Dbur Kralove Zoo, northeast of Prague, Czech Republic. With 21 endangered species of rhinos, this zoo has the largest number of rhinos in Europe. However, all the rhinos here are in danger of having their horns cut off. A rhino without horns!
The first to have their horns cut off was Pamir, a 10-year-old male southern white rhinoceros. On Monday (20th local time), the veterinarian who took care of him had his horn cut off with a chainsaw. Why did the veterinarian cut off Pamir’s horn? “It’s better to have your horns cut off than to die,” the zoo explains.
This idea begins with the death of a four-year-old white rhinoceros ‘Vins’ last month at the ‘Touri Zoo’ in western Paris, France. Poachers broke into the zoo and shot and killed Vance in the cage and cut off the horns. It was the first time in Europe that poachers even targeted a rhino at a zoo.
Since this incident, zoos have set out to cut off their horns to protect the rhinos. Prior to the ‘Debourg Kralove Zoo’, Belgium’s ‘Peri desjas Zoo’ also announced that it had decided to cut the rhino’s horns short as a temporary measure.
It is because of the sheer price of rhino horns that poachers even break into zoos with guards and CCTV. Rhino horn is treated as a precious medicine in Asia, mainly in China and Vietnam. In particular, white rhino horn is rumored to be an energizing agent, so it is known that it is sold for a maximum of $60,000 per kg on the black market, or more than 67 million won in Korean money. That’s more expensive than gold or cocaine.
An average of 100 rhinos per month are killed by poachers because of their ‘horns’. only in Africa Over 1,000 were sacrificed last year alone, and now there are only about 20,000 white rhinos left in the world.
African countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe have already chosen to cut off ‘horns’ since last year as a way to protect the remaining rhinos. Zimbabwe has begun the process of removing the horns of 700 rhinos.
So, is it okay to cut off all rhino horns? First of all, veterinarians say that rhinos do not feel pain when their horns are cut off. A rhino’s horn is a kind of hard keratin, so even if it is cut, it does not cause great pain and does not pose a threat to life.
However, animal rights groups are opposed to ‘horn cutting’, arguing that cutting the horn may injure the rhinoceros. Also, some argue that even if the horns are removed, there are poachers who are hunting for the horns remaining at the root, and as a result, it will not be possible to protect the rhinoceros.
If rhinos don’t have horns, what should they call them in the future? If you were to compare a rhinoceros with its horns off to a human, would it be like cutting off its hair? For a person who values so-called ‘hair’, just imagining it is terrifying. However, to a rhino, horns are a symbol, so losing a horn is probably much more painful than losing hair.
However, the fact that rhinos are in danger of disappearing from this planet is not because of ‘horns’ but because of ‘humans’. I hope that rhinos will no longer have to give up their ‘horns’ to survive. Rhino’s ‘horns’ are innocent!
