|
And here we see why no ivory, modern or fossil, elephant, mammoth, or walrus will ever grace my mineral collections. Rhino horn either--it's not ivory, even. Ivory is dental; whether walrus, mammoth, narwhal, sperm whale, or elephant, ivory is teeth.
Rhino horn is keratin; anyone with a strong stomach and the right contacts could be collecting, sterilizing (one would hope) and grinding human hair and finger- & toenails, or for that matter dog hair and canine nail clippings, and the results of any chemical testing would be pretty much identical since rhino horn is just highly modified hair. They'd make a fortune, especially since a lot of Chinese and other Asian cities have a massive stray dog problem.
No matter the price tag on the finished piece or the destination of the harvest, the cost of ivory in either animal or environmental suffering is much too high for my tastes.
|