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September 09, 2021

Anna Murray 

Airlifting rhinoceroses upside down as the best way to relocate them were honored at the 31st Ig Nobel Prize ceremony on September 9th. The spoof awards are less famous than the “real” Nobels, while honor researches first make people laugh and then make them think.

Rhinoceroses are usually relocated to a remote location inaccessible for around a decade to safeguard the population of wild black rhinoceroses in South Africa from poaching. Since it is impractical to relocate rhinoceroses to rugged terrains by truck, rhinoceroses were hung by their legs under a helicopter. 

Robin Radcliffe, a senior lecturer in wildlife and conservation medicine at Cornell University, and his colleagues, worked with the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism, to measure the physical responses of 12 sedate black rhinoceroses slung by a crane. The result showed that rhinoceroses did better in the upside-down position than just lying chest down or on their side.