Daly, M., 1937. Big game hunting and adventure 1887-1936. London, MacMillan, pp. i-xi, 1-322
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| Location: |
Africa - Eastern Africa - Kenya |
| Subject: |
Behaviour - Senses |
| Species: |
Black Rhino |
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Many hold that the rhino is very poor-sighted. But take the following facts and consider whether their sight can really be as poor as made out, particularly by night.
I was camped in the bush down in the lower Wakamba country among the thorn-trees growing very close together, trunks only some six feet apart and extending for some distance, set out like a chess-board. The night was a very dark and stormy one, and about 11 pm. three large rhinos came along at full speed past my tent and through the thorns, the noise of the stampeding feet disappearing in the distance. Knowing the density of the thorn-trees, through which one could not have ridden a polo pony without scrubbing against first one pole and then another, I wondered much, as I had heard no trees hit. Next morning, being curious to investigate the performance of the night before, I followed a considerable distance through the trees. There were the three spoors of the three big rhinos, each taking their own course along parallel lines not following one another, and, though plenty of mud about, not a single tree-trunk had been touched-and this at full speed in a very dark night. This surely could not have been by scent or hearing.
At another place, while lying down near a watering-place (some hundred yards from the water) at night-time, with no tent, a rhino sounded about a hundred and fifty yards upwind. It sounded and sounded again, then gargled with strange ball-like, rolling noise in the throat. It was perfectly clear that the rhino had seen me lying down at that distance in the dark. I had not passed that way and the wind was from the rhino, not from my side. As I endeavoured to shift my position the rhino came on at the charge. I heard it coming but couldn't see it. Waiting, sitting down until I felt it close in front of me, 1 loosed off my 10.75 Mauser. The rhino veered and charged past me, taking the skin off the side of my right forehead and bumping me heavily on the shoulder as it passed in the inky darkness, and did not return.
Surely this was eyesight. I couldn't see ten yards round me and I was not on its path to water. Later on, rhinos came to this same water, snorted and blasted at me, and clearly saw me but did not in any way interfere. I was quite alone at the time, as I had been caught by the darkness in the wait-a-bit thorns, some miles from my camp, and this place was the only little clearance near. A dying rhino is an upsetting object to watch. Its great struggle and heavy sighs are most distressing, and pathetic little squeaks it makes as if pleading for help. It is the worst animal, I think, to watch dying.
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Big game hunting and adventure 1887-1936
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