La scuola

The natural world is full of extraordinary animals

with amazing life histories.

Yet certain stories are more intriguing than most.

The mysteries of a butterfly's life cycle

or the strange biology of the Emperor penguin.

Some of these creatures were surrounded by myth

and misunderstandings for a very long time

and some have only recently revealed their secrets.

These are the animals that stand out from the crowd.

The curiosities I find most fascinating of all.

Some animals appear to protect themselves

with formidable suits of armour.

The rhino carries plates of thick hide on its flanks.

While the hedgehog is covered in prickly spines.

Both, in previous centuries,

inspired far-fetched and outlandish ideas,

but what is the true nature of their strange coats?

Rhinoceroses are strange-looking creatures.

There are five kinds.

The Indian, this one, has a single horn, squat legs, tiny eyes...

Whoa!

..and thick folded skin.

For many centuries, before any had reached Europe,

they were surrounded by myth as much as the unicorn.

Few people had ever seen a live rhino, but, in 1741,

a young Indian rhinoceros called Clara came to Europe

and she transformed our image and understanding of the rhinoceros.

Thank you.

Before Clara arrived,

little was known in Europe about the rhinoceros.

A few animals arrived here in Roman times, but they didn't last long,

many being slaughtered during

the brutal Roman Games.

It wasn't until the 16th century

that they first made a real mark on western society.

In 1515, a woodcut of a rhino was created by an artist called Durer.

It was a beautiful image of an elaborately armoured creature,

but it was inaccurate.

It's doubtful whether Durer ever saw a live rhinoceros.

It's little wonder that the rhinoceros was thought of

as a magical mythical creature

if Durer's woodcut of 1515 was to be believed.

He shows an armour-plated beast with a large horn

and a strange little spike on its back.

But in the 18th century, the perception of the rhinoceros was

to change when Clara came to Europe on an extraordinary 17-year tour.

Clara was captured in Assam at just a few months of age

when hunters killed her mother.

A director of the Dutch East India Company

raised her in his household as a pet.

She wandered indoors amongst the elegant furniture,

ate from a plate and was a popular attraction at his dinner parties.

But, inevitably, Clara got too big

and a little-known Dutch sea captain called Van der Meer

seized the chance to own possibly the only tame rhino in the world.

He saw the opportunity of making a lifetime's income

with an ambitious rhinoceros tour.

Clara became an orphan while she was still dependent on her mother.

Rhino calves usually stay with their mothers for up to two years,

sustained by the milk.

Only after that are they able to feed independently

on soft green grass.

Keeping a young rhino healthy was certainly a challenge,

but Van der Meer was smart and took good care of his new charge.

He travelled with her all the way from India

around the Cape of Good Hope, up the coast of Africa to the Netherlands

and his home town of Leiden.

He discovered very soon that Clara had a huge appetite

and he made sure that she always had plenty to eat.

Rhinoceros spend a great deal of time feeding.

They eat plant matter, but they don't have multiple stomachs

to digest and absorb nutrients,

so they need to eat large quantities of food to survive,

up to 100 kilos a day.

It takes a lot to fuel such an enormous body.

An adult rhino weighs over a tonne.

And the Indian rhino has a special mobile lip

to help it grasp and rip up the vegetation.

After reaching Europe, Clara lived quietly in Leiden for two years,

feeding and growing,

while Van der Meer made plans for his European tour.

At the time, a live rhino was a wondrous thing,

as Van der Meer well appreciated.

He was a clever businessman and he knew that publicity was needed

if his grand tour was to be a success.

Van der Meer made an unusual alliance with an ambitious

Dutch anatomist, BS Albinus,

who was hoping to produce a definitive medical textbook.

Both men were looking for publicity

and together they commissioned Jan Wandelaar,

an accomplished artist,

to make prints that would serve to advertise both the book and Clara.

They were strange but compelling pictures that combined

precisely drawn human skeletons and detailed images of Clara.

They were the most accurate drawings yet of the rhinoceros.

Wandelaar sketched Clara from life.

He was fascinated by the texture of her skin

and he depicted a rhino more realistically than Durer did ,

so, at last,

the myths surrounding the animal's appearance came to an end.

As the news of Clara's tour spread,

everyone was eager to see this wonderful new creature

and Clara's first trip to Vienna was for a royal appointment.

The Empress Maria-Theresa was so eager to see Clara

and so impressed by her appearance and good temperament,

that she brought her children back for another private showing.

Clara became the talk of the town

and European heads of state were eager to meet her.

She travelled through Europe like a celebrity

and met both royalty and crowds of curious onlookers.

Her horn in particular attracted much attention.

In Paris she started a rhino-mania

with fashionable women styling their hair 'a-la rhinoceros!'

Some regarded rhinos as living unicorns.

The scientific name for the Indian rhino is, in fact,

Rhinoceros Unicornis,

and, at the time, it was believed that the horn was made of bone.

But this in fact is not the case.

Rhinoceros horn grows from a spongy base positioned here on the skull.

The horn has no bony core.

It's made of keratin, the same substance as fingernails

and can grow again if it's lost.

Well, in June 1750, Clara's horn fell off,

probably due to her rubbing it on the travel crate.

To Van der Meer, this seemed to be a disaster

since he had no idea that it would regrow.

But, ingenuously, he used the event as a publicity stunt and the crowds

flocked all the more to see Clara fearing that she might be dying.

Even without a horn, Clara was still a fascinating creature

and her strange armoured skin was another talking point.

Why would such a gentle creature have such thick and elaborate folds?

The rhinoceros's skin in some parts is almost five centimetres thick,

nearly three times thicker than you would expect

for an animal that size.

We now know that, in the wild,

rhinoceros are not always as gentle as Clara.

They can be very aggressive,

particularly during the mating season,

and the tough skin provides them with some protection.

But it also has other benefits.

Thick skin is a good barrier against sun, flies and other parasites,

but why the skin of an Indian rhino grows in plate-like structures

with deep grooves has only recently been explained.

We know that the thicker skin areas are good physical protection,

but something deeper is going on.

It seems that the large folds increase the surface area

of the skin and help the rhino regulate its body temperature.

The tissues around the grooves are particularly rich in blood vessels

and transmit heat to the enlarged skin plates