APAn incredible vet in South Africa crafted a bandage made of elephant skin for a rhino after the animal was horribly mutilated by cruel poachers trying to hack off her horn.
The 12-year-old female rhino was shot by poachers in Pongola wildlife park in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province earlier this month.
One of her horns was hacked off after she collapsed and her five-year-old calf was killed and had its horns removed.
Wildlife surgeon Dr Johan Marais, of the University of Pretoria in South Africa, fashioned a bandage for the rhino using elephant skin from a taxidermist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsAu6JEU2j4
Dr Marais is experimenting with the elephant skin cover because plastic or fibreglass shields have proven too rigid to fit the contours of an injured rhino’s face.
Dr Marais, who also belongs to Saving the Survivors, a group that treats rhinos with poaching injuries, said:
We’re looking for a material that’s strong, lightweight but pliable.
The elephant skin bandage was secured this week and it’s predicted to last around four or five weeks.
