Rhinos in Major American Zoos

snowleopard

snowleopard

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The book that I cowrote, titled America’s Top 100 Zoos & Aquariums, contains reviews and photos of 80 zoos and 20 aquariums. There are 61 out of the 80 zoos that currently display rhinos. The breakdown is white (33), black (23) and greater one-horned (15), with a few zoos having more than one species.

A few comments:

71 out of the 80 zoos in the book have giraffes
61 out of the 80 zoos in the book have rhinos
54 out of the 80 zoos in the book have elephants
33 out of the 80 zoos in the book have hippos (common or pygmy)

Dallas Zoo not having any rhino species is quite shocking, because the zoo already has a fairly comprehensive collection of African megafauna. There are elephants, giraffes, hippos, zebras, okapis, gorillas, chimpanzees and many other African mammals, including a lot of behind-the-scenes hoofstock. It’s fascinating that Dallas is considering adding an expensive sealion pool when the zoo could add in either white or black rhinos and also a walking trail around the sprawling ungulate yards to complete its African zone.

Smithsonian’s National Zoo did a great job committing to Asian elephants with a new exhibit almost a decade ago, but for the major zoo of Washington, D.C. not to have either giraffes, hippos or rhinos is a bit surprising. Perhaps after the $55 million Bird House renovation (Experience Migration), then the zoo can consider its options.

Many of the zoos that do not have rhinos are zoos without a lot of space. Central Park, Como Park, El Paso, Fort Wayne, John Ball, Point Defiance, Roger Williams Park, Rosamond Gifford, Sacramento, Santa Barbara and Topeka are 11 zoos that are all around 40 acres in size or much smaller. The zoos with rhinos tend to have far more acreage and North Carolina Zoo has its white rhinos in a 40-acre exhibit that is larger than most zoos! That being said, some of those smaller zoos will indeed have rhinos in the future. I can see Point Defiance and other zoos possibly adding rhinos once their elephants are gone.

The 33 zoos that have white rhinos:

ABQ BioPark
Atlanta
Audubon
Birmingham
Bronx
Busch Gardens
Cameron Park
Detroit
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Fresno Chaffee
Gladys Porter
Henry Vilas
Houston
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Knoxville
Louisville
Maryland
Memphis
Nashville
North Carolina
Omaha
Philadelphia
Phoenix
Reid Park
Riverbanks
San Antonio
San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Tampa
Tulsa
Utah’s Hogle
Virginia
Wildlife World

Here are my 10 favourite white rhino exhibits in the USA (alphabetical ranking):

Busch Gardens
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Fresno Chaffee
Jacksonville
Maryland
Nashville
North Carolina
Omaha
San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Tulsa

Almost all of those 10 white rhino exhibits are mixed-species habitats, which is the trend in modern zoos.

The 23 zoos that have black rhinos:

Brookfield
Buffalo
Busch Gardens
Caldwell
Cheyenne Mountain
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Denver
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Fort Worth
Honolulu
Kansas City
Lincoln Park
Little Rock
Living Desert
Miami
Milwaukee County
Oregon
Pittsburgh
Saint Louis
San Diego Zoo Safari Park
San Francisco
Sedgwick County

Here are my 5 favourite black rhino exhibits in the USA (alphabetical ranking):

Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Fort Worth
Great Plains
Saint Louis
San Diego Zoo Safari Park

The 15 zoos that have greater one-horned rhinos:

Bronx
Buffalo
Columbus
Denver
Fort Worth
Montgomery
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Miami
San Diego
San Diego Zoo Safari Park
Tampa
Tanganyika Wildlife Park
Toledo
Woodland Park

Here are my 5 favourite greater one-horned rhino exhibits in the USA (alphabetical ranking):

Denver
Fort Worth
Oklahoma City
Omaha
San Diego Zoo Safari Park

The 19 zoos that do not have rhinos:

Akron
Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum
Binder Park
Central Park
Como Park
Dallas
El Paso
Fort Wayne
John Ball
Los Angeles
Minnesota
Oakland
Point Defiance
Roger Williams Park
Rosamond Gifford
Sacramento
Santa Barbara
Smithsonian’s National Zoo
Topeka
 
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snowleopard said:
Smithsonian’s National Zoo did a great job committing to Asian elephants with a new exhibit almost a decade ago, but for the major zoo of Washington, D.C. not to have either giraffes, hippos or rhinos is a bit surprising. Perhaps after the $55 million Bird House renovation (Experience Migration), then the zoo can consider its options.
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In April of last year a Washington Post reader asked a local columnist about what happened to the giraffes at the National zoo, and he made this article about it (https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...50431a-85a0-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html). He asked the zoo if they planned on adding giraffes again and they said this:

“Our scientists are currently studying behaviors and movements of giraffes in East Africa because their populations are mysteriously on a fast decline,” Steve Monfort, head of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, said in an email. “I’d like nothing better than to tell that conservation story with giraffes at the National Zoo! We have a vision to renovate our Savannah area but it’s a ways off in our master planning.”
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A few years back I found a document that showed proposed "thematic areas" for the zoo that showed them adding rhinos in between Asia Trail and the Bird House. However I have no clue if that is still in the zoos plans.
 
It's interesting to note that only TWO zoos in the United States have both common and pygmy hippos (San Diego and Gulf Breeze) and only TWO zoos in the United States have white, black and greater one-horned rhinos (San Diego Zoo Safari Park and White Oak).
 
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Out of curiosity, besides @snowleopard, did any other chatter see all four species when White Oak had Harry, the sumatran rhino?
 
I did. If you didn't had the chance - believe me, you didn't miss anything, because it doesn't make any difference if you saw 2,3 or 4 rhino species at the same place. If you are a regular zoo-goer, you have certainly seen three of them in many other zoos, and the Sumatran rhino was still around for a long time in Cincinnati and Los Angeles, and before that in San Diego and New York. I was still the same person after my visit to White Oak, unlike that, having just seen 4 species of rhino in the same place. After the third species I was bored. Not again a rhinoceros - are there no other animals here ?:D I had simply already visited too many zoos with 3 rhino species.;) And even the Sumatran rhino was nothing new for me, I already knew from Cincinnati and L.A, but missed them at Port Lympne.
 
PSO said:
Out of curiosity, besides @snowleopard, did any other chatter see all four species when White Oak had Harry, the sumatran rhino?
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Yes I was fortunate to see the Sumatran rhinoceros "Harapan" at White Oak. (I'd also previously seen the species in New York (Bronx Zoo) and many times at Port Lympne.)
 
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@Bib Fortuna maybe you didn't appreciate it but I certainly did. Don't know your liking of species but always loved seeing multiple rhino species (and pachyderms in general) at facilities and to see the only four at the time kept in captivity at White Oak was a real treat. Considering it hadn't been done since London (and still blows my mind the one they did not have was whites) made it more special.
 
PSO said:
.... and to see the only four at the time kept in captivity at White Oak was a real treat. Considering it hadn't been done since London (and still blows my mind the one they did not have was whites) made it more special.
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Indeed. Given that the white rhinoceros is the rhino species most commonly seen in zoos today, it seems very strange that they weren't kept in zoos before the 1950s.

At the time London Zoo had four species of rhinoceros (black, Javan, Sumatran and Indian) no zoos had ever kept white rhinos.
 
Tim May said:
Indeed. Given that the white rhinoceros is the rhino species most commonly seen in zoos today, it seems very strange that they weren't kept in zoos before the 1950s.

At the time London Zoo had four species of rhinoceros (black, Javan, Sumatran and Indian) no zoos had ever kept white rhinos.
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I would think Javans were very rare in zoos
 
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