Controlled rhino dehorning

[SweetLucy]

I get so annoyed when New Agey type folks rhapsodize about Oriental medicine…I’m sure there are some good aspects to it, but when it involves sacrificing endangered species (rhinos, tigers, seahorses, etc.) just to satisfy people’s superstitions, it’s evil!

[Guinastasia]

Could the same be done with elephant tusks?

[Fear_Itself]

Some Vietnamese believe powdered rhino horn cures cancer:

“I was diagnosed with stomach cancer nine years ago. I’ve tried everything including rhino horn powder every day. Now, doctors have told me I’m in a stable condition,” wealthy Hanoi-based octogenarian Nguyen Hung told AFP.

“I have lots of money, I am old (and) I just love to live… I have no reason not to spend money on buying the expensive rhino horns and drinking its powder if it helps me,” said Hung, who asked his real name be withheld.

So it appears that rhino horn smugglers are good at marketing their product; if Viagra eats into their limp dick market, there are plenty of cancer victims to defraud.

[BrainGlutton]

@Blake

In case this isn’t a joke: No.

Adult rhinos are far to big to be bothered by lions, and of course the young don’t have horns to speak of. Rhinos use their horns mostly for fighting other rhinos. If you’ve ever been headbutted by a polled steer, you know that the skull alone is more than enough to inflict fatal damage. When you have 3 tonnes of animal hitting you a relatively blunt horn isn’t a major consideration in whether you are going to die. Only in how.

The horn is important against other heavily armoured rhinos of course, but not against thin-skinned cats and people.

Well, then, don’t rhinos need their horns? Mightn’t it upset the rhythm of their mating-fights or something if they were hornless?

[BrainGlutton]

@Guinastasia

Could the same be done with elephant tusks?

I’m also thinking elephants need their tusks, or why would they have them? Can something so prominent be a useless vestigial organ?

[Dr.Love]

@heathen_earthling

If not, I wonder if genetic engineering could be used to make some readily farmed horned ungulate like cattle or sheep grow keratin that is physically identical to rhino horn. And if there’d be any market for that.

Even without the genetic engineering, would flooding the market like this work? How difficult would it be to chemically distinguish between different sources of keratin once it’s been been powdered?

[BrainGlutton]

Seems to me the solution to this problem is an educational one. Some people think taking powdered rhino horn is good for this or that, but there’s no scientific proof at all that it is – is there?

Now, I can understand cancer patients grasping at straws, but for erectile dysfunction?! When Viagra is proven in clinical trials and easier and cheaper to get and no endangered animals have to die?!

[Sailboat]

It’s probably too late – this park is “home to four of the last seven northern white rhinos left in the world” – and it’s not (currently) armed – but a drone is going into the rhino protection business at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

[Simple_Linctus]

Regarding the “flooding the market with fake horns” idea - is there any reason the market can’t be flooded with the responsibly harvested horns?

[Fear_Itself]

I doubt there are enough rhinos available for responsibly harvested horns to dampen the demand. The price might fall some, but the market would soak up any horns available.

[gracer]

@Fear_Itself

I doubt there are enough rhinos available for responsibly harvested horns to dampen the demand. The price might fall some, but the market would soak up any horns available.

You could cut the real stuff with oregano.

But really, the horn is hair, isn’t it? So is it the same stuff as any other bits of hair the rhino has? Could you shave the rhino, powder that, cut it with old bits of rhino horn you have lying about (and some oregano, just for good measure) and then flood the market?

You’d have to know how big the market is, I suppose. Maybe rhinos don’t have enough hair for it to work.

[running_coach]

@gracer

You’d have to know how big the market is, I suppose. Maybe rhinos don’t have enough hair for it to work.

Shaving the rhino might be a tad difficult.

[Czarcasm]

@gracer

You could cut the real stuff with oregano.

But really, the horn is hair, isn’t it? So is it the same stuff as any other bits of hair the rhino has? Could you shave the rhino, powder that, cut it with old bits of rhino horn you have lying about (and some oregano, just for good measure) and then flood the market?

You’d have to know how big the market is, I suppose. Maybe rhinos don’t have enough hair for it to work.

It would be next to impossible to keep that a secret for very long, and the poachers would become the only trusted merchants in no time flat, achieving the exact opposite of what is wanted here.