Behavior and diet
As with extant rhinoceroses, the woolly rhinoceros was a herbivore. Controversy has long surrounded the precise dietary preference of Coelodonta as past investigations have found plausible both grazing (eating grass and other low vegetation) and browsing (eating leaves and woody twigs from trees and shrubs) modes of life.
The palaeodiet of the woolly rhinoceros has been reconstructed using several lines of evidence. Climatic reconstructions indicate the preferred environment to have been cold and arid steppe-tundra, with large herbivores forming an important part of the feedback cycle. Pollen analysis shows a prevalence of grasses and sedges within a more complicated vegetation mosaic.
A strain vector biomechanical investigation of the skull, mandible and teeth of a well-preserved last cold stage individual recovered from Whitemoor Haye, Staffordshire, revealed musculature and dental characteristics that support a grazing feeding preference. In particular, the enlargement of the temporalis and neck muscles is consistent with that required to resist the large tugging forces generated when taking large mouthfuls of fodder from the ground. The presence of a large diastema supports this theory.
Comparisons with extant perissodactyls suggests that Coelodonta was a hindgut fermentor with a single stomach, and as such would have grazed upon cellulose-rich, protein-poor fodder. This method of digestion would have required a large throughput of food and thus links the large mouthful size to the low nutritive content of the chosen grasses and sedges.
It is believed that the woolly rhinoceros lived socially similar to modern forms, either alone or in small family groups