A better rhinoceros

Rhinos are by nature solitary creatures which are impossible to domesticate. Even the most sociable, the white rhino is still not quite there yet. Is it possible for natural selection to create a creature that might be domesticable by which I mean more social, less violent and that does not die after five minutes of running?
 
Is there any reason for natural selection to do so?

Does it in any way or another make it more suited to its environment than the RL rhino?
 
Is there any reason for natural selection to do so?

Does it in any way or another make it more suited to its environment than the RL rhino?

Maybe if there is some sort of terrifying predator that makes it necessary to be able to run faster and socialize more for protection?
 
Its impossible to make a better Rhinoceros, they are perfect just the way they are in all their half blind stupid glory.
 
Changing the evolution of rhinos would almost certainly change the evolution of humans.

That said there are many very large mammals that are stupid, have poor senses, and are aggressive, but manage to live in herds anyway. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a reason why rhinos couldn't evolve to be social.
 

Zirantun

Banned
I am not sure the effects that more social, domesticatable rhino would have.

I think if you are going by Jared Diamond's theory of geography, I would suggest reading the rebuttal. Many anthropologists agree only in part with his findings, and believe that he is going at anthropology with a one-size-fits-all approach.

The process of how animals such as horses, the aurochs, wolves, and pigs were even domesticated are still a matter of speculation. There is no consensus as to how these things happened, nor when. Recently, dogs have been shown to have been kept by humans as early as 100,000 years ago, and may have been 'kept' by Neanderthals in a similar fashion to the way the New Guinean Singing Dog is 'kept' in New Guinea.

Many argue that there are plenty of potentially suitable animals for domestication on the African continent, as well as a wide area from east to west that the climate remains similar on similar latitudes, and in fact a far better example of similar climates on similar latitudes than Eurasia. For example, Paris is on a similar latitude as Harbin in Northeastern China. One is temperate and rather mild, the other is an icy hell. Even as far north as Edinburgh one experiences the warmth carried to it by the Gulf Stream Current. In China and Siberia, no such powerful climate changing current exists. Similarly, as how horses, the aurochs, and the boar were domesticated is a matter of debate, there is no real reason to assume that animals like zebras and warthogs and perhaps wildebeest (or any number of the artidactyls in the area) are not capable of being domesticated, as our own process of domestication appears to have taken a very long time (thousands of years).

So instead of changing an animal like the rhino to fit what myself and many others consider to be a very simplistic explanation of why Africans did not rule the world, perhaps you could change the workings of African cultures and make them domesticate some of their possibly perfectly domesticatable fauna.
 
Similarly, as how horses, the aurochs, and the boar were domesticated is a matter of debate, there is no real reason to assume that animals like zebras and warthogs and perhaps wildebeest (or any number of the artidactyls in the area) are not capable of being domesticated, as our own process of domestication appears to have taken a very long time (thousands of years).
I'd think part of it has to be how easy it is to domesticate any given species. Cattle, horses, and particularly dogs are pretty much ready to go once you eliminate the adults in a pack/herd and have just the young; you can dominate them, they will accept you as the leader. Almost as important is that you carry this over into herding them out in the open. Sure, it might be possible to domesticate zebras if you confine them in pens for 1000 generations, but for a stone age level people to do that is not feasible. The same is true for about any big animal in Africa, which explains why they ended up importing cattle and goats from places north...
 
Couldn't a more sociable Rhino mean that it resembles a Cape Buffalo instead of a cow. It'll be extremely aggressive on its own.
 
A herd of rhinos would place an enormous strain on the local ecosystem; they're very big browsers. The only social browser in the same weight class is the elephant, and elephant herds have to remain on the move over enormous areas to avoid destroying their environment (like a wildfire, a section of forest requires a few years to recover from the passage of an elephant herd). I'm pretty sure there's no room for two animals in that ecological niche, so social rhinos requires the extinction of elephants to make room for them.
 
Maybe if there is some sort of terrifying predator that makes it necessary to be able to run faster and socialize more for protection?

There is no predator terrifying enough when you have the size and strenght of a rhino. Their shape is nature's way of saying "don't fuck with me".

If you go back to the Miocene there are quite a lot of different rhinos: hippo-like rhinos, cow-like rhinos, even sauropod-like rhinos like Paraceratherium. They were probably more sociable than modern rhinos and could have lived in herds. In this case, the thing that did them in was more likely the more advanced artiodactyls that came later and filled those niches, leaving them with only the modern "solitary horned rhino" role to them.

The most different species today is probably the Sumatran rhino, which in a very broad ecological sense is not that different from a very big tapir. I think that it is also quite friendly in captivity.
 
Maybe if there is some sort of terrifying predator that makes it necessary to be able to run faster and socialize more for protection?

Elephants raping and murdering* them is'nt enough?



*Occasionally following the death of the Alpha/Pack leader of a Troupe of male elephants one of the younger ones will go on an insane rampage and their have been cases where it's been recrded where they'll charge down a Rhino, rape it and then brutally kill it.
 
Elephants raping and murdering* them is'nt enough?



*Occasionally following the death of the Alpha/Pack leader of a Troupe of male elephants one of the younger ones will go on an insane rampage and their have been cases where it's been recrded where they'll charge down a Rhino, rape it and then brutally kill it.

I am way, way too drunk to handle this post.
 
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