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Help Save Endangered Rhinos by Making Artificial Horns (Video)
Black Rhinoceros horn material sells for $65,000 per kilo. The rhinos are rare, which helps up the price, but the horn is also prized "as a fever-reducer, a cosmetic, an aphrodisiac, a hangover care. And so people highly value it in the Vietnamese and Chinese cultures. So we are trying to reduce that value by increasing the supply," says Jennifer Kaehms of Pembient, a company that's working to make artificial rhino horns that are not only chemically indistinguishable from the natural variety, but are 3-D printed to look the same. The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching -- which is a big deal because there are only about 5,000 black rhinos left in the whole world.
They have a crowdfunding appeal on experiment.com looking for help in sequencing the black rhino genome. At this writing, it has two days to run and has only raised $12,831 of its $16,500 goal. The results will be open sourced, and once the black rhino is on its way to salvation, they plan to work on the white rhino, then move on to killing the black market for ivory and tiger pelts, which don't sell for as much as rhino horns but are valuable enough to keep an international horde of poachers in business.
They have a crowdfunding appeal on experiment.com looking for help in sequencing the black rhino genome. At this writing, it has two days to run and has only raised $12,831 of its $16,500 goal. The results will be open sourced, and once the black rhino is on its way to salvation, they plan to work on the white rhino, then move on to killing the black market for ivory and tiger pelts, which don't sell for as much as rhino horns but are valuable enough to keep an international horde of poachers in business.
Sounds like the perfect cover for a rhino-poaching operation. "Honest, Mr. Federal Agent, that one is a fake! We made it right here in the lab! It's indistinguishable from the real thing!"
It's not the chemical makeup of rhino horn that makes it valuable to people, it's the 'mystical' properties of it. It's pure superstition.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Consider the horn's magical qualities are all bullshit, the people buying horns will be convinced that lab grown horn is not magical like the real thing. All sold horns will now have video evidence of the rhino being killed and the video will show markings on the horns to prove it's that horn.
is to hunt the poachers and stream the kills live on the Internet, to scare the others into stopping what they're doing.
Won't flooding the market with cheap knockoff's only increase the value and desirability of the real deal?
How about teaching backwoods-asshole Chinese and Vietnamese that not every rare animal part will make their dick harder or bigger?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Wouldn't that be the easy solution to the buyers of poached horn?
Prepare to harvest the lower horn!
There's a joke in there somewhere about black rhinos being killed like black men are being killed in America. I just can't be bothered to go there though.
The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching -- which is a big deal because there are only about 5,000 black rhinos left in the whole world.
Or we'll accidentally build a two-tier economy where 'authentic' rhino horn is worth even more than it currently prices. Either way.
It should self fund.
In 1900 there were less than 20 white rhinos left due to poaching for their horns. In 2010 there were 20,000. This success was accomplished by privatizing the white rhinos.
Today, the black rhinos face the exact same threat, and we don't know what to do?!? Is this a racist thing (lol) ?
In case you are wondering why this worked: If I own the last 20 white rhinos, they are worth a fortune. I have a tremendous economic incentive to protect them from poaching and reproduce them. Eventually as their population grows, I might be able to sell some for profit and the new owners would also have the incentive to protect and reproduce theirs. As supply grows, the value of an individual rhino drops and eventually it might be economical to sell them to hunters. If there are too many rhinos the free market would hunt them, and if there are too few the free market would protect them, keeping a stable and sustainable population. This is why any animal we can own (chickens, pigs, cows, horses, dogs, etc...) are not in any danger of extinction.
Why should rhino horn have beneficial properties? It think it is time to start spreading new "facts" about rhino horn.
Rhino horn results in infertility and impotence. Also reduces life expectancy, contributes to hair loss, and causes cancer.
They want to make rhino horn so they are sequencing the genes? These two ideas have almost nothing to do with each other. If they were raising funds for chemical analysis of horn material or for purchasing 3D printers, it might make sense. They are unlikely to get much helpful information from a genetic analysis that will help with making fake horns. Seems like the person who posted this story was not paying attention.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
... that explodes in the face of anyone cutting it up. Or one containing a toxin that causes their dick to go black and fall off? Seriously. Make them appreciate that any benefits they imagine the horn has are vastly outweighed by the real harms that a fake horn will do to them.
$38,000 U.S. (€34,500)...
Excluding So Africa, the average annual income in all of sub-Saharan Africa is $315.00.
Yeah... the odds of these creatures avoiding extinction is slightly lower than picking the hairs off a mosquito's balls wearing boxing gloves.
"Fixing" the "horns" on the idiots who are the root cause of this horrible act?
This looks familiar.
I frequently see ads featuring Yao Ming and Jackie Chan regarding rhino horns.
I live in 'Murica, WTF do I care about a rhino horn that I'd want to buy some?
I don't eat deep fried scorpions or snakes, vaccinate my children, and wash my hands after pewping, thus I'm a person of at *least* average intelligence. Explain to me the desire to ingest what is effectively very large toenail in powdered form.
They should be directing these commercials at the backwater countries that believe in this bovine manure, like asian and mexico/south america.
This is either a rich man's trophy or woowoo. Now all rhino horns will need to come with part of the rhino still attached.
"Crowdfund" for rhino research if you want, but it's a serious fucking conflict of interest if you are also trying to commercially substitute for rhino horn, thus promoting an industry which should die the fuck out entirely.
1. So far as I understand the horns are being ground down mostly for chinese penis pills or something. So... printing the horns is pointless.
2.Even if the horns are ornamental, the real deal will fetch a higher price.
3. Clearly there are already established manufactuering methods for making horns that are cheaper and give a better finished product using less expensive manufacturing equipment.
4. The actual way you protect the Rhinos is by giving the people in the area OWNERSHIP of the Rhinos. This has been done in a few other places and the poaching stops if the local people literally own the animal. They don't put it in a cage or something. But it is on their land and they understand that they own it. And in addition to that they are owed a share of any safari money or whatever comes from tourism or scientific whatever in the area. You enter my zone... I have responsibility for X animals there are Y total animals... X is some ratio of Y... when you come to the area for a safari I get a proportional share of that money. Then you have people come out and audit how many of the animals are still alive and on the property. The locals are thus rewarded proportionately for how many of these animals live in their area. This has been done in a few places and it always works. The local governments don't like to do this because they want the money. But then they spend a lot of it on anti poaching police that don't actually work because the locals live with these animals and if they want money they just either go out themselves and kill the animal or get paid to turn a blind eye by some poachers. If the locals are getting paid to keep the animals alive the poaching stops.
This is a dumb project for clueless 1st world idiots that makes them think they're accomplishing something by playing with their toys.
I'd be sorry for being harsh if I weren't even more disgusted at the fucking stupidity.
Come kids... we didn't build these big rich ass countries by being morons. Be practical or we're going to lose it all.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Anybody who kills or directly profits from the killing of an endangered species should be executed. It's as simple as that.
Sure it won't stop the poaching but you televise the hanging of a few dozen shopkeepers selling rhino horn & people who've purchased such and you can bet your ass the demand will drop overnight. People might buy it if it's just illegal; far fewer will if it's punishable by death.
If these people want to trade in death let us respond in kind.
maybe I'm missing it, but the crowdfunding site makes no mention of synthetic horns or anything.. they just say they're doing it for research?
seems like they'd do better by including this info, unless someone has incorrectly connected the dots on this story?
It hurts their goal of exterminating another species.
Either:
1) The artificial rhino horn has no more real benefit than the real one: Ignorant chinese masses will never question their long held beliefs so will just conclude the artificial horn doesn't work as well as the real one so demand for real rhino horn (and poaching) increases.
or...
they make an artificial rhino horn that has more (i.e. actually has some) benefit than the real one because they also included actual drugs in the mix. Ignorant chinese masses have their dumb belief that rhino horn actually does something confirmed so demand for real rhino horn (and poaching) increases.
"...chemically indistinguishable from the natural variety, but are 3-D printed to look the same. The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching"
how exactly are the buyers going to know whether it's genuine horn or counterfeit? the point is to lie and sell these as real, thus dropping the price considerably.
I have a better idea: just kickstart generic sildenafil production in some country that doesn't observe American patents. Pfizer's patent on the magic substance would have normally expired in April, 2012, but keeps getting extended due to the usual cronyist skulduggery. It would serve them right, and save the rhino, if some Asian Walter White would start manufacturing it for global consumption.
Doesn't regular printer ink from HP already cost about $65k per kilo much less Rhino Ink ;)
Cat horn is even rarer, my cat must be worth a fortune! She has the largest feline cutaneous horn ever as far as I (or the vet) can tell, about 10x the size of anything on Google images! ((don't do that search before lunch))
Back in the 80ies they were trying a better thing: Tranquilizing Rinos and replacing their horns with artificial ones made of red plastic. The Rinos don't care - they're colorblind and probably like a new horn thats bigger and sturdier than the original. But the poachers won't kill a rino for plastic. Neat idea - why didn't that pan out .- apparently?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I mean, artificial diamonds hasn't killed the market for natural diamonds.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
so much for RTFA, video seems to contain the only info on the horns.
Would have been interesting how you make rhino horn besides "proprietary printing" :/
Nothing about how to help save rhinos, I don't see how DNA sequencing does that.
Above average mismatch for title, summary, and content even by Slashdot standards!
What I don't get is this: If Rhino Horn powder is such a big deal with so many idiots - why hasn't anybody started breeding them? Sounds like a license to print money to me. Clearly some african nation must've thought of that, no? ... And you can take a Rhinos horn *without* killing it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Privatization? WTF are you talking about?
The white Rhino was saved by the establishment of the Hluhluwe–iMfolozi Park. The last 20 Rhinos were not privately owned, but protected by the state.
Had they been privately owned, they would almost certainly now be extinct. The idea that private enterprise would conserve and endangered animal for some far off future benefit when it is generally incapable of seeing past the next quarter is not just stupid, but dangerous.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
How about teaching them that the ground up bones of African poachers is even better at making their dicks harder and bigger?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Rhino horn is expensive because so many people are superstitious. End the market by setting the death penalty on buying rhino horn. Then you con't have to make artificial rhino horn.
no, I don't have a sig
presumably there isn't a multi-billion dollar rhino-horn cartel spending millions of dollars to spread phony science and a broadcast network dedicated to carrying their water. Still, not easy to fight generations of superstition.
I mean, really. They never put a coin in my pocket.
Seems like a problem that will work itself out. Poachers kill all the rhinos. No more demand for rhino horn. No more need for poachers, so poachers die out
That would certainly explain the extinction of chickens, cows, and pigs.
The U.S. military slaughtered bison to control native populations. Small herds were kept and bred by private ranchers to save the species from extinction.
do not read this line twice.
So they would be allowed to fraud people with impunity? Their cause is good... but allowing them to commit a crime because they are the "good" criminals?
I'd rather use the money to bullets with which to shoot poachers and horn buyers.
Albeit an interesting idea, I can't help but wonder why we should even care if the rhinos go extinct. All species are fighting for survival, and if a species can't make the cut, it dies out. If the rhinos can't adapt, they will also go extinct. Why should we interfere? From an evolutionary standpoint, by preventing nature from taking its course, aren't we just prolonging the inevitable?
Now there's a turnaround for the books. Flooding the Chinese market with a cheap artificial knock-off of a valued product. Anyone remember plastic RAM?
Apparently the poachers don't really hunt the rhinos - they just set snares and indiscriminately catch/kill them. So it may not be as effective as initially thought.
I've been wondering why someone hasn't done this yet. They are 95% the way there... the only part they are missing is LYING. Tell them it's REAL black Rhino horn. Flood the market with FAKE horn and call it real. Bring the price down to pennies... i.e. killing a Rhino would not make you more than the price of the bullet. Then the poaching will stop.
Anecdotal evidence, I know, but I've heard from a friends who has been living in mainland China for a few years now. This topic on rhino horns has apparently come up a few times.
This is one of those cases where having a public awareness campaign in China might actually help.
The issue: Lots of chinese believe that getting a rhino horn doesn't involve killing the rhino. They believe you can just pick them up from the ground - that they work like elk/deer/moose horns that drops away from the head every now and then. Once the locals have learned the truth, they have usually been apalled.
The mystical/medicinal crap aside, the fact that folks don't *know* that rhino horn has to come from a poached rhino is a big factor.
Everyone who donates as well as the masterminds of this scheme can be charged with Conspiracy to commit Fraud. :)
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
China is a hellhole full of corrupt, dishonest, back biting scum, who would happily enslave every one of their fellow Chinese to make a buck. Most Chinese don't give a toss whether the rhino become extinct - these people are idiots, losers who can't maintain erections, etc.
It may have real effects - and it retails for about the same price. Ophiocordyceps sinensis
I think they are talking about the results of that group. They sent off the white rhinos into other areas and established a breeding program (as far as I recall). Some of that was done in private parks which operated for profit. I think that may be where they are getting this "information."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Drive down cost by increasing supply? Careful, people don't take kindly to real economics on the internet.
So the real rhino horns will in future come with a piece of rhino head attached, to distinguish them from the fakes.
Good luck faking all that bone and flesh.
The privatization of the herds has been well documented and is a very interesting success story. I've seen at least 2 documentaries on it.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...
Basically, if you're a big game hunter, there's not much left to hunt. So people raise the Rhinos on farms and then sell them for hunting or whatever... They sell for tens of thousands of dollars, far more than their horns are worth, so you can rest assured the farmers protect them ferociously.
The problem with this approach is that a lot of endangered species aren't something someone would want to "Buy" so it only works for animals that look good in a trophy room. In the U.S. for example, most of the surviving large animals are ones that hunters protect because they like to hunt them. Around me, hunters have reintroduced wild turkeys, black bears, cougars, bobcats, etc... none of those species lived around here when I was a kid, but a couple of years ago my father hit a black bear that was big enough to total his F150. They're so plentiful they're a nuisance now. Hunters are some of the most involved conservationists there are.
Make the Rhinos more valuable alive than dead, and the problem solves itself.
You really need to look p the definition of privatization
Now that this is a known fact that the horn can be faked, the clients will ask for a full rhino head with the horn still attached, just to be sure..