RADIOACTIVE RHINOS

Researchers from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg are working on a pilot program backed by Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation to inject rhino horns with radioactive material, a tactic that could discourage rhino poaching, the consumption of rhino horn, and make it easier to detect illegal trade. Illegal hunting remains the biggest threat to about 20,000 rhinos in South Africa. Known as The Rhisotope Project, the plan would be to insert a small quantity of radioactive material into the horns, which would be detected by the thousands of existing sensors along international borders to detect the illegal movement of rhino horn. Researchers are already running tests to see if the radioactive compound will move into the animals’ bodies. Says Professor James Larkin: “If we make it radioactive, there will be a reticence by these people to buy it.”
* Because the people who believe rhino horns will cure stuff have the equipment to test each rhino horn for radioactivity before they poach it.
* They’ll change and only poach at night, and avoid the rhinos with the glowing horns.
* Putting radioactivity into animals is how we get Godzilla. Does nobody go to the movies anymore?
* Radioactive Rhino would make a bitchin’ band name. (Or … “I once saw Radioactive Rhino open for Modest Mouse.”)