http://www.newsoxy.com/science/last-female-rhino-killed-south-africa-13941.html
Voodoo is of Haitian origin. They’d have no use for rhino tusk.
No, just the Chinese. :(
There is another.
Voodoo in the sense of sympathetic magic, silly. Rhino horn = pointy, erection = pointy, therefore some rhino horn is just what you need when you’re down in the Bob Dole-drums.
Same silly shit.
Pfft. You guys are just asking for Houngan to reveal his black hand and unleash his ashe. You’ll not be confusing vodou with anything else when Kalfu rides his horse and the midnight loa come to party.
Don’t try to impress me with that vocab, BM — I was reading Brother Voodoo’s team-up with Dr. Strange when you were still in Huggies. The point is, keratin doesn’t give anyone a boner, so lay off the rhinos.
The female rhino was found dead with her horn sawed off. It is believed that she had bled to death from the injury. This was the 136th rhino to die this year at the hands of poachers.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the horn, which is shaved or ground into a powder and dissolved in boiling water, is used to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, and other disorders. According to the 16th century Chinese pharmacist Li Shi Chen, the horn could also cure snakebites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning, and “devil possession.” It is most commonly prescribed as an aphrodisiac.
Humans suck.
Years ago I read a scifi novel called “Nature’s End.” The premise was that the environment was totally fucked up because of human actions and as a result a movement had started that was basically advocating a mass human suicide program to save the survivors and the planet. Their plan was that everyone would be given suicide pills with a certain percentage being real and the rest not.
Sometimes I think this would be a movement I could support.
Ummm…it was the last female rhino ON THAT PRESERVE. But the article title says last one in South Africa. Which is it? This article is poorly written. What injury, exactly? The horn? Cutting the horn makes the animal bleed? It’s just very confusing.
Anyway, people suck, yes.
If they did there would be no need for the horn.
Yes, cutting the horn does make the animal bleed, typically to death, considering the horn goes deep into the facial structure of the rhino. An image I recall is that of a deep gaping wound that just won’t heal.
While the article itself doesn’t make sense with regards to whether it is the last in the country, or the preserve, the death of any female rhino is a blow to their preservation. Does it really matter if the article is poorly written?
Needless to say, fucking poachers can go rot on a stone slab in the middle of the kalahari desert. Just make sure their fingernails and toenails are removed beforehand and sold off as a rhinohorn substitute.
Why aren’t poachers shot for this kind of shit?
I guess when you’re dealing with people dumb enough to think that grinding up rhino horn is going to cure disease…
Just on that preserve. White rhinos aren’t actually endangered, though they’re threatened enough that it’s a tragedy to see any, especially a female, die.
Poachers are frustrating because they either they don’t believe or just don’t care that they’re putting themselves out of business, but there’s only so much that the government can (or cares to) do about it. The people who live in these places need to develop a greater degree of pride in the national identity they gain from having these unique animals. There are cases in parts of Africa where community pride has lead to poachers being so disliked that ivory hunters have met some pretty unkind fates. I have a hard time feeling too bad for them.
Only inasmuch as a new article should readily convey news in a clear manner. Poor writing defeats the purpose.
They sometimes are.
Not executed, but the preserve guards and rangers are armed and do use deadly force.
But just like with the pirates of Etiopia - in a very poor country doing something dumb and dangerous is preferable to starving. And when you’re dirt poor you generally don’t think of the long term good of the planet or the ecosystem.
As an interesting aside CITES also prevents the sale of stuff like ivory from legally culled animals (a sale that could finance more guards, more preservation or more education of the people likely to turn to poaching) and stupid organisations like PETA would rather have animals like elephants starve to death than allow culling in preserves (or the sale to American zoos… because zoos are like totally evil with cages and shit).
Also as noted, while a sad thing, it wasn’t the last rhino (except for that preserve)
Yup.
Today, my family and I are hungry. We might not live until the end of next week, so here goes…
Somalia. Ethiopia is landlocked. :)
The poachers aren’t the real problem — the real problem is that enough people believe in (completely bogus) traditional medicine to create a demand for exotic animal parts. Someone will meet that demand as long as big money’s available.
Once at a science editors’ convention I heard the editor of a journal of tropical diseases explain the difficulties African doctors have with access to basic research. Not only do the libraries suck down there, but Internet access is hard to maintain — because as soon as copper cables are laid the locals dig them up and sell them for scrap. Extreme poverty guarantees that kid of thing.