White Rhino

(Ceratotherium simum)

Seneca Park Zoo is home to one southern white rhinoceros named Jiwe. He was born in December, 2016 at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Texas and came to the Zoo in 2020. The rhino habitat is located in Animals of the Savanna.

Animal Facts

The white rhino is one of five species of rhinos. The others are the Javan rhino, the Sumatran rhino, the Indian rhino and the black rhino.

Full-grown adult white rhinos weigh between 5,000 to 7,000 pounds and measure 6-feet tall at the shoulders.

Our white rhino is fed 10 pounds of grain, 5 pounds of produce (lots of bananas!) and hay every day.

The name white rhino comes from the Dutch words “wijd” or “weit,” meaning wide and refers to their wide, square shaped upper lip.

Rhinos have a poor vision. They can see movement, but not details more than 100 feet away. They do, however, have excellent hearing and a keen sense of smell which enables them to detect odors up to a mile away.

Diet

Grasses, fruits and grain are the primary foods.

Status in The Wild

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List status

The squared lip that the white rhino is named for is an adaptation to the African grasslands that it grazes for food.

The rhino is built to graze the open grasslands and floodplains in pockets of eastern and southern Africa. When the rhino Species Survival Plan committee decides where to place rhinos in facilities, a number of factors come into play, including the rhino’s age, sex, genetics and exhibit availability.