It was an absolutely heartbreaking sight when a foreign photographer recently saw a white rhinoceros that had lost its horn in a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa.
Allegedly, after the white rhino was attacked by poachers, its rhino horns were cut off because the head wound was too large to cause it to recover, and it had to wait for death in the protected area after being rescued.
This white rhinoceros must have sensed that its death was approaching, and it was still with tear marks on its face when it was dying, which can be imagined that this is the tear of despair left by it.
And this is not the first white rhinoceros to wait for death in despair after the horns of the rhinoceros have been cut off, and similar situations occur every day in Africa.
White rhinos, a creature that has lived on Earth for more than 2 million years, are also the most intelligent and evolutionarily successful of rhino species.
From the distribution point of view, white rhinos are mainly distributed in Africa, and are divided into 2 subspecies of northern white rhinoceros and southern white rhinoceros, due to human hunting, the northern white rhinoceros has been endangered.
In 2018, the world's last wild male northern white rhino died in Kenya's protected area. This white rhino was also attacked by poachers before his death, and its rhino horn was also cut off.
Relatively speaking, the status quo of the southern white rhino is relatively better, but the number is only about a few thousand, most of which are distributed in South Africa, which makes South Africa the most serious white rhino poaching country in the world today.
It is said that poachers attack white rhinos in order to obtain their rhino horns, just as African poachers attack African elephants in order to obtain ivory. On the one hand, it is to make various ornaments, ornaments, etc., on the other hand, there is a view that rhino horn has high medicinal value.
This has also led to the rhinoceros in many countries, all because of human poaching and extinction, take our country, China also once had wild rhinos, but as early as 1922, China's last wild rhinoceros, because of being hunted and cut off rhino horns died, China's wild rhinos are also extinct.
Subsequently, with the continuous strengthening of people's awareness of wildlife protection, in 1993, the use of rhino horn was completely banned in China, and at the same time, China also banned the trade of any rhino horn products.
Of course, all of the world's rhinos (out of a total of 5 species) are at risk of extinction, and what has led to this is the threat of human activity to them.
According to the data, the number of wild rhinos in the world is now less than 26,000, mainly in Africa and Asia, in addition, in some parts of the world, there are about 2,000 captive rhinos living in zoos.
Scientists are also trying their best to make rhinos not extinct, but the effect is not ideal, because rhinos themselves as a large animal, they are not easy to be tamed, and very aggressive, which also leads to want to form a large-scale breeding of rhinos through artificial breeding, which is itself very difficult.
At the same time, due to human hunting and human activities, the habitat of rhinos has been drastically reduced, which has also led to the small number of rhinos in the wild, which have been divided into small populations, and the communication between populations has become less and less.
This leads to another worrying problem: the increasing inbreeding of wild rhinos, and the increasing number of genetically defective rhinos born, which can also lead to the extinction of wild rhinos.
Therefore, on the whole, the survival status of rhinos is not optimistic, of course, if humans can increase protection, especially in Africa can completely ban poaching, then the number of rhino populations is still likely to gradually recover.
From the distribution point of view, rhinoceros in China once had 3 species, namely Indian rhinoceros, Javan rhinoceros, Sumen rhinoceros, at the beginning, their number is still very large, but in China's Qing Dynasty, due to human activities and hunting reasons, wild rhinoceros in China, only a small number of distribution in Yunnan, other places have been extinct.
Subsequently, in 1916, the last Sumatran rhinoceros in China died; in 1920, the last Indian rhinoceros in China died; in 1922, the last Javan rhinoceros in China died, so that the three rhino species that were originally native to china were all extinct.
Of course, their extinction is related to being hunted by humans, including the last rhinoceros. Although it is not known who killed the last Chinese rhinoceros, it was human greed that led to their extinction, and I hope that other wild rhinos today will not suffer such a fate.