers show where rhinos survived, where they were brought back and where they were introduced.
Continent
Its habitats
Where can you find this animal?
- Used to live here · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Brought here by people · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
- Brought back by people · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Used to live here · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Former range of the northern white rhino: extinct in the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan, and possibly extinct in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
Places: Central African Rep., Chad, Sudan, DR Congo and South Sudan.
Source: iucn-red-list · checked October 2026
Brought here by people · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Kenya and Zambia, where southern white rhinos were moved outside their historical range (the IUCN calls this assisted colonization).
Places: Kenya and Zambia.
Source: iucn-red-list · checked October 2026
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
South Africa holds the only white rhinos that survive in their original range. They live in protected parks and private reserves, not across the whole country.
Places: South Africa.
Source: iucn-red-list · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Eswatini, Zambia and 19 more places.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Brought back by people · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Countries where white rhinos had disappeared and have been brought back (Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, Zimbabwe), listed by the IUCN as extant and reintroduced.
Places: Botswana, Eswatini, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Source: iucn-red-list · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
A lawnmower with lips
White rhinos eat grass.
They keep their heads down low to the ground. Their wide lips work like a lawnmower. They need a drink every few days.
White rhinos are grazers: they eat grass, and they are very good at it. Their wide, square lips crop short grass close to the ground, a bit like a lawnmower. A white rhino spends much of the day with its heavy head hanging low, and it lifts its head mainly when something alarms it.
White rhinos need to drink every two to four days. They feed and rest in turns through the day and night, resting in the hottest hours.
The white rhino is a specialist grazer. Its broad, square upper lip is adapted for cropping short grasses, and powerful neck muscles, which form the hump above the shoulders, support a large head carried low to the ground for much of the day.
By grazing heavily on short-grass patches, white rhinos maintain grazing lawns used by other herbivores, and Animal Diversity Web notes that their grazing may reduce fuel for wildfires. They alternate feeding and resting around the clock, rest in the heat of the day, and need to drink every two to four days, so they rarely range far from water.
Horns, hump and thick skin
A rhino's horns are made of the same stuff as your fingernails.
If a horn breaks, it grows back. Rhinos cannot see very well. But they hear and smell very well.
A rhino's horns are not bone. They are made of keratin, the same material as your fingernails and hair, packed tightly together. They keep growing all through the rhino's life, and if one breaks, it grows back. The front horn of a southern white rhino can grow up to about 2 meters long.
White rhinos have poor eyesight, but excellent hearing and a strong sense of smell. They roll in mud to cool down and protect their skin from sun and insects.
Rhino horns are dense masses of keratin fibers that grow from the skin and rest on bony bumps on the skull rather than being attached to it. They grow throughout life and regrow if broken. Save the Rhino gives front horns of up to about 79 inches (2 meters) in southern white rhinos; the rear horn reaches about 22 inches.
The prominent hump is muscle supporting the heavy head. Eyesight is poor, but hearing and smell are acute; scent from shared dung heaps carries a great deal of social information. Wallowing in mud cools the body, shields the skin from sun and helps remove parasites, and after a wallow a rhino takes on the color of the local soil.
A calf at its mother's side
A baby rhino is called a calf.
It stands up within an hour of being born. The calf walks in front of its mom. It stays with her for about three years.
A white rhino mother is pregnant for about 16 months. Her calf weighs 40 to 60 kilograms at birth, about as much as a small grown-up, and stands up within an hour to drink milk.
Mother and calf go everywhere together, and a white rhino calf usually walks just in front of its mother. It starts nibbling grass at about two months and stops drinking milk at about one year, but it stays with its mother for around three years, until her next calf is born.
Gestation lasts about 16 months (records from zoos range from 480 to 548 days; Grzimek's encyclopedia gives 490 days). A single calf of 40 to 60 kilograms stands within an hour and suckles at once. Mother and calf are inseparable, and the calf usually moves in front of the cow, reacting at once to her behavior.
Calves begin grazing at about two months, are weaned at about one year and stay with the mother for about three years. Females first give birth at about 6.5 to 7 years, and males mature at 10 to 12. Because a cow calves only every three to four years, populations grow slowly, and heavy losses take many years to make up.
Dung heaps and quiet herds
Rhinos leave smelly messages for each other.
They use big piles of dung, a bit like a message board. Mothers and calves stay close. Big males often live alone.
White rhinos are more social than you might think: females are rarely alone. Females and young often stay in small groups called crashes, of up to about six animals. Adult males usually live alone, each guarding a small territory of 1 to 3 square kilometers.
Rhinos share news by smell. They use shared dung piles, called middens, at the edges of territories. A sniff tells another rhino who has passed by. They also make many sounds, from a calf's squeak to an adult's snort.
White rhinos are sedentary, semi-social and territorial. Mature bulls hold territories averaging 1 to 3 square kilometers, often tolerating one to three submissive 'satellite' bulls, and are far more aggressive to strange males. Females range over 6 to 20 square kilometers that overlap several territories and are rarely alone; stable groups of up to six are common.
Communal dung middens, usually at territory boundaries, act as scent noticeboards for both sexes, but only territorial bulls scatter dung with ritual kicks and spray urine to mark boundaries. Vocalizations range from calf squeaks to adult snarls and wails. Like other rhinos they are watched in the wild only from a safe distance.
Did you know?
White rhinos are really gray.
White rhinos and black rhinos are both gray. The names do not describe their color.
Both African rhino species are grayish; the names 'white' and 'black' are long-established labels, not descriptions of skin color.
Back from the brink
Long ago, there were very few white rhinos left.
People worked hard to protect them. Now there are many more! Rangers still guard them every day.
The white rhino's story shows that conservation can work. The southern white rhino was once nearly gone, but strong protection and moving rhinos to new parks helped it recover. In 2025 rhino experts reported about 15,750 white rhinos in the wild, more than any other kind of rhino.
The northern white rhino has not been so lucky. The last male died in 2018, and only two females remain, protected in Kenya. Poaching for rhino horn is still the biggest danger to all white rhinos.
The IUCN lists the white rhino as Near Threatened (2020 assessment), with about 10,080 mature individuals and a decreasing trend driven by poaching for horn, which is traded illegally despite having no proven medical value. Under CITES, international commercial trade in northern white rhinos is banned (Appendix I), and trade in southern white rhinos is controlled and monitored (Appendix II).
The southern subspecies recovered from perhaps 50 to 100 animals in the early 1900s thanks to protected areas, strong laws and translocations; figures reported in 2025 by the IUCN rhino specialist groups give about 15,750 white rhinos in the wild, nearly all of them southern. The northern white rhino is Critically Endangered and functionally extinct: the last male died in 2018, and the two surviving females live at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. Scientists are trying advanced reproductive technologies to save the subspecies.
IUCN Red List
How is the white rhinoceros doing in the wild?
- Least Concern
- Near Threatened (this animal)
- Vulnerable
- Endangered
- Critically Endangered
- Extinct in the Wild
- Extinct
Near Threatened
Not at risk yet, but it could be soon.
See the IUCN Red List assessment · The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022.2
Amazing facts
-
White rhinos are really gray.
White rhinos and black rhinos are both gray. The names do not describe their color.
Both African rhino species are grayish; the names 'white' and 'black' are long-established labels, not descriptions of skin color.
-
Rhino horns grow back if they break.
Rhino horns are made of keratin, like your fingernails, and keep growing all through a rhino's life.
Horns are compacted keratin fibers that grow from the skin, rest on bony bumps on the skull and regrow if broken.
-
A baby white rhino walks in front of its mom.
A white rhino calf usually walks just in front of its mother, and she follows close behind.
White rhino calves typically move ahead of the cow and respond immediately to her behavior.
-
Rhinos take mud baths.
Rolling in mud keeps a rhino cool, protects its skin from the sun and helps get rid of bugs. Afterward it is the color of the local soil!
Wallowing aids cooling, sun protection and parasite removal, and leaves the rhino colored like the local soil.
Words to know
- keratin
- the tough material that makes hair, nails and rhino horns
- grazer
- an animal that eats mostly grass
- midden
- a pile of dung that animals use to leave scent messages
- poaching
- hunting animals when it is against the law
- reintroduced
- brought back to a place where an animal used to live
- subspecies
- a group within a species that lives in its own area and looks a little different
Discovery challenge
-
What color is a white rhino?
What color is a white rhinoceros really?
What does the name 'white rhinoceros' tell you about its color?
- Gray
- Snow white
- Pink
Show the answer
Gray
White rhinos are gray, like black rhinos.
Both white and black rhinos are gray. The names are just names.
Nothing: both African rhinos are grayish, and the names are traditional labels.
-
What are rhino horns made of?
What material are rhino horns made of?
How are rhino horns attached?
- Bone
- Keratin, like fingernails
- Wood
Show the answer
Keratin, like fingernails
Rhino horns are made of the same stuff as your nails.
Horns are made of keratin, the same material as hair and nails, and they grow back if broken.
They are keratin structures growing from the skin and resting on bony bumps on the skull, not bone fused to it.
-
What do white rhinos eat?
What do white rhinos mostly eat?
What is the square upper lip adapted for?
- Fish
- Grass
- Meat
Show the answer
Grass
White rhinos eat grass.
White rhinos are grazers. Their wide, square lips crop short grass like a lawnmower.
Cropping short grasses close to the ground: the white rhino is a specialist grazer.
-
Where do most white rhinos live?
Which country is home to most wild white rhinos?
Which is the only country where white rhinos survived in their original range?
- South Africa
- Canada
- Australia
Show the answer
South Africa
Most white rhinos live in South Africa.
South Africa has the most, and rhinos from there were moved to start new herds elsewhere.
South Africa; other populations are reintroductions or introductions, many founded from South African animals.
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Describe the white rhino's body, including its keratin horns, square lips and neck hump.
- Explain what a grazer is and how white rhinos feed.
- Explain the difference between native, reintroduced and introduced populations on a range map.
- Describe how the southern white rhino recovered and why the northern white rhino is nearly gone.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might moving rhinos to new parks help protect the species?
- Rhino horn is made of keratin, like fingernails. Why do you think people still try to sell it?
- What does the white rhino's story teach us about helping other endangered animals?
Try at home or in class
- Look at your fingernails and hair: they are made of keratin, the same material as a rhino's horn.
- Measure 3.6 meters on the floor with tape to see how long a white rhino is, then compare it with a car parked nearby.
Key vocabulary: keratin, grazer, midden, poaching, reintroduced, subspecies
Where these facts come from
- The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species , International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN terms of use (no redistribution of Red List data or range maps))
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- White rhino , Save the Rhino International
- White rhinoceros , Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Ceratotherium simum (white rhinoceros) , Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan
- Ceratotherium simum (White rhinoceros), 2020 assessment , IUCN Red List
- Rhino populations , Save the Rhino International
- White rhino , WWF
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 27, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.