Chinese celebrities chew their nails for campaign against rhino horn trade
With rampant poaching threatening survival of the rhinoceros, Chinese media stars have joined campaign in which they bite their fingernails to show users of rhino horn it has no medicinal powers
Chinese celebrities are speaking out against the sale of rhino horn in a campaign by conservation charities.
Film stars Maggie Q, Li Bingbing, and Chen Kun and fashion photographer Chen Man are seen gnawing on their fingernails in the ad campaign, launched in Chinese and English by WildAid and the African Wildlife Foundation. Rhino horn – used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat ailments from fevers to convulsions and epilepsy – is mostly keratin, a protein also found in human nails and hair. Campaigners against the trade in rhino horn say it has no medicinal properties.
WATCH Nail Biters campaign video
Businessman Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, is also part of the campaign.
“Keratin. That’s all it is. No different or more a medical remedy than your fingernails,” Branson, a WildAid ambassador, says of rhino horn. “So with a dwindling rhino population, why kill off one of our planet’s greatest species for no reason?”