We can’t believe our eyes with this one!
An angry rhinoceros at a zoo park in the German state of Lower Saxony has gone viral this week. The animal was captured on film flipping a zoo vehicle over three times with its massive horn. And as if that’s not shocking enough, there was a zookeeper in the car at the time of the incident! YIKES!!!
Related: Sweet Justice! Rhino Poachers Eaten By A Pack Of Lions!
The entire thing occurred a few days ago at Serengeti Park in the town of Hodenhagen. A visitor to the safari park managed to capture video of the rhinoceros as it descended upon the helpless zookeeper in the awfully tiny car.
As you can see from the video (below), the attack was short and efficient, with the rhino almost effortlessly flipping the car over and over again, smashing it to bits and pushing it around like a toy:
Unreal!!!
Amazingly, reports from the scene claim the zookeeper was able to walk away “with only a few bruises” after the attack. That alone seems incredible, especially considering the shape in which the car appears at the end of the terrifying ordeal!
As for the rhino, officials say the beast arrived at the park for a breeding program about 18 months ago, and the animal is still adjusting to his new environment. So far, it’s unclear what may have set the animal off — but whatever it was, the sheer display of power there is awesome… and terrifying!
We Must Protect The Rhinos!
As scary as this was for the zookeeper involved, the reality of life outside zoos for rhinos all over the world is far, far more dangerous. Many Asian markets are filled with rhinoceros horns, a product historically considered to be an aphrodisiac while also supposedly treating a variety of other disorders and ailments.
(This is, of course, nonsense. Chemically, it’s about the same makeup as your fingernail clippings.)
Because of that, poaching across Asia and Africa has long been out of control, with wild populations of the animal plummeting for years now. The Western Black Rhino officially went extinct in 2013 after years of overly-aggressive hunting and poaching. The extremely endangered Northern White Rhino has seen its wild population fall to single digits, with just two known females left in the entire world as of last August, 2019.
At least the Southern White Rhinoceros, at one point also nearly extinct, has held numbers in captivity thanks to an aggressive breeding program recently undertaken by zoos worldwide. Even so, poachers have become so brazen that rhinos supposedly safe in zoo enclosures are still being slaughtered in the dead of night for their horns.
We note all that to say this: the video here clearly reinforces the fact the rhinoceros is an incredibly powerful, unique, and amazing creature (and, yes, pretty terrifying, too). And sadly we’ve done a terrible job saving it from complete annihilation.
Thankfully the zookeeper involved here is OK; we wish we hope one day we’ll be able to say the same thing about wild rhino populations all over the world.
[Image via YouTube]
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