Google has been accused of inadvertently promoting the slaughter of endangered whale and elephant species after environmentalists found tens of thousands of ads for ivory and other products on its Japanese shopping site. Non-profit campaigning group the Environmental Investigation Agency said that despite Google’s own “ …

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Wednesday 6th March 2013 09:09 GMT Winkypop

Scientific research?

So is this related to Japan's needless slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean?

Asshats!

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Wednesday 6th March 2013 11:43 GMT auburnman

Anti hunting hypothesis

What would happen if someone could flood the market with cheap imitation ivory? Would it be possible to devalue ivory to the point that it wouldn't be worth the hunter's time?

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1. Wednesday 6th March 2013 11:51 GMT mark l 2
  
  Re: Anti hunting hypothesis
  
  Yeah i was thinking of exactly the same about rhino horn since its essentially hair you could make a fortune from your local hair dressers waste cuttings if you matted it together into a horn shape and flogged it to the asian markets
  
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  1. Wednesday 6th March 2013 12:45 GMT Tom 35
    
    Re: Anti hunting hypothesis
    
    If it was that easy, someone (or lots of someones) in China would already be doing that.
    
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    1. Thursday 7th March 2013 01:37 GMT veti
      
      Re: Anti hunting hypothesis
      
      What makes you think they're not doing it?
      
      I remember having this argument years ago, about antique ivory. If the elephant was killed 100 years ago, surely it's not encouraging the hunting of animals now?
      
      But the trouble is, all it does is divide the market. If you invent near-perfect fake ivory, now there's an exclusive, expensive market for real ivory, and a lower-class, more mass market for the fake stuff, plus of course a fraudulent market for the fake being passed off as real ivory. And now you've created plausible deniability for the trader ("It's fake ivory, nothing wrong with that" when talking to the authorities, but the opposite story when talking to customers).
      
      But the rich customers will still want the real thing, and they'll go to great lengths to get it. Think the sort of people who buy 'wild salmon' or 'real caviar'. Some of them will be genuinely able to tell the difference. Others won't, but will still want the real thing to impress those who can.
      
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