ORDER PERISSODACTYLA : ODD-TOED UNGULATES 397 



Somali Black Rhinoceros 



DlCBROS BIOORNIS SOMALIENSIS (Potocki) 



Rhinoceros bicornis somaliensis Potocki, Sport in Somaliland, p. 82, 1900. 

 Fias.: Dugmore, A. R., Camera Adventures in the African Wilds, figs. opp. 



p. 16, 1910; Ward, 1935, figs. opp. pp. 343, 345, 347; Maxwell, M., 3 pis., 



1930. 



The African Black Rhinoceros is readily distinguished by its rather 

 narrow muzzle, with a hooked rather than squared upper lip. The 

 two horns are placed one behind the other on the nose, the posterior 

 one usually the smaller, though in some cases the reverse is true 

 (giving rise to the belief that this condition represented a second 

 species, the keitloa). Skin thick and dark brown in color. Hoofs 

 three on each foot. Head and body about 10 feet long; tail, 28 

 inches. The record front horn, measured on the outside curve, is 

 given by Rowland Ward as 53.5 inches (a female) . The average is 

 much less, perhaps about 20 inches. 



The Black Rhinoceros avoids wet forest country but prefers rather 

 dry thorn bush and plains with streams here and there where it may 

 drink. Its range therefore included formerly the Cape region in the 

 south, from southwestern Angola across the Cape Province to eastern 

 Africa, and north, avoiding the Congo Basin and its rain forests, 

 to Somaliland and southwestern Ethiopia, thence westward along a 

 strip between the Sahara and the Congo and Nigerian forests to 

 the region of Lake Chad and the French Cameroons. Over this vast 

 area are localities where rhinos are absent, as along the coast of 

 Kenya and Tanganyika Territory, or between the Chobe and the 

 Zambesi, where according to Selous the natives say there were none 

 even in days before white occupation. Formerly common locally, 

 the Black Rhino has become much reduced of late years. In the 

 northeast of this general range, east of the Tana River and Lake 

 Rudolf in Kenya Colony, the animal is supposed to be slightly 

 smaller and is generally regarded as a distinct race, somaliensis, but 

 the extent of these differences needs more particular definition, and 

 the two may here be considered together. 



Sclater (1900) and Shortridge (1934) have given a good summary 

 of its history in South Africa. It seems to have first become known 

 to Europeans about 1653 at the time of the first settlement of the 

 Cape. "It is frequently mentioned in van Riebeck's diary, and ap- 

 parently at that time, was common enough on the slopes of Table 

 Mountain and on the Cape Flats; a further incident corroborating 

 this is, that the coach in which Simon van der Stel, the Governor, 

 was proceeding northwards, on a journey to Namaqualand in 1685, 

 was upset in the neighbourhood of Piquetberg, by the charge of a 

 rhinoceros, and the Governor himself had a narrow escape. Tachard 



