This is the second illustration in this series of drawings and I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I haven’t drawn an animal this textured in a while so I felt quite rusty to begin with but I soon loosened up.
I wanted to draw a white rhino mother and baby since I went to the zoo back in March and saw a young calf and its mother and watched how they interacted with each other. The mother was asleep but the calf was staying by her side and brushing against her and even sucking her horn at one point. After researching more about rhinos over the next few weeks, I watched so many heartbreaking videos of rhino calves trying to help their mothers back to their feet after they had been killed by poachers and even one where the calf successfully scared a group of men away from its injured mother. The bond between them is so strong that both mother and calf show great signs of distress if they are ever separated.
Male rhinos leave the mother as soon as they have mated so the mother raises her calves on her own. The female rhino will be pregnant for around 16 months and eventually give birth to a 100-140lbs (10 stone) calf. Although when the calf is born they are not as delicate as a newborn human, they still heavily rely on their mother for milk, protection and to teach them all of the necessary skills needed to survive on their own after 2-3 years.
