Elephants evolve without tusks in wake of poaching
Animals on Mozambique reserve appear to be evolving to protect the species, researchers find
‘Tusklessness might be an advantage during war but that comes at a cost’
ELEPHANTS are evolving to be tuskless after decades of rampant poaching in Africa, researchers have discovered.
The rare tuskless genetic condition in Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique has become far more common after years of ruthless activity by ivory hunters.
About 90 per cent of the country’s elephant population was slaughtered between 1977 to 1992 by Kalashnikovwielding groups who used the ivory to fund a bloody Cold War-era conflict.
After the war, those tuskless surviving females passed on their genes with expected, as well as surprising, results. About half their daughters were tuskless. But more perplexing, two thirds of their offspring were female.
Prior to the war, less than a fifth of females lacked tusks.
Like eye colour in humans, genes are responsible for whether elephants inherit tusks from their parents. Although tusklessness was once rare in African savannah elephants, it’s become more common – like a rare eye colour becoming widespread.
The findings were described as a “bright spot” in a storm of negative news about biodiversity by Robert Pringle of Princeton University.
“Tusklessness might be advantageous during a war,” he said. “But that comes at a cost.”
The trait is only seen in female elephants and researchers said that genetic sequencing shows that it is linked to a mutation in the X chromosome, which can be fatal to male elephants in the womb. This means that while the tuskless trait could be useful for elephants when facing poachers, it could also account for lower than normal breeding rates. There are now about 700 elephants left in the national park.
The news in Mozambique has been accompanied by a huge blow to efforts to keep the world’s most endangered animal from extinction in Kenya.
The future of the northern white rhino now lies with a single female after her mother was retired from a worldfirst breeding programme.
Fatu, the daughter of 32-year-old Najin, is now the only donor left in the programme, which hopes to implant artificially developed embryos into another more abundant species of rhino in Kenya.
Neither of the two remaining northern white rhinos can carry a calf to term and there are no known living males.
Northern white rhinos, which are actually grey in colour, used to roam across parts of Uganda, South Sudan, DR Congo and as far west as Lake Chad.
But their population was devastated by poachers during the late 20th century. Scientists, led by researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, hope to implant embryos made from the white rhinos’ egg cells and frozen sperm from deceased males into surrogate mothers.
“This decision was an exceptionally difficult one for the experts as Najin represents 50 per cent of the entire northern white rhino population they are trying hard to preserve, whilst importantly considering her welfare,” Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Central Kenya said in a statement on Thursday.
The conservancy said it hoped that Najin would continue to transfer social and behaviour knowledge to Fatu, the last hope for the species.
Ultrasound examinations have revealed multiple small, benign tumours in Najin’s cervix and uterus.