![]() ![]() “We are not yet at a stage where we fully understand how synthetic horns might be perceived by consumers-i.e., whether they would be associated with being luxury goods in the same manner as real horns,” writes American University of Sharjah economist Adrian Lopes, who studies the rhino horn trade, in an email. No one has made perfect replicas of rhino horns, flooded the market, and watched what happened. The core of the problem is there’s no precedent. And if it's a status symbol, just don't.” If it's medicinal, you can use something else. “Every conservation organization working in Asia, both the international ones and the Asian organizations, are working on demand reduction, trying to educate people not to use rhino horn. “There is no place in either of those markets for some kind of artificial rhino horn,” says Jon Taylor, deputy director of Save the Rhino International. It is also popular in Vietnam, where people pursue it more as a status piece. In Chinese traditional medicine, it’s used as a fever remedy-not, as you may have heard, as an aphrodisiac. ![]() Rhino horn is sought after for one of two things. That would make poaching less lucrative, potentially helping to save the endangered species. “Economists would argue if there is a commodity that's very expensive, and if you can flood that market, you should bring the price down if the copies are good,” says University of Oxford biologist Fritz Vollrath, coauthor on the study. A recent paper in Scientific Reports describes the manufacture of imitation rhino horn from, of all things, horsehair, using a process that is both simpler and produces a more convincing knockoff than earlier attempts, according to the researchers involved. Some scientists have been trying to put this principle to work in the rhino horn trade, by producing a convincing synthetic alternative and one day unleashing it on the market. Prada doesn’t like knockoffs because they undercut both the bottom line as well as the purity of its brand. The economics of knockoffs is simple: The rich buy Prada bags, while the not so rich opt for fakes, which telegraph to the world they’re just as shallow as the rich, but on a budget.
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