How the Elephant Lost its Tusks

Last night as Scarlet Panda, Anti-blog, Leo, and I headed to the Brovis’ house the conversation naturally turned to elephants. I mentioned that I’d seen a discovery show about these massive creatures and the phenomenon sweeping the African Savannah. "Elephants are now being born w/o tusks", I said, "as an evolutionary survival tool against poaching." Anti-blog had seen this too, but neither of us could remember the specifics, and all our interests were peaked.

There are currently three recognized species of elephants, the Asian, Savannah and Forest Elephants (these latter two are collectively known as African Elephants and will be referred to as such in this blog). All types of elephants have tusks, but the Asian Elephant has smaller tusks and the ladies often don’t have tusks at all. There is, however, an absent-tusk gene. Once a rare abnormality, this gene is becoming more prevalent.

As most of you know, African Elephants have long been poached/hunted for their tusks. Because the poachers only killed Elephants with tusks, a natural selection began to occur and we’ve seen a sharp rise in elephants being born with out tusks. Less tusked elephants with which to mate, meant one had to mate with elephants w/ no tusks, thus creating more availability for the tuskless gene to flourish. Today, more and more elephants are born with this tusk-less gene (30% in some elephant populations). This has been an evolutionary process that would normally take thousands of years, but for some reason it is happening rapidly in these elephant populations.

When I first heard about his on the discovery program, I thought it was pretty cool- quick thinking evolution at it’s best, but that is mainly because I saw no point to the tusks anyway. Upon further reading, however, it appears that tusks do serve a purpose – who knew?! Apparently, elephants use their tusks to dig for water (pretty important in the dessert!) and minerals, remove rind from trees, and move large trees and branches.

Hopefully Mother Nature knows what she is doing, and the elephants will get along swimmingly without their tusks. I’m sure I’ll get some comments saying "let the elephants die- what do they do besides remember stuff anyway," so I thought I’d head that off from the start by telling how they are a benefit to the environment around them.

• Elephants pull down trees, break branches and pull out roots (to eat) and in doing so, they create clearings for new trees and vegetation to grow, thus providing future nutrition for elephants and other organisms.
• Elephants tromp through their environment creating natural roads for other animals to use, allowing them access places they might not be able to get otherwise.
• Elephants dig for water in the dry seasons, this createds access to the underground water source for many animals.
  

Thank you wikipedia for so much useful information!