African elephants use their tusks for self-defense. Recently, however, elephants are increasingly being born without them. Researchers associate biological evolution with the increased number of ivory hunters.
Several studies in the 1990s showed that the number of tuskless elephant calves was zero. In 1998, a study at Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda found that 16% of female elephants and 9% of males are born without tusks. This is a growing number compared to figures from 1930, when only 1% of elephants of both sexes were born without tusks.
According to one of the researchers, in one of the national parks in East Africa, 98% of female elephants do not have tusks.
Joyce Poole, head of the non-profit organization Voices of Elephants, has spent over 30 years researching the evolution of species. Poole said that, according to her observations, there is clearly a direct link between the increase in poaching and the number of female elephants that are born without tusks. In the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, 90% of the elephants were killed between 1977 and 1992 during the country's civil war.
Poachers are mainly interested in animals with tusks, which is why almost half of elephants over 35 years old are left without them. Females pass the “tineless gene” on to their daughters. Of all elephants born after the war, 30% of females do not have tusks. 98% of elephants in Addo Elephant National Park do not have tusks. This is probably the most compelling example of the "tineless gene." In 1931, when the park was just founded, only 11 elephants escaped from hunters. Of the 8 surviving females, four were without tusks.
Although the international trade in ivory has been banned since the late 1980s, WWF reports that tens of thousands of African elephants continue to die every year from their tusks.