Behold This Bonkers Photo of a 2,800-Pound Rhino Dangling Upside Down From a Helicopter

Yahoo

06-04-2025

What you're seeing isn't Photoshop, or — heaven forbid — AI slop. That's a real rhino, weighing over 2,800 pounds and suspended from the bottom of a helicopter by its legs, upside down.
This isn't the giant herbivore's idea of thrill seeking. And it's okay to laugh. What you're seeing is called "translocation," and it's become a favored way of rescuing the critically endangered creatures from poachers, the BBC reports. That it looks like some hilarious circus act is just an added bonus.
It wouldn't be a stretch to call this a miracle in the animal conservation world. In the wilderness of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, where these black rhinos roam, transporting a creature that can weigh more than a ton overland isn't always practical. Roads don't reach everywhere, and the long, bumpy rides are far from comfortable for the rhino passengers.
But helicopter airlifts sidestep those problems. Using them has "revolutionized the world of rhino conservation," according to Ursina Rusch, population manager for the World Wildlife Foundation's South Africa Black Rhino Range Expansion Project.
The project shelters over 400 black rhinos across eighteen sites. For reference, black rhinos have a total population of just 6,500 globally, which is more than double what it was three decades ago, per the BBC.
"Really none of this would be possible without helicopters, both in terms of darting and transferring rhinos out of inaccessible areas," Rusch told the broadcaster
First, the rhino is immobilized with a tranquilizer dart. After microchipping the behemoth to track it, a ground team ties straps around each of its four ankles, which connect to a single rope dangling beneath a chopper, usually an Airbus AS350 Astar, or an old UH1-H Huey. Then the rhino's ready to fly, usually for a duration of ten to thirty minutes.
As precarious — and ridiculous — as it looks, the intervention is pretty safe. Conservationists have spent years experimenting with multiple methods, including using nets, but Rusch says that hanging the rhinos upside down has proven the most dependable.
One reason why is that the rhinos can still breathe properly in that position. Amazingly, with their horns acting as a "tail feather or wind vane," the rhinos are also surprisingly well-suited to being suspended in the air.
"The great thing about lifting the rhinos upside down by their feet is that they're aerodynamic themselves," Robin Radcliffe, associate professor of wildlife and conservation medicine at Cornell University, told the BBC.
Since it began, the WWF project has translocated 160 rhinos via airlift, per the BBC's reporting. And it's not just to save them from poachers, either. "If we don't translocate rhinos and create new populations, they will inbreed enough that they crash, or run out of resources and stop breeding," Rusch said.
We said this was a miracle in the world of conservation. From the perspective of a rhino, which is high on an opioid while this is all happening and isn't used to seeing the landscape rush by hundreds of feet below them, it's literal deus ex machina — a term that originates from ancient Greek theater, in which god was brought in, poetically, with a crane.
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