Ivory has many uses, none of which are essential to anyone; except perhaps the elephants. Carvings for ivory (scrimshaw) have been made for centuries, such as for jewelry. Adventurers sometimes make the handles of daggers and swords out of ivory or rhino horns, and poachers themselves have been known to make the butt of rifles and pistols out of ivory. A rhino's horn(s) seems to have fewer uses than an elephant's tusks, but the demand for rhino horns is high enough that white rhinos are basically extinct, and there are perhaps 3500 or less black rhinos left in the wild as of the early '90s. A rhino's horn could be used as a receptacle for gun powder, could perhaps be used as a canteen, among other uses, but the most common use is as a superstitious belief that the horn has 'aphrodisiac' qualities. Asia has the highest demand for rhino horns.
Orientals use powdered rhino horns as folk medicine and even as an aphrodisiac, and neither use is likely very effective. If U.S. residents and others refrain from buying ivory or any relics of rhino horns there might be much less of an incentive for poachers and other unscrupulous individuals to slaughter rare, threatened, or endangered species.
[The original version of this essay first appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early '90s and as part of my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays]
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