King Louis XV’s rhinoceros was the star of the court of Versailles, reports The Guardian.
Fed on a diet of bread, its tough hide was regularly massaged with oil. But it proved not an easy pet to keep and unfortunately killed two people who entered its enclosure.
Now, the magnificent beast, since stuffed and preserved, has left Paris for the first time since it arrived in 1770, travelling to London to take up a temporary place under the spotlight at the Science Museum in London.
“We are very excited to see it here,” said curator Glyn Morgan this weekend. “It looks fantastic. The photographs really did not do justice to just how impressive and characterful it is. The skin is almost jet black.”
The animal is an enormous bit of surviving evidence of a period of so-called “rhinomania” that swept Europe at the end of the 18th century, with clocks, decorations and occasionally even wigs all styled to feature the shape of the animal.