Video Help Save Endangered Rhinos by Making Artificial Horns (Video) 202
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Black Rhinoceros horn material sells for $65,000 per kilo. The rhinos are rare, which helps up the price, but the horn is also prized "as a fever-reducer, a cosmetic, an aphrodisiac, a hangover care. And so people highly value it in the Vietnamese and Chinese cultures. So we are trying to reduce that value by increasing the supply," says Jennifer Kaehms of Pembient, a company that's working to make artificial rhino horns that are not only chemically indistinguishable from the natural variety, but are 3-D printed to look the same. The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching -- which is a big deal because there are only about 5,000 black rhinos left in the whole world.
They have a crowdfunding appeal on experiment.com looking for help in sequencing the black rhino genome. At this writing, it has two days to run and has only raised $12,831 of its $16,500 goal. The results will be open sourced, and once the black rhino is on its way to salvation, they plan to work on the white rhino, then move on to killing the black market for ivory and tiger pelts, which don't sell for as much as rhino horns but are valuable enough to keep an international horde of poachers in business.
They have a crowdfunding appeal on experiment.com looking for help in sequencing the black rhino genome. At this writing, it has two days to run and has only raised $12,831 of its $16,500 goal. The results will be open sourced, and once the black rhino is on its way to salvation, they plan to work on the white rhino, then move on to killing the black market for ivory and tiger pelts, which don't sell for as much as rhino horns but are valuable enough to keep an international horde of poachers in business.
Sounds like they don't get it at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds like they don't get it at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why they're not selling it as a rhino horn alternative. They appear to be going out of their way to make people believe it IS rhino horn, so all the mystical BS that people attach to it isn't removed from the equation.
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But if they can flood the markets with indistinguishable counterfeits, that should drop the price enough that actually going to Africa to shoot rhinos and smuggling the horns back is no longer a profitable exercise.
Re:Sounds like they don't get it at all (Score:4, Insightful)
And if the people selling the Rhino horns think they can fake them and still sell them then they obviously will - far more profit.
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Doesn't really matter, if they can sell the fake one as real it still means one less dead Rhino.
Yes, a fool will be out of money. But then again, whether he wastes it on Rhino horn, healing crystals, televangelists or bach flowers, it's just that some other quack doesn't get the money, it's not like he would have saved it.
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Yes, a fool will be out of money. But then again, whether he wastes it on Rhino horn, healing crystals, televangelists or bach flowers
Or stock (in Chinese companies) that he's not allowed to sell... :p
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Swindling fools out of money is a totally wholesome capitalist way of making money, what's your problem?
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Eh? This seems like a great way to save rhinos, no rhino has to die or have it's horn cut off.
Honestly I don't understand, why?
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The object of this exercise is to wreck "trust" at each stage of the pipeline, to the po
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The same goes for drug dealers in the US. Local drug dealers earn money that's stratospheric by local standards which is very profitable until you get caught.
What will happen is this will simply create a submarket for 'real' horn poachers that establish their 'confirmed kill', perhaps via video. Horns will still be harvested (until they run out of rhino's) but it will be harder to catch the real with all the fakes around and everyone will be claiming theirs is fake to get away from prosecution.
It's going to
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What will happen is this will simply create a submarket for 'real' horn poachers that establish their 'confirmed kill', perhaps via video.
I don't think you thought that through, then again maybe you believe everything you see on Youtube and television. Even if the latter is true it doesn't mean that those who can pay for independent DNA testing of a product purportedly Black Rhino horn are going to require the same (low) level of evidence required to believe an old video is fact (some correlation with the ability to pay perhaps?). Maybe someone will fake a video and sell it over and over again.
How the hell do you prove the video is real and t
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It doesn't need to be chemically identical. In fact it would be better if it wasn't. Sell a mixture of baby powder, wheat germ, ground up horse hooves and add some Viagra, a little vitamin B and maybe an anti-depressant and suddenly the "fake" is more effective than the "real".
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There's already fake rhino horn powder like that, the people who pay the big money test the product to ensure they're actually buying rhino horn. By being indistinguishable they flood the top end market with fakes and the price drops because no one can tell when they're getting a fake and when they're getting the real thing.
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Also add in some powdered amanita phalloides. Just for flavor. Superstitious people striving for special animal rarities deserve a treat.
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Superstition (and to an extent, religion, but that's a lot more complicated) is just obsessive-compulsive disorder by another name. Replacement therapy is one possible treatment of the most destructive aspects of OCD. If they can replace the obsession, maybe they can deal with one of the worst symptoms (poaching, in this case).
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And that's just one of the issues.
The bigger issue is going to be: how are they going to inject it into the existing market, and be able to pass it off as the real thing? There are only a couple thousand black rhinos left, so there can't be more than a couple hundred genuine horns in the market per year. Now these guys want to try and flood that market with thousands of horns, and think they can make the buyers believe they can supply thousands of horns? Good luck with that!
This is an illegal market so the
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If something has not even the potential to have some effect, it is not possible for it to have it. Anything claimed beyond it IS mystical. By definition.
When I faith heal you, the effect is mystical. There is no system available that could detect or measure the effect. I'd deem it impossible that there is one, but all I can say so far with certainty is that there is no effect that we could possibly measure.
Same for rhino horn. It's essentially solidified hair. That has by itself no measurable, tangible medi
Re: Sounds like they don't get it at all (Score:2)
I had to stop chewing my finger nails because it kept giving me an erection, you insensitive clod.
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1) I am married to a Chinese so i am familiar with a lot of this stuff (based on your english, i am going to guess you are Chinese as well).
And you insult his English?
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If I can't see or observe the effect, why is it worth spending a lot of money on in the first place?
Because value is made of the same pixie dust as magical cures?
Cheap Knockoffs (Score:3)
Won't flooding the market with cheap knockoff's only increase the value and desirability of the real deal?
Re:Cheap Knockoffs (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is that no one will be able to tell which is which. It's the same idea as destabilizing an economy by flooding the market with high-quality counterfeit bills.
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The point is that no one will be able to tell which is which. It's the same idea as destabilizing an economy by flooding the market with high-quality counterfeit bills.
Sure, but if they flood the market and the horns become more popular and more available (even if they are fake), it's not going to drop the price to zero, it will just increase overall demand. I suspect that even if the price dropped precipitously from $65K/kg to $1K/kg, there would still be people willing to kill rhinos for the real thing.
Maybe they'd be better off tranquilizing the real rhinos, removing their horns, and replacing them with 3d printed fakes (that are a different color or have some other ch
Re:Cheap Knockoffs (Score:4, Insightful)
There have been efforts to cut off the horns in the past (no need to replace them with a fake, 3D printed or otherwise because it's mostly for display). The problem is that poachers don't shoot rhinos that are running around loose; they use snares or traps that kill indiscriminately, whether the horn has already been removed or not.
The best solution is to cut the market price. By flooding the market with knock-offs the price will drop enough that it won't be worth the effort and risk to kill a rhino for its horn. And maybe (maybe) idiots will stop buying it because they know that what they're buying is almost certainly fake. A poacher in Africa would know he has the real thing, but by the time it gets to Asia everyone will claim to be selling the real thing, even though most will be fake.
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The rumor I heard is that the horns contain not only keratin [wikipedia.org], but also some deposits of testosterone (and probably other minerals and body chemicals). I say rumor as I have no way of verifying this. However, deer antler velvet (if you want to google it) seems to be a popular fad amongst some bodybuilders and other athletes, as well as in traditional Chinese medicine.
My point: There MAY in fact be some truth to the medicinal effects attributed to rhino horn due to well-known biochemistry - it is just not kn
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I'd predict that poachers will be among those that buy the fakes by the truckload to pass it on as the real deal. If you need a video proof, they'll fake that.
Seriously, if you have the choice to engage in a highly illegal and dangerous activity to get one horn or engage in heavy photoshopping and swindle the fool who is idiot enough to buy into the whole "mystical horn" bull and sell a few thousands of those horns, and most likely for the same price (because if you drop the price, the buyer would be suspic
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Once the market is flooded, a warranted non counterfeit horn will have a price high enough to keep the business alive. And the magic hand of free market will keep shooting rhinos to feed the Chinese market.
Got a better idea (Score:3, Funny)
How about teaching backwoods-asshole Chinese and Vietnamese that not every rare animal part will make their dick harder or bigger?
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How about teaching backwoods-asshole Chinese and Vietnamese that not every rare animal part will make their dick harder or bigger?
That would be easier than teaching whitetrash-asshole in America that climate change is real?
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Good thing that only China/Asia is being affected!
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How about teaching backwoods-asshole Chinese and Vietnamese that not every rare animal part will make their dick harder or bigger?
I think they're trying to make themselves hornier.
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Well, given the success in teaching Americans that guns don't make their dick harder or bigger, how well do you think this would work?
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Hmm... can I opt to teach the Chinese? It sounds heaps easier.
Poisoned Rhino Horn (Score:1)
Wouldn't that be the easy solution to the buyers of poached horn?
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You are aware that your salad is technically still alive when you eat it? We at least are decent enough to kill our food before we eat it.
Re: Poisoned Rhino Horn (Score:2)
Why would I eat salad? It's what my food eats.
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So you're some kind of "second hand vegetarian"?
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I prefer the term level 5 anti-vegan - I only eat food that casts a shadow.
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Interestingly enough, when my sister was in South America, she saw plenty of places where the "vegetarian" option contained chicken. Apparently "sin carne" meant no red meat. Vegetarianism by choice was pretty rare, which supports my theory that you find vegetarians where it's either mandated by religion, or where people are affluent enough to chose not to eat meat.
Lrrr (Score:2)
Prepare to harvest the lower horn!
At 65k per kilo (Score:4, Insightful)
It should self fund.
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And if they plan on selling thousands, backers should get shares in the company.
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Or use the money they get to dump even more of the things on the market until the entire market collapses. You wouldn't want this thing to be for-profit, as this would encourage them to not kill the market and keep the rhino horn black market going.
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So keep it going?
It's unlikely that they will bring the price down. As soon as word gets out that "fake" horn exists, people will deliberately go out of their way to buy the expensive stuff, thinking that the cheap one is almost certainly fake (because who can sell the real deal for that price?). So to have an impact, they'd have to start selling at the same price as the poachers.
Over time the price might fall a little, but I doubt it will drop considerably. What they can achieve, though, is that despite th
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The difference is the reason why we buy diamonds. Well, aside of the crystal faith healing crowd. They do it for the same reason the horn users buy it: The "mystical" property. And you may rest assured that those that profit from hunting will drum up a huge campaign that only the real stuff has those mystical properties.
I for sure done't care whether I use natural or synthetic diamonds, as their physical properties are essentially the same. But of course I also don't care about the all-important Cs (cut, cl
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And why would anyone bother selling real Rhino horn when they could just print one cheap and sell that instead.
Privatize them (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1900 there were less than 20 white rhinos left due to poaching for their horns. In 2010 there were 20,000. This success was accomplished by privatizing the white rhinos [perc.org].
Today, the black rhinos face the exact same threat, and we don't know what to do?!? Is this a racist thing (lol) ?
In case you are wondering why this worked: If I own the last 20 white rhinos, they are worth a fortune. I have a tremendous economic incentive to protect them from poaching and reproduce them. Eventually as their population grows, I might be able to sell some for profit and the new owners would also have the incentive to protect and reproduce theirs. As supply grows, the value of an individual rhino drops and eventually it might be economical to sell them to hunters. If there are too many rhinos the free market would hunt them, and if there are too few the free market would protect them, keeping a stable and sustainable population. This is why any animal we can own (chickens, pigs, cows, horses, dogs, etc...) are not in any danger of extinction.
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<protest>Black horns matter!</protest>
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But what is your economic incentive to grow the population if you have the last 20? Wouldn't you maximize their value by keeping their numbers down?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the curative effects of rhino horn are purely fictional (thought I suspect a rhino horn might give you an erection if you stick
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Wouldn't you maximize their value by keeping their numbers down?
Yes, but why would the owner of a herd of rhinos want to maximize the value of an individual rhino?
Think.
Do you think that farmers try to maximize the value of an individual ear of corn?
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We're talking magic here. When you're selling magical properties, rarity is a selling point. If everyone on my block can now get the magic rhino horn, it's worth less to me (assuming I believe in rhino horn's magical effectiveness in treating erectile dysfunction).
Ears of corn don't have magical properties. They have an actual
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Businesses try to maximize total profit you ignorant donkey.
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You're right. That's why things like "Limited Edition" don't exist. Why there's no such thing as "supply/demand" curves.
I guess I'll leave the rhino horn business to successful entrepreneurs like you.
White Rhino saved by state-run national reserve. (Score:5, Interesting)
Privatization? WTF are you talking about?
The white Rhino was saved by the establishment of the Hluhluwe–iMfolozi Park [wikipedia.org]. The last 20 Rhinos were not privately owned, but protected by the state.
Had they been privately owned, they would almost certainly now be extinct. The idea that private enterprise would conserve and endangered animal for some far off future benefit when it is generally incapable of seeing past the next quarter is not just stupid, but dangerous.
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That would certainly explain the extinction of chickens, cows, and pigs.
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The U.S. military slaughtered bison [wikipedia.org] to control native populations. Small herds were kept and bred by private ranchers [wikipedia.org] to save the species from extinction.
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I think they are talking about the results of that group. They sent off the white rhinos into other areas and established a breeding program (as far as I recall). Some of that was done in private parks which operated for profit. I think that may be where they are getting this "information."
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The privatization of the herds has been well documented and is a very interesting success story. I've seen at least 2 documentaries on it.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... [smithsonianmag.com]
Basically, if you're a big game hunter, there's not much left to hunt. So people raise the Rhinos on farms and then sell them for hunting or whatever... They sell for tens of thousands of dollars, far more than their horns are worth, so you can rest assured the farmers protect them ferociously.
The problem with this approach is that a lot o
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I dunno. Maybe economists in the 1900s were smarter than today, but today I'd fully expect a manager to slaughter them all to make his quarter report look great, cash in his bonus and bail.
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If I own the last 20 white rhinos, they are worth a fortune. I have a tremendous economic incentive to protect them from poaching and reproduce them. Eventually as their population grows, I might be able to sell some for profit and the new owners would also have the incentive to protect and reproduce theirs. As supply grows, the value of an individual rhino drops and eventually it might be economical to sell them to hunters. If there are too many rhinos the free market would hunt them, and if there are too few the free market would protect them, keeping a stable and sustainable population. This is why any animal we can own (chickens, pigs, cows, horses, dogs, etc...) are not in any danger of extinction.
Rhinos only have economic value, as described, if you can sell them (to hunters, traditional chinese medicinemen, Kenya Fried Rhino restaurants, whatever). Having people look at them only brings in so much and wildlife tourism establishments seem perpetually low on funds.
Stupid (Score:2)
1. So far as I understand the horns are being ground down mostly for chinese penis pills or something. So... printing the horns is pointless.
2.Even if the horns are ornamental, the real deal will fetch a higher price.
3. Clearly there are already established manufactuering methods for making horns that are cheaper and give a better finished product using less expensive manufacturing equipment.
4. The actual way you protect the Rhinos is by giving the people in the area OWNERSHIP of the Rhinos. This has been d
read the SUMMARY you idiot (Score:2)
"...chemically indistinguishable from the natural variety, but are 3-D printed to look the same. The idea is that if they can flood the market with human-made rhino horns, it will cut poaching"
how exactly are the buyers going to know whether it's genuine horn or counterfeit? the point is to lie and sell these as real, thus dropping the price considerably.
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Good luck with that. If you really think they can't tell then I've got a bridge to sell you.
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can a highly advanced, well funded laboratory tell the difference? probably.
can the seedy vendors and back alley thugs that sell this stuff? or the superstitious clients buying it? seems less likely.
in fact, why would the sellers even care? as long as the buyers can't tell the difference, the sellers will happily sell fake stuff, even knowingly.
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you think you're going to 3d print the bone, dried flesh, and dried blood?
Okay. good luck with that.
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1. So far as I understand the horns are being ground down mostly for chinese penis pills or something. So... printing the horns is pointless.
2.Even if the horns are ornamental, the real deal will fetch a higher price.
3. Clearly there are already established manufactuering methods for making horns that are cheaper and give a better finished product using less expensive manufacturing equipment.
4. The actual way you protect the Rhinos is by giving the people in the area OWNERSHIP of the Rhinos. This has been done in a few other places and the poaching stops if the local people literally own the animal. They don't put it in a cage or something. But it is on their land and they understand that they own it. And in addition to that they are owed a share of any safari money or whatever comes from tourism or scientific whatever in the area. You enter my zone... I have responsibility for X animals there are Y total animals... X is some ratio of Y... when you come to the area for a safari I get a proportional share of that money. Then you have people come out and audit how many of the animals are still alive and on the property. The locals are thus rewarded proportionately for how many of these animals live in their area. This has been done in a few places and it always works. The local governments don't like to do this because they want the money. But then they spend a lot of it on anti poaching police that don't actually work because the locals live with these animals and if they want money they just either go out themselves and kill the animal or get paid to turn a blind eye by some poachers. If the locals are getting paid to keep the animals alive the poaching stops.
This is a dumb project for clueless 1st world idiots that makes them think they're accomplishing something by playing with their toys.
I'd be sorry for being harsh if I weren't even more disgusted at the fucking stupidity.
Come kids... we didn't build these big rich ass countries by being morons. Be practical or we're going to lose it all.
Whoosh! If it's hard to distinguish fake horns from real ones, then people will be motivated to pass off the fake ones as real. Making them look like horns ensures they are inserted into the bottom of the supply chain. This will hopefully flood the market and shake consumer confidence, both of which will drive the price down. Yes, people will be willing to pay more for "real" horn, fortunately a lot of people will be willing to lie and say that fake horns are real, or that they are selling "real" powder
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How long do you think it will take before the buyers start insisting that something extra be attached to the horn?... like part of the skull? Maybe a little dried flesh and some blood?
In a market floodeded with fakes, the poachers will have an incentive to demonstrate they have the real thing.
I am pulling fool proof ways to show you have a REAL horn out of my ass. Your master plan is not as clever as you think it is.
Can do nothing but up demand for real rhino (Score:2)
Either:
1) The artificial rhino horn has no more real benefit than the real one: Ignorant chinese masses will never question their long held beliefs so will just conclude the artificial horn doesn't work as well as the real one so demand for real rhino horn (and poaching) increases.
or...
they make an artificial rhino horn that has more (i.e. actually has some) benefit than the real one because they also included actual drugs in the mix. Ignorant chinese masses have their dumb belief that rhino horn actually
#BlackRhinoLivesMatter (Score:2)
I have a better idea: just kickstart generic sildenafil production in some country that doesn't observe American patents. Pfizer's patent on the magic substance would have normally expired in April, 2012, but keeps getting extended due to the usual cronyist skulduggery. It would serve them right, and save the rhino, if some Asian Walter White would start manufacturing it for global consumption.
Back in the 80ies they were trying a better thing (Score:2)
Back in the 80ies they were trying a better thing: Tranquilizing Rinos and replacing their horns with artificial ones made of red plastic. The Rinos don't care - they're colorblind and probably like a new horn thats bigger and sturdier than the original. But the poachers won't kill a rino for plastic. Neat idea - why didn't that pan out .- apparently?
Re: Back in the 80ies they were trying a better th (Score:2)
Apparently the poachers don't really hunt the rhinos - they just set snares and indiscriminately catch/kill them. So it may not be as effective as initially thought.
I wonder how DeBeers feels about this (Score:2)
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Why hasn't anybody started breeding rhinos? (Score:3)
What I don't get is this: If Rhino Horn powder is such a big deal with so many idiots - why hasn't anybody started breeding them? Sounds like a license to print money to me. Clearly some african nation must've thought of that, no? ... And you can take a Rhinos horn *without* killing it.
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1. It's illegal to keep a endangered animal captive.
2. They don't breed well in captivity.
3. Keeping them alive costs a fortune.
4. Selling their horns is, again, illegal.
5. They don't want to create a market for the thing they don't want people to use.
6. If selling farmed horn is legal, distinguishing between it, and illegal horn, would be impossible.
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just stop poaching (Score:2)
Rhino horn is expensive because so many people are superstitious. End the market by setting the death penalty on buying rhino horn. Then you con't have to make artificial rhino horn.
Legalized Scammer? (Score:2)
So they would be allowed to fraud people with impunity? Their cause is good... but allowing them to commit a crime because they are the "good" criminals?
Yes! This! (Score:2)
I've been wondering why someone hasn't done this yet. They are 95% the way there... the only part they are missing is LYING. Tell them it's REAL black Rhino horn. Flood the market with FAKE horn and call it real. Bring the price down to pennies... i.e. killing a Rhino would not make you more than the price of the bullet. Then the poaching will stop.
Informing the public *might* actually help (Score:2)
Anecdotal evidence, I know, but I've heard from a friends who has been living in mainland China for a few years now. This topic on rhino horns has apparently come up a few times.
This is one of those cases where having a public awareness campaign in China might actually help.
The issue: Lots of chinese believe that getting a rhino horn doesn't involve killing the rhino. They believe you can just pick them up from the ground - that they work like elk/deer/moose horns that drops away from the head every now and
Or crowd-source yartsa gunbu culturing (Score:2)
It may have real effects - and it retails for about the same price. Ophiocordyceps sinensis [wikipedia.org]
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No no no. Poachers do it for the money, not for the difficulty and risk. Make fakes good enough and no need to go shooting. (If you could print perfect money - why work.)
It is about time. The chinese fakes all sorts of things and try to sell to us. (Famous brands and fake drugs) Why not fake the stuff superstitious chinese wants? Powdered rhino horn is also popular - the powder would be even easier to fake. No structure there.
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Re: Sounds like the perfect cover... (Score:3)
Have you been on eBay recently?
chemistry vs genetics (Score:5, Informative)
They want to make rhino horn so they are sequencing the genes? These two ideas have almost nothing to do with each other. If they were raising funds for chemical analysis of horn material or for purchasing 3D printers, it might make sense. They are unlikely to get much helpful information from a genetic analysis that will help with making fake horns. Seems like the person who posted this story was not paying attention.
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The summary is pretty misleading.
The crowdfunding project to sequence the black rhino genome is not a prerequisite to their goal of making rhino horns, no. If you click through, it appears to just research that they hope will lead to better understanding of black rhino subspecies:
Sequencing the black rhino genome is just the first step. The data from this project will be used to create a biobank of genomic data for the remaining 8 subspecies of black rhino. Three are already extinct. We intend to use this project as a catalyst to sequence all subspecies of black rhino and understand the genetic divergence within and between rhino species.
This will be a foundation that future researcher can utilize and could possibly help bring the three currently extinct black rhinoceros subspecies back into existence
Whether that last goal is at all realistic... that depends largely on whether they have DNA from the extinct rhinos on hand.
Re:chemistry vs genetics (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see it in this article, but I saw another article about the same topic a while ago.
The genetic sequencing is necessary so that they can create artificial DNA sequences to include in the fake horns. Otherwise you could easily detect the fake horns by doing a DNA test on a sample. The point is to make it as hard as possible to distinguish the real from the counterfeit.
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Or maybe the uncertainty will be like throwing sand into the engine oil (car analogy)?
I am all in favor of trying different things to disrupt the assholes on both the supply and particularly the demand side. All the effort and cost to make it biologically accurate is probably wasted. Put "some" counterfeit material into the pipeline and make sure it is discussed.
To be more nasty, just grind up cattle hooves and season liberally with castor bean.
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I'd mix other stuff into it too. But my lawyer said that would still be considered murder.
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Consider the horn's magical qualities are all bullshit, the people buying horns will be convinced that lab grown horn is not magical like the real thing. All sold horns will now have video evidence of the rhino being killed and the video will show markings on the horns to prove it's that horn.
Yeah that would work. "See in the video where we paint the number on the horn - that proves this horn is real, now give me $100000".
I can see that working with the sort of people that have that kind of money to throw around. Though there may be one or maybe two corner cases where those sort of people might not run to lawyers if they think they got ripped off. Keeping customers happy might be tricky when you peddle high-priced woo.
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The man who buys the meat is brother to the butcher.
If you aren't at least willing to do it yourself, and simultaneously complain about conditions and cruelty while eating McNuggets, then you're a hypocrite. Vote with your actions and stand by your principles, assuming you have any.
Me? I eat meat. I don't hunt (no need to) or slaughter animals, myself, but I understand the process required to bring food to me. Were I suddenly required to do it myself, I would do it myself, not stop eating meat.
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Does the probability of an event happening change the ethical considerations?
For example, if you were to calculate your odds of being caught and severely punished embezzling from a business and found them to be extremely low, would it suddenly become ethical to embezzle?
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No, that one was the original. This one is a 1D copy of it.
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Video? Where? I only see a huge gray field where informative text should be.
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Well, twinkies and soda actually do have an effect. They're tasty.
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Nature has nothing to do with it. What they would be failing to adapt to in this case is human beings hunting them to extinction.