

If underdosed, the animal may not fall asleep at all. During that time, the animal may actually try to attack the person who shot it with the tranq dart.
#Tranquilizer dart full
It may take several minutes for the drug to take full effect. When darted, an animal does not just fall asleep instantly. Keep in mind that in real life tranquilizer darts work differently than they do in the movies. For example, if the needle of the dart penetrates the chest cavity in the right way, it could cause the animal's lung to deflate over a period of hours, even though the animal might seem pretty much ok at first.

The tranq dart actually killed the rhino, not because of the effects of the tranquilizer drug, but simply because the needle of the dart hit a major blood vessel and the rhino bled out.Įven if a wild animal were to be released after being darted and showed no apparent ill effects at the time of release, internal injuries caused by the dart could cause the animal to suffer and even die. Back in the '80s I remember reading an article about wildlife researchers trying to dart a very rare rhino in the wild with a tranq dart. The heavy weight of the dart increases its potential to cause injury, such as bruising, hematoma, or even broken bones.Īnother way that tranq darts can cause unintended injury is if the needle penetrates a major blood vessel. Tranq darts usually have to be rather heavy in order to hold enough liquid to be effective. The hydraulic force can actually cause severe tissue trauma.Īnther way in which tranq darts can cause unintended injury is the simple blunt force of the dart body impacting an animal if the needle penetrates the flesh "all the way to the hilt". Leave the use of tranq darts to trained professionals!Īnother way in which the darts can cause unintended injury is the force of the liquid being rapidly injected into the animal. Guessing the weight wrong can result in an overdose and have harmful or even fatal consequences. But keep in mind that even selecting the proper amount of a tranquilizer drug is based on an estimate of an animal's weight. Here at the forum we don't discuss poisons or drugs in any detail. One way in which tranq darts can cause unintended injury is if the type and amount of the tranquilizer drug is not properly selected.
#Tranquilizer dart how to
A user needs to trained not just in how to properly used the tranquilizer dart, but also in how to recognize if a dart has caused unintended injuries that could spiral out of control, and how to treat such injuries. It is easy to cause unintended injury or even death when using the darts. Tranquilizer darts are best left to use by trained professionals. The man was mentally deranged at the time and had gone into the enclosure to talk to the lions.

Tranquilizer darts are used in blowguns by veterinarians, wildlife researchers, and animal control officers.īack in 2004, workers in a Taiwan zoo used blowguns to deliver tranquilizer darts to lions so that they could rescue a man from the lions' enclosure.
