 Reference Base  The game animals of India, Burma, and Tibet, being a new ... |
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Lydekker, R., 1907. The game animals of India, Burma, and Tibet, being a new and revised edition of 'The great and small game of India, Burma, and Tibet'. London, Rowland Ward, pp. i-xv, 1-409
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| Location: |
World |
| Subject: |
Morphology - Horn |
| Species: |
All Rhino Species |
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No one is likely to confound a 'rhino' with a giraffe, and yet these are the only two groups of living land animals furnished with a horn situated in the middle line of the skull. The horn of a giraffe is, however, very unlike the horn (or horns) of a rhinoceros, being composed of a boss of bone, covered with skin, and situated on the forehead of the skull, to which in adult age it is immovably attached. In all living rhinoceroses, on the other hand, the horn (or horns) is composed of agglutinated hairs, and has no firm atttachment to the bones of the skull, which are merely roughened and somewhat elevated so as to fit into the concave base of the solid horn. As Sir Samuel Baker has well remarked, the attachment of the horn of a rhinoceros to the skull is very like that of the leaves of an artichoke to the 'choke.' In those species of living rhinoceros in which there is a single horn, this is placed immediately above the nose, and it is only in the two-horned species that there is a horn on the forehead, comparable in position with the giraffe's median horn. There is, however, an extinct Siberian rhinoceros with a single horn having the same situation as the latter. An equally marked structural difference obtains between the solid hair-like horn of a rhinoceros and the hollow horn of an ox, sheep, or antelope on the one hand, and the entirely bony antler of a deer, so that these appendages are absolutely distinctive of the former animals. It happens, however, that the female of the Javan rhinoceros is frequently more or less completely hornless, and since the same condition obtained in both sexes of certain extinct species (some of which are found in India), it is obvious that other characters must be sought in order to properly define these animals.
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