World Rhino Day

As a nature photographer I have had the great fortune to photograph many places that most only experience on TV, books or the web. Of the locations I have visited, none are more special than my travels to Tanzania in 2008 and Kenya in 2010. During each of these visits I felt as if I had stepped into the past... experiencing both the birth of humanity and a glimpse at the mega-fauna that was once the norm rather than the exception.

Today is "World Rhino Day." It is an opportunity to speak out in support of something other than ourselves. This place, East Africa, where humans began their journey as Australopithecus is also one of the last refugium of mammalian history. Home to rhinoceros, elephants, buffalo and the big cats, this place where humanity had its start is also where the last giants are being eradicated by senseless and uncontrolled poaching. Join me by signing the NRDC Petition to put issues like the conservation of the rhinoceros at the front of political and social discourse.

©2000-2016 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.

Did You Know (36)?

A giraffe’s neck has only seven cervical vertebrae. Surprisingly, this is the same number of vertebral bones in most mammalian necks. The 1.8 meter (6 feet) climb from shoulder to head requires an unusually powerful heart muscle. Weighing in at 11 kilogram (25 pound) the massive heart relies on a series of one-way arterial valves to propel the blood uphill. This tallest of all living land mammals has extreme metabolic requisites that has led to the evolution of a lung capacity that can capture 55 liters (12 gallons) of air. 

©2000-2015 BTLeventhal.com / Bruce & Tamy Leventhal. All rights reserved. No image on this site may be used without permission.