{"id":297828,"date":"2026-02-18T18:59:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/297828\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:59:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:59:06","slug":"animal-behaviorists-help-save-endangered-rhino-with-unique-eyedrop-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/297828\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal behaviorists help save endangered rhino with unique eyedrop plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Corralling a wild rhinoceros into a small chute to give it eyedrops might seem like a crazy plan. But if it\u2019s crazy and it works, then it\u2019s not crazy.<\/p>\n

Animal behaviorists partnering with the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society<\/a> in Florida traveled to Africa in August to help an endangered white rhino with a life-threatening, parasitic eye infection.<\/p>\n

Daniel Terblanche, a security manager with Imvelo Safari Lodges<\/a>, said no one in Zimbabwe would have come up with the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve me, we didn\u2019t think of it; it was a completely ridiculous idea to us,\u201d Terblanche said. \u201cBut without trying all of the things that we could to rectify that situation, we would have been in trouble, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of Zimbabwe\u2019s Hwange National Park, the Community Rhino Conservation Initiative<\/a>, with support from Imvelo Safari Lodges, engages local communities to reintroduce southern white rhinos to communal lands for the first time in the nation\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Palm Beach Zoo CEO and President Margo McKnight was visiting the area last year when Imvelo Safari Lodges managing director Mark Butcher told her a health scare with a male rhino named Thuza could jeopardize the future of the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis rhino had bleeding eyes. He was rubbing his eyes,\u201d Butcher said. \u201cAnd I was looking at a potential where this guy was gonna lose his eyesight. And this is in a pilot project that\u2019s got fantastic vision for a future for conservation throughout Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thad and Angi Lacinak, founders of Precision Behavior<\/a>, traveled to Zimbabwe to work with the anti-poacher scouts. They developed a plan based on lessons learned at Palm Beach Zoo, where animals are taught to voluntarily participate in their own care.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this few animals in this location in Africa, it was essential that we save all of them,\u201d Angi Lacinak said. \u201cSo when they called and said, Thuza is going to lose his eye, a blind rhino is a dead rhino. So no matter what it took, we were going to go over there and try.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea was to coax Thuza into a tight space with his favorite foods and then to desensitize him to humans touching and squirting water on the face.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin about a week, we were actually putting the eye drops strategically in his eyes while he held for it,\u201d Lacinak said. \u201cAnd by the end of two weeks, we had transferred that skill set to not only Daniel, who was in charge of leading their guards, but to the guards.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conservation status of southern white rhinos is listed as near threatened, with about 16,000 animals living in the wild. Poaching and habitat loss remain significant sources of danger. So while Thuza and other rhinos continue to face challenges in the wild, at least the animal\u2019s eyes have been protected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re consistently getting the medications into his eyes every day,\u201d Lacinak said. \u201cAnd the rhinos are just thriving now and they feel really, really confident that this solved their problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Corralling a wild rhinoceros into a small chute to give it eyedrops…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1911,2594,2084,3667,150714,3946,242,32484,1210,122,163,85,46,150716,150715,853,11201,26319,141,20437,917,95733,39873],"class_list":{"0":"post-297828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-animals","10":"tag-climate","11":"tag-climate-and-environment","12":"tag-daniel-terblanche","13":"tag-endangered-species","14":"tag-environment","15":"tag-fl-state-wire","16":"tag-florida","17":"tag-general-news","18":"tag-health","19":"tag-il","20":"tag-israel","21":"tag-margo-mcknight","22":"tag-mark-butcher","23":"tag-national","24":"tag-oddities","25":"tag-rhinoceros","26":"tag-science","27":"tag-trending-news","28":"tag-u-s-news","29":"tag-year-in-review","30":"tag-zimbabwe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}