3D Printing Might Save the Rhinoceros

GordonShure.com writes: San Francisco based biotech startup Pembient have released details of their 3D printing led method to derail the market for Rhinoceros horns. Presently the bulk of demand originates from China, where said horns — gathered in the wild by poachers who usually kill the rhinos — are revered for supposed medicinal qualities. The new firm intends to mix keratin with Rhino DNA, then machine the combination with a 3D printer in a way that their counterfeit horns are difficult to detect by customers and traffickers alike.

The company already mulls expanding its production principle to other, lucrative wild animal trades such as the claws of tigers and lions. Pembient is however a young company — for all their ingenuity, will their ambitions to take on such a colossal black market be realized?

Comments

unworkable

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Animal horns have intricate ordered microscopic structures that no 3D printer can reproduce, but that are easy to look for with a microscope.

So, just like synth diamonds have eliminated...

[Overzeetop]

This will work about as well as synthetic diamonds (which are actual, real diamonds) have collapsed the natural diamond market and eliminated the horrific practices which surround natural diamond mines in under developed areas of the world.