Chapter 11: The Rhino Gets an Ultrasound

                                    

In chapter 11, Elizabeth Kolbert introduces us to the nature of enclosures and captive breeding as well as give us information on the status of rhinos and elephants. In the beginning, Elizabeth Kolbert tells us about the first time she met Suci, a sumatran rhino from a cincinnati zoo who was breed from two other captive rhinos. The breeding of rhinos, from our perspective is unpredictable, and doesn’t happen unless females sense a compatible male nearby which could be thousands of miles away. Since this is unavaiable to those in captives, there are attempts with “establishing a captive breeding program to insure against the species’ total loss” and even though it was disastrous at first, Elizabeth Kolbert stated that “in an ironic twist, humans have brought the species so low that it seems only heroic human efforts can save it” (p. 221). This statement was later explained when Kolbert starts talking about poachers who hunt rhinos for their horns and how rhinos, as well as elephants, are generally not hunted by predators when they reach a certain age of adulthood. This would show that science is a process, because it took zoologist a while to even learn that rhinos couldn’t survive off of hay, and to find a sustainable way to get these animals to breed which was done through little ‘dates’ monitored by the scientist. It is also stated in the chapter that “humans are capable of driving virtually any large mammal species extinct, even though they are also capable of going to great lengths to guarantee that they do not” (p. 234). This represents how humans affect the environment and the toll it could take if we continue altering the earth for selfish and invaluable reasons such as personal growth, money, and allowing nature to perish [R].