White Rhinos Aren’t White. Nobody Knows Where the Name Came From.

There are two leading theories about why the white rhinoceros is called white. The first is that early Dutch settlers in southern Africa used the word wijd, meaning wide, to describe the animal’s broad, square lip, and that English speakers misheard or mistranslated this as white. The second is that the name derives from the pale, dusty appearance of rhinos that have been wallowing in light-colored soil. Neither theory has been definitively confirmed, and the animal itself, Ceratotherium simum, is grey. Unambiguously, consistently grey.

The naming confusion is a minor footnote. The conservation story is not.

Two Subspecies, Two Completely Different Situations

The white rhinoceros exists as two subspecies with almost nothing in common except their taxonomy. The southern white rhino, Ceratotherium simum simum, is the most numerous rhinoceros subspecies on Earth, with a population of approximately 20,000 individuals, almost all in South Africa. It is a conservation success story, recovered from fewer than 50 individuals at the end of the nineteenth century through intensive protection and managed breeding programs.

The northern white rhino, Ceratotherium simum cottoni, is functionally extinct. As of 2024, two individuals remain alive. Both are female. Both live under 24-hour armed guard at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. The last male, named Sudan, died in March 2018 at the age of 45. There will be no natural reproduction. The only possibility of saving the subspecies lies in assisted reproductive technology, specifically in vitro fertilization using frozen sperm from deceased males and eggs harvested from the two surviving females.

Researcher Thomas Hildebrandt at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin has led the scientific effort to develop IVF protocols for northern white rhinos, successfully creating embryos from harvested eggs and frozen sperm. Whether those embryos can be successfully implanted in southern white rhino surrogate mothers and carried to term is a question that reproductive science has not yet answered definitively, though the team reported the first successful embryo transfers in 2023.

The Horn and the Poaching Crisis

Rhinoceros horn is composed of keratin, the same protein that makes up human fingernails and hair. It has no pharmacological activity that has been demonstrated in controlled scientific studies. It is not effective as a fever reducer, an aphrodisiac, or a cancer treatment, despite claims made in traditional medicine markets primarily in Vietnam and China.

The belief that it does have these properties has driven the price of rhino horn to levels that exceed gold by weight, creating an economic incentive for poaching that has overwhelmed conservation efforts across Africa. South Africa, which holds the majority of the world’s white rhinos, lost over 1,000 rhinos to poaching annually between 2013 and 2017. The poaching syndicates involved are sophisticated criminal organizations with connections to international wildlife trafficking networks.

Researcher Duan Biggs at the University of Queensland has studied the economics of rhino poaching and the effectiveness of various anti-poaching strategies, finding that the relationship between horn price, poaching rates, and rhino population dynamics is more complex than simple supply-and-demand models suggest. Strategies that have shown measurable effectiveness include intensive protection of high-density rhino populations, community-based conservation programs that give local communities economic stakes in rhino survival, and demand reduction campaigns in consumer markets.

The dehorning of rhinos, removing the horn to make them less attractive to poachers, has been implemented in some reserves. The evidence for its effectiveness is mixed. Poachers have killed dehorned rhinos, apparently to prevent horn regrowth from being harvested by others, and the stress of repeated dehorning procedures has welfare implications for the animals.

Biology of a Grazer

The white rhino’s square lip, the feature that may have given it its name, is a grazing adaptation. Unlike the black rhino, which has a pointed, prehensile lip adapted for browsing on shrubs and trees, the white rhino’s wide, flat lip is designed for cropping short grass close to the ground. It is a grazing specialist, and its preferred habitat is open grassland and savanna with short grass cover.

White rhinos are the second largest land animal after elephants, with large males weighing up to 2,300 kilograms. Despite their size, they are capable of running at speeds of up to 50 kilometers per hour over short distances. Their eyesight is poor, but their hearing and sense of smell are acute, and they rely primarily on these senses to detect threats.

Social behavior in white rhinos is more developed than in black rhinos. Females with calves form loose groups, and dominant males maintain territories that overlap with female home ranges. Communication involves a range of vocalizations, scent marking through dung middens and urine spraying, and physical contact during social interactions.

Researcher Kees Rookmaaker, who has studied rhinoceros history and conservation for decades, has documented the dramatic population fluctuations of white rhinos across the past two centuries, from near-extinction in the late 1800s to recovery in the twentieth century to the current crisis driven by poaching. The southern white rhino’s recovery demonstrates that rhinoceros populations can rebuild when threats are controlled. The northern white rhino’s situation demonstrates what happens when they are not.

Two females. Armed guards. Frozen sperm. Embryos in a laboratory in Berlin. The name might be wrong, but the stakes are not.