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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Poaching is altering the genetics of wild animals.
Share this story Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share All sharing options Share All sharing options for: Poaching is altering the genetics of wild animals. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Courtesy of Joyce Poole Sometime in the distant past, well before humans walked the Earth, the ancestors of modern-day elephants evolved their iconic tusks.
How a civil war caused elephants to lose their tusks Social conflict and the decline of wildlife are often closely linked, the authors of the Science study write. The researchers have to tranquilize elephants in order to collect their DNA. Should all elephants ditch their tusks? Two male elephants spar in the Masai Mara grassland in Narok, Kenya. How humans are changing animals Humans have shaped the environment around them for centuries, down to the very genetics of wild plants and animals.
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Now, Long and a team of ecology and genetic researchers are starting to study how tuskless elephants are navigating their lives. In June, the team started tracking six adult females in Gorongosa—half with tusks, half not—from three different breeding herds. Elephants are highly social and form tight family groups.
Their goal is to uncover more information about how these animals move, eat, and what their genomes look like. Long hopes to detail how elephants without the benefit of tusks as tools may alter their behavior to get access to nutrients. Another collaborator, Shane Campbell-Staton, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California Los Angeles, will study blood, searching for answers about how genetics influences the phenomenon of tusklessness.
Tusklessness does seem to occur disproportionately among females. Joyce Poole corroborates this. Perhaps the elephants are targeting different kinds of trees that are easier to strip, or trees that have already had some stripping by other elephants—giving them a prepared leverage point for tearing off bark.
Recent bans on the ivory trade in China and the U. Among Asian elephants , for example, a long history of hunting for ivory—as well as removing tusked elephants from the wild for labor—likely helped contribute to higher tuskless numbers there. Exactly why the Asian and African elephant populations have such different rates of tusklessness remains unexplained.
All rights reserved. Wildlife Watch is an investigative reporting project between National Geographic Society and National Geographic Partners focusing on wildlife crime and exploitation. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ngwildlife natgeo.
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Epic floods leave South Sudanese to face disease and starvation. Travel 5 pandemic tech innovations that will change travel forever These digital innovations will make your next trip safer and more efficient. But will they invade your privacy? Go Further. Humans have long been attracted to the beautiful tusks of elephants. Ivory remains one of the most highly prized materials in the natural world. Those targeted are often the oldest and largest animals — because they have the biggest and therefore most valuable tusks.
This is not only tragic for individual animals, but also for the wider elephant population , as the oldest and wisest elephants play a key leadership role in elephant society. In fact, we conducted experiments showing that the oldest elephant matriarchs — the female leaders of the family groups — were much better than younger matriarchs at distinguishing more dangerous male lions from female lions using just the sound of their roars.
Now, these elephants are likely to be at an advantage as they are much less likely to be targeted by poachers. A greater chance of surviving and breeding might explain why these tuskless animals have become more common in the population. Studies are underway to determine whether that is the case. The good news, however, is that when protected and given space to roam, elephant populations can flourish.
There are many excellent conservation projects across Africa and Asia working hard to ensure that elephants — and their tusks — are a part of the natural world for many years to come. Indeed, by greatly reducing the number of elephants killed for their ivory, we can protect remaining populations, and potentially halt, or even reverse, the decline in tusk size. Who knows, maybe there is a young elephant in Africa who is destined to one day rival Ahmed and his mighty tusks.
Interestingly, elephants and humans both have hair. In fact, all mammals have hair at some point in their lives , even whales and dolphins.
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