The elephants and the rhinos are the most endangered species across the world and in some areas have been poached to extinction. These huge animals one would expect that they can survive in the jungle. An average adult rhino can weigh about one and a half tones and once it charges, it can go after its target at a speed of up to 50km/hr which means that if an adult rhino is upset and charges to full speed, it is bound to hit this object really hard and can cause serious damage.
In this case therefore, one might think that rhinos would know better than fight each other which is not the case. However, rhinos are very territorial and demand that other rhinos stay out of way but are very much will to fight any intruders and the consequences of any such fight can be very horrific.
In Uganda, rhinos are only in the Ziwa rhino sanctuary while in the rest of East Africa, you can find them in different conservation areas like the Ol Pejeta Conservancy where the 21 year old blind Baraka was raised.
This was one of the first rhinos born in Ol Pejeta Conservancy and has been considered a blessing to the conservancy just as it name Baraka suggests which meaning “blessings” in Swahili. Baraka back then had the bad luck to get into a territorial dispute with another rhino and he got the worst of it that by the end, he had one eye bodily injured that it was literally hanging out from its socket. Later it developed large cluster of boils under the skin on this eye. So in the end, the eye had to be removed and later the other eye developed further complications in his other eye that the veterinarians were not able to cure so became blind in both eyes. It was transferred to 100-acre enclosure known as the Morani’s complex since it could not take care of itself in the conservancy
Today Baraka is major attraction at the Morani Information Center because there so many people that visit just to see how this blind rhino survives
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