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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: brain stuff Lauren vogelbamb Here. In seventeen, a South African

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Speaker 1: court sentenced a traditional medicine healer to twenty eight years

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Speaker 1: in prison for rhinoceros poaching. The man was convicted on

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Speaker 1: forensic evidence from the Rhino DNA Indexing System or RHODUS,

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Speaker 1: the DNA matching database that is successfully being used to

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Speaker 1: connect horns, blood, and animal carcasses from specific crime scenes

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Speaker 1: to the poachers responsible for rhinoceros killings and mutilations. According

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Speaker 1: to a twenty eighteen article in the journal Current Biology,

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Speaker 1: evidence from five thousand, eight hundred crime scenes has been

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Speaker 1: submitted to RHOTUS since its inception. To date, the system

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Speaker 1: has matched rhino DNA to more than a hundred and

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Speaker 1: twenty criminal cases, nine of which have been successfully prosecuted.

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Speaker 1: The hope is that the same genetic fingerprinting methods used

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Speaker 1: to convict perpetrators of violent human on human crime will

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Speaker 1: result in more poaching convictions, acting at once as a

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Speaker 1: deterrent and a form of wildlife of preservation. In spite

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Speaker 1: of rigid trade bands and strict enforcement, poaching of endangered

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Speaker 1: white and black rhinoceroses in South Africa has increased exponentially,

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Speaker 1: from just thirteen incidents in two thousand and seven to

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Speaker 1: more than one thousand, two hundred. Wildlife trafficking is one

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Speaker 1: of the biggest illegal black markets in the world, with

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Speaker 1: the keratin rich rhino horn fetching upward of sixty thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars per pound, making it more expensive than gold, diamonds

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Speaker 1: or cocaine. In Vietnam and China, the traffic horn is

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Speaker 1: sometimes thought to be a cure for cancer and impotence,

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Speaker 1: and in some parts of Asia it's considered an aphrodisiac

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Speaker 1: and a magical cure. All talisman's and curios made from

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Speaker 1: the horn can be seen as status symbols and signs

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Speaker 1: of wealth, and poaching is not limited to the national

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Speaker 1: parks and wilds of African India. The astronomical black market

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Speaker 1: price of rhino horn recently lord criminals to a zoo

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Speaker 1: near Paris, France, where they broke in late at night,

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Speaker 1: shot a rhino named Vince in the head and removed

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Speaker 1: his horn with a chainsaw. This horrific act prompted a

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Speaker 1: odd discussion about the future security of endangered animals in

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Speaker 1: captivity trafficking is the backbone of the illegal rhino horn

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Speaker 1: trade that makes poaching profitable. Through cooperation with police, arrangers

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Speaker 1: and wildlife investigators, researchers on the Rhodas Team hope to

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Speaker 1: use crime scene DNA to thwart crime syndicates that chip

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Speaker 1: rhino contraband to foreign countries. Thus far, the Rhodus database

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Speaker 1: has helped to convict poachers and traffickers in South Africa, Namibia, Kenya,

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Speaker 1: and Swaziland. Today's episode is written by Carrie Tato and

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Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots

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Speaker 1: of other depressing yet slightly hopeful topics, visit our home planet,

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Speaker 1: pastaff works dot com.