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Elephant tusks are both a valuable tool and a potential liability for these gentle giants. The desire for ivory has made elephants popular targets for illegal poaching, and it can have a ...
Taking tusks from an elephant which has died of natural causes. Taking tusks from an elephant which has had to be put down for another reason, for example, severe arthritis, or if its last molar teeth are worn out and can no longer chew its food. Among working elephants which use their tusks to carry logs, there is a best length for their tusks.
Elephant and mammoth ivory comes from the two modified upper incisors. Tusks of some male African elephants can grow up to 2 meters (6 ½ feet) and weigh up to 45 kilograms (100 pounds). The tusks have a pulp cavity where the root and soft tissues attach to the jaw and that extends for approximately one-third of the tusk.
Elephant tusks can grow over 10 feet and are used for many purposes such as debarking trees and digging underground for salts, minerals, and water sources during dry seasons.
Ivory trade in Ghana, 1690. Elephant ivory has been exported from Africa and Asia for millennia with records going back to the 14th century BCE.Transport of the heavy commodity was always difficult, and with the establishment of the early-modern slave trades from East and West Africa, freshly captured slaves were used to carry the heavy tusks to the ports where both the tusks and their ...
Hunting for ivory is responsible for significant reductions in elephant populations in several parts of Africa. Between 1979 and 1989, the African elephant population decreased from 1.3 million to 600,000. Ivory became a billion-dollar market, with about 80% of the supply taken from illegally killed elephants.
Kenyan wildlife officials plan to burn 105 tons of ivory at the end of April in a move they say will protect elephants.
An African elephant in Tanzania, with visible tusks. Tusks are elongated, continuously growing front teeth that protrude well beyond the mouth of certain mammal species. They are most commonly canine teeth, as with narwhals, chevrotains, musk deer, water deer, muntjac, pigs, peccaries, hippopotamuses and walruses, or, in the case of elephants, elongated incisors.