The greater one-horned rhinoceros lives along rivers in northern India and southern Nepal.
A single horn and deep skin folds give it an armor-plated appearance.
Other animals gather at places where greater one-horned rhinos repeatedly deposit dung. Deer and wild boar eat plants or fungi growing on it, while birds take insects. The waste of a large herbivore becomes connected to the food of other animals.
A study published in 2024 compared rhino latrines in Chitwan National Park, Nepal, and Shuklaphanta National Park, where translocations had augmented the rhino population. Observations covered the monsoon and post-monsoon periods in 2020 and 2021. Across the two parks, eighteen bird and mammal species other than rhinos visited latrines. Ten interacted with the latrines themselves, through activities including feeding, smelling and urinating.
Some animals consumed dung or plant fragments within it, others ate plants and fungi growing on it, and others took insects nearby. Spotted deer smelled the dung, grazed around it and occasionally rested on it. Animals also used latrines in Shuklaphanta, where rhinos were less numerous. The places left behind by rhinos served both as feeding spots and places to rest.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Nepal’s National Trust for Nature Conservation established a project for rhinos and tigers in the Chitwan–Parsa complex covering November 2021 to October 2025. It identified poaching, habitat degradation and community conflict as challenges. Its objectives included community engagement, grassland and wetland management, individual-based rhino monitoring, and stronger capacity to investigate disease and mortality. Management of four hundred hectares of grassland and restoration of five wetlands were listed as expected outputs, rather than reported completed results.