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[martinuzz]

In a new effort to protect the highly endagered rhinoceros, wildlife protectors' words are now backed with nuclear weapons.
With a new technique, they inject the horns of the rhinos with radioactive material.
This way, they become unfit for human consumption, and more easy to detect when horns are smuggled through customs (harbors and airports have radiation detectors).
According to researchers, the radioactive material will not harm the rhino (I guess it will, but the net effect of protection the species is positive).

Now let's just hope that China does not see this as an attempt to poison it's citizens with radiation.

[dragdeler]

     According to researchers, the radioactive material will not harm the rhino     

To allow any nuance might interfere with our endeavour. We live in a post-truth world. If it's alpha radiation just say so. You'll get your infinite amounts of nuance when it's a pointless argument between ireconsilable political positions tho... But we don't do that shit for objective stuff. One has to wonder what miracle procedure makes it unfit for human consumption but absolutely harmless for the rhino, you would think they would like to elaborate on such an accomplishement.


I'm really starting to feel like any amount of news consumption is toxic and needs to be left out of my information diet. How them kids say?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[martinuzz]

My guess Is that they just calculate exposure per body mass to say it's not okay for human consumption but okay for rhinos.
Rhinos weigh a bit more than humans. This totally would ignore the fact though that it is a localized application and the face area might get more than the recommended dose.
It's not plutonium or anything though. 'Light radioactive material'.
You don't need much of it either to trigger customs scanners, considering a truck with a huge mass of bananas can trigger the customs radiation alarm too.

I'm okay with it if it prevents more rhinos being killed than that it harms through light radiation.
They need protection, as long as a few dozen millions of Chinese believe that groud up rhino horn powder has medicinal use (or maybe less now, I do hope folk medicine is on recline in China with modern technology becoming more and more widespread amongst the rural population).

[ChairmanPoo]

South African scientists on Tuesday injected radioactive material into live rhino horns to make them easier to detect at border posts in a pioneering project aimed at curbing poaching.

Border agents often have handheld radiation detectors which can detect contraband in addition to thousands of radiation detectors installed at ports and airports, the scientists said.

Both of you get an F in reading comprehension

[dragdeler]

The sourcerer.

[martinuzz]

My newspaper says it's also to make it unfit for consumption

[Mathel]

I thought rhinoceros horn was already unfit for human consumption. People usually don't eat the hair, claws, and hooves of animals. And a rhino horn is made of a similar material.

As for the radioactivity, I am guessing they are injecting the material into the non-living portions of the horn. So while it might bust some cells there, the overall damage would be minimal.
But if you eat it, you will have a radiation source in your stomach, which is rather harmful.

[nenjin]

IIRC they grind the horn into powder to use it as a virility supplement. Even if it's not fit for human consumption, in powder form you could consume it without too many immediate issues.

[MaxTheFox]

Had a sudden and fleeting intensely profound sadness that we can't bring ancient organisms back to life. I'm not talking mammoths, I mean stuff like Cooksonia, trilobites, all that sort of thing. The stuff that stopped existing hundreds of millions of years ago and which will never re-emerge in even a similar capacity because it doesn't have the adaptations modern life has that puts it head-and-shoulders above its primitive origins.

It's more WTF than sad because it came out of fucking nowhere.

In my setting, basically all famous prehistoric lifeforms got revived.

After the advent of genemodding in the very late 21st-early 22nd centuries, many extinct species, particularly the most famous and interesting ones, were resurrected. Paleolithic life like mammoths and sabertooth tigers was revived via frozen DNA samples, while dinosaurs and Cambrian lifeforms were reconstructed from scratch. Contrary to fears driven by sensationalist media and outdated science fiction, these revivals did not result in any notable incidents. They were considered unremarkable by the 23rd century, and could be found in zoos on many human worlds, while Archeopteryx in particular were a current pet fad.

They were basically... adapted, yeah. Seen as just more wildlife by the "present".

[ChairmanPoo]

My newspaper says it's also to make it unfit for consumption

James Larkin, director of the University of the Witwatersrand's radiation and health physics unit who spearheaded the initiative, told AFP he had put "two tiny little radioactive chips in the horn" as he administered the radioisotopes on one of the large animals' horns.

The radioactive material would "render the horn useless... essentially poisonous for human consumption," added Nithaya Chetty, professor and dean of science at the same university.

This is to say, some random professor from the same uni chimed in with that. But it's not the purpose per se. Probably because rhinocero horn, being an illegal product, does not go through quality control.


Also

https://rhisotope.org/

The official website of the initiative only mentions border control

Science Saving Rhinos
Making rhino horns horn radioactive, reduces their desirability as a commodity. 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 if you eat it, you will have a radiation source in your stomach, which is rather harmful.

You will have a weak radiation source in your bowels for a day or so, anyway. Its probably not healthy but I doubt it will be a Litvinenko moment for anyone eating that shit. So its unlikely to harm the trade in that way

[dragdeler]

A chip (as in chipping a nail, not a computerchip) does sound so much better than an injection. Because yes allow my scepticism concerning a process that sounded like they're going to inject something into the horn that does not harm the rhino, but harms consumers of the horns, and also the horn doesn't abrase radioactive material into the enviroment (presumably -> you inject into the soft parts, if it doesn't hurt the rhino, it must have wandered into the more hard, less actively living, and less covered in nervous tissue, parts of the horn, which the rhino might erode by practical purposes).

[klefenz]

Sounds like those "chips" are tiny radiation sources embedded into the horn. With a Geiger counter, the poachers might be able to locate the "chips" and remove them.
The horn itself would not remain radioactive.

It could maybe work if they inserted a large number of smaller chips to make it impracticable to locate and remove them all without damaging the horn.

[EuchreJack]

As a Republican, I can not condone the protection of Rhinos.  They're already radioactive enough.

[Enemy post]

(Deleted some content here.)

[nenjin]

So I've been a cigarette smoker for quite a long time. And I've also gotten on a dating app in the last couple years. Cigarettes. Pretty big deal breaker for the vast majority of people right? I put it on the profile.

Twice today. TWICE. Two people that were interested just failed to notice that. One of them managed to notice the thing right next to it, but not the thing itself.

The last four people that have matched me have done the same thing.

I know what the default thought is. (If you want a date, stop smoking. Fair.) What my actual complaint is......

DOES ANYONE FUCKING READ THIS SHIT AT ALL.

It doesn't help the app stupidly puts this information on a part of the UI you wouldn't expect to scroll. But even when people get to the "drugs and alcohol" bit of the profile, they somehow still miss this.

I guess I managed to filter them by their attention to detail before they managed to filter me for smoking. FFS. That's me, the guy who works in IT helpfully teaching women how to use a dating app so they don't make the same mistake the next time!