Death of Mshindi: Denver Zoo’s Champion, Painter, Warrior Black Rhino

Mshindi’s passing nevertheless expresses advantages and disadvantages of captive, confined, conserved animals in the Denver Zoo of:

• Association of Zoos and Aquariums accreditation;
• 600 animal conservation projects involving 60+ countries and 7 continents;
• 4,300 animals representing 600+ species.

Denver Zoo indeed finds conservation revenues, extra-local interest, and household recognition from:

• arranging $60 Meet-‘n-Greet rhino encounter admissions (until Mshindi’s biting -- with some of his 12 molars and 12 pre-molars -- a female guest’s finger during fruit-, grain-, hay-, vegetable-feeding in August 2013);
• juggling carrot and yam snack-sharing and interspecies friendships between Bodie the lab-collie Wonder Dog and Mshindi in 2014.

It generates patrons and researchers by selling Mshindi’s canvases, painted with mouth-held brushes and positioned by keepers. 

A conserved venue helps Mshindi socialize, wild-like, with:

• Bandhu (born May 18, 2009) the painter and Tensing (born 2007?/2008?), San Diego and Columbus Zoo wildlife park-born Indian (greater-horned) rhinoceroses;
• Shy Anne (December 11, 1982 – February 7, 2014), San Antonio Zoo-born black rhinoceros.

It is wild-like with:

• females herding juvenile males and unmated females;
• males soloing on exclusive or overlapping home ranges.

It juggles wild-like breeding and maturing when mates feed and sleep together every 2 to 5 years, September to November and March to July, before birthing 88.18-pound (40-kilogram) singles 419 to 478 days later for:

• scrub-/shrub-/thicket-/thornbush-foraging at 2 years;
• self-reliance at 2.5 to 3.5 years;
• sexual maturity for 4- to 6-year-old females, 7- to 9-year-old males. 

Park-, reserve-, and zoo-keepers know how to mature black rhinoceroses to:

• 19.69-inch (50-centimeter) male horn-lengths, 53.50-inch (135.9-centimeter) female horn-lengths;
• 55.12- to 70.87-inch (140- to 180-centimeter) shoulder heights;
• 118.11- to 147.64-inch (300- to 375-centimeter) head-body lengths;
• 1,763.69- to 3,086.47-pound (800- to 1,400-kilogram) weights.

Experience and expertise lead them to emergency, long-term, and short-term care decisions regarding black rhino emotional, mental, physical, psychological, and social needs. But per Liverpudlian guitarist/keyboardist/songwriter/vocalist John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1940), life moves along while plans busily are made.

And so Mshindi numbers among the world’s animals that are saved from extermination or extinction in the wild only to expire in confined captivity and conservation despite modern medical/scientific/technological advances. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

entrance to Denver Zoo: lifelong home of Mshindi
2300 Steele Street, City Park of Denver, east central Denver, north central Colorado; Monday, June 11, 2012, 09:06: Donlammers, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Denver_Zoo_entrance_pavilion_2012.jpg

Shy Anne (December 11, 1982 - February 7, 2014) at Denver Zoo on May 8, 2009, about 8 years 7 months after her transfer from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
2300 Steele Street, City Park of Denver, east central Denver, north central Colorado; Friday, May 8, 2009, 08:00:47: Drew Avery, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/33590535@N06/3527886932/

good friends: Shy Anne (reclining, foreground) and Mshindi (standing) on August 7, 2008
Save the Rhino estimates the population of conserved and wild Black Rhinos (Diceros bicornis) as dwindling to 5,055 in the 21st century.
2300 Steele Street, City Park of Denver, east central Denver, north central Colorado; Thursday, August 7, 2008, 13:12:08: jamieotterbein, CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieotterbein/2743264150/

Mshindi enjoys sunshiny nap, March 12, 2012.
In addition to talents as brush painter, Mshindi cooperated perfectly with "Sit!" commands, sitting on queue.
2300 Steele Street, City Park of Denver, east central Denver, north central Colorado; Monday, March 12, 2012, 14:21: Postdlf, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diceros_bicornis_at_the_Denver_Zoo-2012_03_12_0825.jpg

Black rhino depicted as petroglyph at Twyfelfontein (Afrikaans: "uncertain spring"), officially known as ǀUi-ǁAis (Damara/Nama: "jumping waterhole"), in northwestern Namibia
Valley site of rock engravings has been occupied for over 6,000 years, firstly by Wilton stone age hunters-gatherers and then taken over by Khoikhoi of southwestern Africa 2500 to 2000 years ago.
Kunene Region, northwestern Namibia; Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 15:10:48: Vernon Swanepoel (Namibnat), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/namibnat/4970304903/

Denver Zoo Lights, December 24, 2014: 24th annual Zoo Lights, December 5, 2014 - January 4, 2015, on more than 40 acres, included Diceros bicornis in light tributes to Denver Zoo's crowd-pleasing animals.
City Park of Denver, east central Denver, north central Colorado; Christmas Eve, Wednesday, December 24, 2014, 04:15:54: Kari (designsbykari), CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/designsbykari/15992304138/

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