Home range sizes in thickets were about 2 km? and in savanna 4-4.5 km? in the Hluhluwe Game Reserve (Hitchins 1969). Joubert & Eloff found them to vary from 30 to 40 sq.km in their very dry study area, the largest being in the most and parts. The black rhinoceros is dependent on drinking water in most regions.
They were found in wooded grassland or bushveld in South Africa as far north as Rhodesia and South West Africa, and also west of the upper Nile in Uganda, parts of Zaire and the Sudan.
Both African species of the family Rhinocerotidae have suffered great reductions in numbers and range. Diceros bicornis is the more widespread of the two and originally occupied the widest range of open and closed savanna vegetation types, occurring in many parts of the South West Arid, Southern and Northern Savanna zones. Cover is also an important habitat requirement intimately linked with food preferences. Joubert & Eloff report a clear preference for the densest vegetation in their study area, a tree and thorn shrub savanna, and Lamprey found his animals to prefer denser Commiphora woodland.
There appears to be some uncertainty over social organization. Authors such as Schenkel & Schenkel-Hulliger and Joubert & Eloff found no evidence of territoriality. However Owen-Smith (1975) regards the species as being territorial and, contrary to conventional beliefs, finds little difference between the social system of Ceratotherium, which he studied intensively, and Diceros. Only 3.4 per cent of white rhino groupings included more than three individuals against 1.7 per cent for black rhino which is usually said to be much more solitary. Black rhino subadults are however usually found solitarily while in white rhino associations of several individuals are relatively common.
