biology

Southern black rhinoceros

Southern black rhinoceros is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Southern black rhinoceros rather than just read about it. In short: The southern black rhinoceros, southern hook-lipped rhinoceros or Cape rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis bicornis) is an extinct subspecies of the black rhinoceros that was once abundant in South Africa from the Cape Province to Transvaal, southern Namibia, and possibly also Lesotho and southern Botswana. Zoos, animal sanctuaries and conservation centers use this same scientific name as an indicating reference to the sur…

Key takeaways

Southern black rhinoceros belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Southern black rhinoceros to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Southern black rhinoceros from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The southern black rhinoceros, southern hook-lipped rhinoceros or Cape rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis bicornis) is an extinct subspecies of the black rhinoceros that was once abundant in South Africa from the Cape Province to Transvaal, southern Namibia, and possibly also Lesotho and southern Botswana. Zoos, animal sanctuaries and conservation centers use this same scientific name as an indicating reference to the surviving south-central black rhinoceros. This former species was brought to extinction by excessive hunting and habitat destruction around 1850.

Taxonomy It is unknown from where the original specimen (the holotype), on which Carl Linnaeus based "Rhinoceros" bicornis in 1758, was collected. It was even proposed that it was indeed the skull of an Indian rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) with a faked second horn, as Linnaeus erroneously noted India as occurrence. This was fixed formally in 1911, when O. Thomas declared the Cape of Good Hope as type locality of D. bicornis. Therefore, this population formed the base of the nominal subspecies of the black rhinoceros. Later this subspecies became frequently mistaken for the south-western black rhinoceros, but the latter has to be considered a separate subspecies (D. bicornis occidentalis).

Description D. bicornis bicornis was the largest of all black rhino subspecies. While the differentiation of subspecies is mostly based on skull and body proportions, as well as details of the dentition, the external appearance of the southern subspecies is not exactly known because no photos exist. The skull was the largest of any known subspecies and proportionally large compared to the body. The limbs were short but slender and the skin folds were probably only weakly pronounced.

Ecology This subspecies was restricted to well-vegetated regions, in contrast to others that are well adapted to desertic conditions.

IUCN status As the IUCN considers the living northern Namibian black rhino populations (D. bicornis occidentalis) to belong to D. bicornis bicornis, the latter is listed as "vulnerable" instead of "extinct". This synonymy, based upon du Toit (1987) was, however, considered erroneous by Groves and Grubb (2011).

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Southern black rhinoceros

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Southern black rhinoceros claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Southern black rhinoceros before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Southern black rhinoceros ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Southern black rhinoceros

In research: Southern black rhinoceros appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Southern black rhinoceros in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Southern black rhinoceros is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Animal taxa named by Carl Linnaeus, Black rhinoceros, Extinct mammals of Africa, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Southern black rhinoceros outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Southern black rhinoceros in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Southern black rhinoceros means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Southern black rhinoceros out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Southern black rhinoceros in simple terms?

Why does Southern black rhinoceros matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Southern black rhinoceros?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Southern black rhinoceros.