With six years of tedious phd work on theropod dinosaurs behind him, Darren Naish stares longingly from his office window at the birds outside and wonders: why did I bother? He pursues exotic lizards and feral cats across the British countryside, occasionally prizes the skeletal jaws from hedgehog corpses, and aims to publish his technical work on obscure Cretaceous dinosaurs. He remains desperately in quest of an academic job that'll last more than a month, and - with a background in TV research, e-learning development, academic editing, popular writing, teaching, landscape gardening, parenting and the wonderful world of retail - he still holds out hope of becoming a dedicated academic. He can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. For more biographical info go 
Apologies to all for total lack of proper posts recently - I am just too busy. However, several posts will - in theory - appear very soon, and I hope that they will prove really, really interesting (especially to people interested in our views on the diversity of extant mammals. And please don't try and guess: I'm not telling). The theme for today's picture of the day is, obviously, rhinos.. again. This photo shows a Ceratotherium simum, the animal that (for an as-yet-unknown reason) we call the White rhino (and, no, that stuff about 'white' being a corruption of 'wide', 'wijd', 'weit' or whatever, is no longer regarded as correct). I've just returned from the Rhino May Day, co-organised by the Rhino Resource Center and the Zoological Society of London. Not coincidentally, today is also the day that the awesome Rhino Resource Center website is re-launched: if you're interested in rhinos, go here for the largest on-line resource of rhino pdfs, images, and much, much more. Anyway, back to work...
Comments
A White Rhino Story
Back in the day my mom was working on her masters in biology. She chose the subject of breeding behavior in southern white rhinos, observing an older pair at the San Diego Zoo. Every time Rheinhardt, the male, showed signs of becoming amorous, she'd drive on down to the zoo to make observations.
And every time she'd arrive only to see Rheinhardt lose all interest in the female.
So she switched to a more cooperative subject, a bacterium, and subsequently earned her masters.
Meantime the San Diego Zoological Society decided to build another campus. This one to be known as The San Diego Wild Animal Park. A few years before the park opened they moved Rheinhardt there, where he joined some young, nubile, female southern white rhinos from South Africa. Rheinhardt was in rhino paradise.
A few months after the Wild Animal Park opened Mom took the three of us to see the place. After seeing all the sights you could see on foot we got on the Wagasa Bush Line and took the grand tour. As we're coming up on the South Africa exhibit the conductor announced "Ahead to your right you can see the park's southern white rhinos. The three calves --- plus four more on the way --- are all the work of one --- count them, one --- male southern white rhinoceros... Rheinhardt the Romantic Rhino".
My mom, who had cussed just once before in my hearing some 13 years before this occasion, shot to her feet and yelled out, "You son of a bitch!"
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | May 30, 2007 7:49 PM
Awesome RRC website! Very useful, thanks for the post.
Posted by: John H | May 31, 2007 6:48 AM