Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations
Watch Live

Arts & Culture

NATURE: Rhinoceros

Photo of an Indian rhino and calf. This program looks at efforts in South Africa, India and Indonesia to protect the planet's five remaining rhino species from poachers and relocate them to new habitats. The episode also covers American efforts to breed rhinos in captivity. Shown: An Indian one-horned rhinoceros and her calf graze in Kaziranga National Park in northeast India.
Nigel Marven/©Image Impact and EBC
Photo of an Indian rhino and calf. This program looks at efforts in South Africa, India and Indonesia to protect the planet's five remaining rhino species from poachers and relocate them to new habitats. The episode also covers American efforts to breed rhinos in captivity. Shown: An Indian one-horned rhinoceros and her calf graze in Kaziranga National Park in northeast India.

Airs Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 8 p.m. on KPBS TV

They are hulking beasts from prehistory, virtually unchanged over 25 million years. Once they roamed the Earth in millions, numbering hundreds of species of all shapes and sizes; today, the rhinoceros is one of the planet's rarest animals, with three of the remaining five species on the brink of extinction.

"Nature: Rhinoceros" trails rangers through the savannahs of South Africa, the grasslands of India and the jungles of Indonesia, and visits rhino fertility experts at an American zoo, detailing efforts to protect rhinos from poachers, relocate them to new habitats and breed them in captivity.

Along the way, the program offers fascinating close-up scenes of the pachyderms in their natural habitats, from a pulse-quickening charge by a black rhino to an Indian one-horned rhino nursery full of mothers and calves, and much more.

Advertisement

Watch video of filmmaker Nigel Marven as he has to make a quick escape after a mother rhino with a calf begins to charge.

Video Excerpt: Cutting Edge Science Saves Rhinos