Questions about an episode of MacGuyver

[WyreWizard]

15 years ago,(give or take a year or two) I saw an episode of MacGuyver where he was in Africa helping to stop poachers.  The beginning of the episode gave a warning that said a scene would show an injured animal.  The animal and the injury were simulated.  I saw that scene just 25 mins it, it was a Rhinoceros with its horn cut off.  The animal was in pain to it had to be put down.

about 5 years later, I saw a documentary on Animal Planet where they were making animals undesirable to poachers.  They tranquilized a black rhino and cut its horn off with a chainsaw.  When the rhino awoke, it wasn't in any pain.  It looked more annoyed.  The narrator said that rhino horns were made of keratin, the stuff that makes your fingernails, not bone.

My main question is why did the writers of that episode of MacGuyver lie like that?  Or were they speculating?

Second, if cutting the horn off a rhino doesn't really injure them, why is poaching them a problem?  Do the poachers kill the rhinos to obtain their horns?

I know rhinos are rather violent animals.  They will charge at anything that enters their limited field of view.   

[Flick James]

You pretty much answered your own question. Poachers are killing the animals.

[3mnkids]

You pretty much answered your own question. Poachers are killing the animals.

Right. Its not like they are shooting the animals with a tranquilizer and then oh so gently cutting off the horn. They don't care about these animals so they just kill them in order to get what they want. Poachers suck but the people who buy what they sell are even worse.

[WyreWizard]

Ok. but you didn't answer my main question.  Why did the writers of that episode of MacGuyver misconstrue the facts and make it look like rhino horns were made of bone?  Or were they just speculating?

[3mnkids]

Maybe they didn't do their research, maybe they thought no one would question it, maybe they figured it made for better tv... who knows.

[dean]

Ah in the 80s there was no such thing as facts, that's what the internet invented...

[AndyC]

Ok. but you didn't answer my main question.  Why did the writers of that episode of MacGuyver misconstrue the facts and make it look like rhino horns were made of bone?  Or were they just speculating?

They probably thought nobody gives a s**t. And I think they got that spot-on.