Indian Rhinoceros

Indian Rhinoceros battle analysis

A prime Indian rhino bull looks like a tank built from grey leather: great folds of hide at the neck, shoulders and rump, studded with wart-like bumps, over roughly two tonnes of muscle and bone. A single horn rises from the snout, usually about 25 cm long. The real weapons are hidden until the mouth opens: sharp lower incisor tusks that bulls use to slash one another in fights that are reported as the leading natural cause of death in the species.

Most of the time Indian rhinos graze the tall grasses of the Brahmaputra and Terai floodplains, wallow in pools, swim rivers and keep to home ranges of a few square kilometres. They hear and smell well but see poorly, and a disturbed rhino either crashes away through the grass or charges. People living beside Nepal's parks lose crops and, every year, a few lives to rhinos.

On the ABS scale the Indian rhino sits beside the white rhinoceros at the top of the rhino group. The white rhino keeps a small edge in mass, raw power and horn reach, while the Indian rhino matches it in defense through its heavier folds and adds a slashing tusk system that no African rhino has. Both remain below the common hippopotamus in Attack, and far below elephants in size.

Habitat & range

Alluvial floodplain grasslands, swamps and adjoining riverine forest of the Brahmaputra basin and the Terai of northern India and southern Nepal, usually close to water. It survives in 12 protected areas, including Kaziranga, Orang, Pobitora, Manas, Jaldapara, Gorumara and Dudhwa in India and Chitwan, Bardia, Parsa and Shuklaphanta in Nepal.

Diet & hunting

Mainly a grazer of tall and short grasses, also eating twigs, leaves, shrubs, flowers, fruit and aquatic plants. By grazing and wallowing it keeps floodplain grasslands open. Mynahs and egrets feed on insects around it.

Social life

Largely solitary. Cows keep calves close for up to four years; subadults form stable groups; groups of up to 10 rhinos gather at wallows. Bulls hold overlapping home ranges of about 2–8 km² and become intolerant of rivals during breeding.

Conservation

Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. From about 100 animals in the early 1900s and roughly 1,870–1,895 in the early 1990s, the population grew to an estimated 4,075 in March 2025 (3,323 in India and 752 in Nepal). More than 70% live in Kaziranga National Park, so a single disaster could hit most of the species. Poaching for horn remains the main threat, along with invasive plants, shrinking grasslands and silting wetlands.

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