Mating rhinos

‘’Every creature on earth is a masterpiece of art.’’ – Anthony Douglas Williams

With Rhinos there is no set breeding season thus making it a special and rare sighting that many have not seen before. In able for these two Rhinos to join up and mate, there are quite a few things that they need to do – for example, the males need to fight for a territory and scent mark that area with dung middens and urine, protecting it from other bulls.

It is only after all that when a female Rhino will choose the male she wants to mate with and that’s not an easy road for the male as the female constantly runs around and turning on the male hitting him with her horn. Eventually the female will go into full oestrus where she will urinate to signal that she is ready to mate.

On this day, we saw a bull following a female around and suddenly he mounted the female and the copulation started. We were very lucky as they were facing us and were in a wide open area.

My camera was on the right settings as prior to this I photographed lions moving. The mating went on for about 2 to 5 minutes every time and eventually I got the photo I was looking for.

The bull wanted to get off the female but she turned and he slipped with his one foot stuck on her back he face-planted into her back creating quite a bit of dust.

Equipment Used

• Camera – Canon 7D Mkii
• Lens and Focal length – Sigma 150-600mm F5 – 6.3 DG @516mm

Settings used to capture this image

• ISO – 640
• Aperture – F 8.0
• Shutter – 1/800

In Lightroom I pushed up clarity and gave it a little more contrast in able to see the dust cloud a bit better.