Plan your safari
A black rhino grazing on the shoreline with flamingos beyond

Rhino Facts: Black & White Rhino and Where to See Them

The rhino: ancient, armored and rarest of the five. Every sighting counts.

Plan your safari Highlights

Africa has two rhino species, and neither is named for its color. The white rhino, a mistranslation of the Dutch “wijde” (wide), is a square-lipped grazer of open grassland, heavier and calmer, often weighing more than 2 tons. By contrast, the black rhino is a hook-lipped browser of thicket, smaller, more solitary and famously feistier.

However, poaching brought both to the brink, which is why seeing one today is inseparable from conservation. In fact, the sanctuaries doing the work, from Kenya’s Lewa to South Africa’s private reserves, are precisely where sightings are best, and where your safari directly funds the rangers who keep them alive.

Highlights of the rhinoceros

White rhino

Square-lipped grazer of open grassland: often over 2 tons, calmer, often in small groups called crashes.

Black rhino

Hook-lipped browser of dense thicket, smaller, solitary and famously quicker to charge.

Senses & speed

Poor eyesight but exceptional smell and hearing. Despite the bulk, a rhino can reach about 30mph.

Horn & behavior

The horn is keratin (the same as fingernails), regrowing through life and used in defense and display.

A conservation story

Fewer than 25,000 remain in Africa. Still, sanctuaries and private reserves are why numbers are rising in places.

Where to see them

Lewa and Ol Pejeta in Kenya, the Ngorongoro Crater’s black rhino, and South Africa’s private reserves.

Explore Where to see them →

Best time to see rhino

Jun–Oct

Dry season: rhinos hold to water points and shorter grass also improves viewing.

Year-round

Even so, on fenced, protected sanctuaries like Lewa, sightings are possible in every month.

Quieter seasons, considered

Meanwhile, in the green months rates ease at many of these camps, the plains empty of vehicles and the light turns dramatic. What each season gives, and what it trades, is set out in our Safari Planning Guide.

Planning a safari to see rhino

Safari cost

Priced to your budget, and built around your camps, the season and how you like to travel. In other words, there are no fixed packages.

How we travel

Instead, we design every journey privately, with private guides and vehicles arranged where specified, the finest lodges, and a specialist on call throughout. At fly-in camps, game drives may be shared unless a private vehicle is reserved.

The Rhinoceros FAQs

Kenya’s Lewa and Ol Pejeta conservancies for both species (Ol Pejeta is East Africa’s largest black-rhino sanctuary), the Ngorongoro Crater for black rhino, and South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s white rhinos.

In short, lip shape and behavior, not color: white rhinos have wide, square lips for grazing grass and are larger and calmer; black rhinos have hooked, prehensile lips for browsing shrubs and are smaller and more aggressive.

Yes. In particular, several conservancies offer expert-guided tracking on foot with armed rangers, one of the most thrilling and safely managed experiences in Africa.

Plan a safari to see rhino.

So tell us how you like to travel and start with a complimentary consultation.

Plan your safari

For each species’ current conservation status, see the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.