Indian Rhino's Diet

The Indian rhinoceros are herbivores. They prefer a wide variety of plants with different seasons. Moreover, 80% of the Indian rhino’s diet constitutes different varieties of grasses.

Hence grassland is more critical for rhinoceros’ survival. Besides grasses rhinoceros also prefer seasonal fruit, tender twigs of trees and shrubs, varieties of herbs, and aquatic plants. They also like roots, flowers of different plant species. They are good grazer so they can control particular grassland areas and broadly a microhabitat manager.

They like to prefer species like Scacharum sps. Narenga prophyrocoma, Arundo donax, Phragmities karka, Cynodon dactylon, Hermathia compressa, Cyperous sps, Alpinia allughas, Malastoma sp, Anthocephalus  cadamba Bombax  ceiba, Dillenia indica , Emblica officinalis, Ficus glomerata, Paederia foetida , Vallisneria spiralis and many more.

Rhinoceros are water-loving animals, but during flood season they avoided fast-flowing deep waters. During flood rhinos like to spent highlands among the other animals. Kaziranga national park, Assam India has the world's largest rhinoceros’ population. Kaziranga is a situated flood plain of river Brahmaputra, so every year flooded the situation facing by the entire rhinoceros’ population.

In the flooding seasons, rhinos would not have the chance to graze or browse for about 5-7 days. On the verge of starvation, they spent 5-7 days, and as flood water recedes, they like to drag food plants from the staying place or underwater.

Sometimes rhinoceros stray outside the park boundary, and raided agricultural crop adjoin village fields at dawn or dusk and silently returned to the park boundary. Usually, a few shrewd natured rhinos intend to raid crop, but maximum rhino stays only inside the park boundary. In such instances, they like to prefer potato, onion, pumpkins, corns, paddy crop, carrot, cabbage, and many other vegetables. In Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary of Assam, some shrewd nature rhinos every night raided crop adjoin village crop fields.

Rhinos' alimentary canal is Monogastric, and they have a simple single-chambered stomach. They are also called as hindgut fermenters. They have large caecum (90cm) as well as large colon (6-7m).

Typically rhinos are active on feeding early morning and late afternoon to late evening. Indian rhinos have a unique habit of defecating in the same place and of creating dung midden. The dung midden also acts as a communication spot among the species.

Rhinos normally sniff the dung before after the defecate and scratch the same location with a hind leg and spread pheromone from the peddle glands. Thus they got to know how many rhinos present and on that same location.

Many birds flock on the rhino dung heaps in search of insects also indigested food matter. In such a relation lot of plants also spread all across the area. Thus rhinos have much ecological importance to maintain particular habitat through single food preference behaviour.