August 27, 2015
By Sarah Buhr
There’s a startup called Pembient(click here) that is 3D printing rhinoceros horns in a lab on the far edge of San Francisco. These are not horns that look like rhino horns. These are genetically identical rhino horns, according to the startup. Pembient just didn’t need a rhino in order to make them.
That’s good news for the very few rhinoceroses around the world. There are only five northern white rhinos left, and the Western black rhinoceros, which was thought to be extinct in 2006, is now officially extinct.
Poachers have been killing off these big, beautiful free-roaming mammals – nearly wiping them off the face of the planet forever – just to rip out their horns. The horns are used as daggers in Yemen, and in traditional Chinese medicine it is believed that the rhino horn has healing powers....
This technology is an extension of species protections.
By Sarah Buhr
There’s a startup called Pembient(click here) that is 3D printing rhinoceros horns in a lab on the far edge of San Francisco. These are not horns that look like rhino horns. These are genetically identical rhino horns, according to the startup. Pembient just didn’t need a rhino in order to make them.
That’s good news for the very few rhinoceroses around the world. There are only five northern white rhinos left, and the Western black rhinoceros, which was thought to be extinct in 2006, is now officially extinct.
Poachers have been killing off these big, beautiful free-roaming mammals – nearly wiping them off the face of the planet forever – just to rip out their horns. The horns are used as daggers in Yemen, and in traditional Chinese medicine it is believed that the rhino horn has healing powers....
This technology is an extension of species protections.
