![]() But until the Ig Nobel Prize-winning study, we weren't entirely sure whether this upside-down transportation was actually safe for the rhinos involved. So conservationists have to lend a helping hand-or helicopter-to place rhinos into new regions. But this prevents animals from colonizing new areas, recolonising vacant areas, or mixing genes between areas. We translocate rhinos because they live within guarded, fenced areas to keep them monitored-and protected, in theory, from poaching for rhino horn, their main threat. In attempts to protect rhino populations, conservationists have tried dehorning (to try to make rhinos less desirable to poachers), translocation (moving rhinos, including upside-down via helicopter), and even resurrection (creating embryos from the eggs and sperm, or even the DNA, of dead individuals). The species hung upside-down in the study is the black rhino, weighing in at 1.5 tons and with an estimated population of just 5,000. The three-ton white rhino is the least endangered, yet there are still only an estimated 20,000 of them left in the wild. There are five species of rhino, and all are endangered. But while hanging rhinos produce spectacularly absurd photographs, behind the award and the study lies a serious business. A recent study that suspended rhinos upside-down by their ankles from a helicopter must have been a shoe-in for the award's judges, securing the 2021 Ig Nobel Transportation Prize.
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