₦airaland Forum

Elephants in Mozambique's Gorongosa Park are being born tuskless at rates approaching 33% — a genetic signature of 15 years of civil-war ivory hunting that the population is now passing to its daughters

Fifteen years of ivory hunting during Mozambique's civil war left a genetic mark on Gorongosa's elephants that is still visible in their daughters' skulls today — roughly a third of females now born without tusks, a Princeton team traced to two specific genes.

In the floodplains of Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, roughly a third of the female elephants born after the country’s civil war have no tusks at all. Before the war, around 18.5 percent of females were naturally tuskless. Among the adult females that survived the conflict, the figure rose to about 51 percent.

The difference is not a fluke of one generation. Research published in Science in October 2021 found evidence that 15 years of intense ivory hunting changed the frequency of inherited tusklessness within the population. The study, led by evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton, described the shift as rapid, poaching-mediated natural selection in a large, long-lived mammal. The Princeton research record summarises the genetic and population evidence behind the finding.

A war that ate the elephants

Mozambique’s civil war ran from 1977 to 1992. Gorongosa sat inside the conflict zone, and elephants were killed for meat and for ivory that could be exchanged for weapons and supplies.

By the end of the conflict, the park’s elephant population had fallen by roughly 90 percent. Estimates vary by source and census period, but the broad collapse is not in dispute: a population numbering in the thousands had been reduced to only a few hundred animals.

Among the survivors, a striking pattern emerged. A disproportionate number of adult females had no tusks. In an environment where elephants were being selected for their ivory, having no ivory offered an obvious survival advantage.

Historical footage and later surveys indicated that tusklessness among adult females rose from about 18.5 percent before the war to approximately 51 percent among survivors. Among females born after the war, the proportion was close to one-third.

The genes behind the pattern

Tusks are elongated upper incisors. They are made from the same basic dental tissues found in other mammalian teeth, including dentin and enamel-related structures.

Campbell-Staton’s team compared genomic data from tusked and tuskless females and identified two candidate regions associated with the trait. One contained AMELX, an X-chromosome gene involved in tooth development. The other contained MEP1a, which is associated with dentin formation.

The researchers did not claim that these two genes alone fully explain every case of tusklessness. Rather, the genomic signals, family patterns, and absence of tuskless males pointed toward an inherited mechanism involving the X chromosome.

Why the population produces more daughters

The study found that tuskless mothers produced offspring that were about 65.7 percent female. That skew fits a genetic model in which a tuskless mother has a chance of passing an X-linked variant to each calf, while male embryos inheriting the affected chromosome may not survive.

This is an inference supported by the population and genomic evidence, not a direct observation of every affected pregnancy. The authors therefore described the pattern as consistent with an X-linked dominant, male-lethal trait.

The demographic consequence is still significant. Tuskless females may produce fewer surviving male calves than tusked females, while daughters that inherit the relevant variant can survive and pass it into another generation.

What an elephant loses when it loses its tusks

A full-grown African savanna elephant uses its tusks as tools. They help strip bark, dig for roots and water, move branches, open food sources, defend calves, and compete with other elephants.

Removing those tools can change how an elephant feeds and interacts with its environment. The Princeton study found dietary differences between tusked and tuskless females, suggesting that the anatomical shift may carry ecological consequences beyond the elephants themselves.

Gorongosa is not alone

Higher rates of tusklessness have been observed in other elephant populations exposed to heavy ivory hunting. Gorongosa is unusually valuable to researchers because its population history can be reconstructed through historical film, aerial surveys, field records, family observations, and modern genetic samples.

The recovery and what it cannot immediately undo

Gorongosa’s wider wildlife recovery began after the war, with restoration work gaining momentum in the 2000s. American philanthropist Greg Carr first visited the park in 2004 after being invited by Mozambique’s government. Following several years of preparation, a formal long-term management partnership was signed in 2008. Carr’s official Gorongosa biography describes that sequence directly.

A signature visible at a glance

Most evidence of evolutionary change cannot be seen without genetic sampling and statistical analysis. Scientists compare genomes, family patterns, survival rates, and changes in allele frequencies before they can identify selection within a population.

What the daughters inherit

Many of the tuskless females alive in Gorongosa today were born after the war. They did not survive the original wave of ivory hunting themselves, but they inherited a trait that became more common because their mothers’ and grandmothers’ generations were subjected to it.

Source https://spacedaily.com/sd-v-elephants-in-mozambiques-gorongosa-park-are-being-born-tuskless-at-rates-approaching-33-a-genetic-signature-of-15-years-of-civil-war-ivory-hunting-that-the-population-is-now-passing-to-its-daught/

That's the beauty and wonder of nature.

The truth is that we have not really learned everything about nature.

All the things we have learned about nature are not final.

So we will keep seeing new things like this, which will always look strange to us.

Their ancestors have seen how the Tusk endanger their species then discuss with the gods and so therefore the new elephant realm

Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

banom:
That's the beauty and wonder of nature.

Good morning everyone

What is good about the morning 🌅?

frankblinkz:
Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

Elephant 🐘 meat 🍖 sweet aswear

Since marauders and thieves don't want to let their tusks to rest, nature has devised a new means for them...



Beauty!

frankblinkz:
Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

Which part of Nigeria is Obohia located?

my love for animals no be today

The proverb about Aneke the bird comes to mind

Since men have learned to shoot without missing, I have learned to fly without perching.

Come to think of it, I don do more than 3 decades and I norva see Elephant for real life o.

Sonofgod1990:
What is good about the morning 🌅?

If your morning is not good, mine is. However, sorry for anything you are passing through. May God see you through.

Sonofgod1990:
Elephant 🐘 meat 🍖 sweet aswear

bro the yansh side na the sweetest

[sub][/sub]

frankblinkz:
Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

and u never blow.. Iffa hear say u see them easily free anywhere in Nigeria except reserves

At least they still have parks where wild and exotic animals are conserved and protected from extinction.
Can we say the same thing about my dear country.

frankblinkz:
Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

Lies, they have gone into extinction since tinubu became president.

Men are hungry

banom:
If your morning is not good, mine is. However, sorry for anything you are passing through. May God see you through.

He meant to say Tinubu must go

You dey lick woman yansh?

frankblinkz:
bro the yansh side na the sweetest

Elephants dey River state.

EmekaBlue:
[sub][/sub] and u never blow.. Iffa hear say u see them easily free anywhere in Nigeria except reserves

EmekaBlue:
[sub][/sub] and u never blow.. Iffa hear say u see them easily free anywhere in Nigeria except reserves

is obohia a joke to you.
You think you have seen all parts of Nigeria

Silly article fuelled by confirmation bias.

Common sense should tell the researchers that the specie that had trunks were killed off by poachers.

And the trunkless species that were not killed off started breeding instead.

And that's why they are now many more than expected.

Changed in genetics 🧬 Bleep

The elephants came prepared.

frankblinkz:
Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

You guys lie too much.
You tell too many lies.

Effect of global warming and sins.

Tenses:
Lies, they have gone into extinction since tinubu became president.

Men are hungry

keep blaming Tinubu for everything while people around u keep progressing

When they later ask of your achievement blame Tinubu

Like I always tell atheist or anyone else, we are in the world we don't own.

The number evidence we don't own the land or earth is death, evidence will not reveal this, but truth will do. We are flesh, don't count until we are sons and daughters of the owner. Imagine, those who fought for Nigeria independence has died, some died by Nigeria legal framework. Imagine the richest person on earth or in Africa has to die one day.

We are just son and daughter of the Most High God

Yes, we study it and come out with what we can get.

The true owners are the one that will inherit it from the owner and they are called Son of God, not slave, not self claimed or acclaimed one

Stephen0mozzy:
The proverb about Aneke the bird comes to mind


Come to think of it, I don do more than 3 decades and I norva see Elephant for real life o.

Lolz! We wey dey approach 5 decades never see sef

Expected, that's how almost all species evolved. People think it's film tricks when we talk about the theory of evolution.

frankblinkz:
Come my village for obohia see how elephant plenty.

Kai!why u dey give us lamba?

Sonofgod1990:
Elephant 🐘 meat 🍖 sweet aswear

lion meat dey taste like human being meat