Tuskless Elephants: A Perilous Pachyderm Predicament
If you’re like me, one of your favorite trivia items to bring up is that just like we are right or left-handed, elephants are right or left-tusked. Whether it’s at parties, the rare conversation about elephants, or the far more likely group silence that you feel like disrupting, talking about an elephant’s dominant or “master” tusk always does the trick. It’s not a subject we often think about but when it comes to prying off tree bark, digging for water, or fighting, elephants have a preferred tusk which you can identify because it’s shorter from heavy use. Unfortunately for the elephants and my dinner party conversation, the time of the tusked elephant may be on its way out.
As it turns out, tuskless elephants are nothing new. Just like cows born with an extra leg or the two headed sharks that have been washing up around the world, there are reports of tuskless elephants dating back to 1930. It is estimated that the tuskless counted for about 1% of the elephant population at the time. Compare that to an estimated 9%-35% in some parks in Africa today. More and more elephants are coming into the world without their main tool for foraging, mating displays, and defense. As a matter of evolution, the tuskless population is going up, not because of a natural selection, but because of artificial selection.
It’s no secret that the illegal, (or legal but still not okay,) hunting of animals continues to be problematic. Without getting distracted by the ridiculousness of using rhino horn for an aphrodisiac or the selfishness of mounting the world’s last tiger on your wall, let’s focus on elephants, primarily hunted for their ivory tusks. (Specifically African Elephants as both male and female have tusks as opposed to Asian Elephants where it is only males who are tusked.) Poachers are looking to get as much ivory in one swing as they can. This means that the elephants with the biggest tusks, are the ones more likely to be killed. If you have a higher chance of being killed because of your big tusks, you have less time during which to pass on your D.N.A. for big tusks. It becomes useful for elephants to have smaller tusks because they are less likely to be killed before they can pass on their D.N.A. making for smaller and smaller tusk size. Being tuskless would be the best because you have nothing that the poachers want.
Many of you may be thinking, “Sure, that’s sad, but what can I do? I don’t buy ivory and my only experience with poaching is in preparing breakfast. What can I do about elephants half a world away?”
I’m glad you asked, generic reader I just made up. There are actually a number of things you can do besides simply not buying ivory, (obviously,) and not shooting protected animals, (even more obviously.) There are programs like Elephants Without Borders, and Save the Elephants that are always looking for donations of time and funding. Becoming an Eco-Tourist is an option popularized by Elephant Voices to actively engage in sustainable elephant environments. Even if you only have 5 seconds and 5 cents to offer, spread the word. Use your skills to spread the word. People spreading the word is how we got circuses to stop using elephants, maybe that’s how we save the tusks too.
The bigger tusked elephants are the ones most sought after by poachers. As a result of this artificial selection, elephants are being born without tusks, one of their key tools for survival. If the elephants can no longer protect themselves, the job is going to fall to us.
