Why Do Rhinoceroses Have Bad Vision ? - Exploring The Hypothesis | Part-2

Why Do Rhinoceroses Have Bad Vision ? - Exploring The Hypothesis .

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Rhinoceros are considered one of the "Big Five" game animals in Africa.

Because they are among the largest and most dangerous land mammals on the continent, along with elephants, lions, leopards, and Cape buffaloes.

Historically, the term "Big Five" was used by big-game hunters to describe the five most challenging animals to hunt on foot, due to their size, strength, and aggressiveness.

Despite being part the "Big Five", every Rhinoceros have a huge flaw, which is their poor eyesight.

Because of their poor eyesight, it makes them more dangerous, because they charge at anything, even if it does not pose any threat to them.

At number 4, we have the cause , Inbreeding.

Between 1970 and 1992, rhinos were hunted at a large scale, bringing them at the verge of extinction. So to preserve future of the species, inbreeding was common method. This may have caused the current rhino species to have far more worse vision than it's ancestors. But it is also to be noted that the , the pre extinct rhinos also had a bad eyesight.

At number 3, we have the cause , The position of the eyes.

Rhinos are actually related to horses and zebras. Unlike rhinos, they posses a sharp vision. The reason behind it may be because of the position of their eyes, The eyes of the rhinos are positioned at the opposite side of each other. This removes them from the perk of having a binocular vision like other mammals. But in the case of horse or Zebra, their eyes are positioned in a way where it is kinda leaned forward towards the face. That's why they posses a sharp and binocular vision while rhinos don't.

At number 2, we have the cause, Eye-size.

Compared to the other relatives of the rhino, the size of the eyes are very small. Moreover, having small eyes, rhinos are actually color blind, making seeing something hard for them.

At number 1 we have the most reasonable case, which is , Evolution.

We have already learned that rhinos and horses are related. But how are they related ? To answer that we have to look 54.5 million years in the past in the subcontinent of India. There a species lived which scientists named cambaytherium thewissi. They were the ancestors of both modern-day Equidaes and rhinos. Current horses, zebras and donkeys fall under this Equidae faction. While evolving, some of the cambaytherium thewissi changed their body throughout the time to be more agile and fast ans slim. While others changed their body to be massive in size , body full of strength and durability , and evolve a horn on their face. During the evolution, Rhinos relied more and more on their other senses like:- Smell and hearing, causing them to weaken their vision power. Since they evolved into a huge bodies, their head also became huge and as a result the position of their eyes are very wide from each other. So basically rhino put it's evolution points on its size , power and other senses like - smell and hearing . while their relatives put their evolution points on agility, stamina, bite force and eyesight.