They Talk Shit Here

Would you know how to tell the difference between the droppings of a white rhinoceros an elephant and a black rhinoceros? This is the sort of stuff we have learned here. Prepare to be enlightened....

At first glance the droppings look quite similar but there are a couple of things that help make the identification easy. Firstly elephants: they eat everything and when they are not sleeping they are generally eating. They need to eat a lot as they only digest 40 percent of the food they eat and they have a big body to keep going. Their dung contains everything: seeds, leaves, grass, twigs and a lot of it is undigested. Their dung also tends to leave a trail along the path as they drop while walking along, no doubt impatient to find the next place to eat.

Rhinoceros on the other hand tend leave their droppings in a pile and, even more telling, they then use their hind legs to kick the stuff about. The scuff marks in the dust and the kicked around dung say 'here I am' and a passing rhinoceros can tell a lot from the scent about the health and sex of the animal that left it. As for the difference between a white and black rhinoceros (they are both grey in colour in reality) the white rhinoceros is a grazer and you will see it on the plains eating grass whereas the black rhinoceros is a browser spending its time feeding in the shrub areas on leaves and branches. The contents of the dung reflect this diet and in addition the black rhinoceros dung is redder as it contains a lot of tannins from leaves the animal consumes. Who would have thought dung could be so fascinating?