Learning Celebrations

Richard Powell - Fall 2024 - Intro to Linguistics

Animal Communication Analysis: White Rhinoceros

Two white rhinos at Nairobi National Park. Kenya, Feb 2018

Category	Description
Animal	White Rhinoceros
Mode	acoustic, olfactory, and spatial
Semanticity	dominance, territory, and mating
Pragmatic Function	✔
Interchangeability	✔
Cultural Transmission	✖
Arbitrarinesss	✔
Discreteness	✖
Displacement	✔
Productivity	✖

Animal

The white rhinoceros (ceratotherium simum) is the largest rhinoceros species and one of the largest land mammals. In fact, adult white rhinos have no natural predators besides humans. They are native to Southern Africa and graze on short grains.

Mode

Because of their poor eyesight, white rhinos rely on auditory and olfactory communication. They make noises, such as grunts, snarls, bellows, and whines. They also mark territory boundaries with urine, and they use communal dung heaps called middens to keep track of other rhinos in the area, like a sort of social media. The position of one’s dung in the heap also seems to play a role, with dominant males defecating in the center of a midden and others defecating on the periphery.

Semanticity

Rhinoceros sounds can communicate multiple things. They are used during confrontations and fights, when trying to intimidate would-be attackers, and when attempting to mate. Whines are also used by calves to get their mothers’ attention.

Using middens, rhinos announce their presence and can assert their dominance over others. Use of these dung heaps plays a role in mating as well, because males can detect which females are eligible to mate with.

Pragmatic Function

Territorial male rhinos use information from middens to maintain dominance and mate with females. Non-territorial males and potential challengers can also use this information, and it seems that both male and female rhinos use middens to make choices related to mating.

Interchangeability

Rhinos both make noises and react to noises made, making their acoustic communication interchangable. Similarly, white rhinos are able to use middens for sending (i.e. defecating) and recieving (i.e. sniffing) information.

Cultural Transmission

As far as we know, white rhino communication, both acoustic and olfactory, is genetic rather than culturally transmitted.

Arbitrarinesss

White rhinos’ acoustic communication, like most, is largely arbitrary. However, the chemical cues in dung that reflect things like age and mating readiness are not arbitrary. The use of urine to mark territory is also non-arbitrary, since the place they mark corresponds directly to what they consider their territory.

Discreteness

Although each sound made by white rhinos has its own meaning, their grunts and whines cannot be broken into smaller parts. The same is true for olfactory communication.

Displacement

The use of middens could be argued to have some sort of displacement aspect. After all, when a rhino smells dung, they are learning about another rhino that is likely not present.

Productivity

Rhinos produce a relatively small number of sounds, and they do not string them together to create any new meaning. The same is true for olfactory communication.