Given the scant evidence that removing the horns of rhinos reduces poaching, is it worth it? <\/p>
New research shows that removing the horns of black rhinos<\/a> to make them less attractive to poachers is reducing their territory sizes and making them less sociable with each other.<\/p>\n The study, published in the journal PNAS<\/em><\/a>, found that de-horned South African rhinos have home ranges that are 45 per cent smaller than those of intact animals and were 37 per cent less likely to engage in social interactions.<\/p>\n \u201cThe big, dominant bulls that used to have very large territories that overlapped with a lot of females may now have much less territory and much less reproductive success,\u201d says Vanessa Duth\u00e9, who led the work at Switzerland\u2019s University of Neuch\u00e2tel.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to predict the effects of this,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that population success will necessarily decline, because it might open up gaps for younger males that would not have had the space or the means before.\u201d<\/p>\n