For the Past 100 Year, Rhinos Are Growing Shorter Hunts After Surviving Hunts

Because they have been surviving hunts for the past 100 years, research shows that rhinos are now growing shorter horns.

Because shorter-horned animals have a higher chance of surviving, years of hunting long-horned rhinos have not only endangered the species but also diminished the horn sizes for future generations.

All rhinoceros species' horns have gradually shrunk throughout the past century, and scientists think hunting may be to blame.

The study is based on the examination of numerous photographs of the animals amassed over the course of the last 140 years.

Rhino Horns and Its Uses

Researchers believe that rhinos with shorter horns more likely survived and passed on their genes to subsequent generations after years of rhinos being hunted for having the longest or larger horns.

According to The Guardian, over the years, hunters have long sought after rhino horns, and today's poachers sell them so that they can be used in Chinese and Vietnamese traditional medicines. This information was also confirmed by the specialists from the University of Cambridge.

The report's lead author, Oscar Wilson, a former researcher from the zoology department at the University of Cambridge, expressed how happy they were to have discovered photographic proof that rhinoceros horns have shrunk over time.

Wilson added that because of security issues, the rhinos are probably one of the most difficult things to work on in all of natural history.

There is a belief that having smaller horns might be disadvantageous to a rhino's survival because different species use their horns in different ways, such as to help them grasp food or defend against predators, according to Wilson, who is currently based in Finland's the University of Helsinki.

Read also: Notorious Rhino Poacher from Mozambique Received Sentence of 30 Years in Prison 

Rhinos with Shorter Horns in Records

All five rhino species found in The Rhino Resource Center's online archive were included in the study, which measured the horns of 80 rhino images taken between 1886 and 2018. The five rhino species are the Indian, Javan, Sumatran, White, and Black.

They looked closely at photos of hunters shooting dead rhinos, including one that showed Theodore Roosevelt, a former US president, standing over the black rhino he killed in 1911.

The dimensions of the horn in relation to the rhino's body were also compared by the researchers.

Even 500-year-old drawings and artwork were examined by scientists. They discovered that there had been little interest in the species' conservation up until the 1950s.

Endangered, Critically Endangered

According to Wilson, for a few decades now, there has been a lot more attention paid to rhino conservation, and this is evident in more recent images that depict rhino conservation in protected areas or their daily struggles in the wild.

Less than 30,000 rhinos remain in the wild today, making them an endangered species compared to more than 500,000 that existed at the beginning of the 20th century.

The status of the black, Javan, and Sumatran rhinos is critically endangered, Sky News reports.

The findings of the study by Wilson and his colleagues were released in the People And Nature journal.

Related article: Eggs Taken From the Remaining Two Northern White Rhinos Might Rescue the Species