White Rhinoceros in GURPS

"You need to know something about the way that a rhino sees his world before we go barging into it," [Charles] whispered to us. "They're pretty mild and inoffensive creatures for all their size and horns and everything. His eyesight is very poor and he only relies on it for pretty basic information. If he sees five animals like us approaching him, he'll get nervous and run off. So we have to keep close together in single file. Then he'll think we're just one big animal and he'll be less worried."

"A pretty big animal," I said.

"That doesn't matter. He's not afraid of big animals, but numbers bother him. We also have to stay downwind of him, which means that from here we're going to have to make a wide circle around him. His sense of smell is very acute indeed. In fact, it's his most important sense. His whole world picture is made up of smells. He 'sees' in smells. His nasal passages are in fact bigger than his brain."

- "Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams

The white rhinoceros is a grazer from the savannas of Sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest living non-elephant land animal. It has two horns on its face, a large horn on its nose and a smaller horn between its eyes. Despite their name, white rhinos are gray, and are nearly the same color as the black rhinoceros from which they can be distinguished by their square upper lip and larger size. White rhino females and young gather in groups (called crashes) of around a dozen, while adult males remain solitary. Bulls are territorial, they mark their territory by dropping dung, urine spraying, and scraping their horn on the ground or in bushes. These rhinos pant to keep in contact, grunt and snort to communicate with each other, squeal in pain or alarm, and roar and bellow when angry or threatening.

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