Source: Taiwan Straits Network
A white rhino couple at Fuzhou Zoo.
According to the Fuzhou Evening News, September 22 every year is World Rhino Day. At fuzhou zoo, a white rhino couple from South Africa, "Xiaofu" and "Xiaozhou", have lived in Fuzhou for 13 years. What happened in between? Let's take a look.
You can eat 50 kg of grass a day
In 2008, the 4-year-old "Xiaofu" and "Xiaozhou" came to Fuzhou from far away South Africa. Later, they fell in love in Fuzhou, and soon after, "Xiaofu" married "Xiaozhou" as its bride.
"Covered in thick armor", "head with top horns", "huge body weighing several tons"... This is the common impression of rhinos. According to the relevant person in charge of the Fuzhou Zoo Management Office, the rhinoceros is a large mammal second only to elephants on land, living in the open plains, and even the ground will shake when running and sprinting. It is large and eats a lot of food, and can eat 50 kilograms of grass in a day.
Move to 1000 m2 "Sun Room"
When I first arrived at Fuzhou Zoo, "Xiaofu" and "Xiaozhou" were susceptible to skin diseases. In order to improve the situation, before the National Day in 2012, the Fuzhou Zoo Management Office moved them from the north district to the south district, and adjusted them to the sika deer and pony cage. The current Rhino Pavilion is full of sun exposure and covers an area of 1,000 square meters, which is nearly 5 times larger than the old Rhino Pavilion. It is reported that at that time, the Fuzhou Zoo Management Office also used a crane to move the rhinos.
Rhinos have no sweat glands and rely on soaking in mud to regulate their body temperature. When the new museum was built, a mud pond was built as an outdoor "sports field" for "Xiaofu" and "Xiaozhou". However, on hot days in Fuzhou, they prefer to stay indoors with cooling facilities. "Now, the white rhino couple is in a very good state, and I hope that the 'boat' can give birth to their baby soon." said the above-mentioned person in charge.
White rhinos are not white
Currently, only five species of rhinos remain in the world, including black rhinos, white rhinos, Sumatran rhinos, Javan rhinos and Indian rhinos, which are on the verge of extinction due to heavy hunting and habitat loss.
World Rhino Day was established in 2010 by WWF South Africa to raise awareness of rhino conservation through eco-friendly activities. On this day every year, in addition to popularizing the knowledge of rhinos to tourists, Fuzhou Zoo will also simultaneously push this knowledge and daily life videos of "Xiaofu" and "Xiaozhou" on the official WeChat to enhance the public's awareness of protecting rhinos and loving animals.
The person in charge said that although "Xiaofu" and "Xiaozhou" are white rhinos, don't think of them as "white rhinos". The name white rhino comes from the Dutch word "weit", which means wide flat, which is for their lips, but was later mistakenly called "white", so it was called white rhinoceros.
Rhino's lips are wide and flat.
Learn a little more
Wild rhinos are extinct in China
Wild rhinos have become extinct in our country and no longer exist. However, in ancient China, rhinos not only existed, but also numbered quite a few.
There are many records about rhinos in ancient Chinese literature. For example, in Li Shangyin's "Untitled", "the body is without color phoenix and double wings, and the heart has a spirit and a rhinoceros", and the "rhinoceros" here refers to the rhinoceros. Rhinoceros is a sacred beast in ancient legends, the horn of the spirit rhinoceros is covered with white stripes, can keenly sense things and emotions, and is a beautiful sustenance for the emotional resonance of sentient people.
In the Neolithic ruins, many rhino bones have been found, and in the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, there are also records of people burning forests and hunting rhinos.
Rhinoceros picking process in the city of Bori
According to relevant archaeological excavations in China, the remains of rhinoceros unearthed so far are quite widely distributed, which is also corroborated with the literature. For example, the bronze rhinoceros statue with a wrong gold and silver cloud pattern excavated in Xingping, Shaanxi Province, in 1963 is now in the National Museum of China.
The Fuzhou Museum also has a national treasure-level collection - the Southern Song Dynasty "three-layer lacquer box for rhinoceros". The collection was unearthed in 1986 in a Song tomb in Chayuan Village, a northern suburb of Fuzhou, which is also the earliest carved lacquerware among the cultural relics that have been verified to have an exact date.
The unique rhinoceros picking process is to use two or three colors of lacquer (mostly red and black) on the molded carcass, regularly staggered, and finally form a thick pile of paint, and then use the knife side to carve the pattern on the paint. Because the texture presented at the cross-section of the knife edge is similar to the texture effect of the rhino horn cross-section, it is called rhinoceros.