The Guardian
Scripps Howard News Service
L O N D O N, Sept. 29 "Evolution is saving
elephants in Africa by producing herds with tiny
tusks or none at all" which provides no profit for
poachers and thus ensures the survival of the
species.
The phenomenon has been noticed in all parts of
Africa where hunting has been going on longest, with both trophy
hunters and poachers always shooting the elephants with the
biggest tusks.
A survey in the Queen Elizabeth National Park in
Uganda in the 1930s showed that only 1 percent of adult
elephants were without tusks. Then it was regarded as a rare
mutation.
This year Eve Abe, of the Ugandan wildlife
authority, found that 30 percent of adult elephants in the same area
were without tusks.
Richard Barnwell, World Wide Fund for Nature
conservation officer for Africa, said the trend towards
elephants having smaller tusks or none had been noticed
all over the savannah area of West Africa, where elephants
had been hunted longest.
"All the elephants with genes that produce big tusks
have been taken out of the population. Those that remain
either have small tusks or none at all."
Big Tuskers Becoming Rare
He said it was now rare to find a big tusker in Cameroon,
Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Niger or Mali. Another attribute
aiding elephant survival is bad temper.
Elephants were hunted almost to extinction in South
Africa at the turn of the last century. One small herd in what is
now the Addo national park on the edge of the Indian Ocean
survived, however. Barnwell said this was partly because
these elephants were known to be very bad-tempered and
did not have particularly large tusks. "Elephants are
very intelligent and can be very dangerous if they are prone
to bad temper. Hunters decided that trying to kill them was not
worth the risk, so being bad-tempered is a survival
technique too."
Poaching in the Queen Elizabeth park reduced
elephant numbers from 3,500 animals in 1963 to 200 in 1992. Now
the population is 1,200 and is growing quickly. The
difficulty of finding an elephant with large enough tusks is
defeating commercial poaching.
**
Tusks May Still Have Uses
Lack of tusks is not all good news for elephants,
however. Bulls fight for the right to mate with females, and in
this respect large tusks are a big advantage. This is why
bulls with big tusks developed in the first place.
An additional advantage is that tusks are used as
tools, particularly in the dry season for digging in river beds
looking for water. Campbell said this did not particularly matter
in the Queen Elizabeth national park because water was
plentiful, but for the dry savannah elephants it could be crucial.
In parts of central Africa, elephants are hunted for
their value as meat, so even being without tusks is no help.
He added: "The fact is that elephants with big tusks
would come back if we stopped hunting them. Large tusks are an
adaptation that took place to help survival. The message
of all this is that we are forcing a change in elephants which
is not necessarily to their advantage. If they are to survive,
we need to look after them."
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm