White rhinos in South Africa. Photo © Michael Jansen / Flickr via Cool Green Science

From our counterparts at TNC’s blog Cool Green Science comes a second post on the wacky strategies sometimes implemented to save endangered wildlife species. Poisoning rhino horns so people can’t use them for so-called medicine, treating bats for fungus with banana bacteria, killing invasive snakes with acetominophen-filled dead mice thrown from helicopters, the list goes on. Justine Hausheer writes:

Consumers of illegal rhino horn products might be in for a bit of a nasty gastrointestinal shock. In an effort to protect their population of rhinos from poachers, the South Africa’s Sabi Sand Game Reserve is injecting parasiticides and pink dye into their rhinos’ horns. The chemical cocktail isn’t lethal (to humans or the rhinos) but it will send anyone that ingests powdered horn racing for the nearest restroom. Reserve staff have already treated more than 100 rhinos and put up sign warning poachers of the treatment.

Using Bananas’ Bacteria to Save Bats

The cure for a devastating wildlife disease might be sitting in your kitchen fruit basket.

It all started when researchers at Georgia State University accidentally discovered that a bacterium on bananas inhibits the growth of fungus. That’s good news for North American bats, which are currently battling an epidemic fungus called white-nose syndrome that has already killed an estimated 5.7 million bats in just a few years.

Bat Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and the U.S. Forest Service teamed up with the researchers to turn this bacterium into a treatment for white-nose syndrome. For more, check out our story on how the first 75 successfully treated bats were released last year.

Tricking Flamingos With Their Own Reflection

Zookeepers in England were having trouble getting a pair of Lesser Flamingos to breed successfully in captivity. The pair would lay eggs, but their parenting skills were rather atrocious — they’d smash the eggs and kick them out of the nest. Lesser Flamingos usually breed in flocks of tens of thousands of birds, but the zoo had only 34 pairs. Suspecting that the old saying “It takes a village” might be true, zookeepers gathered 50 spare mirrors and set them up in the bird’s enclose to give the illusion of a flock. Other captive breeding programs use similar techniques, including keeping injured birds company while they recover.

Read more examples of weird conservation here.