Elephants have evolved to be tuskless because of ivory poaching, a study finds

Group 3: Nathan, Arraya, Gio, David, Brennan

Background

Elephants have evolved to develop tusks from their teeth, which give them many advantages, such as digging for water, lifting heavy objects, stripping bark from trees for food, and for defending themselves. Tusks are also seen in other animals like the hippos, Walruses, Narwhals, etc, they are important for these creatures to survive in their environment.

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Problem

But, due to the high value of tusks in the ivory trade, elephants started being poached for their tusks. Elephants that have no tusks are more likely to be left alone, as the main thing the poachers want is the high-value tusks. This made the tusked elephant population steadily decline, and the tuskless elephants that remain dominate the population more now since tusked elephants are declining. This is actually bad for the elephant species as the tuskless elephants struggle to defend themselves, dig for water, and strip bark from trees for food. The elephants actually play a key role in shaping the environment; other living things that depend on the changes elephants make to their habitat make pathways in dense forested habitat that allow passage for other animals. An elephant footprint can also enable a micro-ecosystem that, when filled with water, can provide a home for tadpoles and other organisms. This shows how human actions can affect both species and ecosystems.  

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Theoritical Background

Over the years, Elephant tusks evolved from teeth, giving the species an evolutionary advantage such as digging, lifting objects, gathering food, and more. As we know some hunters prefer to catch elephants with big tusks which are considered valuable , because of that, the population of them is rapidly decreasing. Which we know because of poachers hunting elephant tusk. Which has led to a significant decline in elephant numbers across various regions. This selective hunting has also resulted in an evolutionary shift, with some elephants now being born without tusks, a trait that may help them avoid being targeted by poachers but also limits their ability to perform essential tasks to survive in the wild.  

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Hypothesis

If the overhunting keeps going on, we will see a change to the offspring of the elephant because tusklessness is a dominant trait, particularly in females, and it's carried on the X chromosome 

Proving The Hypothesis

To prove that the hypothesis

To show poaching makes more tuskless elephants, our group made simulation about elephant . In the simulation we started with 15 elephant each with tusks and tuskless. Tusklessness is a dominant trait and tusked trait is a recessive. In the simulation we simulate the poacher going around and killing the tusked elephants for their tusks hunting, you can change the speed of the simulation and the amount of poachers using a slide on the left on the simulation. The elephants also have a chance to reproduce.

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Analysis and Conclusion

In this simulation we can analyze that the tusked elephants keep getting reduced because the hunters want to gain the tusks for the ivory trade. The simulation did go as planned, and we expected that the tuskless elephants would be dominant as time passed, even at a big disadvantage from the beginning. Our hypothesis is correct because we can clearly see that at the end the tuskless elephants will dominate the population over the tusked elephants. 

Suggestion

Although the simulation was a success, there were some problems we encountered during the making of this simulation such as the design not pleasing and the code breaking sometimes. After we fixed the problems, there were still some problems we couldn't fix and in the future we will learn from our mistakes and make it better. 

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