Elephants are known to be poached for their tusks, with African savannah and Asian elephants endangered, while African forest elephants are critically endangered.
Like the African forest elephant, there is a bird that is famous for its skull, and its value is comparable to gold, it is the helmeted hornbill.
Helmeted hornbill
The helmeted hornbill is a species of hornbill that once found Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei, but has now been hit hard by poaching its ivory beak.
Helmeted hornbill skull
Helmeted hornbill appearance
The helmeted hornbill is a very large bird, it can grow up to 110-120 cm long, males can weigh up to 3.1 kg, females average about 2.7 kg.
Its plumage is mostly black, except that the belly, legs, and tail are white, and there is a black band near the tip of the tail. The tail is long, and the two tail feathers in the center are much longer than the others, making the total length of this bird longer than any other hornbill.
Helmeted hornbill standing in treetops
Life habits of helmeted hornbills
It mainly eats the fruits of strangled plants, and occasionally chooses snails, snakes and other animals to feed. This bird is also loyal to love, and after choosing a mate, it will stay with it until old age, and they breed once a year and give birth to a chick. Females and chicks live in a sealed tree hole for the first five months of life.
Loving helmeted hornbill couple
Male helmeted hornbills will use their gold-worthy skulls to fight for territory, and they will use their skulls to hit each other, a situation known as aerial combat. Females sometimes accompany males in aerial combat.
Helmeted hornbill of aerial combat
What is special about the helmeted hornbill skull
The helmeted hornbill's skull is their weapon because their skull is very special. Its skull is almost solid, about 11% of its weight of 3 kilograms.
Unlike any other hornbill, its skull is used in fights between males. The sebaceous glands of helmeted hornbills seal up a red waxy fluid, staining the skull red.
It is precisely because of the particularity of its skull that it has been targeted by humans.
Helmeted hornbill that eats fruit
Hunters brutally take their bones
Poachers often use anesthesia guns to shoot them out of the air, and then remove their skulls alive while they are still alive, eventually allowing them to die in pain.
A helmeted hornbill with its head removed
Its skull costs as much as $4,000 per kilogram, which translates to 28,000 yuan. According to the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, 2,170 skulls were seized in just three years in China and Indonesia alone.
A large number of helmeted hornbill skulls were captured
In the past five years, at least 546 helmeted hornbill body parts, mostly skulls, have been sold on Thai Facebook. Merchants buy helmeted hornbill skulls from villagers for 5,000-6,000 baht. Sold doubling or tripling in cities, prices increase exponentially when sold overseas.
Helmeted hornbills sold on the black market
What the skull is used for
There is a saying in the collecting world, "one red, two black and three white", white is ivory, black is rhino horn, can be ranked before the two is this "crane top red", and the helmet hornbill skull is the source of crane top red, which is a very precious carving material.
Helmeted hornbill skull packaged for sale
The helmeted hornbill's skull is made of hard keratin, and its lipid glands secrete a red, waxy fluid, so that over time it can dye the yellow helmet into bright red "ivory".
This red ivory, also known as "crane top red" or "golden jade", is the skull of the carefully carved helmeted hornbill is even three times more valuable than ivory, and is extremely valuable in the eyes of illegal poachers.
Helmeted hornbill crafts
Historically, this material has also been used by Chinese and Japanese carvers. During the Yuan Dynasty on the mainland, Heding red crafts appeared, and in the Qing Dynasty, closed to the country, Heding red was basically in short supply, and the owners were also those who had very few status.
Helmeted hornbill crafts
Recently, at the 2007 Christie's Spring Auction in New York, a one-inch Qi Baishi as a crane-top red "Yipin Xianhe" snuff bottle sold for more than 650,000 yuan. At the 2012 Beijing Poly auction, an iPhone4-sized crane-top red ornament could be valued at 180,000.
It can be seen that the skull of the helmeted hornbill has been extremely precious and valuable from ancient times to the present.
Qing dynasty crane top red snuff bottle
Survival is at stake
The helmeted hornbill is critically endangered, in addition to illegal poaching by humans, but also the destruction of its habitat by humans, and there are now fewer than 100 of them left in the forests of Thailand.
Helmeted hornbill habitat
Protection of helmeted hornbills
In 2015, the helmeted hornbill was added to the IUCN Red List and is listed as a Class I protected animal in the Washington Convention.
Helmeted hornbill heads, like ivory and rhino horn, are prohibited in international trade. The mainland's Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China also stipulates that criminal liability will be pursued for the illegal acquisition, transportation and sale of this endangered wild animal.
Caught poachers
Now, in the context of severe damage to the global wildlife environment, whether helmeted hornbills or other wild animals, it is immoral and unworthwhile to expose them to cruel death and extinction.
They are an important part of the earth's ecology, and their extinction and demise also herald the demise of ecology. So, let them live and multiply together on this beautiful earth, just like us.