Tranquillizer gun

A tranquillizer gun (also spelled tranquilizer gun or tranquilliser gun), capture gun, or dart gun, is a non-lethal gun used for capture via a special chemical. Tranquillizer guns shoot darts filled with tranquillizer that, when injected, temporarily sedates an animal, so that it may be handled (or captured) safely. The tranquillizer can be a sedative, anaesthetic, or paralytic agent. Tranquillizer guns have a long history of use for capturing wildlife without injury. Tranquillizer darts can also be fired by crossbow or breath-powered blowgun.

While for thousands of years various tribal peoples have used poisoned arrows, (for example tipped with Curare), to incapacitate animals before killing them, the modern tranquillizer gun was invented only in the 1950s by New Zealander Colin Murdoch. While working with colleagues who were studying introduced wild goat and deer populations in New Zealand, Murdoch had the idea that the animals would be much easier to catch, examine, and release if a dose of tranquillizer could be administered by projection from afar. Murdoch went on to develop a range of rifles, darts, and pistols that have had an enormous impact on the treatment and study of animals around the world.

The first remote drug delivery system was actually invented by scientists at the University of Georgia in the 1950s, and was the direct predecessor to the Cap-Chur equipment used worldwide for decades.

In Kenya in the early 1960s, a team headed by Dr. Tony Pooley and Dr. Toni Harthoorn discovered that various species, despite being of roughly equal size (for example, the rhinoceros and the buffalo), needed very different doses and spectra of drugs to safely immobilize them.

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