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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Now I
Speaker 1: want you to imagine yourself for a second, to do
Speaker 1: a little mental time travel here, a little uh, a
Speaker 1: little fantasizing. Okay, wait, no, am I going to the
Speaker 1: future where the crab monsters rule. No, no, no no, You're
Speaker 1: gonna go to the past, but not so far back
Speaker 1: in time that you encounter the crab monsters again from
Speaker 1: their first visit. Right, No, No, I want you to
Speaker 1: imagine yourself as a king or a queen ruling over
Speaker 1: a troubled kingdom. Okay, not hard to do. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: after a recent episode on Greek Fire we talked about
Speaker 1: the Byzantine Empire. Right exactly, You're constantly warring against rival
Speaker 1: powers on all borders. Your enemies are Legion, every stranger
Speaker 1: is a potential assassin, and every cup of wine is
Speaker 1: a potential poison plot. I have often gotten the feeling
Speaker 1: that it is a natural part of the sort of
Speaker 1: unique decadence of hereditary monarchs to be terrified of poison
Speaker 1: above all other things. I know. It was after a
Speaker 1: guy named Richard Russ tried to poison the Bishop of
Speaker 1: Rochester to death in fifteen thirty one that Henry the
Speaker 1: eighth in Parliament decided in England, people found guilty of
Speaker 1: poisoning would be punished by being boiled alive. I mean
Speaker 1: you could tell it bothered him, Yeah, like he didn't
Speaker 1: like the idea. Well, you can get in Henry's head
Speaker 1: a little bit like he's there feasting, having some lamprey
Speaker 1: pie or something, and he's like, somebody must have it
Speaker 1: in for me. And what if they came at me
Speaker 1: straight through the food? It would be the worst possible thing.
Speaker 1: What's such a subtle weapon? Yeah, and maybe it has
Speaker 1: something to do with like kings and queens feasting while
Speaker 1: their people starve. So you know, the poisoning of their
Speaker 1: food seems like this unbearably ironic reward and thus the
Speaker 1: thing they fear above all else. Oh yes, and of
Speaker 1: course we have so many different fictional, mythological and historic
Speaker 1: examples of this type of thing happening. Right, How many
Speaker 1: different rulers or or at least characters get poisoned in Shakespeare? Okay,
Speaker 1: so if you're Henry the Eighth, they're really you're any king, queen,
Speaker 1: somebody who fears being attacked right in the food. What
Speaker 1: are your options? Well, you know you could you could
Speaker 1: have a food taster, a wine taster and sort of
Speaker 1: try everything out on an individual before it comes to
Speaker 1: your lips. What if nobody wants that job, Well, in
Speaker 1: that case, you need to turn to your trusted advisory
Speaker 1: King Joe. You're because you're trusted Advisor has has traveled far,
Speaker 1: and he's he spent a lot of time with with
Speaker 1: with crumbling tons of arcane knowledge and secrets. And one day,
Speaker 1: this wizard presents you with an ornate drinking vessel carved
Speaker 1: from a mysterious substance. It's unlike any wood or stone
Speaker 1: you've ever seen. And he tells you that this cup
Speaker 1: will alert you to the presence of any poison poured
Speaker 1: within it, for it is crafted from the sacred horn
Speaker 1: of the unicorn. Wow, So the unicorn goblet is like
Speaker 1: a tattle tale cup. It's a chemical tattle tale and
Speaker 1: it will somehow let you know if you are entering
Speaker 1: the danger zone. Yeah, that's well, that's the idea that
Speaker 1: it's a it's I mean, you can ask the wizard.
Speaker 1: You might say, well, does it does it light up?
Speaker 1: Does it is it gonna flash it? You know, what's
Speaker 1: going to be the effect? How am I going to know? Now? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think I would have a hard time coming across
Speaker 1: this cup because the unicorns don't exist. That that is
Speaker 1: certainly a design flaw here. Yeah, they're the natural world
Speaker 1: has never known a true unicorn, but it has long
Speaker 1: known the thundering footsteps of the rhinoceros. Oh okay, and
Speaker 1: humans have long sought it's horn for alleged medicinal and
Speaker 1: magical purposes, a fact that is both intriguing and kind
Speaker 1: of sad because you have to imagine how they get
Speaker 1: the horn. That's right. So pretty much our entire episode
Speaker 1: is going to be intriguing and sad. It's going to
Speaker 1: be uh magical, But we're also going to dive into
Speaker 1: the possible scientific basis for some of these alleged properties
Speaker 1: of rhino horn. Most of them do not pan out.
Speaker 1: We'll go ahead and let you know that right up
Speaker 1: front in case you are considering buying rhino horn for
Speaker 1: some purpose or another. But the science is still interesting. Right. So,
Speaker 1: when you see a rhinoceros, I think it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: the first thing you're gonna notice about it is the horn.
Speaker 1: In fact, the word rhinoceros comes from the observation of
Speaker 1: the horn. Literally it means nose horn. Well, if not
Speaker 1: the nose horn, they're just the sheer size of these creatures. Um,
Speaker 1: if you happen to see one at a zoo, I
Speaker 1: mean they're a megaphon that they are enormous. I was
Speaker 1: in the past year. I was at the zoo down
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, and if they're right their rhino habitat,
Speaker 1: they have it laid out in such a way that
Speaker 1: you can there's certainly a divider between you and the rhinos.
Speaker 1: But but you're you're sort of at level, or perhaps
Speaker 1: a little lower than the rhinos because they're kind of
Speaker 1: they're kind of on a hill, a slight incline anyway,
Speaker 1: So you're you're you're kind of instead of looking down
Speaker 1: on them as if they're in a pit, like you
Speaker 1: encountered a lot of zoos, uh, You're you're kind of
Speaker 1: viewing them on their level, on your level, and it
Speaker 1: just it just makes you realize even more just how
Speaker 1: enormous these creatures are. Also makes it harder for a
Speaker 1: suicidal person to jump down into the rhino pit, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's going to be a little more effort to
Speaker 1: to meet your death in the hands of the rhino. Now.
Speaker 1: A funny kind of linguistic connection, of course, is that
Speaker 1: when when I look at a rhinoceros, one of the
Speaker 1: things I often think is I see a dinosaur, and
Speaker 1: I see that in in plenty of mammals. Actually, this
Speaker 1: is this might be a weird peek into my messed
Speaker 1: up brain. But when I see horses, I think of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure why. It's something about the elongation
Speaker 1: of the face paired with the size of the animal.
Speaker 1: But with the rhinoceros, it's it's definitely that horn. I mean,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of the try sarratops. But the
Speaker 1: linguistic connection is, you know, they've got the same thing
Speaker 1: in the name the try sarah tops three horned face
Speaker 1: and the rhinos seras the sarah there both comes from
Speaker 1: the Greek keros for horn, nose, horn basically. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: currently there are five species and eleven subspecies of rhino.
Speaker 1: Some have two horns while others have one. And uh,
Speaker 1: we should really drive home a few facts about that horn.
Speaker 1: Uh you can you can argue that it's not even
Speaker 1: a true horn because it doesn't have a bone core.
Speaker 1: So and if you see a skeleton of a rhino
Speaker 1: in a museum, uh, sometimes you'll notice that there's no
Speaker 1: that they won't have any kind of a horn fixture attached. Um.
Speaker 1: I know this was the case at the Field Museum
Speaker 1: in Chicago. They had some rhino skeletons. I can't recall
Speaker 1: if they were um extent rhinos or some sort of
Speaker 1: prehistoric rhino beast, but there was no horn present on
Speaker 1: the skeleton. Interesting. The rhino horn actually has more in
Speaker 1: common with horse hoofs or the beak of a of
Speaker 1: a bird or turtle. It's made of keraton. This is
Speaker 1: the stuff you find in hair and fingernails, and the
Speaker 1: core of the horn contains dense mental deposits of calcium
Speaker 1: and melanin. But it's not like a true bony core,
Speaker 1: so it's more like a big, densely packed protein horn
Speaker 1: rather than a bone horn. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like just a big enormous fingernail in many respects. Now,
Speaker 1: don't let that be deceiving, because it's still probably hurts
Speaker 1: if it comes at you at high speed. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still a formidable weapon. That that the horns can
Speaker 1: be cracked. The horns can be removed. I know that
Speaker 1: the male rhino they previously had at Zoo Atlanta, Uh,
Speaker 1: the horn became cracked and then they had to remove
Speaker 1: it entirely. Yeah. Because so the horns can be removed,
Speaker 1: the material of the horn can be ground down into
Speaker 1: a powder, or it can be made in shavings. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it can be carved, and it can be polished,
Speaker 1: and when it's polished it it often takes on a
Speaker 1: translucent quality and the luster allegedly increases with age. Now,
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's hard to deny that many of
Speaker 1: the artifacts that people make out of rhinoceros horns are
Speaker 1: truly very beautiful. They're astonishing to look at. But we
Speaker 1: shouldn't lose sight of the fact that you know, these
Speaker 1: are acquired through the coaching of rhinoceroses, and in many
Speaker 1: cases rhinoceroses are endangered or critically endangered species. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of those those numbers here in
Speaker 1: a bit, but if you want to see examples of
Speaker 1: these these rhino horn drinking vessels, we will include two
Speaker 1: images of them as well as some images of rhinos
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind dot Com. Now, I know throughout history
Speaker 1: that the rhinoceros horn has had not just decorative purposes,
Speaker 1: but believe it's believed to have had magical purposes as well.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, a lot of the magical uses for
Speaker 1: rhino horns are rooted in ancient Asian practices, and these
Speaker 1: entered into European culture as early as the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: and intensified in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries within along
Speaker 1: with increased European trade with the East and West Indies.
Speaker 1: I found an excellent source on all of this from
Speaker 1: an author by the name of Marnie P. Stark. Came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand three, and it it's uh titled
Speaker 1: mounted bees or stones, say, shells, nuts, and rhinoceros horns
Speaker 1: decorative objects as antidotes in early modern Europe. So the
Speaker 1: idea here is if if maybe you are that king
Speaker 1: and you already had some poison, that in some sense
Speaker 1: it was believed that some of these things might cure you,
Speaker 1: or might save you, Yeah, or just serve as magical
Speaker 1: protective elements. Uh. So the author here points out that,
Speaker 1: you know, the thirteenth century in particular saw the European
Speaker 1: introduction of quote, poison detectors or proofs of mounted griffin claws, serpents, tongues, toadstones,
Speaker 1: and a host of other materials as quote part of
Speaker 1: the rituals of dining, as well as rich collections. Oh
Speaker 1: I like that, So like maybe one thing that you
Speaker 1: truly think is functional. In one century at detecting poison
Speaker 1: just becomes a sort of enjoyable and traditional part of
Speaker 1: how you have dinner. Yeah, I mean, and and I
Speaker 1: imagine you know, you may have somebody trying your food
Speaker 1: for you to keep poison, uh from entering your system.
Speaker 1: You may have spies everywhere and guards on hand, and
Speaker 1: you're threatening everyone with with boiling if they try to
Speaker 1: to get some sort of deadly poison into your body.
Speaker 1: But it also helps to have a few magical trinkets
Speaker 1: on hand just in case, just ahead your bat now, uh.
Speaker 1: You you might be wondering. You know, we're not gonna
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on this, but you might think,
Speaker 1: what are bees or stones? Well, these were allegedly un
Speaker 1: obtained indigestible stone from the gas gastrow intestinal tract of
Speaker 1: an animal such as a goat, and you would wear
Speaker 1: it as an ambulant. And this is probably had an
Speaker 1: Arabic origin. And sometimes these were mounted with bands of
Speaker 1: metal or gold around them, so it would be kind
Speaker 1: of like a paperweight that you know, I guess sets
Speaker 1: on the table with you while you eat. I think
Speaker 1: I recall them having something to do with the plot
Speaker 1: of one of the Harry Potter books. Don't somebody swallow
Speaker 1: a bees or to cure some kind of poison? Oh?
Speaker 1: Maybe they do? Okay, that does that does ring about
Speaker 1: our Potter fans will have to clue us in there.
Speaker 1: She was always throwing an all sort of wonderful little
Speaker 1: occult tidbits. Uh. And as far as Saychelle nuts go,
Speaker 1: these are sa coconuts. It's so I said. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just a it's just a coconut essentially, but it
Speaker 1: is it has an exotic quality to it. Hey, if
Speaker 1: you're in the fifteenth century Europe, you know, coconut looks
Speaker 1: pretty magical. Now. The idea that that that horn, particularly
Speaker 1: uh rhino horn, could have some sort of healing properties
Speaker 1: or or poison detecting property properties, you see, that go
Speaker 1: back at least as far as uh well, in one
Speaker 1: case fifth century see Persia, where they believed that the
Speaker 1: horn vessel could detect poisons and would cause a bubbling
Speaker 1: in the liquid that was in the horn. Right. So,
Speaker 1: if you're a lord who fears poisoning and somebody brings
Speaker 1: you your rhino horn goblet of wine, you sit it
Speaker 1: down for a while, and you observe it, and if
Speaker 1: it starts to froth up, you know that your servant
Speaker 1: is well you probably don't actually know, but you might
Speaker 1: as well accuse your servant of trying to kill you. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to boil somebody at that point, otherwise who's
Speaker 1: gonna fear you? Right, there's a wonderful quote here that
Speaker 1: Stark included uh in in the paper, and this is
Speaker 1: from Swedish traveler Carl Peter Thunberg seventeen seventy three. Around
Speaker 1: the Cape of Good Hope, the horn of the rhinoceros
Speaker 1: were kept by some people not only as rarities, but
Speaker 1: also as useful in disease and for the purpose of
Speaker 1: detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the
Speaker 1: fine shavings of the horn taken internally were supposed to
Speaker 1: cure convulsions and spasms and children. With regard to the later,
Speaker 1: it was generally believed that goblets made of these horns
Speaker 1: in a turner's lathe could would discover a poisonous draft
Speaker 1: that was put into them by making the liquor ferment
Speaker 1: until it ran quite out of the goblet. Such horns
Speaker 1: as were taken from a young rhinoceros calf were said
Speaker 1: to be the best and the most to be depended on.
Speaker 1: Of these goblets are may which are set in gold
Speaker 1: and silver and made presents to kings, people of distinction,
Speaker 1: and particular friends or else sold at high high price,
Speaker 1: sometimes at the rate of fixed fifty six dollars a goblin.
Speaker 1: Now those are seventeen seventy three dollars. Yes, fifty six
Speaker 1: dollars went a lot further back then. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I got to imagine that if you're thinking the rhino
Speaker 1: horn cup has these powers, it may tie in via
Speaker 1: the type of magical thinking that was common then to
Speaker 1: the powers of the rhinoceros itself. Surely, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that was a common mode of thought. Like
Speaker 1: a powerful beast that you know in life has some
Speaker 1: has a strong body and can do great harm or
Speaker 1: something if it's enraged, can also be powerful in a
Speaker 1: magical sense if you take objects from its body or
Speaker 1: some kind of sympathetic magic things that have touched it
Speaker 1: or come from it. Yeah, and so many of these
Speaker 1: these vessels also had rhinos carved on them, so they
Speaker 1: really didn't want you to forget where this came from.
Speaker 1: That was part of the branding, right. The rhin know
Speaker 1: long had a reputation in the West as a ferocious
Speaker 1: beast chat capable of conquering all others, and this was
Speaker 1: thanks in no small part to observations by Pompey the
Speaker 1: Great and the writings of Plenty of the Elder frequent
Speaker 1: a frequent topic here on the show, one of our
Speaker 1: favorite sources of ancient misinformation. Yes, uh so, one of
Speaker 1: these rhinos is said to have fought an elephant in
Speaker 1: the Games of POMPEII, and another one came to Europe
Speaker 1: in fifteen fifteen as a gift to King Manuel of Lisbon,
Speaker 1: and he he also you know, since he had a
Speaker 1: rhino and apparently had an elephant as well, he planned
Speaker 1: to just recreate the battle. What was wrong with these people,
Speaker 1: I know, to fight animals to get this amazing creature,
Speaker 1: you know, imported, and then the first thing you want
Speaker 1: to do do is fight them. I mean even Pablo Escobar. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't think he did that. I think he just
Speaker 1: kept the exotic animals around. Whatever. Yeah, so, in this case,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, the rhino allegedly won the barbaric sport. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but before it died, an artist sketched the animal
Speaker 1: and he sent it to a certain artist of note,
Speaker 1: right albreat Dearer in in Nuremberg. And so this is
Speaker 1: where we get this classic image. If you have not
Speaker 1: seen it, you should look up Dearer's Rhinoceros. D u
Speaker 1: r e er So Juror did many of these drawings
Speaker 1: and woodcuts of the sixteenth century, and this image is
Speaker 1: just out of this world. It looks like an hr
Speaker 1: Geeger creation. And I'm not making that up, am I Robert.
Speaker 1: It's this bio mechanical robot alien or Also, I can
Speaker 1: imagine that you could look at it as a melancholy
Speaker 1: animal with these sad, downcast eyes covered in finally machined
Speaker 1: metal armor with psychedelic designs. Yeah, I mean that that
Speaker 1: describes it to a t. It seems like something that
Speaker 1: you would see tromping around in a like a weird
Speaker 1: psychedelic fringe animated film, like something Mobius would have created. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's like some thing out of the Codex Saraphoninus,
Speaker 1: except it's it's a real animal. Yeah, And you know
Speaker 1: he was, of course, he was going off of this
Speaker 1: this illustration. He's going off, you know, you know, secondhand
Speaker 1: information here and uh and he but he did get
Speaker 1: the idea of the rhino down, especially if this was
Speaker 1: indeed an Indian rhino, which has more sort of skin
Speaker 1: flaps going on, it does have more of an armor
Speaker 1: plating appearance. And he just in his interpretation of the rhino,
Speaker 1: he really takes us and runs with it. He just
Speaker 1: exaggerates it to fantastic effect. Yeah, that does appear to
Speaker 1: be what's going on, because here we see the rhino
Speaker 1: in the image has one horn, and it's got these
Speaker 1: long ridges going across its armor plates, and it also
Speaker 1: has an extra little no if you noticed this on
Speaker 1: the illustration near the word rhinos, there's a horn above
Speaker 1: the shoulder blade. Yeah, which is interesting. And it looks
Speaker 1: a lot like a small unicorn horn, which I think
Speaker 1: is interesting and it ties into our topic here because
Speaker 1: in Stark's paper, she nights that the antidotal powers of
Speaker 1: the horn, the idea that you could, you know, take
Speaker 1: the powder of the horn and it would cure some
Speaker 1: ailment or cure a poison inside you. Uh, that these
Speaker 1: were barred from tales of the mythical unicorn. She writes
Speaker 1: that since at least the fourteenth century, the horn of
Speaker 1: the unicorn, which was in turn usually a narwhal or
Speaker 1: walrus tusk um to begin with, oh, those walls, those
Speaker 1: narwhal horns are great. By the way, that narwhal horn,
Speaker 1: it's a tooth. Did you know that? Yeah? I I
Speaker 1: And there was some recent news about the narwhale. There's
Speaker 1: some new footage I want to say. I mean, can
Speaker 1: you imagine if like a human was like this, like
Speaker 1: if you had like one six foot tooth just shooting
Speaker 1: straight out the front of your mouth, we could probably
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on all the teeth were thankful
Speaker 1: we don't have, I mean you count narwhale teeth and
Speaker 1: uh or the barbar russo where the you know, the
Speaker 1: tusk will grow up, grows up through the like the
Speaker 1: basically the roof of its snout and curve back around
Speaker 1: and die eve into their brain if if they're, if
Speaker 1: they're they're left to grow that long yeah uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but we'll let me believe that for another another episode.
Speaker 1: The long front tooth. It certainly makes kissing hard. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: well with the barbarousa. Not to get too off topic,
Speaker 1: the other I mean, the weird thing is they when
Speaker 1: they fight, these things are brittle, so they just they
Speaker 1: break off. So it's like I said, be thankful. It's
Speaker 1: weird as human teeth are as awful as they can be. Um,
Speaker 1: they're worst way to have teeth. Well anyway, So we
Speaker 1: have all these ancient teeth, tusks, horns, things that people
Speaker 1: think are from unicorns, and they're believed to have these
Speaker 1: magical powers. Oh yeah, yeah, with the unicorn horn or
Speaker 1: the alleged unicorn horn. They believe that you could use
Speaker 1: as a remedy for poison, you could use it to
Speaker 1: to cure diseases, even the plague. And then when Europeans
Speaker 1: began encountering the rhinoceros and it's and uh and it's
Speaker 1: horn uh, you know, out when they were traveling and abroad,
Speaker 1: then the reality in the myth became intertwined. So they
Speaker 1: took what what they observed about the rhino, and then
Speaker 1: in turn, they took what others and farm lands told
Speaker 1: them about the rhino and their magical beliefs, and then
Speaker 1: they took their own ideas about the unicorn, and it
Speaker 1: all just came kind of became meshed together. Um, they
Speaker 1: you know, they encountered all these uh, additional traditions of
Speaker 1: magico medicinal powers that were associated with the rhino horn,
Speaker 1: and they incorporated them into their own beliefs. And weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: some accounts indicate that even when rhino horn and unicorn
Speaker 1: were considered distinct, uh you know, so people believed in
Speaker 1: both unicorn horns and rhino horns and thought they were
Speaker 1: separate things. Yeah, you know, and that even in these
Speaker 1: cases there are instances where where they talk about, well,
Speaker 1: if you can't get unicorn horn, rhino horn will do,
Speaker 1: you're giving away the game go on. So what's the
Speaker 1: point of the unicorn horn? Now? In terms of of
Speaker 1: other uh nationalities and other cultural beliefs regarding the rhino horn, um,
Speaker 1: there are various tidbits about this. For starters, a fourth
Speaker 1: century Chinese writer Old Kung believed that horns were antidotal
Speaker 1: because the rhino eight poisonous plants and trees, enabling it
Speaker 1: to conquer the poison. Oh okay, so there's a slightly
Speaker 1: more you know, proto scientific way of thinking about it,
Speaker 1: not you know, not quite fully rigorous, but you can
Speaker 1: you can see the chain of cause and effect going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just Hey, it's magic. There's an attempt to
Speaker 1: understand what could be underlying this presumed effect. Now, in
Speaker 1: terms of all the various medicinal qualities alleged medicinal qualities
Speaker 1: of of the rhino horn, this is pretty common in
Speaker 1: the traditional medicine systems of Malaysia, South Korea, India, and
Speaker 1: of course China. So so you've got it in Chinese
Speaker 1: traditional medicine. What did they think it did well? The
Speaker 1: idea was that you could take shaved or powdered horn
Speaker 1: and it could be boiled in water to treat fever, rheumatism, gout,
Speaker 1: and various other conditions. Sixteenth century. That's a mean dynas
Speaker 1: Chinese pharmacist and just general polly math. This guy was
Speaker 1: really amazing. Lee shi Jin wrote that it could even
Speaker 1: cure snake bites, hallucinations, typhoid headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning,
Speaker 1: and devil possession. Now, the interesting thing is that you'll
Speaker 1: find various sources out there there that say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm rather scandalously Oh well, you know, we have all
Speaker 1: these problem with rhino poaching because people in Asia use
Speaker 1: it as an aphrodisiac, which the thing is where I
Speaker 1: could run across of no verifiable information about that being
Speaker 1: the case, no actual cases of of of brno horn
Speaker 1: being prescribed as an aphrodisiac, for instance, in traditional Chinese medicine. Now,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, I will say that it seems
Speaker 1: like almost anything is sometimes prescribed as an aphrodisiac. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know that's not I mean you can see where,
Speaker 1: even if it's not part of traditional medical medical systems,
Speaker 1: it would not take mutt for something to for a
Speaker 1: belief to become tweaked in that direction, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean I could start a rumor today that canned crab
Speaker 1: is an aphrodisiac. It wasn't this, This was on something
Speaker 1: what was there was something about canned crab as you
Speaker 1: know this is on Game of Thrones, right, no spoilers, Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I knew it was. It was like is it Rick
Speaker 1: and Morty or is it Game of Thrones? Could go
Speaker 1: either way. Um, but yeah, as far as as far
Speaker 1: as I could tell, and if anyone out there has
Speaker 1: more information on illicit any legal aphrodisiacs, let me know.
Speaker 1: But I found like multiple like spokespeople on behalf of
Speaker 1: Chinese traditional medicine who were saying, no, this is not
Speaker 1: that's that's not something we use it for. Uh though,
Speaker 1: of course they're having to they've been they've had to
Speaker 1: address the other uses and come up with botanical alternatives
Speaker 1: to rhino horn. Now the hm you mean because of
Speaker 1: ecological considerations, yes, yes, Now the ancient Greeks they also
Speaker 1: used the horn as well, and they said that he
Speaker 1: could purify water. So we see sort of similar overlap there. Now,
Speaker 1: on top of all these magical medicinal uses, it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that with it you can just have a purely
Speaker 1: ornamental use of the horn as well. I mean as
Speaker 1: far as you can you know, have any purely ornamental
Speaker 1: use of of a man made material, right, but just
Speaker 1: using it for various ornamental purposes that dates back at
Speaker 1: least two seventh centuries see each China, and it's long
Speaker 1: been a Yeminy practice where you have these a special daggers,
Speaker 1: these jambilla daggers, and you would have the hilt of
Speaker 1: the thing carved out of rhino horn. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I already mentioned this earlier, but it is something
Speaker 1: that struck me multiple times when I was looking through
Speaker 1: the images of these artifacts, which is that it's I
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge the artistry and the beauty that goes
Speaker 1: into crafting these well, at the same time not approving
Speaker 1: of things that are made out of the bodies of
Speaker 1: endangered animals. Yeah, because you you want to admire them
Speaker 1: for their beauty, but you don't want to admire them
Speaker 1: so much that you're sort of contributing to a cultural
Speaker 1: desire for these items. So if you're if you're even
Speaker 1: thinking about acquiring a rhino horn artifact, Uh, then make
Speaker 1: sure you listen to the rest of the episode because
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of the the ramifications of all
Speaker 1: of this. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will talk more about
Speaker 1: what science has to say about the chemistry of the
Speaker 1: rhino horn. All right, we're back. So, Robert, is their
Speaker 1: solid scientific evidence that we should use the rhinoceros horn
Speaker 1: for its magical and scientific medicinal properties? Uh No, there's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, science can certainly but in and say, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, there's no such thing as magic. Uh
Speaker 1: there's there's such thing as medicine, and to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: there's such things you know, there there is the placebo
Speaker 1: effect that has to be taken to account in all adders.
Speaker 1: But you can have you know, wood chips, and that
Speaker 1: can have a placebo effect if you have you know,
Speaker 1: a belief in the wood chip as a curative element. Okay,
Speaker 1: But so while there is not broad agreement in the
Speaker 1: scientific community that rhino horn even I mean even ecological
Speaker 1: consideration consideration society, even if you could get synthetic stuff,
Speaker 1: like if the horns fell off and we're just you know,
Speaker 1: laying over the ground, right, even then there's not good
Speaker 1: evidence that we should use it for whatever. All these
Speaker 1: purposes are, curing fever, curing devil possession, or food poisoning. Um.
Speaker 1: There might be some tidbits, right, some little areas where
Speaker 1: there's some crossover there in just talking about the idea
Speaker 1: of consuming the horn for as as a medicinal element.
Speaker 1: There's there's almost no evidence to support it. And what
Speaker 1: little evidence there is, it's just so miniscule that it
Speaker 1: does not it doesn't make it worth anybody's while it
Speaker 1: doesn't make it worth you know, breaking the law risking
Speaker 1: um um, you know, arrest or death trying to cut
Speaker 1: off a rhino's horn, and and it's not worth the
Speaker 1: money or the or the you know, the risk of
Speaker 1: engaging in the legal activity to consume it. Um, let
Speaker 1: me get into the examples here. So in uh In
Speaker 1: Ninete researchers at Chinese University in Hong Kong, they found
Speaker 1: that large doses of horn could slightly lower fever in rats.
Speaker 1: But the concentration here was so it was, it was
Speaker 1: so great that it was it far exceeded what was
Speaker 1: used in traditional Chinese medicine. Anyway, I wonder what the
Speaker 1: long term side effects are of just eating a bunch
Speaker 1: of ground up keratin. Well, I mean it's it would
Speaker 1: be it would I guess, be like if you just
Speaker 1: chewed your fingernails your whole life and like not counting
Speaker 1: any you know, damage to your your nail beds or whatever.
Speaker 1: But just if you eight fingernail clippings all the time,
Speaker 1: or ground up fingernail clippings into a fine powder and
Speaker 1: put it in your smoothie every morning, and in fact,
Speaker 1: in an interview with PBS Nature, ecologist raj Amen of
Speaker 1: the Zoological Society of London says you'd be better off
Speaker 1: doing just that than engaging in the consumption of rhino horn.
Speaker 1: So like, if you want to lower your fever a
Speaker 1: little bit, and you don't have access to aspirin or
Speaker 1: any of the normal stuff you'd used to do that,
Speaker 1: you might just eat all your fingernails and hair. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: But you know you probably have access to these other
Speaker 1: things that would work much better and are far more verified. Uh.
Speaker 1: In his seven Jama Dermatology article skin Potions, which is
Speaker 1: just a lovely title for a paper, Leonard M. Millstone
Speaker 1: m D wrote that powders of rhino horn amount to
Speaker 1: quote no more than compacted stratum corneum. That's the outermost
Speaker 1: layer of the epidermist, consisting of dead skin. Right, so
Speaker 1: we're back to the keratin. Yeah. And according to a
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen New Scientists article, like Curtis Abraham, a
Speaker 1: Taiwanese human study found that rhino horn could temporarily reduce
Speaker 1: fever in children, but was no more effective than aspirint,
Speaker 1: and animal studies in the UK and South Africa discovered
Speaker 1: no pharmacological effects of this or any animal horn at all. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's about what what we would expect right now,
Speaker 1: to just go back to traditional Chinese medicine for a second.
Speaker 1: I do want to mention as well, then in in
Speaker 1: most of those models, you wouldn't you wouldn't have someone
Speaker 1: just consuming the horn. The horn would would have be
Speaker 1: the ground up horn would be utilized with other ingredients,
Speaker 1: herbs or what have you. So you know, you could
Speaker 1: make the argue, well, some concoction that contained the horn
Speaker 1: might work, but if it did work, it's not the
Speaker 1: horn that's probably causing it. It's something else in the
Speaker 1: in the potion, if you will. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the classic potion trick, right, if you just throw a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff into a cauldron and get somebody
Speaker 1: to take it. On one hand, you've got placebo effect working.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you threw a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: in there and something might do something. And then third,
Speaker 1: there's this thing that that I think we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: like the idea that essentially any detectable effect can sort
Speaker 1: of be interpreted as the desired effect. Yeah, and now
Speaker 1: you can also say some cost probably plays a role
Speaker 1: as well, because at this point you've gone to the
Speaker 1: apothecary store, You've you've paid for this stuff, and you've
Speaker 1: probably had to sort of choke it back. You've so
Speaker 1: you've gone through sort of three trials to get there,
Speaker 1: so it better do something. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna believe it did something. Otherwise I wasted all
Speaker 1: this time and energy. You're riding my favorite horse. The
Speaker 1: some cost fallacy explains a lot. Now, Luckily, in China, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and South Korea, rhino horn has been completely banned from
Speaker 1: use in medicine since about and in China it can
Speaker 1: only be used in research. So, as we'll discuss, there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of efforts to curb the poaching of
Speaker 1: rhinos in the illicit trade of rhino horn. Now, what
Speaker 1: about this old belief that we started off with that
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a king or a queen and
Speaker 1: you fear poisoning, you could have a rhino horn cup
Speaker 1: that would detect any poisons placed within it. Is there
Speaker 1: any scientific evidence that that could be true? Well, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, there is, and it comes down to
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, as we've mentioned, there's this
Speaker 1: idea that the poison would bubble or froth or froth
Speaker 1: and bubble out over the the edge of the cup
Speaker 1: if there was a poison in it. And so therefore
Speaker 1: we have what appears to be an account of a
Speaker 1: chemical reaction. And where there's chemical, where there's chemistry, there's
Speaker 1: there's science. Right, there's a potential for there to be
Speaker 1: some actual chemical reaction taking place. So I'm I've had
Speaker 1: trouble finding a primary source on this, but it's it's
Speaker 1: been widely reported by PPS Nature, rhino conservation groups, in
Speaker 1: various academic patriot papers that there may be scientific grounds
Speaker 1: for this in some cases. So as you'll remember, the
Speaker 1: rhino horn is keratin, right, stuff in your hair and fingernails,
Speaker 1: and what do many poisons contain alkaline? This is a
Speaker 1: like like a base as opposed to an acid, uh,
Speaker 1: and this may react chemically with the kerotene, and this
Speaker 1: can produce fropping, foaming, or bubbles. So in in the
Speaker 1: instance that someone is trying to poison you with a
Speaker 1: with a with an alkaline poison, there is the possibility
Speaker 1: that the cup could detect it. Now, Joe, I know
Speaker 1: you looked into this as well. Were you able to
Speaker 1: find any additional information on this, uh, this possible chemical reaction? Well,
Speaker 1: I I yeah, I mean I I thought about this,
Speaker 1: and I want to start with one claim about because
Speaker 1: as you said, you know, this is claimed all over
Speaker 1: the place, but nobody has exactly explained how it would work.
Speaker 1: Uh So, one of one of the claims I found
Speaker 1: on this was from a paper, or actually it was
Speaker 1: a It was a sort of a book length work
Speaker 1: published in or X the International Journal of Conservation called
Speaker 1: a Look at Threatened Species by Lee Miriam Talbot in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. And the author here is talking about how
Speaker 1: rhino horns are used with regard to poisons. And this
Speaker 1: is what the author claims. Quote in Sumatra, it should
Speaker 1: be drunk as a purgative if one feels the first
Speaker 1: signs of poisoning. In Burma, a belief exists that when
Speaker 1: one puts rhino horn shavings into a cup containing poison,
Speaker 1: they will bubble and smoke. In Nepal. In parts of India,
Speaker 1: the belief is that if poison is placed into a
Speaker 1: rhino horn cup, the poison will bubble, discolor or become harmless,
Speaker 1: or else the coup will slowly disintegrate or shatter. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: there may be some basis for this latter belief. Many
Speaker 1: of the old poisons were strong alkaloids, and the horn
Speaker 1: is what amounts to an agglutination of hair closer in
Speaker 1: structure to toenails than to cattle horns or deer antlers.
Speaker 1: Such a structure would indeed be a afected by a
Speaker 1: strong alkaloid. Although the shattering and other dramatic behavior is
Speaker 1: probably an embellishment. It's a wonderful embellishment though, because it
Speaker 1: just sounds fantastic that the king is at his table,
Speaker 1: the wine is poured into this vessel and it is
Speaker 1: so poisonous that it just shatters the magical vessel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like he says, that might be an embellishment,
Speaker 1: But I think there's a chance that there's something to
Speaker 1: this for certain kinds of poisons. Like we said, most
Speaker 1: of the sources we found that claim this don't really
Speaker 1: explain how it would work. But I think I've got
Speaker 1: an idea. Um it might work for any poisons that
Speaker 1: are relatively strong bases. As we mentioned. And here's my example.
Speaker 1: When your shower drain gets clogged and the water gets
Speaker 1: backed up and starts to collect around your ankles, what's
Speaker 1: going on, Well, unless you're doing something really weird in
Speaker 1: the shower, the substance most likely clogging your shower or
Speaker 1: bathtub drain pipe is what well, it's hair, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean unless you're like eating olives in the shower
Speaker 1: and spitting the pits down the during it. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hair. It's gonna be mostly hair made of keratin.
Speaker 1: So what do you do? Well? You can't just run
Speaker 1: water over the hair until it dissolves. That's never gonna happen. Keratin,
Speaker 1: which is what hair is made of, is highly stable
Speaker 1: in water and resists dissolution. So you will have to
Speaker 1: avail yourself of some different weapons. Now, if you've got
Speaker 1: special equipment like a drain snake and a d i
Speaker 1: y attitude, you might be able to do that, but
Speaker 1: most people probably I know what you do? What do
Speaker 1: you do? You go out, you snag a bottle of
Speaker 1: what you get some of that drain o, right, Because,
Speaker 1: like you said, the snake option is uh is good
Speaker 1: if you really want to get in there and if
Speaker 1: you want to behold what is down there, pull that
Speaker 1: wolf tail out, yeah, which I don't recommend, but I
Speaker 1: mean sometimes that's what you gotta do. Well, But the
Speaker 1: draino is is great because you just pour it down
Speaker 1: there and you just let it sit for a little
Speaker 1: bit and you're done. Right now, I'm not necessarily advocating
Speaker 1: the use of chemical drain cleaners, especially because they can
Speaker 1: be dangerous if they splash back on you or something
Speaker 1: like that. So, uh, you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: People use this stuff. Now, what's the main active ingredient
Speaker 1: in most chemical drain cleaners, for example, drain O It's
Speaker 1: gonna be sodium hydroxide, which is in a O H
Speaker 1: also known as LIE. Sodium hydroxide is this highly alkaline
Speaker 1: inorganic substance that has a caustic reaction with proteins, proteins
Speaker 1: like the carrot like in hair. So essentially it fizzes
Speaker 1: and eats right through organic matter, including the protein keratin,
Speaker 1: which is the main ingredient in hair and in rhinoceros horns.
Speaker 1: So now it's more complicated than this because medieval poisoners,
Speaker 1: probably we're not putting drain cleaner into the lord's wine goblet. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the source I mentioned a minute ago called out alkaloids,
Speaker 1: and there is a difference between an alkaline and an alkaloid,
Speaker 1: though most but not all, alkaloids are alkaline. But anyway,
Speaker 1: if the poisoning question is a reasonably strong bait, if
Speaker 1: it's if it's strongly alkaline. I think there is a
Speaker 1: good chance it would react with a keratin based cup.
Speaker 1: Dissolving and reacting with the walls of the vessel would
Speaker 1: be kind of like storing drain cleaner in a chalice
Speaker 1: of tightly woven hair. Disgusting, well, the chalice of tightly
Speaker 1: woven hair. This makes me think of of of a
Speaker 1: piece of art titled Breakfast and Fur. Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen this? No? I don't think it's like like dinnerware
Speaker 1: made out of hair or fur? You know? So who
Speaker 1: did that? I can't remember the name. I have a
Speaker 1: friend of mine from from high school studied like a
Speaker 1: fabric art material art and this was a piece that
Speaker 1: she uh that inspired her her email address. So it's
Speaker 1: always stuck in my head. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: let's take one more break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss the rhinoceros a little bit more,
Speaker 1: the various extinct and extant species out there, as well
Speaker 1: as the whole conundrum of of of anti poaching efforts
Speaker 1: and rhino conservation. Alright, we're back, So Joe, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about extinct rhinos. First, do you have any any favorites. Well,
Speaker 1: I know you're going to mention Elasmothereum. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the big one. That the ugly unicorn. The ugly unicorn.
Speaker 1: Why do people think it's ugly? I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. It's I think the problem is that sometimes
Speaker 1: well there's some actual unicorn mythology to consider here, but
Speaker 1: you'll have these in these situations where the science papers,
Speaker 1: the science journalism will pick up elasmotherium news and they'll
Speaker 1: talk about it as if it's a unicorn. And then
Speaker 1: people will look at this big, uh, ferocious beast and
Speaker 1: they'll compare it to those beautiful unicorns from say the
Speaker 1: Last Unicorn or Legend, and they don't quite they don't
Speaker 1: think the comparison doesn't stack up. Was there a unicorn
Speaker 1: in legend? There were two unicorns? What did they do? Oh?
Speaker 1: That that was the whole deal, right that the goblins
Speaker 1: like took the unicorns horn and oh yeah, and the
Speaker 1: big Tim Curry devil creature had the horn and it
Speaker 1: was in I don't know, I only remember Tim Curry
Speaker 1: from that movie. And the soundtrack, oh yeah, the soundtrack
Speaker 1: is wonderful. Tangerine Dream soundtrack on that one Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. It's a film where the visuals in the
Speaker 1: sound stick with me, but I'm not really sure I
Speaker 1: remember the plot at all. But yeah, at any rate,
Speaker 1: Elasmothereum the and in particular Elasmotherium sibericum is an interesting
Speaker 1: case that ties in with all the stuff we've been
Speaker 1: talking about because there was a recent study in the
Speaker 1: American Journal of Applied Sciences that placed the beast in
Speaker 1: modern day Kazakhstan a mere twenty nine thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: while previous estimates placed it outside the two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: year run of human history. Okay, so that means we
Speaker 1: could have been interacting, right, And this supports an argument
Speaker 1: that myths of the Western unicorn and even the various
Speaker 1: Eastern beasts such as the Chinese quillon or the Japanese kiran,
Speaker 1: are based on accounts of human interactions with the actual
Speaker 1: unihorned beasts now in China. There's also the counter argument
Speaker 1: that the Asian rhino populations once existed in grade in
Speaker 1: number throughout ancient China, and that's what these myths are
Speaker 1: referring to. And indeed this is based on historical writings,
Speaker 1: art and even uh, you know, fossil evidence UH, and
Speaker 1: this would have this would have been the northern Sumatra
Speaker 1: and rhino in particular. Now, in terms of other extinct
Speaker 1: rhino species, we have some some recent, fairly recent additions
Speaker 1: to that list. The Western black rhinoceros, the sub This
Speaker 1: is a sub Saharan Africa UH species. Primarily it was
Speaker 1: found in Cameroon. This was just declared extinct in twleven
Speaker 1: and it may have been extinct for some five or
Speaker 1: six years at that point. Now, but there is till
Speaker 1: a black rhinoceros that exists right, yes, but these are
Speaker 1: just variations of the black rhino that have blinked out.
Speaker 1: For instance, the Southern black rhinoceros disappeared around eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: and the Northeastern black rhino also went extinct sometime in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. And of course there are all these
Speaker 1: additional cool prehistoric rhinos and rhino like beasts that we
Speaker 1: don't really have time to get into. But you have
Speaker 1: like the Wooly rhino, the Titanic hornless rhinos known as
Speaker 1: the parasceratherium, and the wonderful sort of sling shot horned
Speaker 1: mega serops. These were and these were not technically rhinos.
Speaker 1: They were just rhino like that. I was always intrigued
Speaker 1: by the images of them in my childhood, like prehistoric
Speaker 1: animal books, because it looks like the formation for a slingshot,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a a y shaped horn. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. Yeah, you can just
Speaker 1: imagine them, you know, somehow acquiring large rubber bands and
Speaker 1: outfitting them and I don't know, finding smaller mammals to
Speaker 1: ride atop their their neck can fire projectiles out of it.
Speaker 1: I mean they also kind of just look like they're
Speaker 1: perfectly designed to like skewer your buttocks if the thing
Speaker 1: tosses you into the air. Yeah, true, Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was probably more in keeping with the actual purpose of
Speaker 1: the of the horn. Now, in terms of the rhinos
Speaker 1: that we have today that are still left in the world,
Speaker 1: we have, as we mentioned earlier, five different varieties. There's
Speaker 1: the white rhino and this is found in northern, northern,
Speaker 1: and southern varieties in Africa. Um, the northern is extinct
Speaker 1: in the wild, but the southern rhino, they're in estimated
Speaker 1: roughly twenty thousand, four hundred and five individuals left in
Speaker 1: the world, and that's the most abundant one right right,
Speaker 1: that's the if you want to call a success story,
Speaker 1: that's the success story. Um, some of these other the
Speaker 1: numbers are gonna gonna dip as we proceed, though. There's
Speaker 1: a black rhino that's still found in eastern and Southern Africa.
Speaker 1: This one has has two horns, by the way, much
Speaker 1: like the white, and this one is you're looking at
Speaker 1: around five thousand or five thousand and fifty five individuals left.
Speaker 1: Then we have the Indian rhino, and this is found
Speaker 1: in India, Nepal, part of Pakistan. It has one horn.
Speaker 1: This is the one with the fabulous skin folds. It
Speaker 1: looks really cool, and you'll find somewhere around three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred and fifty five of these left in the wild.
Speaker 1: Then you have the Java and rhino, and this is
Speaker 1: only found in Java, Indonesia. The male has one horn,
Speaker 1: the females are hornless, and as of two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: only sixty three individuals remained in the wild and in
Speaker 1: captivity combined. So are they thinking that could come back
Speaker 1: or is that passed the point in no return? I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, that's you're getting down to
Speaker 1: such slim numbers. There that you, Well, we've seen cases
Speaker 1: with other species where the numbers become so reduced that
Speaker 1: even if you are able to bounce the species back,
Speaker 1: then there's not gonna be a lot of genetic diversity there.
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be a continuing uphill battle and you're
Speaker 1: certainly not going to have what you once had. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then finally we have the Sumatran rhino, which is
Speaker 1: one of the ones that I really like. You only
Speaker 1: find this in the very high altitudes of Borneo and Sumatra.
Speaker 1: It has two horns, and then it's it's hairy. It
Speaker 1: has this kind of reddish looking hair. They're really they're
Speaker 1: really cool if you if you look up videos or
Speaker 1: photos of these guys. They're also relatively small, aren't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're the smallest of the of the extent rhinos, and
Speaker 1: they're only around two hundred seventy five left in the world.
Speaker 1: All told, there were around five hundred thousand rhinos left
Speaker 1: in African Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and today it's more like twenty nine thousand in the
Speaker 1: wild due to poaching and loss of habitat. Now, if
Speaker 1: we're looking to act on this immediately, to try to
Speaker 1: turn that around and help populations bounce back. It seems
Speaker 1: like it'll it'll take longer to restore damaged or lost habitats. Right,
Speaker 1: But is there anything that can be done about poaching
Speaker 1: immediately or is this just one of those wicked problems
Speaker 1: that you know, it's uh, it's like the gopher game,
Speaker 1: like you can't stop it. Well, there's some there have
Speaker 1: been some wonderful proposals on how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll touch on some of these, but it it
Speaker 1: does seem more and more like a wicked problem, like
Speaker 1: they're just they're a number of converging elements here. And
Speaker 1: there's some very well being initiatives that have come out
Speaker 1: to try and curb the poaching of of rhino horn
Speaker 1: and the illicit trade of rhino horn, but you know,
Speaker 1: nothing is really stuck. Nothing has really managed to cut
Speaker 1: into that trade too much. And then, you know, to
Speaker 1: your point, when you couple this with tremendous habitat loss,
Speaker 1: which has challenged a number of of animals and certainly
Speaker 1: the megafauna that used to you know, roam free in
Speaker 1: these areas, uh, you have quite a problem. Now poaching
Speaker 1: again has been a major factor in rhino endangerment and extinction.
Speaker 1: And while you you can eat rhino meat and they
Speaker 1: have been killed in the past for their meat and
Speaker 1: their skin, uh, the horn seems to be the main
Speaker 1: thing that's that's causing the poaching. And that's because the
Speaker 1: corn is the part of the rhino that fetches the
Speaker 1: highest price. That's that's what they're being poached for. Uh.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the poachers drugged the animal and saw the
Speaker 1: horn off, but other times they are taking more than
Speaker 1: the horn after drugging the animal, or they're just straight
Speaker 1: up killing the animal. So what what kind of efforts
Speaker 1: can be established to prevent poaching or at least discourage it. Well,
Speaker 1: we've touched on some of the legal efforts. So it's
Speaker 1: it's currently illegal for rhino horn sales to take place
Speaker 1: between countries, but interestingly enough, it's not illegal in South Africa,
Speaker 1: not anymore so. In April of this year, South African
Speaker 1: courts ruled that sales of rhino horns could take place
Speaker 1: provided the seller had a permit. And with these permitted
Speaker 1: cases were generally talking breeding farm um. The horns in
Speaker 1: these cases are removed painlessly and humanely, The leading a
Speaker 1: rhino farmer a John Hume, according to BBC News, he
Speaker 1: believes that it's such a legal and open trade is
Speaker 1: is going to be beneficial because as the trade, because
Speaker 1: the trade first of all can raise money that can
Speaker 1: help but conserve the species. And he also thinks that
Speaker 1: these open, legal sales will drive down the price of
Speaker 1: illicit horn and reduce poaching. Now, critics say that this
Speaker 1: practice will only increase the demand for for the horn.
Speaker 1: It will you know, perhaps even normalize it. Plus, if
Speaker 1: you have a legitimate trade taking place, then that can
Speaker 1: provide cover for illegitimate trade to take place, you know. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're trying to create a stigma
Speaker 1: around the sale of rhino horns, even if you've been failing,
Speaker 1: it's going to be even harder to establish that stigma
Speaker 1: if you're also selling legit horns next door. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: And also like let's say that you're you're traveling out
Speaker 1: of South Africa and some you know, an official opens
Speaker 1: your bag and it has rhino horns in it and
Speaker 1: they say what's this and you go, oh, these are
Speaker 1: legal rhino horns. I have a permit um and maybe
Speaker 1: you have a fake permit like if permits exist, you
Speaker 1: have a leg up on deceiving the system. But if
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a legal uh um, you know,
Speaker 1: a legal sale of rhino horns, then there's no way
Speaker 1: you could pass that off. Just to put it in
Speaker 1: very simple terms, now, I guess one big question would
Speaker 1: be or the farmed humane horns cheaper than the poached horns?
Speaker 1: I think that would be the idea right there. You
Speaker 1: would do this to drive down the price, like why
Speaker 1: why pay all this, uh this additional money for an
Speaker 1: illegitimate horn when you can get the real thing for
Speaker 1: cheaper uh and it's official and it's verifiable. Now, there
Speaker 1: have there have been efforts to curb poaching by practicing
Speaker 1: horn removal, uh you know in the wild as well
Speaker 1: as as well as a tactic that actually brings this
Speaker 1: full circle poisoning the rhino horn to prevent its eventual consumption.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, So the ideas you would drew two holes
Speaker 1: into it and then you would you would pump in
Speaker 1: a poison in particular would be a highly toxic ectoparasiticide
Speaker 1: and it would have a die with it as well.
Speaker 1: So you would have this drilled, discolored horn that would ideally, uh,
Speaker 1: announced to any poachers, don't steal this horn. This horn
Speaker 1: is poisoned and if you if you claim this horn
Speaker 1: and sell it, it could kill somebody or make them sick. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously the goal would not be too just poison people
Speaker 1: for consuming rhino horn. The goal would be to prevent
Speaker 1: the poaching in the first place. Well, I saw I
Speaker 1: saw some quotes that seemed to imply the former as well.
Speaker 1: They're saying like this, this will punish somebody who take
Speaker 1: who consumes it, which is, you know, a weird moral
Speaker 1: leg to try and stand on. I think, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know that's great. I mean, I believe very much
Speaker 1: in rhino conservation, but I don't think the answer is
Speaker 1: poisoning humans. I think that the larger idea here would be, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, create the idea that there are poisoned
Speaker 1: rhino horns, and then this would discourage the poaching. But though,
Speaker 1: one of the problems here is that the individuals doing
Speaker 1: the poaching they really don't care about the consumer. They're
Speaker 1: they're selling to a middleman anyway, so well, what does
Speaker 1: it matter to them? And then they're and they're you're
Speaker 1: probably not thinking really long term about the illicit rhinal
Speaker 1: horn industry. Well, I guess the question is does it
Speaker 1: work well? Based on what I've been reading, it has not,
Speaker 1: so savvy sands. This is a private game reserve adjacent
Speaker 1: to the Kruger National Park. Uh, they tried the poison
Speaker 1: method and it didn't work. Poachers still came middle of
Speaker 1: then still presumably bought the horn. Didn't make any difference. Plus,
Speaker 1: as pointed out by Save the Rhino Dot Org, as
Speaker 1: Asian traditional medicines reduced the need for rhino horn as
Speaker 1: they sort of try and spread the message that you
Speaker 1: don't need rhino horn, that there are other, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: various ingredients that will supposedly do the same job. And
Speaker 1: the poison horn could just be used for ornamental purposes
Speaker 1: and you know, would would still would still drive up
Speaker 1: the demand for rhino horn. And then there are some
Speaker 1: additional criticisms as well. There's the idea that the poison
Speaker 1: could wind up driving up the cost of unpoisoned horn.
Speaker 1: So you've polluted the market. But that means there's even
Speaker 1: less rhino horn out there for individuals wanting to consume it,
Speaker 1: and therefore it would be more expensive. And then Finally,
Speaker 1: this is a big one, too big area too. If
Speaker 1: you're going to go out and start, you know, doing
Speaker 1: widespread rhino horn poisoning, well then you need people to
Speaker 1: go out find the rhinos, uh, subdue them, you know,
Speaker 1: assume I assume drug them, then you know, do the
Speaker 1: performedive procedure on the horn. And uh, you're talking about
Speaker 1: a treatment of hundreds and hundreds of rhinos in these cases. Now,
Speaker 1: even though the poison in this scheme wouldn't get into
Speaker 1: the rhino and harm it directly, you can imagine blood
Speaker 1: flow to the in the horn. Yeah, you can still
Speaker 1: imagine that just the process of like drugging the rhinos
Speaker 1: so that this could be done, could lead to some
Speaker 1: injuries or could harm some rhinos. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: kind of comes back to the same situation as with
Speaker 1: widespread horn removal, like somebody has to do it, somebody
Speaker 1: has to pay for it, and uh, and it's just
Speaker 1: generally not going to be the manpower and the money
Speaker 1: on hand. Now, there are some other interesting schemes that
Speaker 1: have come into place to try and uh and raise
Speaker 1: funds for rhino conservation efforts, perhaps such as these and
Speaker 1: some of those, oddly enough, include hunting permits for rhinos.
Speaker 1: Various areas have offered a very limited number of these
Speaker 1: for you know, you know, big ticket westerners to come
Speaker 1: in and uh and shoot a rhino, with the money
Speaker 1: presumably going for going to rhino conservation efforts, you know,
Speaker 1: along the same lines as warning people about poisoned horns.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just wonder if so if the basis
Speaker 1: of medicinal demand for rhino horn or belief in the
Speaker 1: magical powers of the rhino horn is pernicious false rumors
Speaker 1: about what the horns can do to help you, I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it would be possible to to combat
Speaker 1: that just with pernicious rumors about the dangers of rhino horns.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that would be That's tough because
Speaker 1: you would also in that case be lying about it.
Speaker 1: You'd have it to be intentionally spreading lies. But if
Speaker 1: you tried to spread a rumor that the horns would
Speaker 1: cause intense pain of the teeth or something or whatever, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you you look to our various situations with
Speaker 1: with illicit drugs, though, where there have been public information
Speaker 1: campaigns that have that if you know that that have
Speaker 1: really uh push the idea that say, oh, if you
Speaker 1: do meth all all your teeth are cana fall out,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have this meth mouth scenario, which I've I've
Speaker 1: read I've read criticism that you know that says that
Speaker 1: that's not really a one to one situation. Uh. Likewise,
Speaker 1: steroid use, there's the the warning messaging all that if
Speaker 1: you use of steroids, are all these additional problems that
Speaker 1: aren't occur with your body. But people still use them
Speaker 1: still people people still use performance enhancing drugs. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then you know, earlier you mentioned something about about the
Speaker 1: use of various alleged medicinal properties. That something is happening
Speaker 1: idea that actually ties into one of the criticisms of
Speaker 1: poisoning the horn, because what have you poisoned the horn?
Speaker 1: And it does make its way, you know, through the
Speaker 1: various middlemen. It ends up as a powder in somebody's
Speaker 1: smoothie if you if you will uh. And so if
Speaker 1: there's enough poison in there to cause some sort of
Speaker 1: reaction in the person's body, then something is happening and
Speaker 1: they can attribute that to to the to the positive
Speaker 1: effects of the horn. I feel something, I feel a
Speaker 1: little sick that must be the horn getting on top
Speaker 1: of me. And if and if you spread these ideas
Speaker 1: then that the horn is dangerous that might feed into
Speaker 1: it as well. Like of course, it's of course rhino
Speaker 1: horn is going to make you feel a little weird
Speaker 1: because it's the power of the horn, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: can see how that backfire. Yeah, absolutely, But I agree
Speaker 1: it is all kind of insane, right because the science
Speaker 1: is pretty clear. Consuming rhino horn is going to do
Speaker 1: nothing for you. This is a purely uh supernatural exercise
Speaker 1: on an individual's part, and yet it continues. Maybe what
Speaker 1: you could do is try to replace this with a
Speaker 1: belief in the power of consuming hair and fingernails. Like
Speaker 1: if you, instead of spreading a false, pernicious rumor about
Speaker 1: the dangers of rhino horn, spread a true, infectious rumor
Speaker 1: about the equivalence of rhino horn and fingernails and hair,
Speaker 1: so you so, instead you would just create a demand
Speaker 1: for the widely available substances that can be acquired without
Speaker 1: harming people. And unless this leads leads to poaching of
Speaker 1: humans for their hair and fingernails, oh no, no. But
Speaker 1: the great thing about this, I see how this could work.
Speaker 1: We just needed an initiative where certain powerful individuals or
Speaker 1: individuals are at least you know, icons of physical prowess.
Speaker 1: They must donate all of their fingernails and maybe their
Speaker 1: hair clippings, uh to to be used in these traditional
Speaker 1: medicines instead. So like a like a John Cena or
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwarzenegger, people of this stature, uh, they need to
Speaker 1: donate those clippings and then those will be ground up
Speaker 1: and used in traditional medicines instead. Man, what does Arnold's
Speaker 1: hair tastes like? I don't know, but but you know,
Speaker 1: if you have enough, you've put enough fruit in the smoothie,
Speaker 1: you don't really taste it. I guess this is my
Speaker 1: Arnold hair goblet. Al right, Well, hopefully we were able
Speaker 1: to give you, uh, you know, an interesting insight into
Speaker 1: the history of rhino horn as it's been used for
Speaker 1: various magical and slightly scientific slightly in the case of
Speaker 1: poison detection, slightly scientific uh uses and and rituals, as
Speaker 1: well as just the dire state of the rhino species
Speaker 1: that we still have with us in the world. Now,
Speaker 1: if anyone out there wants to learn more about rhino conservation,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different organizations UM we already
Speaker 1: we already mentioned I think one of them. But there's
Speaker 1: also the International Rhino Foundation. You can go to rhinos
Speaker 1: dot org for that. There's also International Anti Poaching Foundation
Speaker 1: and that is i APF dot org. Alright, so hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to see any of the pictures that
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