Warning Horn In an effort to make them useless to poachers, researchers are implanting radioactive isotopes into the horns of rhinos in South Africa. The unusual material would “render the horn useless… essentially poisonous for human consumption,” James Larkin, professor and dean of science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told Agence France-Presse. […]
Tag: traditional medicine
Freya the rescued lion cub is safe in South Africa, but many other lions there are bred to be shot
PAARL, South Africa — Freya, a 6-month-old lion cub rescued from the wildlife trade in Lebanon, poked a curious nose out of her transport crate and sniffed the air. Satisfied, she took her first cautious steps in her new forever home in a sanctuary in South Africa. Freya’s relocation to the Drakenstein Lion Park is […]
First report of wound treatment by a wild animal using a pain-relieving plant
Even though there is evidence of certain self-medication behaviors in animals, so far it has never been known that animals treat their wounds with healing plants. Now, biologists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Germany and Universitas Nasional, Indonesia have observed this in a male Sumatran orangutan who sustained a facial wound. He […]
Bearded giants gliding the barrier of spears
This is the first post from my trip to Giant’s Castle in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg park in mid-July. Apart from the breath-taking beauty, a key attraction at Giant’s Castle was its vulture hide. The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park has Africa’s highest mountain range south of Kilimanjaro. It presents a formidable horizon of massive basalt cliffs in […]