Circulating images claim to show an elephant and a rhino that have had a pink dye applied to their tusks/horns to waive off poachers.
It is true that there is an effort in South Africa that involves injecting pink dye into rhino horns to ward off poachers, but the images spreading across the Internet do not illustrate that effort, rather they have been digitally altered on a computer.
The fake images spreading across the Internet.
You can read more about the effort – taking place in Sabi Sand in Kruger National Park – through this link, and it appears that this is the website that the image of the rhino with a pink horn originated from.
On that website – takepart.com – is does note in a disclaimer that the image has been altered, but the image has since been separated from that disclaimer and circulated through social media, leading many to believe it is a genuine illustration of the pink dye at work when that is not the case.
In fact the dye is designed to affect – mostly – the inside of the horn, not the exterior, so results will not look as pronounced as they do on the circulating images.
