Elephants Evolving Due to Poachers

[barbells.and.arrows]

Saw CBS nightly news talking about this last night, but I wasn't paying much attention, so I googled this morning. Just waiting on hunters to get dragged into this.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/tech...ozambiques-gorongosa-national-park/ar-BBPDVQj

 

[IvW]

Saw CBS nightly news talking about this last night, but I wasn't paying much attention, so I googled this morning. Just waiting on hunters to get dragged into this.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/tech...ozambiques-gorongosa-national-park/ar-BBPDVQj

WOW, astonishing the b...s... that people can publish! Even worse are the invalids that believe a lot of this crap!!!

Yes of course ivory poachers don't shoot tuskless and this can result in more tuskless for a given area but to assume the elephants are evolving this way as a result is ridiculous.

Male elephant tusks are bigger and heavier, but due to increased poaching, hunters began to focus on females.

??

In South Africa 98 per cent of the 174 females in Addo Elephant National Park reportedly did not grow tusks in the early 2000s.

Must be a real serious poaching crises in Addo nobody is aware of!! Can someone please alert the authorities!!

Tusks are used for digging water

I am going to have to change my speech when I take the next group out on foot safari! Last time I checked they used their front feet and trunks to do that in the dry river beds but when they could smell the water below the sand! Dawn these cyber elephants are going to ruin my career or they are all going to die from thirst as a result!!

 

[BRICKBURN]

Come on man, you can't believe that "ElephantVoices" is a legit scientific organization?


The media have too many time slots to fill if they are regurgitating this drivel.

 

[barbells.and.arrows]

@IvW & @BRICKBURN I shared both of y'all's thoughts. I'm not even sure who makes the news up anymore. I'm just appalled that things like this are shown as "real news," and people blindly believe it. I can't recall the amount of people who want to argue with me about what is "endangered" and what isn't thanks to our wonderful mainstream media.

 

[npm352]

This "news" is obviously skewed. The 98% tuskless rate in the RSA park seems off....as well as a picture of an Asian elephant in a story about African elephants. But it is not wrong to believe that poaching perpetuates the amount of elephants with the tuskless gene. That is basic biology. It is a genetic trait that naturally occurs. If a higher percentage/ratio of tuskless are left after poachers take out tusked elephants, that many more will pass on the gene....same thing would happen if people never shot bearded hen turkeys or brown phase black bears or spike deer or elk. The ratio in the population would change because those are all genetic traits.

 

[IvW]

This "news" is obviously skewed. The 98% tuskless rate in the RSA park seems off....as well as a picture of an Asian elephant in a story about African elephants. But it is not wrong to believe that poaching perpetuates the amount of elephants with the tuskless gene. That is basic biology. It is a genetic trait that naturally occurs. If a higher percentage/ratio of tuskless are left after poachers take out tusked elephants, that many more will pass on the gene....same thing would happen if people never shot bearded hen turkeys or brown phase black bears or spike deer or elk. The ratio in the population would change because those are all genetic traits.

The best solution is to offer affordable hunts for tusk less elephant.

 

[npm352]

Absolutely. This is what Zimbabwe has been doing to address the issue.

 

[tigris115]

It'd be nice of they did this

Study places that have/haven't had lots of poaching pressure for a few elephant generations and see what the average tusk size is. Personally, I think there will be more expressions of tusklessness in heavily poached populations.

 

[Hunting Sailor]

IIRC:
In regards to the Addo tuskless elephants they are, according to the rangers in the park, left over from Major Pretorious’ shooting out the elephants on a government contract way back when. He apparently got paid in ivory for doing the job. When there were only a few left the people in the area had the government to stop the contract. As the payment went, the elephants with tusks went first and the left over elephants went ahead and carried the tuskless genes.
A few years ago some tusked elephants were introduced to gain tusked elephants again in the area.
The above may be somewhat blurred, but in general that’s about what I remember from one of the trips I made there.