In areas where ivory hunting is most popular, an increased number of African elephants have evolved towards being tuskless due to this high demand activity. Since the 1970s, poaching started gaining more popularity to finance a civil war in Mozambique that lasted until the early 90s, which has created an intense decline in the number of African elephants. Before this war, there were ~18.5% of females who naturally didn’t have tusks, but among the mere 91 female elephants that have been born since then, 33% of females have been born tuskless. A big issue with this rise in tusklessness, is the fact that tuskless animals and tusked animals eat different types of plants. A shift in plants being consumed could drastically alter an ecosystem, and landscape.
An interesting find is that natural tusklessness has only been seen in female elephants, along with the inheritance of the trait. This suggests that this traits is caused by a mutation in the X chromosome, either the AMELX gene or the MEP1a gene, which are genes involved in the growth of human incisor teeth (our equivalence to tusks). While both female and male humans have this gene, the gene for tusklessness is fatal in male offspring, which is why there are only female elephants seen with this trait. Since there is an increase in this gene mutation, less elephants may be seen overall, since female elephants will be the only ones able to survive under these conditions. It’s very eye opening to see how largely humans affect the other living beings, and systems of the world.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02867-y
Posted by Emma Alderman-Shapiro (4)
It's crazy that human hunting and poaching could cause a shift in traits and cause elephants to evolve tuskless. It's so sad that the poaching has lead to the gene changing, and evolution of tusklessness. Its even sadder that any male born with this mutation will not survive!
ReplyDelete- jess ross
The effect that humans have on changing certain species is crazy. I did not know that elephants had started to develop a trend to being naturally tuskless so this was quite interesting to learn
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this. I never knew the poaching was used to finance the war in Mozambique. It is so sad how on top of poaching there is also this gene mutation. How do scientists plan to combat this gene mutation?
ReplyDelete- Shannon Gray
Yeah it really puts into perspective how much war effects every single living thing around us,and a lot of the time these living things have no involvement in the war at all! I do not think there has been a found proven way to combat gene mutation, but with all of the gene editing technology gaining popularity, hopefully something is able to help!
Delete-Emma Alderman-Shapiro
I enjoyed reading this article. It was interesting that there's a connection to human incisor teeth genes and the evolution analysis of tusk-less elephants.
ReplyDelete- Tugba Kahveci
I thought this was interesting too! It's cool to think about that we have our own forms of tusks, just on a smaller scale!
Delete-Emma Alderman-Shapiro
I found this article very interesting. It's sad to see that we may be seeing the extinction of elephants take place in front of our eyes, and the efforts that are being made by animal rights activists are going unnoticed due to the increase in poaching for tusks.
ReplyDeleteIt truly is heartbreaking, especially since we're seeing the effects over such a short period of time. If this is how elephant poplations have been effected now, I can't imagine what it will be like 20 years from now. Hopefully this research can act as a wake up call to those contributing the most to poaching, so they can see how much they are depleting this resource.
Delete-Emma Alderman-Shapiro
This post is very eye opening. It's tough to wrap your head around the fact that humans can alter a whole species through generations of hunting.
ReplyDelete- David Miropolsky