Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/26/why-scientists-are-making-these-rhinos-radioactive.html
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Contributed by Allan Rose Hill…
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Not sure how this protects these rhinos. Poachers will not know (or care) that the horns are radioactive. This seems more likely to find horns that are in transit (after being hacked from a dead rhino) and may prevent them reaching their ‘market’, sure. But not stop the poaching.
Am I missing something here?
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I guess the theory is that if word gets out to the customers that these things are poisonous then it will dry up demand, but if buyers actually cared about evidence-based medical effects they wouldn’t be ingesting rhino horn to begin with.
As an aside, wasn’t an experiment involving radioactive rhinoceros parts the canonical origin of a certain Spider-Man foes’s powers?
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Word may or may not get to users (who, by their nature, may not be the best informed people) and in any event, it will be much harder for radioactive materials to get to market a all (which is good). Demand may reduce but it will not dry up completely. Poachers will know this. The commercial beneficiary here will be the sellers of second-hand geiger counters to poachers, who will ‘need’ to kill another rhino when they find the one they just killed is radioactive. Or maybe the makers of lead-lined rhino horn transport boxes?
Dunno about Spidey’s origin story and rhinos, but Rhinoman, eh? That’s a superhero the world has been in great need of for some time! 
(Though I’m unsure what Rhinoman’s special powers will be.)
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Rhino is already a Spider-Man villain. Basically a big dumb Russian henchman in an indestructable suit made from (I think?) radioactive rhinocerous hide.
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Special powers? He’s a rhino. What more does he need?
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I haven’t watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2 yet but my understanding is that the villain has the ability to opine on the flavor notes of various fine wines in great detail, as well as harbor a superhuman resentment towards merlot.
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I think that’s Wino, not Rhino. Accidentally nicked himself with a radioactive foil cutter.
I love it when a thread goes a little sideways.
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The intelligence of an average rhino and the strength of an average man? Show me where it says that they have to be good special powers.
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Reminds me of one of my favorite Bojack Horseman lines from when Princess Carolyn has a blind date with a condescending gynecologist.
Carolyn: Ecch! Not if you were the last albino rhino gyno on the planet.
Doctor: Well, I’m the only albino rhino gyno I know. Should we get some wine?
Caroyn: Oh, great. You’re also a wine addict.
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I think the salient point here isn’t that they’ll become poisonous but that they’ll set off radiation detectors, making it harder to get them to paying costumers. I doubt poachers would continue poaching if they can’t get paid for it.
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And maybe he’s permanently horny?
(Sorry, not sorry.)
But how will they know which rhinos are radioactive and which aren’t? The market remains and the poachers will continue to try to feed it and profit from it. I guess my geiger counter idea looks a little less daft.
The poachers don’t need to know. If the buyers believe that the product is likely compromised, then they’ll avoid it like it’s radioactive. The poachers aren’t going to keep killing rhinos if there’s no money in it for them. It’ll take time for word to get around, but the market will dry up when shipments can’t get through. And they won’t get through because cargo is routinely scanned for radioactive material.
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I fully understand your point, but I rather doubt the market will be as ‘efficient’ as that. The criminals, crooks and charlatans promoting rhino horn will find a way to defend their turf and continue to exploit their customers. If what you suggest does actually happen, I fear it will take a very long time to happen.
But, to be clear, I am not against this initiative; I just suspect it is a drop in the ocean in the fight to protect the rhino and a little naive of the scheme’s promoters if they think it is going to stop the less well-informed (I’m being polite) but determined end-users (and supply chain) from continuing to want some ground rhino horn to cure whatever it is they think it cures.
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The “detectors that are installed globally” are in more places than you might think. A childhood friend who was given radiation therapy shortly after 9/11 in NJ was stopped twice on the way back home to CT for being too radioactive, once on the highway on the way into NYC on I-95, and again on the way out of New York City near the CT border. In both cases, the police investigating the moving radiation source called the hospital in question to confirm he had received recent radiation therapy, then let him go.
These monitors are also reportedly in airports, regular-old shipping ports, border crossings, and essentially every official and regularly used exit/entry into any country, along with (from the anecdotal evidence) the approaches to major cities, railways, subways, and so on. There are also mobile sensor vehicles driving around, and of course if an address pops up as having bought something of interest off the Internet such a vehicle will come around to make sure that’s all the sensors can pick up.
But that’s the USA, where I hope we are not a major market for rhino horns, thought I’m prepared to be disappointed. Internationally, AFAICT, international airports are practically required to have such nowadays if they want to connect to the rest of the world, similarly with shipping ports, some of which also scan incoming vessels in addition to in-port monitors.
While “essentially poisonous” is certainly a deterrent, I note that a strong secondary justification on the Rhisotope Project website is prominently mentioned immediately after the 'we poisoned it" message: “Radioactively treated horns are more likely to be detected at international borders, making it more likely that smuggling syndicates are exposed, prosecuted and convicted under anti-terrorism laws.”
But will “it may be radioactive” be an active deterrent for the end users? Shrug, the market in question is already so ignorant they think keratin (hair, essentially) is a potent medicine, assuming they’re not capitalists just buying up a rare and soon to be extinct investment property. The value can only, after all, go up.
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Spectacles. Their eyesight is shockin’ bad.
