@RachelNuwer
RHINO ROULETTE: South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world’s rhinos, a third of which belong to private owners. Some owners say legal trade in the rhinos’ horns is the only way to save them.
DENIS FARRELL/AP
WOBBLING LEFT, then right, the 2-ton animal stumbles and starts to fall. Twelve pairs of hands are there to ease it toward the dusty orange earth. A man wearing a blue work suit quickly straps an eye mask over the sedated beast; another slips in a pair of massive earplugs. A few measurements are taken, then the reciprocating saw comes out. A worker turns it on and presses the whirring blade against the base of the rhino’s nubby horn, and white chips go flying. Within a couple of minutes, the horn cleanly pops off, leaving a teardrop shaped pattern of pink, white and black keratin—a biological material found in hair and nails. Mission completed, wildlife veterinarian Michelle Otto injects the rhino with an antidote to the sedative she darted it with 10 minutes earlier. The team scrambles into two pickup trucks, and the rhino—its nose sporting a stubby plateau rather than a peak—stumbles to its feet and trots off.