In the National Museum of China, there is a beautiful artifact: the bronze rhinoceros statue with a wrong gold and silver cloud pattern, which is made in the shape of a rhinoceros.
During the Western Han Dynasty, it was very common to encounter rhinos in the wild, especially in the Yangtze River Basin, where a large number of rhinos lived. But at that time, rhinos also suffered large-scale hunting, mainly because the rhinoceros skin was hard and rough, almost invincible, and could serve as human armor, so in the Spring and Autumn Period, people had already hunted rhinos and made armor. Qu Yuan once wrote in the Nine Songs of National Martyrdom that Wu Ge Xi wearing rhinoceros armor, the car is wrong hub xi short soldiers, the rhinoceros armor here is the armor made of rhinoceros skin.
Although the ancients have always had the habit of hunting rhinos, rhinos are really in danger of extinction because they are believed to have aphrodisiac horns.
It's hard to imagine that rhinos have lived on Earth for more than 500 million years and are one of the most primitive animals. Moreover, in the last century, rhinos were also distributed in China, and rhinos inhabiting our regions were called "Chinese rhinoceros", but it was not a subspecies of rhinoceros, but a collective name for the three types of rhinos of Indian rhinoceros, Javan rhinoceros and Sumatran rhinoceros.
Chinese rhinos are mainly distributed in the Yangtze River Basin region of China, they like water, like to sleep, like to live alone. The skin on their bodies is so hard that even tigers can't hurt them, so rhinos have few predators in the wild.
But humans stared at them, first targeting their skins and using their skins to make armor; later they found that the skin and blood of rhino horns could be used in medicine, and rhino horns could be used as aphrodisiacs, so in the past, people often hunted rhinos to obtain rhino horns.
Once, in an antique market, a stall owner placed a rhino pen holder on the stall for 90,000 yuan; another smaller rhino pen holder also sold for 79,000 yuan.
After rhino horn was banned from sale, rhino horn was still circulated on the black market because people believed that rhino horn could be aphrodisiac. It has been seen on the Vietnamese black market that rhino horn powder costs $133 a gram, which is higher than the price of gold.
Such high economic benefits drove poachers to take risks, resulting in a large number of rhinos dying under the barrels of hunters.
Rhinos disappeared from our country because of the long history of hunting in our country, coupled with the fact that in 1922, the country was in a state of war, not to mention the need to protect the Chinese rhinoceros. In this way, when the last small one-horned rhinoceros (Javan rhino) was killed in 1922, no one ever saw a Chinese rhinoceros again.
When it comes to aphrodisiacs, probably every man will look at each other and smile and then share some aphrodisiac secrets that they know. Ordinary people will tell you that eating leeks aphrodisiac, eating lamb aphrodisiac, eating oyster aphrodisiac, etc. Regardless of whether these foods have aphrodisiac effect or not, because they are our food and have been cultivated or raised by humans on a large scale, it is harmless to eat more even if we think they have an aphrodisiac effect, after all, we have a lot of these foods.
However, there are still some people who choose in pursuit of high-end aphrodisiac foods: tiger bones, rhino horns, etc., and it is people's prejudices that have led to the continuous decline of these biological species, of which the Chinese rhinoceros has not appeared since 1922.
But in fact, scientists have studied the composition of rhino horn and found that these components are mainly keratin, cholesterol, calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, etc., and human nail components are similar. That is to say, if you think that rhino horn has an aphrodisiac effect, it is better to nibble your own nails, after all, your nails will still grow.
In addition, although humans have been seeking "aphrodisiac" effects in food, the actual effect is well, and every man knows that it is of little use. If there is a real need for aphrodisiacs, look for medical help rather than believe folklore.
In addition, rhino horn does not have medicinal functions, but because the traditional medicine of various countries lists rhino horn as a medicinal animal, there are still many people who believe that rhino horn has medicinal value, and even many people think that rhino horn has anti-cancer effects.
But nowadays, the drugs used in mainstream medicine are not as shoddy as in the past, but will extract active ingredients from animals and plants to use, and scientists have not extracted medicinal ingredients from rhino horn, so rhino horn has no medicinal value.
Although the Chinese rhinoceros has disappeared, the rhinoceros has not gone extinct, but they are not living well. Although the hunting of rhinos is banned worldwide and the circulation of rhino products is severely cracked down. However, due to the huge economic benefits, the price of rhinos has risen repeatedly in the black market, resulting in many poachers taking risks.
Coupled with the fact that some African countries are very corrupt, fueling the arrogance of poachers, there are even poaching groups that directly fly helicopters to hunt rhinos in order to obtain their horns.
Some environmental groups, in order to protect rhinos, can only endure the pain of cutting off their horns to help them avoid poachers as much as possible. However, this is only a symptom, not a cure.
The real solution to the danger of rhino poaching is probably the phrase we often mention, "No buying, no harm." ”