Baby animals acting up are always cute, but they’re just doing their best usually. This young rhino calf was doing its best with its happy feet as it worked up some energy.
This fast little rhino was spotted at the Kapama Game Reserve, and the footage was sent in to Latest Sightings. It was adorable to see it zooming around its mom in circles.
Staying Safe With Mom
Because of their thick skin and large horns, adult rhinos might be the target of human poachers, but other predators tend not to try and tangle with them in favor of easier prey.
Something like an impala might be able to outrun a lion, but it’s not going to turn around and gore it with a sharp weapon. An adult rhino often isn’t worth the effort, unless predators are desperate.
But a baby rhino, with no horn yet to speak of, might be worth a hunting attempt if it’s in a vulnerable situation. For this young calf, mom was right there the entire time and she would be ready to protect it at a moment’s notice.
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Never A Bad Time To Dance
Because this rhino was safe with mom, it didn’t need to stay on survival mode for the entire time, and it was able to actually enjoy itself. Sudden spurts of energy seem to be a common characteristic of all young mammals.
This calf was feeling it now, and the dance moves were bursting out of it suddenly and with aplomb. It looked almost like it was trying to restrain itself and look mature, but suddenly its legs would start jiggling and jiving.
Considering rhinos give off the impression of being large thundering tanks, this calf looked remarkable nimble as it danced around its mom, kicking up the dust.
Keeping A Weather Eye Out
With the vehicle on the road to spot the rhinos, this behavior might also have been this calf’s adorable attempts at intimidation. Due to their poor eyesight, rhinos tend to assume that nearby objects they don’t recognise are threats.
For adults this means safari vehicles, and sometimes less novel things like trees are targets of rhino charges and attacks, or at least being the subjects of mock charges.
An actual charge might be risky if the threat fights back, so like many other kinds of animals rhinos might line up a fake charge to try and scare threats away without needing to fight them.
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Not Quite Figured It Out
This calf’s behavior seemed to be in response to the presence of observers as it took a good look at the group filming before busting out its dance moves.
Because these dance move mainly focused on kicking up dust and false starts towards the camera, it’s possible that this rhino was trying to emulate something it had seen an adult do to ward off threats.
Unfortunately for this calf, it had no horn, and it was too cute for anything to consider it a threat to be fled from. It was going to have to keep practicing, and kick up a storm the entire time.