Due to the illegal hunting of elephants for ivory, the relative number of elephants without tusks has increased, a phenomenon resulting from a genetic mutation
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The expansion of illegal hunting by ivory traders has resulted in a significant decrease in the gene pool of Asian elephants, and this is reflected in an actual increase in the incidence of elephant herds lacking ivory tusks. Asian elephants are hunted more than their larger African cousins. It is estimated that today there are at most 50 Asian elephants living throughout the Indian subcontinent and in Indochina - about a tenth of their number in Africa.
Male elephants normally grow ivory tusks, but about 2-5% of the species have a genetic mutation that leaves them without tusks. The illegal poachers, who follow the ivory and kill the tusked males, raise the possibility that the tusks will mate and pass the mutation on to the next generation.
Advertisement Zhang Li, a zoologist at Beijing Normal University, studied elephant herds in China and found that up to 10% of them are tusks. "The hunters are looking for the elephants with the bigger tusks, so the probability that they will be killed is higher," he told the "China Daily" newspaper. "Therefore, the elephants without tusks survive and pass this gene on within the species." The illegal trade in ivory has also damaged the ratio of males to females in China's elephant herds, and now the number of females is four times greater than the number of males.
The illegal hunters are now using new methods to evade the authorities. Instead of using guns, which attract the attention of the inspectors, many of them hunt with bows and aim the arrows at soft areas of the elephant's body, for example the mouth. "It can be a slow and painful death, lasting several days, and the poachers follow the elephant until it dies, to remove the tusks," said David Quadri, director of the fight against the ivory trade at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
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