Rhino Orphans Become the Best of Friends. (5 November, 1996)

For once top South African rehabilitator Karen Trendler is happy to be bucking nature. Her Animal Rehabilitation Centre at Kameeldrift, near Roodeplaat Dam, is a temporary home to a pair of boisterous young rhinos - one black and one white - who, until a few weeks ago, where more than a handful.

'As they were in adjacent bomas, we thought why not let them get together,' Mrs Trendler said yesterday. Initially the two orphans fought and had to be separated by personnel, but then matters came to a head. 'I had had enough and decided simply to leave the young rhinos together until they sorted themselves out,' Mrs Trendler said. It took just over a day for the 6-month-old youngsters to come to terms with each other, leaving Mrs Trendler and her staff to carry on with more important duties, such as seeing to the African black-footed cat breeding programme.

Now the young rhinos - a square-lipped white male from the Kruger National Park and the other a prehensile-lipped black rhino cow calf from North-West Province's Pilanesberg Park - are the best of companions. 'Bonding of this nature betweeen black and white rhinos does not happen normally in the wild but I'm happy it has happened here. It gives both youngsters a chance to do what young rhinos do in the wild - learn about survival by playing and also keeps human contact, and hence imprinting, to an absolute minimum,' she said. This is a necessity if the rhinos are to be successfully released into the wild.

The white rhino calf is scheduled to go to Marakele National Park near Thabazimbi. The baby black will be returned to Pilanesberg where it was found suckling from a white rhino cow - also an unusual occurrence. Mrs Trendler believes the black rhino calf lost her mother when she was attacked by a hippo and was attracted to the white rhino cow which North-West Parks Board officials believe lost its calf. She was removed from the cow so as not to affect her chances of breeding. 'No-one was exactly sure of what would have happened had the white rhino given birth. The black rhino calf was removed to give both the best chance,' Mrs Trendler added. Kim Helfrich. Courtesy of the Pretoria News.