Posted on 01/23/2022 11:00:13 AM PST by nickcarraway
A rhino will be released back into the wild after heartbreaking images showed it with tears running down its face after poachers attacked.
Touching footage shows Seha, a 4,500-pound Southern White rhino, being trained one day before he gets his first taste of freedom in six years.
He will be transported from a paddock into the wild tomorrow.
The huge moment comes after his horn was brutally hacked off by poachers in South Africa.
They left the rhino for dead in 2016 as he ‘wasn’t worth a bullet to put down’.
But the alarm was raised when police stumbled across the animal two weeks later.
Seha was rescued by wildlife veterinarian Johan Marais, who founded Saving the Survivors which saves animals that have fallen victim to traumatic incidents.
After moving to the Marataba Game Reserve in South Africa, Seha underwent 30 operations and recovered with the aid of three organisations and hundreds of donors.
Celebrities including Ricky Gervais and Lorraine Kelly took to Twitter to share the picture of the crying rhino when it went viral late last year.
Sharing the story on Twitter, Ricky said: ‘Devastating. I go from wanting to cry, to wanting to f***ing batter the c**** who did this.’
The upsetting photo was taken by British director and photographer Simon Needham, 55.
‘When I heard about Saving the Survivors within the community and after hearing what they do I offered my time to photograph the rhino to help promote their need to raise money’, Simon said.
‘Poachers butchered the rhino’s horns and removed parts of the bone in his skull as well.
‘The owners of the game reserve left him for dead for two weeks as he wasn’t worth a bullet to put him down, not without his horns.
‘The police noticed him and called Saving the Survivors to help him.
‘Six years later, Seha is now finally ready to go back into the wild, due to the effort and diligence of Johan Marais.’
Looks like he has his horn back from the pictures. I wonder whether it grew back or was replaced with a prosthesis. I’m guessing the latter since the story says the poachers hacked away bone from the skull. Evil SOBs.
“Too bad they can’t dehorn these RINOs”
They don’t have any horns.
I could not find specifics of this case but rhinos can regrow their horns. The horn is made up of keratin, and are somewhat like fingernails.
Bravo!
“Politics aside, I love rhinos and they are going extinct because poachers kill them for their horns, which the bleeping Chinese use for some kind of ‘medicine’. “
Basically, it is either used as chinese viagra or chinese spanish fly
Wow. Hardly any of the horn left, just a few locks of hair.
Poachers need their sticky out appendages whacked off.
R1cky G3rvais does worse things to people. And he isn’t satisfied at hacking off a few horns.
#ComediansAreSadisticLosers
I have a proposal for ecological justice. Every time we find a rhino left with its horn wacked off we find an proportionate number of Chicoms, whack off an appendage and leave them to rot in the middle of a desert somewhere. Oh, and we will throw in some of our own RINOs for free.
Thanks China for another one of your STUPID evil tricks. Godless creeps.
Animal abuse sets me off. And bad enough abuse to make a Rhino cry?!? Animals handle pain much better than humans. A dog can have a busted leg and its idiot owner won’t know until someone else points it out. So it takes an awful lot of pain to make a friken Rhino cry.
I’d like a day alone with whoever did that.
Yes, an entire day.
“.Too bad they can’t dehorn these RINOs...”
True. But there really isn’t much there to “de-horn”.
One would need a magnifying glass, mini tweezers and a very small scalpel.
Or it could be a reaction like when your nose is sore it causes your eyes to water.
All because some idiots in Vietnam and China think it will cure hangovers or their limp d*cks.
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