Each year, a selection of seemingly strange and useless scientific experiments receive the Ig Nobel Prize. Awarded by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research, the award recognizes projects that “first make them laugh and then make them think.”
A recent study that suspended rhinos upside down by the ankles of a helicopter must have been a shoe for the judges of the award, which won the Ig Nobel Prize for transportation in 2021. But while hanging rhinos produce spectacularly absurd photographs, behind of the award and the study there is a serious business.
Rhinos have problems. There are five species of rhino and all are endangered. The three-ton white rhino is the least endangered, although only about 20,000 are estimated to be wild. The species hanging upside down in the study is the black rhino, weighing 1.5 tons and with an estimated population of only 5,000.
In attempts to protect rhino populations, conservationists have tried to dehorn (to try to make rhinos less desirable to poachers), translocation (moving rhinos, including upside down by helicopter), and even resurrection. (creating embryos from the eggs and sperm, or even DNA, of dead individuals).
We move rhinos because they live in enclosed and guarded areas to keep them guarded and, in theory, protected from poaching for the rhino horn, their main threat. But this prevents animals from colonizing new areas, recolonizing vacant areas, or mixing genes between areas.
So ecologists have to lend a hand (or helicopter) to place rhinos in new regions. But until the Ig Nobel Prize-winning study, we weren’t entirely sure if this reverse transport was really safe for the rhinos involved.
Hanging herbivores
Capturing and translocating large mammals can be dangerous and detrimental to the welfare of affected animals. Large African mammals, including elephants, giraffes, and rhinos, are physiologically sensitive.
The whole process of capture and translocation can cause psychological and physiological stress. If these animals are given too high a dose of tranquilizer or left in the wrong position under tranquilizer, they may die.
Historically, wildlife translocation methods have been informal and experimental, with successful methods spreading by word of mouth. Increasingly, this ad-hoc approach has been replaced by formal scientific research, either by supporting perceived wisdom or by bringing new innovations.
Therefore, it is important, only for animal health and welfare reasons, that the procedures applied to catch and move large animals be as safe and non-harmful as possible.
For several years now, African rhinos have relocated by hanging them upside down suspended from a helicopter, with their eyes covered and under reassurance. In addition to allowing the capture and short-distance transfer of rhinos from inaccessible areas by road, helicopter transport can mean shorter travel times, so it may be preferable for the rhino where it is practical to do so.
But no one had ever established whether hanging upside down is harmful to rhinos. Sure, rhinos look good when they wake up at their final destination, but then are they really okay?
This is where science comes in. It may sound fun to deliberately hang 12 black rhinos upside down for 10 minutes just to control their physiology. But if no one does the research, no one knows if it is a safe way to transport an endangered animal.
The Ig Noble Award-winning study compared the respiratory function and metabolic effects of rhinos when their ankles were hanging and the animals themselves were lying on their sides.
The researchers found that the respiratory efficiency of rhinos hanging upside down is, in any case, slightly better than when rhinos are set aside during reassurance. Therefore, the process is claimed to be at least as good as traditional transportation methods.
Rhino transfer
I have been involved in numerous white rhino capture and translocation operations in South Africa for my own research: collecting blood and saliva samples to assess the physiological stress associated with capture.
The equipment he worked with also used helicopters, but only to launch the rhino with a tranquilizer from the air. Rhinos woke up as soon as possible before walking them, with their eyes covered and covered in boxes to transport them by road by truck to places many hours away.
During the transport of long-distance rhinos, it is not economical or healthy for the rhino to remain calm, so road transport is preferred.
While being around these awesome beasts is humiliating and the capture experience a little exciting, my motivation for being there was science: collecting data on the effects of capture to finally inform and improve wildlife conservation.
Still, I always felt a sadness that we had to subdue these sensitive, soft giants in such an unnatural process. But unfortunately we have no choice.
If we want to effectively save endangered species, we cannot leave them alone. They have to be managed and often this means moving them to safer places for poaching or to new areas to try to expand the population and diversify local inbreeding populations.
We want these animals to survive the process of capture and translocation and to have immune and reproductive systems as strong and healthy as possible when released.
To achieve this, science is needed. And if that science involves hanging rhinos upside down or other seemingly weird and funny research, let’s do it. Extinction of wildlife is no problem laughing, even if you learn the strange opportunity to laugh.
Jason Gilchrist, ecologist at Napier University in Edinburgh.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.