that's chinese medicine for ya! ancient knowledge! hope all those men with improved erections feel good about themselves. fucking absurd. extirpate a gem of nature for its ugly little worthless horn.
oh and trophy hunters. fuck you too.

I grieve for mankind.

Onion, while poaching undoubtedly played a role, the primary reason for this has been elimination of habitat. Oh, you can still blame mankind - just different ones.

@2 - I completely agree with you.

I'm hoping that zoologist, or biologist, or whatever can save some form of DNA or sperm/egg to repopulate the species at a date when we're better able to do so.

Charles, any word of such a plan to be put into place?

Another top feeder gone.

Good riddance to them.

Message from the Food Chain.

I hope they're not extinct, just hiding from humans.

@2 I grieve for everything dying because of mankind.

too many people.

These animals are little pieces of us, of who we are and how we got here, falling away. Are we bound to this destruction? I believe we are. Look at the extinctions we've already caused since the begining of our predations. Now we've added environmental destruction. It doesn't look good for our species and the animals are telling us.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think we have one or two at Riverbanks Zoo right here in Columbia SC. I'm just about certain that our friend Diceros bicornis is now merely extinct in the wild (conservation status EW) so while hope is faint, it is not yet lost.

I wish religious nuts and bigots would go extinct.

@9 I think you are right. Not to be grim, but all species face extinction sooner or later. Conditions ultimately change to those not supporting a species' survival. It's just a pity that humanity is causing those conditions for itself and so much of the planet.

http://www.rhinos-irf.org/captive/

Captive-breeding and germplasm-storage programs are useful stopgaps, but habitat protection and restoration are still essential. A species minus its natural habitat is arguably not a species anymore, as it is removed from the environmental influences that created it and would otherwise continue to shape it through evolution. In addition, too small an effective breeding population (living, breathing animals + repositories of genetic material [frozen sperm and embryos] which can be "rotated" into the population) leads to loss of genetic diversity with concomitant increases in congenital defects and disease susceptibility.

I dug a little deeper. It looks like it's just one of four subspecies of D. bicornis, the West African Black Rhinoceros, that seems to have taken the plunge into fossildom. There are about 3000 Black Rhinos left in the wild, with about 300 safely zooified.

The Javan Rhino? Apparently over and done.

If you're keeping score, that's:
homo sapiens: 7 billion
Javan rhino: 0

I happen to agree with Vince @2 and shaneleopard @7. I grieve for the natural world being destroyed by humanity, and I grieve for humanity.

It's all too easy to blame such developments on overpopulation.

It's all too easy to blame such developments on the fossil-fuel-intensive, massive-energy-footprint Western lifestyle.

It's all too easy to blame such developments on Asian nations' appetite for quack cures and exotic delicacies at the cost of the survival of endangered species.

But the painful truth is, it's really all of the above.

Well, it sucks and I don't want to diminish the loss, but when you step back and look at it, this is they had a good run considering that humans had already exterminated most of the world's coolest animals (wooly rhinos, giant ground sloths, 2-ton armadillos?!) before entering the bronze age. Just the latest victim in an incredibly long line.

As long as the Spearmint Rhino isn't extinct, I'll be okay.

I desperately hope that humans kill themselves off... I would pay big money to have humanity exterminate itself. Seriously. I want humans to die. I want humanity to die. forever. Please die, fuckers. please die (yes, including myself. If I was the last human alive, i'd gladly exterminate myself. Please just give me the chance.).

Not to get all "market based solutions" on y'all but can't we get some Viagra to our friends in Asia? The quackery would seem to disappear when offered up against a proven pharm. kinda like the Fakir and Shaman find their raison de être threatened with the advent of the microscope and germ theory.

@5: Your posts just get nuttier and nuttier. You know that rhinos are not at the top of the food chain, right?

@14, if that wasn't on purpose, that was a world-class typo.