A South African university has launched an anti-poaching campaign to inject the horns of rhinoceroses with radioactive isotopes that it says are harmless for the animals but can be detected by customs agents.
Under the collaborative project involving the University of the Witwatersrand, nuclear energy officials and conservationists, five rhinos were injected in what the university hopes will be the start of a mass injection of the declining rhino population, which they are calling the Rhisotope Project.
Last year, about 20 rhinos at a sanctuary were injected with isotopes in trials that paved the way for Thursday’s launch. The radioactive isotopes even at low levels can be recognised by radiation detectors at airports and borders, leading to the arrest of poachers and traffickers.
This is movie plot material, don’t tell me otherwise. I mean if we got Cocaine Bear, why can’t we have a rhino with superpowers after a radioactive injection killing poachers all over the place?
Sounds like a job for Spider-Man.
Or pay someone to follow the rhinos around and shoot poachers on sight.
They actually already do that. They just can’t track all of them all the time.
Por que no los dos? (That is, also shoot anyone with the radioactive horn products on sight).
Arent these things being ingested as an alternative medicine?
The Rhinos were fine, so it probably won’t kill anyone. But it would be
funnyacceptable if someone died from buying snake oil.
