Das Fünffte Buch / Das Thier Rhinoceros genannt.

Title

Das Fünffte Buch / Das Thier Rhinoceros genannt.

Representation of a rhinoceros, on reverse a description of the Rhina ans a view of Narsinga in India.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) was a leading Renaissance cosmographer. His most famous work, the Cosmographia (1544), was a comprehensive description of the world with 24 maps, based on research dating back to 1528. Continuously revised, the 1550 edition already included many new maps. It was the first scientific yet accessible world description published in German, illustrated with numerous woodcuts by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger. Between 1544 and 1650, the Cosmographia appeared in 46 editions (27 in German) and was translated into several languages. Münster’s work combined the knowledge of scholars, artists, and travelers and remained influential long after his death.

Historical Description

Rhinoceroses are a family of odd-toed ungulates with five species still living today. Rhinos today live in Africa south of the Sahara and in South and Southeast Asia, both in savannah landscapes and in tropical rainforests in highlands and lowlands. However, the original distribution was much wider. The phylogenetically oldest species can be traced back to the Middle Eocene, around 50 million years ago, in Eurasia and North America. At the end of the last ice age, the rhinoceroses disappeared from northern Asia and Europe. In the course of their phylogenetic history, the various rhinoceros species occupied almost all ecological niches accessible to large, terrestrial mammals. Rhinos often live as solitary animals, but in savannahs they can also occur in small, matriarchally organized herds. Bulls are usually solitary and territorial. The individual animals live in narrowly defined territories. All rhinos feed exclusively on plant foods and are adapted to this diet with broad molars. However, the species have specialized in different plant foods. Four of the five rhino species living today prefer soft plant foods such as leaves, branches, twigs, buds and fruit.