Rhino horns may be the key to saving the endangered species from a potentially fatal condition: iron overload disorder.
With the species dwindling in number, if zookeepers were alerted to the condition simply by sampling the amount of iron in rhino horns, they may be able to intervene in time to save the black and Sumatran rhinos who suffer from it.
The Cincinnati Zoo couldn’t save Suci in 2014. She is believed to have died from iron overload disorder. Her mother suffered the same fate.
The Cincinnati Zoo's idea
Director of the Conservation & Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) Terri Roth thinks extra iron in a rhino’s horn could be an early indicator of too much iron in the liver. She is collecting small samples of horns and livers of deceased rhinos from zoos and museums around the world.
Because the horns frequently aren’t labeled with information about species and gender, it’s Cincinnati Zoo researcher Elizabeth Donelan’s job to figure that out.
Donelan turns horn samples into powder and extracts the DNA. In a partnership with the Cincinnati Museum Center, Zoology Curator Heather Farrington uses that genetic material to create a complete DNA profile of each animal.
“Then I get all the data that Heather has sent me, and I stare at my computer and play a very advanced game of match,” says Donelan.
Each batch of samples takes a week or more, and there are dozens to go through.
The zoo can't really validate its theory until the horn information is compared to an animal's liver.
Roth says the zoo is measuring over 14 minerals in the horns and finding arsenic and lead. Mineral imbalances can cause health problems in a wide variety of animals.
The Cincinnati Zoo no longer has any Sumatran rhinos. The last one on display in North America, Harapan, left for Indonesia in 2015, as WVXU reported.
