Four rhino heads have been stolen in a bold raid by three masked men who overwhelmed and tied up a guard at an Irish National Museum warehouse north of Dublin on Wednesday night. By the time the guard was able to work himself free, the robbers were long gone.
Ironically, museum curator Nigel Monaghan explained that the four rhinoceros heads were moved to the warehouse in the first place because of an ongoing problem with gangs stealing rhino horn: “The pattern was to smash and grab, even when the museums were open, and we did not want to put the public at risk.”
The four rhino heads were over a century old. Three were black rhinos from Kenya, and a fourth was a white rhino species from the Sudan. Monaghan estimated that the ground-up powder from the rhino horn would sell on the illegal market for as much as $650,000.
As I previously reported, rhino horn is made of keratin — the same substance in human fingernails and toenails. The World Wildlife Fund has recently launched an aggressive advertising campaign to remind people of the facts. Keratin has, of course, no value as a medicine.
And keratin from a cut-off head over 100 years old is probably of less than no value. It’s just gross. Don’t just think ground-up toenails. Think ground-up stale toenails.
Unfortunately, the current high price of illegal rhino horn suggests to some observers that it’s not being bought for medicine at all. Instead, it’s being bought as an investment that can only spiral upward in price as rhino species near extinction and the supply of rhino horn grows shorter.
Either way, if the thieves aren’t caught soon, the four rhino heads are likely to be cut up for the valuable powder.
[rhino horn campaign ad courtesy WWF/TRAFFIC with image created by Ogilvy & Mather Viet Nam] [wild rhinoceros photo by Jane Fresco via Wikipedia Commons]