Nature has come up with a unique way to protect elephants from ivory poachers – it is turning them tuskless! Bizarre as it may sound, this is actually what is happening to\u00a0the young female elephants of Mozambique\u2019s Gorongosa National Park.<\/p>\n
While tusklessness is not unheard of in female African elephants, normally it would only happen in about 2-4% of them. The tuskless crew in question here is amongst the first generation born after the end of Mozambique\u2019s 15-year-long civil war, a war which was mostly financed through the slaughter of elephants for ivory. 90% of the area\u2019s elephants were killed, yet those without tusks survived. And now they\u2019ve passed the trait on to their daughters!<\/p>\n
Dina Fine Maron writes about the phenomenon for National Geographic and notes that it\u2019s not just in Mozambique where elephants seem to be taking their fate into their own hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cOther countries with a history of substantial ivory poaching also see similar shifts among female survivors and their daughters,\u201d she writes. For example, at South Africa\u2019s Addo Elephant Park, 98% of the females were tuskless in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n