9/1/2023 0 Comments First rhinoceros drawing![]() Presumably this was a pretty calm animal, they carried huge amounts of hay and food aboard the ship, I really have no idea how long it would have taken but weeks and weeks I would imagine, probably over quite rough seas, and yes - it’s an incredible voyage. ![]() But something of the size of the greater one-horned rhino, and the strength of a one horned rhino, on a sailing ship is clearly an amazing challenge. ![]() You can assume that actually their animal husbandry skills were good, they were probably extremely good people with horses, and the care that they would take transporting horses around would have been very useful in terms of transporting a rhino. I guess on the positive they didn’t have all of the paperwork to worry about in those days! But of course logistically it was an enormous challenge. Transporting a rhino, presumably from India, to Portugal in the 1500s would have been a very different matter. So it’s not that complicated if you put enough preparation time into it. But loading them on to the crate and loading them off the crate is challenging, and that’s done through long-term care and training we train them to walk on to the crate for food, and walk off again. We tend to find that while an animal’s moving, be it in a vehicle or an aeroplane, they stay pretty calm and they just eat while they’re travelling and the time they can get a little bit upset is if things actually come to a stop. ![]() Sometimes we give them some little sedative just to keep them calm although usually we don’t need it, they’ll feed throughout the journey, and actually they travel pretty well generally. But also of course these days they fly, so it’s a very quick transport, but keepers will travel with them to keep them calm. Of course, today we have all the bureaucratic issues huge amounts of paperwork and veterinary certificates and all that bureaucracy that goes on with moving animals and transporting animals around, particularly exotics. Compared to the Black Rhino which is much more highly strung, these animals are much calmer. So greater one-horned rhinos tend to be very laid-back, very calm in their personalities, and therefore can be moved around fairly easily. But also they’re very docile in terms of they tame very quickly. They can be surprisingly fast, they’re very intelligent. A big male can easily weigh a couple of tonnes. The Indian rhinoceros is the world's fourth largest land animal, but can run up to 34 miles per hourĬlearly, it’s a big animal. However, the ship carrying the rhino sank in a storm and the unfortunate rhino was drowned. Seeking approval for his Eastern empire, the Portuguese king sent the rhino as a gift to the pope. The rhino was the first to arrive in Europe since the days of the Roman Empire and caused a sensation. ![]() At the time Portugal's navy dominated the Indian Ocean and controlled the world's spice trade. The rhino that inspired Dürer's print was given by an Indian sultan to King Manuel of Portugal in 1515. Dürer, however, never actually saw a live rhino and based his drawing on a brief sketch and a letter. The new technology of woodcut printing allowed drawings to be mass produced around 4000 to 5000 copies of the rhino print were probably sold in Dürer's lifetime. Dürer's celebrity was in part due to his ability to make his work both available and affordable to a mass audience. This print of a rhinoceros was created by Albrecht Dürer, the most famous artist of his day. ![]()
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