Poison and the Rhino Horn

Mercantile in Manhattan. Stuff you missed in history class has a show right before us, so you can really double down, learn more and buy your tickets today at New York Comic Con dot com slash NYCC hyphen presents Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How Stuff Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. Now I want you to imagine yourself for a second, to do a little mental time travel here, a little uh, a

little fantasizing. Okay, wait, no, am I going to the future where the crab monsters rule. No, no, no no, You're gonna go to the past, but not so far back in time that you encounter the crab monsters again from their first visit. Right, No, No, I want you to imagine yourself as a king or a queen ruling over a troubled kingdom. Okay, not hard to do. Yeah, especially after a recent episode on Greek Fire we talked about the Byzantine Empire. Right exactly, You're constantly warring against rival

powers on all borders. Your enemies are Legion, every stranger is a potential assassin, and every cup of wine is a potential poison plot. I have often gotten the feeling that it is a natural part of the sort of unique decadence of hereditary monarchs to be terrified of poison above all other things. I know. It was after a guy named Richard Russ tried to poison the Bishop of Rochester to death in fifteen thirty one that Henry the eighth in Parliament decided in England, people found guilty of

poisoning would be punished by being boiled alive. I mean you could tell it bothered him, Yeah, like he didn't like the idea. Well, you can get in Henry's head a little bit like he's there feasting, having some lamprey pie or something, and he's like, somebody must have it in for me. And what if they came at me straight through the food? It would be the worst possible thing. What's such a subtle weapon? Yeah, and maybe it has something to do with like kings and queens feasting while

their people starve. So you know, the poisoning of their food seems like this unbearably ironic reward and thus the thing they fear above all else. Oh yes, and of course we have so many different fictional, mythological and historic examples of this type of thing happening. Right, How many different rulers or or at least characters get poisoned in Shakespeare? Okay, so if you're Henry the Eighth, they're really you're any king, queen, somebody who fears being attacked right in the food. What

are your options? Well, you know you could you could have a food taster, a wine taster and sort of try everything out on an individual before it comes to your lips. What if nobody wants that job, Well, in that case, you need to turn to your trusted advisory King Joe. You're because you're trusted Advisor has has traveled far, and he's he spent a lot of time with with with crumbling tons of arcane knowledge and secrets. And one day, this wizard presents you with an ornate drinking vessel carved

from a mysterious substance. It's unlike any wood or stone you've ever seen. And he tells you that this cup will alert you to the presence of any poison poured within it, for it is crafted from the sacred horn of the unicorn. Wow, So the unicorn goblet is like a tattle tale cup. It's a chemical tattle tale and it will somehow let you know if you are entering the danger zone. Yeah, that's well, that's the idea that it's a it's I mean, you can ask the wizard.

You might say, well, does it does it light up? Does it is it gonna flash it? You know, what's going to be the effect? How am I going to know? Now? Unfortunately, I think I would have a hard time coming across this cup because the unicorns don't exist. That that is certainly a design flaw here. Yeah, they're the natural world has never known a true unicorn, but it has long

known the thundering footsteps of the rhinoceros. Oh okay, and humans have long sought it's horn for alleged medicinal and magical purposes, a fact that is both intriguing and kind of sad because you have to imagine how they get the horn. That's right. So pretty much our entire episode is going to be intriguing and sad. It's going to be uh magical, But we're also going to dive into the possible scientific basis for some of these alleged properties of rhino horn. Most of them do not pan out.

We'll go ahead and let you know that right up front in case you are considering buying rhino horn for some purpose or another. But the science is still interesting. Right. So, when you see a rhinoceros, I think it's pretty clear the first thing you're gonna notice about it is the horn. In fact, the word rhinoceros comes from the observation of the horn. Literally it means nose horn. Well, if not

the nose horn, they're just the sheer size of these creatures. Um, if you happen to see one at a zoo, I mean they're a megaphon that they are enormous. I was in the past year. I was at the zoo down in New Orleans, and if they're right their rhino habitat, they have it laid out in such a way that you can there's certainly a divider between you and the rhinos.

But but you're you're sort of at level, or perhaps a little lower than the rhinos because they're kind of they're kind of on a hill, a slight incline anyway, So you're you're you're kind of instead of looking down on them as if they're in a pit, like you encountered a lot of zoos, uh, You're you're kind of viewing them on their level, on your level, and it just it just makes you realize even more just how

enormous these creatures are. Also makes it harder for a suicidal person to jump down into the rhino pit, right, yeah, because it's going to be a little more effort to to meet your death in the hands of the rhino. Now. A funny kind of linguistic connection, of course, is that when when I look at a rhinoceros, one of the things I often think is I see a dinosaur, and I see that in in plenty of mammals. Actually, this is this might be a weird peek into my messed

up brain. But when I see horses, I think of dinosaurs. I'm not quite sure why. It's something about the elongation of the face paired with the size of the animal. But with the rhinoceros, it's it's definitely that horn. I mean, it makes me think of the try sarratops. But the linguistic connection is, you know, they've got the same thing in the name the try sarah tops three horned face and the rhinos seras the sarah there both comes from

the Greek keros for horn, nose, horn basically. Okay, Now, currently there are five species and eleven subspecies of rhino. Some have two horns while others have one. And uh, we should really drive home a few facts about that horn. Uh you can you can argue that it's not even a true horn because it doesn't have a bone core. So and if you see a skeleton of a rhino in a museum, uh, sometimes you'll notice that there's no

that they won't have any kind of a horn fixture attached. Um. I know this was the case at the Field Museum in Chicago. They had some rhino skeletons. I can't recall if they were um extent rhinos or some sort of prehistoric rhino beast, but there was no horn present on the skeleton. Interesting. The rhino horn actually has more in common with horse hoofs or the beak of a of

a bird or turtle. It's made of keraton. This is the stuff you find in hair and fingernails, and the core of the horn contains dense mental deposits of calcium and melanin. But it's not like a true bony core, so it's more like a big, densely packed protein horn rather than a bone horn. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like just a big enormous fingernail in many respects. Now, don't let that be deceiving, because it's still probably hurts if it comes at you at high speed. Yes, yeah,

it's still a formidable weapon. That that the horns can be cracked. The horns can be removed. I know that the male rhino they previously had at Zoo Atlanta, Uh, the horn became cracked and then they had to remove it entirely. Yeah. Because so the horns can be removed, the material of the horn can be ground down into a powder, or it can be made in shavings. Uh, And it can be carved, and it can be polished, and when it's polished it it often takes on a

translucent quality and the luster allegedly increases with age. Now, on one hand, it's hard to deny that many of the artifacts that people make out of rhinoceros horns are truly very beautiful. They're astonishing to look at. But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that you know, these are acquired through the coaching of rhinoceroses, and in many

cases rhinoceroses are endangered or critically endangered species. Yeah, and we'll get into some of those those numbers here in a bit, but if you want to see examples of these these rhino horn drinking vessels, we will include two images of them as well as some images of rhinos on the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to

blow your mind dot Com. Now, I know throughout history that the rhinoceros horn has had not just decorative purposes, but believe it's believed to have had magical purposes as well. That's right. Yeah, a lot of the magical uses for rhino horns are rooted in ancient Asian practices, and these entered into European culture as early as the Middle Ages and intensified in the sixteenth and seventeen centuries within along with increased European trade with the East and West Indies.

I found an excellent source on all of this from an author by the name of Marnie P. Stark. Came out in two thousand three, and it it's uh titled mounted bees or stones, say, shells, nuts, and rhinoceros horns decorative objects as antidotes in early modern Europe. So the idea here is if if maybe you are that king and you already had some poison, that in some sense it was believed that some of these things might cure you, or might save you, Yeah, or just serve as magical

protective elements. Uh. So the author here points out that, you know, the thirteenth century in particular saw the European introduction of quote, poison detectors or proofs of mounted griffin claws, serpents, tongues, toadstones, and a host of other materials as quote part of the rituals of dining, as well as rich collections. Oh I like that, So like maybe one thing that you truly think is functional. In one century at detecting poison just becomes a sort of enjoyable and traditional part of

how you have dinner. Yeah, I mean, and and I imagine you know, you may have somebody trying your food for you to keep poison, uh from entering your system. You may have spies everywhere and guards on hand, and you're threatening everyone with with boiling if they try to to get some sort of deadly poison into your body. But it also helps to have a few magical trinkets on hand just in case, just ahead your bat now, uh.

You you might be wondering. You know, we're not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but you might think, what are bees or stones? Well, these were allegedly un obtained indigestible stone from the gas gastrow intestinal tract of an animal such as a goat, and you would wear it as an ambulant. And this is probably had an Arabic origin. And sometimes these were mounted with bands of metal or gold around them, so it would be kind of like a paperweight that you know, I guess sets

on the table with you while you eat. I think I recall them having something to do with the plot of one of the Harry Potter books. Don't somebody swallow a bees or to cure some kind of poison? Oh? Maybe they do? Okay, that does that does ring about our Potter fans will have to clue us in there. She was always throwing an all sort of wonderful little occult tidbits. Uh. And as far as Saychelle nuts go,

these are sa coconuts. It's so I said. You know, it's just a it's just a coconut essentially, but it is it has an exotic quality to it. Hey, if you're in the fifteenth century Europe, you know, coconut looks

pretty magical. Now. The idea that that that horn, particularly uh rhino horn, could have some sort of healing properties or or poison detecting property properties, you see, that go back at least as far as uh well, in one case fifth century see Persia, where they believed that the horn vessel could detect poisons and would cause a bubbling

in the liquid that was in the horn. Right. So, if you're a lord who fears poisoning and somebody brings you your rhino horn goblet of wine, you sit it down for a while, and you observe it, and if it starts to froth up, you know that your servant is well you probably don't actually know, but you might as well accuse your servant of trying to kill you. Well, you have to boil somebody at that point, otherwise who's

gonna fear you? Right, there's a wonderful quote here that Stark included uh in in the paper, and this is from Swedish traveler Carl Peter Thunberg seventeen seventy three. Around the Cape of Good Hope, the horn of the rhinoceros were kept by some people not only as rarities, but also as useful in disease and for the purpose of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine shavings of the horn taken internally were supposed to

cure convulsions and spasms and children. With regard to the later, it was generally believed that goblets made of these horns in a turner's lathe could would discover a poisonous draft that was put into them by making the liquor ferment until it ran quite out of the goblet. Such horns as were taken from a young rhinoceros calf were said to be the best and the most to be depended on.

Of these goblets are may which are set in gold and silver and made presents to kings, people of distinction, and particular friends or else sold at high high price, sometimes at the rate of fixed fifty six dollars a goblin. Now those are seventeen seventy three dollars. Yes, fifty six dollars went a lot further back then. Yeah, you know, I got to imagine that if you're thinking the rhino horn cup has these powers, it may tie in via the type of magical thinking that was common then to

the powers of the rhinoceros itself. Surely, right, I mean, I think that was a common mode of thought. Like a powerful beast that you know in life has some has a strong body and can do great harm or something if it's enraged, can also be powerful in a magical sense if you take objects from its body or some kind of sympathetic magic things that have touched it

or come from it. Yeah, and so many of these these vessels also had rhinos carved on them, so they really didn't want you to forget where this came from. That was part of the branding, right. The rhin know long had a reputation in the West as a ferocious beast chat capable of conquering all others, and this was thanks in no small part to observations by Pompey the Great and the writings of Plenty of the Elder frequent a frequent topic here on the show, one of our

favorite sources of ancient misinformation. Yes, uh so, one of these rhinos is said to have fought an elephant in the Games of POMPEII, and another one came to Europe in fifteen fifteen as a gift to King Manuel of Lisbon, and he he also you know, since he had a rhino and apparently had an elephant as well, he planned to just recreate the battle. What was wrong with these people, I know, to fight animals to get this amazing creature, you know, imported, and then the first thing you want

to do do is fight them. I mean even Pablo Escobar. Uh, I don't think he did that. I think he just kept the exotic animals around. Whatever. Yeah, so, in this case, in case you're wondering, the rhino allegedly won the barbaric sport. Uh. But but before it died, an artist sketched the animal and he sent it to a certain artist of note, right albreat Dearer in in Nuremberg. And so this is where we get this classic image. If you have not

seen it, you should look up Dearer's Rhinoceros. D u r e er So Juror did many of these drawings and woodcuts of the sixteenth century, and this image is just out of this world. It looks like an hr Geeger creation. And I'm not making that up, am I Robert. It's this bio mechanical robot alien or Also, I can imagine that you could look at it as a melancholy animal with these sad, downcast eyes covered in finally machined

metal armor with psychedelic designs. Yeah, I mean that that describes it to a t. It seems like something that you would see tromping around in a like a weird psychedelic fringe animated film, like something Mobius would have created. Yeah, It's it's like some thing out of the Codex Saraphoninus, except it's it's a real animal. Yeah, And you know he was, of course, he was going off of this

this illustration. He's going off, you know, you know, secondhand information here and uh and he but he did get the idea of the rhino down, especially if this was indeed an Indian rhino, which has more sort of skin flaps going on, it does have more of an armor plating appearance. And he just in his interpretation of the rhino, he really takes us and runs with it. He just

exaggerates it to fantastic effect. Yeah, that does appear to be what's going on, because here we see the rhino in the image has one horn, and it's got these long ridges going across its armor plates, and it also has an extra little no if you noticed this on the illustration near the word rhinos, there's a horn above

the shoulder blade. Yeah, which is interesting. And it looks a lot like a small unicorn horn, which I think is interesting and it ties into our topic here because in Stark's paper, she nights that the antidotal powers of the horn, the idea that you could, you know, take the powder of the horn and it would cure some ailment or cure a poison inside you. Uh, that these

were barred from tales of the mythical unicorn. She writes that since at least the fourteenth century, the horn of the unicorn, which was in turn usually a narwhal or walrus tusk um to begin with, oh, those walls, those narwhal horns are great. By the way, that narwhal horn, it's a tooth. Did you know that? Yeah? I I And there was some recent news about the narwhale. There's

some new footage I want to say. I mean, can you imagine if like a human was like this, like if you had like one six foot tooth just shooting straight out the front of your mouth, we could probably do a whole episode on all the teeth were thankful we don't have, I mean you count narwhale teeth and uh or the barbar russo where the you know, the tusk will grow up, grows up through the like the basically the roof of its snout and curve back around and die eve into their brain if if they're, if

they're they're left to grow that long yeah uh yeah, but we'll let me believe that for another another episode. The long front tooth. It certainly makes kissing hard. Yes, uh, well with the barbarousa. Not to get too off topic, the other I mean, the weird thing is they when they fight, these things are brittle, so they just they break off. So it's like I said, be thankful. It's weird as human teeth are as awful as they can be. Um,

they're worst way to have teeth. Well anyway, So we have all these ancient teeth, tusks, horns, things that people think are from unicorns, and they're believed to have these magical powers. Oh yeah, yeah, with the unicorn horn or the alleged unicorn horn. They believe that you could use as a remedy for poison, you could use it to

to cure diseases, even the plague. And then when Europeans began encountering the rhinoceros and it's and uh and it's horn uh, you know, out when they were traveling and abroad, then the reality in the myth became intertwined. So they took what what they observed about the rhino, and then in turn, they took what others and farm lands told them about the rhino and their magical beliefs, and then they took their own ideas about the unicorn, and it

all just came kind of became meshed together. Um, they you know, they encountered all these uh, additional traditions of magico medicinal powers that were associated with the rhino horn, and they incorporated them into their own beliefs. And weirdly enough, some accounts indicate that even when rhino horn and unicorn were considered distinct, uh you know, so people believed in both unicorn horns and rhino horns and thought they were

separate things. Yeah, you know, and that even in these cases there are instances where where they talk about, well, if you can't get unicorn horn, rhino horn will do, you're giving away the game go on. So what's the point of the unicorn horn? Now? In terms of of other uh nationalities and other cultural beliefs regarding the rhino horn, um,

there are various tidbits about this. For starters, a fourth century Chinese writer Old Kung believed that horns were antidotal because the rhino eight poisonous plants and trees, enabling it to conquer the poison. Oh okay, so there's a slightly more you know, proto scientific way of thinking about it, not you know, not quite fully rigorous, but you can you can see the chain of cause and effect going on. Yeah, it's not just Hey, it's magic. There's an attempt to

understand what could be underlying this presumed effect. Now, in terms of all the various medicinal qualities alleged medicinal qualities of of the rhino horn, this is pretty common in the traditional medicine systems of Malaysia, South Korea, India, and of course China. So so you've got it in Chinese traditional medicine. What did they think it did well? The idea was that you could take shaved or powdered horn and it could be boiled in water to treat fever, rheumatism, gout,

and various other conditions. Sixteenth century. That's a mean dynas Chinese pharmacist and just general polly math. This guy was really amazing. Lee shi Jin wrote that it could even cure snake bites, hallucinations, typhoid headaches, carbuncles, vomiting, food poisoning,

and devil possession. Now, the interesting thing is that you'll find various sources out there there that say, you know, I'm rather scandalously Oh well, you know, we have all these problem with rhino poaching because people in Asia use it as an aphrodisiac, which the thing is where I could run across of no verifiable information about that being the case, no actual cases of of of brno horn

being prescribed as an aphrodisiac, for instance, in traditional Chinese medicine. Now, on the other hand, I will say that it seems like almost anything is sometimes prescribed as an aphrodisiac. Yeah, and you know that's not I mean you can see where, even if it's not part of traditional medical medical systems, it would not take mutt for something to for a belief to become tweaked in that direction, you know. I mean I could start a rumor today that canned crab

is an aphrodisiac. It wasn't this, This was on something what was there was something about canned crab as you know this is on Game of Thrones, right, no spoilers, Yeah, okay, I knew it was. It was like is it Rick and Morty or is it Game of Thrones? Could go either way. Um, but yeah, as far as as far as I could tell, and if anyone out there has more information on illicit any legal aphrodisiacs, let me know.

But I found like multiple like spokespeople on behalf of Chinese traditional medicine who were saying, no, this is not that's that's not something we use it for. Uh though, of course they're having to they've been they've had to address the other uses and come up with botanical alternatives to rhino horn. Now the hm you mean because of ecological considerations, yes, yes, Now the ancient Greeks they also used the horn as well, and they said that he

could purify water. So we see sort of similar overlap there. Now, on top of all these magical medicinal uses, it's worth noting that with it you can just have a purely

ornamental use of the horn as well. I mean as far as you can you know, have any purely ornamental use of of a man made material, right, but just using it for various ornamental purposes that dates back at least two seventh centuries see each China, and it's long been a Yeminy practice where you have these a special daggers, these jambilla daggers, and you would have the hilt of

the thing carved out of rhino horn. I mean, I think I already mentioned this earlier, but it is something that struck me multiple times when I was looking through the images of these artifacts, which is that it's I want to acknowledge the artistry and the beauty that goes into crafting these well, at the same time not approving of things that are made out of the bodies of

endangered animals. Yeah, because you you want to admire them for their beauty, but you don't want to admire them so much that you're sort of contributing to a cultural desire for these items. So if you're if you're even thinking about acquiring a rhino horn artifact, Uh, then make sure you listen to the rest of the episode because we'll get into some of the the ramifications of all

of this. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we will talk more about what science has to say about the chemistry of the rhino horn. All right, we're back. So, Robert, is their solid scientific evidence that we should use the rhinoceros horn for its magical and scientific medicinal properties? Uh No, there's not. I mean, science can certainly but in and say, well,

first of all, there's no such thing as magic. Uh there's there's such thing as medicine, and to a certain extent, there's such things you know, there there is the placebo effect that has to be taken to account in all adders. But you can have you know, wood chips, and that can have a placebo effect if you have you know,

a belief in the wood chip as a curative element. Okay, But so while there is not broad agreement in the scientific community that rhino horn even I mean even ecological consideration consideration society, even if you could get synthetic stuff, like if the horns fell off and we're just you know, laying over the ground, right, even then there's not good evidence that we should use it for whatever. All these

purposes are, curing fever, curing devil possession, or food poisoning. Um. There might be some tidbits, right, some little areas where there's some crossover there in just talking about the idea of consuming the horn for as as a medicinal element.

There's there's almost no evidence to support it. And what little evidence there is, it's just so miniscule that it does not it doesn't make it worth anybody's while it doesn't make it worth you know, breaking the law risking um um, you know, arrest or death trying to cut off a rhino's horn, and and it's not worth the money or the or the you know, the risk of engaging in the legal activity to consume it. Um, let

me get into the examples here. So in uh In Ninete researchers at Chinese University in Hong Kong, they found that large doses of horn could slightly lower fever in rats. But the concentration here was so it was, it was so great that it was it far exceeded what was used in traditional Chinese medicine. Anyway, I wonder what the long term side effects are of just eating a bunch

of ground up keratin. Well, I mean it's it would be it would I guess, be like if you just chewed your fingernails your whole life and like not counting any you know, damage to your your nail beds or whatever.

But just if you eight fingernail clippings all the time, or ground up fingernail clippings into a fine powder and put it in your smoothie every morning, and in fact, in an interview with PBS Nature, ecologist raj Amen of the Zoological Society of London says you'd be better off doing just that than engaging in the consumption of rhino horn. So like, if you want to lower your fever a little bit, and you don't have access to aspirin or any of the normal stuff you'd used to do that,

you might just eat all your fingernails and hair. I guess, yeah, But you know you probably have access to these other things that would work much better and are far more verified. Uh. In his seven Jama Dermatology article skin Potions, which is just a lovely title for a paper, Leonard M. Millstone m D wrote that powders of rhino horn amount to quote no more than compacted stratum corneum. That's the outermost layer of the epidermist, consisting of dead skin. Right, so

we're back to the keratin. Yeah. And according to a two thousand fourteen New Scientists article, like Curtis Abraham, a Taiwanese human study found that rhino horn could temporarily reduce fever in children, but was no more effective than aspirint, and animal studies in the UK and South Africa discovered no pharmacological effects of this or any animal horn at all. Well, I think that's about what what we would expect right now, to just go back to traditional Chinese medicine for a second.

I do want to mention as well, then in in most of those models, you wouldn't you wouldn't have someone just consuming the horn. The horn would would have be the ground up horn would be utilized with other ingredients, herbs or what have you. So you know, you could make the argue, well, some concoction that contained the horn might work, but if it did work, it's not the horn that's probably causing it. It's something else in the

in the potion, if you will. I mean, this is the classic potion trick, right, if you just throw a whole bunch of stuff into a cauldron and get somebody to take it. On one hand, you've got placebo effect working. On the other hand, you threw a bunch of stuff in there and something might do something. And then third, there's this thing that that I think we've talked about before, like the idea that essentially any detectable effect can sort

of be interpreted as the desired effect. Yeah, and now you can also say some cost probably plays a role as well, because at this point you've gone to the apothecary store, You've you've paid for this stuff, and you've probably had to sort of choke it back. You've so you've gone through sort of three trials to get there, so it better do something. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna. I'm gonna believe it did something. Otherwise I wasted all this time and energy. You're riding my favorite horse. The

some cost fallacy explains a lot. Now, Luckily, in China, Taiwan, and South Korea, rhino horn has been completely banned from use in medicine since about and in China it can only be used in research. So, as we'll discuss, there's been a lot of efforts to curb the poaching of rhinos in the illicit trade of rhino horn. Now, what about this old belief that we started off with that you know, if you're a king or a queen and you fear poisoning, you could have a rhino horn cup

that would detect any poisons placed within it. Is there any scientific evidence that that could be true? Well, as it turns out, there is, and it comes down to the fact that, you know, as we've mentioned, there's this idea that the poison would bubble or froth or froth and bubble out over the the edge of the cup if there was a poison in it. And so therefore we have what appears to be an account of a chemical reaction. And where there's chemical, where there's chemistry, there's

there's science. Right, there's a potential for there to be some actual chemical reaction taking place. So I'm I've had trouble finding a primary source on this, but it's it's been widely reported by PPS Nature, rhino conservation groups, in various academic patriot papers that there may be scientific grounds for this in some cases. So as you'll remember, the rhino horn is keratin, right, stuff in your hair and fingernails,

and what do many poisons contain alkaline? This is a like like a base as opposed to an acid, uh, and this may react chemically with the kerotene, and this can produce fropping, foaming, or bubbles. So in in the instance that someone is trying to poison you with a with a with an alkaline poison, there is the possibility that the cup could detect it. Now, Joe, I know you looked into this as well. Were you able to

find any additional information on this, uh, this possible chemical reaction? Well, I I yeah, I mean I I thought about this, and I want to start with one claim about because as you said, you know, this is claimed all over the place, but nobody has exactly explained how it would work.

Uh So, one of one of the claims I found on this was from a paper, or actually it was a It was a sort of a book length work published in or X the International Journal of Conservation called a Look at Threatened Species by Lee Miriam Talbot in nineteen sixty. And the author here is talking about how rhino horns are used with regard to poisons. And this is what the author claims. Quote in Sumatra, it should be drunk as a purgative if one feels the first

signs of poisoning. In Burma, a belief exists that when one puts rhino horn shavings into a cup containing poison, they will bubble and smoke. In Nepal. In parts of India, the belief is that if poison is placed into a rhino horn cup, the poison will bubble, discolor or become harmless, or else the coup will slowly disintegrate or shatter. Interestingly enough,

there may be some basis for this latter belief. Many of the old poisons were strong alkaloids, and the horn is what amounts to an agglutination of hair closer in structure to toenails than to cattle horns or deer antlers. Such a structure would indeed be a afected by a strong alkaloid. Although the shattering and other dramatic behavior is

probably an embellishment. It's a wonderful embellishment though, because it just sounds fantastic that the king is at his table, the wine is poured into this vessel and it is so poisonous that it just shatters the magical vessel. Yeah, and so like he says, that might be an embellishment, But I think there's a chance that there's something to this for certain kinds of poisons. Like we said, most of the sources we found that claim this don't really explain how it would work. But I think I've got

an idea. Um it might work for any poisons that are relatively strong bases. As we mentioned. And here's my example. When your shower drain gets clogged and the water gets backed up and starts to collect around your ankles, what's going on, Well, unless you're doing something really weird in the shower, the substance most likely clogging your shower or bathtub drain pipe is what well, it's hair, right, yeah, I mean unless you're like eating olives in the shower

and spitting the pits down the during it. Anyway, Yeah, it's hair. It's gonna be mostly hair made of keratin. So what do you do? Well? You can't just run water over the hair until it dissolves. That's never gonna happen. Keratin, which is what hair is made of, is highly stable in water and resists dissolution. So you will have to avail yourself of some different weapons. Now, if you've got special equipment like a drain snake and a d i y attitude, you might be able to do that, but

most people probably I know what you do? What do you do? You go out, you snag a bottle of what you get some of that drain o, right, Because, like you said, the snake option is uh is good if you really want to get in there and if you want to behold what is down there, pull that wolf tail out, yeah, which I don't recommend, but I mean sometimes that's what you gotta do. Well, But the draino is is great because you just pour it down there and you just let it sit for a little

bit and you're done. Right now, I'm not necessarily advocating the use of chemical drain cleaners, especially because they can be dangerous if they splash back on you or something like that. So, uh, you know, it is what it is. People use this stuff. Now, what's the main active ingredient in most chemical drain cleaners, for example, drain O It's gonna be sodium hydroxide, which is in a O H

also known as LIE. Sodium hydroxide is this highly alkaline inorganic substance that has a caustic reaction with proteins, proteins like the carrot like in hair. So essentially it fizzes and eats right through organic matter, including the protein keratin, which is the main ingredient in hair and in rhinoceros horns. So now it's more complicated than this because medieval poisoners,

probably we're not putting drain cleaner into the lord's wine goblet. Uh. And the source I mentioned a minute ago called out alkaloids, and there is a difference between an alkaline and an alkaloid, though most but not all, alkaloids are alkaline. But anyway, if the poisoning question is a reasonably strong bait, if it's if it's strongly alkaline. I think there is a good chance it would react with a keratin based cup.

Dissolving and reacting with the walls of the vessel would be kind of like storing drain cleaner in a chalice of tightly woven hair. Disgusting, well, the chalice of tightly woven hair. This makes me think of of of a piece of art titled Breakfast and Fur. Have you ever seen this? No? I don't think it's like like dinnerware made out of hair or fur? You know? So who

did that? I can't remember the name. I have a friend of mine from from high school studied like a fabric art material art and this was a piece that she uh that inspired her her email address. So it's always stuck in my head. All right, Well, on that note, let's take one more break, and when we come back, we're going to discuss the rhinoceros a little bit more, the various extinct and extant species out there, as well as the whole conundrum of of of anti poaching efforts

and rhino conservation. Alright, we're back, So Joe, let's let's talk about extinct rhinos. First, do you have any any favorites. Well, I know you're going to mention Elasmothereum. Oh yeah, that's the big one. That the ugly unicorn. The ugly unicorn. Why do people think it's ugly? I mean, I think

it's beautiful. It's I think the problem is that sometimes well there's some actual unicorn mythology to consider here, but you'll have these in these situations where the science papers, the science journalism will pick up elasmotherium news and they'll talk about it as if it's a unicorn. And then people will look at this big, uh, ferocious beast and they'll compare it to those beautiful unicorns from say the Last Unicorn or Legend, and they don't quite they don't

think the comparison doesn't stack up. Was there a unicorn in legend? There were two unicorns? What did they do? Oh? That that was the whole deal, right that the goblins like took the unicorns horn and oh yeah, and the big Tim Curry devil creature had the horn and it was in I don't know, I only remember Tim Curry from that movie. And the soundtrack, oh yeah, the soundtrack is wonderful. Tangerine Dream soundtrack on that one Um, yeah,

I don't. It's a film where the visuals in the sound stick with me, but I'm not really sure I

remember the plot at all. But yeah, at any rate, Elasmothereum the and in particular Elasmotherium sibericum is an interesting case that ties in with all the stuff we've been talking about because there was a recent study in the American Journal of Applied Sciences that placed the beast in modern day Kazakhstan a mere twenty nine thousand years ago, while previous estimates placed it outside the two hundred thousand

year run of human history. Okay, so that means we could have been interacting, right, And this supports an argument that myths of the Western unicorn and even the various Eastern beasts such as the Chinese quillon or the Japanese kiran, are based on accounts of human interactions with the actual unihorned beasts now in China. There's also the counter argument that the Asian rhino populations once existed in grade in number throughout ancient China, and that's what these myths are

referring to. And indeed this is based on historical writings, art and even uh, you know, fossil evidence UH, and this would have this would have been the northern Sumatra and rhino in particular. Now, in terms of other extinct rhino species, we have some some recent, fairly recent additions to that list. The Western black rhinoceros, the sub This is a sub Saharan Africa UH species. Primarily it was

found in Cameroon. This was just declared extinct in twleven and it may have been extinct for some five or six years at that point. Now, but there is till a black rhinoceros that exists right, yes, but these are just variations of the black rhino that have blinked out. For instance, the Southern black rhinoceros disappeared around eighteen fifty and the Northeastern black rhino also went extinct sometime in

the twentieth century. And of course there are all these additional cool prehistoric rhinos and rhino like beasts that we don't really have time to get into. But you have like the Wooly rhino, the Titanic hornless rhinos known as the parasceratherium, and the wonderful sort of sling shot horned mega serops. These were and these were not technically rhinos.

They were just rhino like that. I was always intrigued by the images of them in my childhood, like prehistoric animal books, because it looks like the formation for a slingshot, you know, it's like a a y shaped horn. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, you can just imagine them, you know, somehow acquiring large rubber bands and outfitting them and I don't know, finding smaller mammals to ride atop their their neck can fire projectiles out of it.

I mean they also kind of just look like they're perfectly designed to like skewer your buttocks if the thing tosses you into the air. Yeah, true, Yeah, and that was probably more in keeping with the actual purpose of the of the horn. Now, in terms of the rhinos that we have today that are still left in the world, we have, as we mentioned earlier, five different varieties. There's the white rhino and this is found in northern, northern,

and southern varieties in Africa. Um, the northern is extinct in the wild, but the southern rhino, they're in estimated roughly twenty thousand, four hundred and five individuals left in the world, and that's the most abundant one right right, that's the if you want to call a success story, that's the success story. Um, some of these other the numbers are gonna gonna dip as we proceed, though. There's a black rhino that's still found in eastern and Southern Africa.

This one has has two horns, by the way, much like the white, and this one is you're looking at around five thousand or five thousand and fifty five individuals left. Then we have the Indian rhino, and this is found in India, Nepal, part of Pakistan. It has one horn. This is the one with the fabulous skin folds. It looks really cool, and you'll find somewhere around three thousand, five hundred and fifty five of these left in the wild. Then you have the Java and rhino, and this is

only found in Java, Indonesia. The male has one horn, the females are hornless, and as of two thousand sixteen, only sixty three individuals remained in the wild and in captivity combined. So are they thinking that could come back or is that passed the point in no return? I don't, I don't know. You know, that's you're getting down to

such slim numbers. There that you, Well, we've seen cases with other species where the numbers become so reduced that even if you are able to bounce the species back, then there's not gonna be a lot of genetic diversity there. So it's gonna be a continuing uphill battle and you're certainly not going to have what you once had. Uh. And then finally we have the Sumatran rhino, which is one of the ones that I really like. You only find this in the very high altitudes of Borneo and Sumatra.

It has two horns, and then it's it's hairy. It has this kind of reddish looking hair. They're really they're really cool if you if you look up videos or photos of these guys. They're also relatively small, aren't they. Yeah, they're the smallest of the of the extent rhinos, and they're only around two hundred seventy five left in the world.

All told, there were around five hundred thousand rhinos left in African Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century, and today it's more like twenty nine thousand in the wild due to poaching and loss of habitat. Now, if we're looking to act on this immediately, to try to turn that around and help populations bounce back. It seems

like it'll it'll take longer to restore damaged or lost habitats. Right, But is there anything that can be done about poaching immediately or is this just one of those wicked problems that you know, it's uh, it's like the gopher game, like you can't stop it. Well, there's some there have been some wonderful proposals on how to deal with it. We'll we'll touch on some of these, but it it does seem more and more like a wicked problem, like

they're just they're a number of converging elements here. And there's some very well being initiatives that have come out to try and curb the poaching of of rhino horn and the illicit trade of rhino horn, but you know, nothing is really stuck. Nothing has really managed to cut into that trade too much. And then, you know, to your point, when you couple this with tremendous habitat loss, which has challenged a number of of animals and certainly the megafauna that used to you know, roam free in

these areas, uh, you have quite a problem. Now poaching again has been a major factor in rhino endangerment and extinction. And while you you can eat rhino meat and they have been killed in the past for their meat and their skin, uh, the horn seems to be the main thing that's that's causing the poaching. And that's because the corn is the part of the rhino that fetches the

highest price. That's that's what they're being poached for. Uh. And sometimes the poachers drugged the animal and saw the horn off, but other times they are taking more than the horn after drugging the animal, or they're just straight up killing the animal. So what what kind of efforts can be established to prevent poaching or at least discourage it. Well,

we've touched on some of the legal efforts. So it's it's currently illegal for rhino horn sales to take place between countries, but interestingly enough, it's not illegal in South Africa, not anymore so. In April of this year, South African courts ruled that sales of rhino horns could take place provided the seller had a permit. And with these permitted

cases were generally talking breeding farm um. The horns in these cases are removed painlessly and humanely, The leading a rhino farmer a John Hume, according to BBC News, he believes that it's such a legal and open trade is is going to be beneficial because as the trade, because the trade first of all can raise money that can help but conserve the species. And he also thinks that these open, legal sales will drive down the price of

illicit horn and reduce poaching. Now, critics say that this practice will only increase the demand for for the horn. It will you know, perhaps even normalize it. Plus, if you have a legitimate trade taking place, then that can provide cover for illegitimate trade to take place, you know. Right, So if you're if you're trying to create a stigma around the sale of rhino horns, even if you've been failing, it's going to be even harder to establish that stigma

if you're also selling legit horns next door. Well yeah, And also like let's say that you're you're traveling out of South Africa and some you know, an official opens your bag and it has rhino horns in it and they say what's this and you go, oh, these are legal rhino horns. I have a permit um and maybe you have a fake permit like if permits exist, you have a leg up on deceiving the system. But if there's no such thing as a legal uh um, you know, a legal sale of rhino horns, then there's no way

you could pass that off. Just to put it in very simple terms, now, I guess one big question would be or the farmed humane horns cheaper than the poached horns? I think that would be the idea right there. You would do this to drive down the price, like why why pay all this, uh this additional money for an illegitimate horn when you can get the real thing for

cheaper uh and it's official and it's verifiable. Now, there have there have been efforts to curb poaching by practicing horn removal, uh you know in the wild as well as as well as a tactic that actually brings this full circle poisoning the rhino horn to prevent its eventual consumption. What Yeah, So the ideas you would drew two holes into it and then you would you would pump in a poison in particular would be a highly toxic ectoparasiticide and it would have a die with it as well.

So you would have this drilled, discolored horn that would ideally, uh, announced to any poachers, don't steal this horn. This horn is poisoned and if you if you claim this horn and sell it, it could kill somebody or make them sick. Now, obviously the goal would not be too just poison people for consuming rhino horn. The goal would be to prevent the poaching in the first place. Well, I saw I saw some quotes that seemed to imply the former as well.

They're saying like this, this will punish somebody who take who consumes it, which is, you know, a weird moral leg to try and stand on. I think, well, I don't know that's great. I mean, I believe very much in rhino conservation, but I don't think the answer is poisoning humans. I think that the larger idea here would be, well, first of all, create the idea that there are poisoned

rhino horns, and then this would discourage the poaching. But though, one of the problems here is that the individuals doing the poaching they really don't care about the consumer. They're they're selling to a middleman anyway, so well, what does it matter to them? And then they're and they're you're probably not thinking really long term about the illicit rhinal horn industry. Well, I guess the question is does it work well? Based on what I've been reading, it has not,

so savvy sands. This is a private game reserve adjacent to the Kruger National Park. Uh, they tried the poison method and it didn't work. Poachers still came middle of then still presumably bought the horn. Didn't make any difference. Plus, as pointed out by Save the Rhino Dot Org, as Asian traditional medicines reduced the need for rhino horn as they sort of try and spread the message that you don't need rhino horn, that there are other, uh, you know,

various ingredients that will supposedly do the same job. And the poison horn could just be used for ornamental purposes and you know, would would still would still drive up the demand for rhino horn. And then there are some additional criticisms as well. There's the idea that the poison could wind up driving up the cost of unpoisoned horn. So you've polluted the market. But that means there's even less rhino horn out there for individuals wanting to consume it,

and therefore it would be more expensive. And then Finally, this is a big one, too big area too. If you're going to go out and start, you know, doing widespread rhino horn poisoning, well then you need people to go out find the rhinos, uh, subdue them, you know, assume I assume drug them, then you know, do the performedive procedure on the horn. And uh, you're talking about

a treatment of hundreds and hundreds of rhinos in these cases. Now, even though the poison in this scheme wouldn't get into the rhino and harm it directly, you can imagine blood flow to the in the horn. Yeah, you can still imagine that just the process of like drugging the rhinos so that this could be done, could lead to some

injuries or could harm some rhinos. Yeah, I mean it kind of comes back to the same situation as with widespread horn removal, like somebody has to do it, somebody has to pay for it, and uh, and it's just generally not going to be the manpower and the money on hand. Now, there are some other interesting schemes that have come into place to try and uh and raise funds for rhino conservation efforts, perhaps such as these and some of those, oddly enough, include hunting permits for rhinos.

Various areas have offered a very limited number of these for you know, you know, big ticket westerners to come in and uh and shoot a rhino, with the money presumably going for going to rhino conservation efforts, you know, along the same lines as warning people about poisoned horns.

I mean, I just wonder if so if the basis of medicinal demand for rhino horn or belief in the magical powers of the rhino horn is pernicious false rumors about what the horns can do to help you, I mean, I wonder if it would be possible to to combat that just with pernicious rumors about the dangers of rhino horns. I mean, I guess that would be That's tough because you would also in that case be lying about it.

You'd have it to be intentionally spreading lies. But if you tried to spread a rumor that the horns would cause intense pain of the teeth or something or whatever, well, I mean, you you look to our various situations with with illicit drugs, though, where there have been public information campaigns that have that if you know that that have really uh push the idea that say, oh, if you do meth all all your teeth are cana fall out, You're gonna have this meth mouth scenario, which I've I've

read I've read criticism that you know that says that that's not really a one to one situation. Uh. Likewise, steroid use, there's the the warning messaging all that if you use of steroids, are all these additional problems that aren't occur with your body. But people still use them still people people still use performance enhancing drugs. Uh. And then you know, earlier you mentioned something about about the

use of various alleged medicinal properties. That something is happening idea that actually ties into one of the criticisms of poisoning the horn, because what have you poisoned the horn? And it does make its way, you know, through the various middlemen. It ends up as a powder in somebody's smoothie if you if you will uh. And so if there's enough poison in there to cause some sort of reaction in the person's body, then something is happening and they can attribute that to to the to the positive

effects of the horn. I feel something, I feel a little sick that must be the horn getting on top of me. And if and if you spread these ideas then that the horn is dangerous that might feed into it as well. Like of course, it's of course rhino horn is going to make you feel a little weird because it's the power of the horn, right, Like, I can see how that backfire. Yeah, absolutely, But I agree it is all kind of insane, right because the science

is pretty clear. Consuming rhino horn is going to do nothing for you. This is a purely uh supernatural exercise on an individual's part, and yet it continues. Maybe what you could do is try to replace this with a

belief in the power of consuming hair and fingernails. Like if you, instead of spreading a false, pernicious rumor about the dangers of rhino horn, spread a true, infectious rumor about the equivalence of rhino horn and fingernails and hair, so you so, instead you would just create a demand for the widely available substances that can be acquired without

harming people. And unless this leads leads to poaching of humans for their hair and fingernails, oh no, no. But the great thing about this, I see how this could work. We just needed an initiative where certain powerful individuals or individuals are at least you know, icons of physical prowess. They must donate all of their fingernails and maybe their hair clippings, uh to to be used in these traditional

medicines instead. So like a like a John Cena or Arnold Schwarzenegger, people of this stature, uh, they need to donate those clippings and then those will be ground up and used in traditional medicines instead. Man, what does Arnold's hair tastes like? I don't know, but but you know, if you have enough, you've put enough fruit in the smoothie, you don't really taste it. I guess this is my

Arnold hair goblet. Al right, Well, hopefully we were able to give you, uh, you know, an interesting insight into the history of rhino horn as it's been used for various magical and slightly scientific slightly in the case of poison detection, slightly scientific uh uses and and rituals, as well as just the dire state of the rhino species

that we still have with us in the world. Now, if anyone out there wants to learn more about rhino conservation, there are a number of different organizations UM we already we already mentioned I think one of them. But there's also the International Rhino Foundation. You can go to rhinos dot org for that. There's also International Anti Poaching Foundation

and that is i APF dot org. Alright, so hey, if you want to see any of the pictures that we were talking about earlier, check out the landing page for this episode. It's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the mothership, that's we will find all of the podcast episodes, will find videos, You'll find blog posts and links out to our various social media accounts such as Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram,

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