A small San Francisco startup Pembient is aiming to put rhino poachers out of business by 3D-printing of rhino horns. Poaching rhinos for their horns, prized for medicinal purposes and as status symbols in Vietnam and China, has been on the rise. According to the nonprofit Save the Rhinos, a rhino is killed every eight hours in South Africa, which has the largest population of rhinos in the world. Software engineer Matthew Markus had it in mind to save the rhinos since the 1990's when he learned about poaching. The confluence of rising poaching rates and the development of 3D printers prompted him, along with chemist George Bonaci, to co-found a company earlier this year. Their horns, which are matched spectrographically to the real thing, are mostly keratin—presently from wool, although they are gearing up to produce rhino keratin in yeast—with trace amounts of sulfur, calcium and potassium, and a dash of rhino DNA. Conservation groups are not on board, feeling that this panders to purveyors of rhino horns.
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Saving rhinos with 3D printed horns. Nat Biotechnol 33, 683 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0715-683a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0715-683a
