Tales from the wild: 🦏🌿 Witness the Incredible Mating Rituals of White Rhinos! 🌿

Another chilly morning and we set out on drive. We’ve had so many amazing sightings of lions, leopards mating and elephants passing right by the car, I decided to take it easy and head down to the Sabi River for some coffee and explore some of the smaller things that nature had to offer.

After a delicious coffee to warm us up after our cold start to the day we slowly made our way back to the lodge. As I got closer to the lodge one of the rangers called in that he had some rhino mating about 5 minutes from the lodge.

We drove straight there and found 5 rhinos in an open area. Everything looked calm as the female was suckling her calf and the rest of the males were grazing.

This changed very quickly as 2 of the males started to have a standoff as they tried to figure out who had dominance and was going to get the opportunity to mate.

The males stormed each other pulling away just before contact. The snorting, huffing and puffing carried on for a while till one of the males eventually ushered the other away from his prize. If he though he had won the battle he was wrong because the female was now rejecting his advances. He patiently waited for her to become calm again.  

We watched and waited. Eventually our patience was rewarded as the male advanced upon the female, making some very strange noises to let her know what his intentions were. His intentions we successful! It will be great to see how long the courtship will last as this particular male has already been following her for 2 weeks. Today was the day she readily accepted his advances, meaning he was the strongest and fittest male to father her calf. What an incredible sighting!