Browsers (from Kingdon 1997; Merz 1991)
- Diet
- Eat leaves, twigs, and branches
- Grass consumption typically very low, though long grass may constitute up to 30%-40% of the diet in some populations (Merz 1991)
- White rhinos, in contrast, eat short grass and herbaceous plants, but no leaves/twigs from trees or bushes
- Diverse, consume up to 220 place species
- 99 woody shrubs
- 102 herbs
- 25 grasses
- Diversity dependent on season and amount of rainfall
- Quantity plant material consumed and diversity of species exploited variable
- Hind gut digestion
- As with horses and zebras
- Digest food by bacterial fermentation in hind gut
Methods for determining diet (from Kingdon 1997; Merz 1991)
- Characteristic dung reveals diet
- Researchers examine fibrous plant remains in dung to understand an animal's diet
- Characteristics of rhino dung
- Dung composition
- Rhino dung contains small, short twigs
- Unlike elephant dung which contains longer, twisted pieces of woody fiber
- Appearance of dung piles
- 2 parallel grooves emanate from a pile of rhino dung
- Pattern is produced by the rhino as it scrapes the dung pile with its back feet, flinging it away
- Unlike elephant dung which is left in undisturbed piles