Rhino

If certain animals posses a trait that decreases their chance of survival, then that the trait is less likely to be passed along to offspring. Such appears to be the case with rhinos hunted for their large horns, according to a recent analysis of photographs.

Do beards to protect our faces from punches? Does corruption in a given country correlate with how obese its politicians are? And why are scientists hanging rhinos off helicopters upside-down? These are a few of this year's Ig Nobel Prize winners.

It's important to track the whereabouts of endangered black rhinos, but doing so in the wilds of Namibia can be difficult – particularly if you don't want to tag the animals. That's where a new footprint identification system is made to come in.

We're used to thinking of fakes and forgeries with disdain, but a new innovation from the University of Oxford looks set to buck that trend: fake rhinoceros horn. Rhino populations have been devastated by poaching due to demand for their horn.

Scientists are trying to save the northern white rhino from extinction, using artificial insemination.

​​After almost a decade of careful safeguarding in a Kenyan conservancy, the last male northern white rhino on Earth has been euthanized following age-related complications. The death of "Sudan" leaves conservationists with advanced IVF treatments as the only hope of saving the subspecies.

Waste products seem to take on a special meaning in the animal kingdom. A new study has dug deeper into this phenomenon, examining rhino dung samples and finding that they serve as information centers to determine things like the sex, fertility, and territorial ambitious of the recently relieved. ​