Elephants Are Now Evolving Without Tusks After Being Hunted For Ivory Over The Years
Elephants are evolving to not grow tusks to avoid being killed mercilessly by hunters for their ivory. Hunters have wiped out nearly 90 per cent of elephants in Mozambique. In southern Kenya poaching has caused the size of tusk to go down in some heavily hunted areas. Tusks are used for digging water or getting bark of trees for food.
To avoid being killed mercilessly killed by hunters for tusks, elephants are now evolving to not grow tusks. Hunters have wiped out nearly 90 per cent of elephants in Mozambique¡¯s Gorongosa National Park.
Tuskless elephants have become a common sight. African elephants in were slaughtered for their ivory to finance weapons in the country's civil war.
But around a third of females - the generation born after the war ended in 1992 - have not developed tusks, recent figures suggest.
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Joyce Poole, scientific director of a nonprofit called ElephantVoices, told the National Geographic: 'Over time, with the older age population, you start to get this really higher proportion of tuskless females.'
Other countries have also a seen a decline in a number of elephants growing tusks.
In southern Kenya, poaching has caused the size of tusk to go down in some heavily hunted areas.
Scientists say that elephants with this handicap may also be altering how they behave.
Tusks are used for digging water or getting bark of trees for food, which now means elephants will face a hard time finding food.
¡°Tusks are used to dig for food and water, to dig up trees and branches and move them around, for self-defence and for sexual display," the BBC reported.
¡°Conservationists say an elephant without tusks is a crippled elephant."
