Elephants without tusks are a response to the selective pressure of poaching
nautil.us
nautil.us
Also if you want to help, you should consider donating to the International Anti-Poaching Foundation[0][1] which fights these poachers. The founder, Damien Mander[2], is an Australian ex spec-ops sniper who is using his military experience to train the park rangers since they, unlike the poachers, tend to be poorly equipped and trained as well as understaffed. There is also the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust[3][4] which takes care of elephant and rhino orphans (most of them are orphans due to poaching). For $50 a year, you can become a sponsor of a particular orphan and they'll send you photos and updates about how your sponsored animal is doing. You can for example sponsor this little fella [5][6]. It's a great gift.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Anti-Poaching_Fo...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Mander
[3] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sheldrick_Wildlife_Trust
[5] http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/orphan_profile.asp...
Elephants are going extinct because no-one has an interest in keeping them alive. Give someone a reason to keep them alive, and the species will last forever.
Beautiful maybe, useful, not really.
> outlawing it makes as little sense as outlawing alcohol,
Not really, prior to 2008 when the CITES relaxed ivory sale regulation, poaching was minimal. The current poaching crisis is a result of this relaxation. Not every good behaves the same way as alcohol.
> What needs to be done is to create the appropriate legal framework and property rights to give Africans an incentive to ranch elephants.
Not possible for ecological, zoological economical and ethical reasons. Elephants take at least 20 years to start growing tusks but the 'big tuskers' are ~50 years old. Also, you won't be able to produce ivory cheaper than a poacher who doesn't have to invest into the elephant. Also elephants aren't domesticated. Also they are an extremely intelligent and social species and one of the species that come up in "non-human personhood" discussions.
> What needs to be done is to create the appropriate legal framework and property rights to give Africans an incentive to ranch elephants.
Right. Establishing legal frameworks and enforcing laws in Africa is very easy.
> Elephants are going extinct because no-one has an interest in keeping them alive. Give someone a reason to keep them alive, and the species will last forever.
It's a lot more complex than that.
Superman vs the kkk was super effective.
Trees also take decades to grow, and yet tree farms are a viable economy.
> Also, you won't be able to produce ivory cheaper than a poacher who doesn't have to invest into the elephant.
So the elephant rancher shoots the poacher. That's what we used to do when cattle rustling was a thing, and it worked pretty well.
> Also they are an extremely intelligent and social species and one of the species that come up in "non-human personhood" discussions.
Frankly, I don't care. Pigs are pretty damned intelligent too, but bacon tastes wonderful. Neither pigs nor elephants are men, and I'm find with killing them.
> Establishing legal frameworks and enforcing laws in Africa is very easy.
It was easier when Africa was better-run, but it can be done again.
> > Elephants are going extinct because no-one has an interest in keeping them alive. Give someone a reason to keep them alive, and the species will last forever.
> It's a lot more complex than that.
No, that is exactly the problem. Species which are useful to man survive; species which are not die; species which are inimical to man are destroyed. We're talking about exterminating mosquitoes, for Pete's sake!
If you want an animal to survive, figure out a way for it to be in someone powerful's interest. The rest will follow as day follows the night.
How much does it cost to grow a tree? It costs quite a bit to raise an elephant.
> So the elephant rancher shoots the poacher. That's what we used to do when cattle rustling was a thing, and it worked pretty well.
You are implying that in your plan there would be no elephants in the wild right? Also can you tell me a bit about your knowledge of animal and in particular elephant husbandry?
> Frankly, I don't care. Pigs are pretty damned intelligent too, but bacon tastes wonderful. Neither pigs nor elephants are men, and I'm find with killing them.
Well not everyone is a psychopath so there's that.
> It was easier when Africa was better-run, but it can be done again.
I like your detailed plan. Also what African countries in particular are you talking about?
> We're talking about exterminating mosquitoes, for Pete's sake!
Idk how that's related? Do you have some device that turns poachers into mosquitoes? Do you?
> If you want an animal to survive, figure out a way for it to be in someone powerful's interest. The rest will follow as day follows the night.
Fuck yeah, fuck ethics, fuck empathy for intelligent beings, fuck ecosystems, libertarianism fuck yeah! On some level I envy you that you have one belief system you think works for everything.
No, I think the idea is that once we have elephant breeded on ranches then the ivory becomes cheap and easily available thus making poaching business not profitable anymore, making wild elephants safe.
Of course the problem with that approach is that raising an elephant is not cheap, so ivory from domesticated elephants won't be that much cheaper. Unless you can make enough money on elephant's meat, which is also unlikely, since, as someone in this thread noticed, growing nice pair of tusks takes 50 years, and meat of old animals tend to taste much worse than that from younger ones.
Even the threat of poisoned ivory would be a strong disincentive for that market.
Permanently stained tusks have been used to dissuade material use (e.g., statues or figures).
https://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/thorny_issues/dyeing...
[I]n terms of injecting dye mixed with poison into the horn (also discussed in our 'thorny issues'), it has been proven that rhino horn is not porous and that a liquid mix does not diffuse throughout the horn. In other words, the poison/dye mix remains in the drilled holes, making it relatively easy to remove and “detox” the horn if it is, indeed, to be consumed. Any remaining external discolouration can be sanded off. And tellingly, dyeing/poisoning Sabi Sands’ rhinos’ horns did not prevent animals from subsequently being poached.
If we use these terms against nature at all. "The planet is fine. The people are fucked." (c)
EDIT: Here are a couple of links: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bighorn-sheep-shrinking-du... https://thegatewayonline.ca/2016/01/alberta-bighorn-sheep-ho...
This is nothing. We're concerned about it because we like elephants, but as far as nature is concerned, there's nothing wrong with killing off ~75% of all species once in a blue moon. [1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#List_of_extin...
And, the extinction events, its not like nature is cruel and killed off most species. As you see in the list of extinctions, the reasons mostly are that the environment (or nature if you will), changed too drastically and quickly that most species couldn't adapt fast enough to survive.
>the environment (or nature if you will), changed too drastically and quickly that most species couldn't adapt fast enough to survive.
These are not mutually exclusive. Mass starvation caused by environmental changes is a cruel kill off. I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is.
Look at the holocene extinction event. It's been going on for over 10,000 years. It's only noticeable statistically, doesn't affect day-to-day life much if at all. Therefore it's not really cruel because for most species it's as benign as having a little too few babies to maintain the population.
And yes, I agree that human accelerated climate change is causing faster extensions. However, I could care less. When does the new MacBook Pro refresh come out?
It's a selection process that results in countless creatures suffering and dying over and over. Sometimes even the selected creatures are suffering immensely and dying shortly after reproducing.
The environment changed too drastically and killed off most species. Humans changed the environment too drastically and it killed off some species. I fail to see what is it that humans are introducing that is so novel. If anything, it just seems like we're tapping into an existing process. Or, I would say, we always were part of the existing process.
Should we promote the process? I do not think so. But talking about opposing or stopping nature is the direct opposite of the usual rhetoric one hears, which is often in the form of: "Humans are terrible and are driving these poor creatures extinct and messing up the environment, we are not paying respects to Mother Nature!"
Meanwhile "Mother Nature" is OK with flooding the entire atmosphere with a completely different gas and making it unlivable for anything that used to be there before.
Species who are "winning" at natural selection can also die in cruel circumstances. They just have to reproduce first.
Some Octupi guard their eggs until they hatch, and at the same time dying of starvation. Other species of insects have the young eat their parent(s) after being hatched.
Elephants evolved tusks because they need them. An elephant without tusks is at a serious disadvantage for all purposes apart from human predation.
It appears that tusks from African elephants are more valued in China than those from S/S.E Asia. Does anyone know why this is ?
With that out of the way I wonder how good nature is generally in adapting to human caused problems. This strategy seems a bit flawed as it should lead to a sharp decline in the male population and an overpopulation of females. That could in fact lead to even more danger for the elephant population. Before the damage was spread over both genders but it is now focused on just one.
I'd love to see a list of animal mutations that resulted from human intervention. Would be very interesting to read.
If they live in an area where there are lots of roads everywhere, completely avoiding them may actually be maladaptive, as not every road crossing results in a fatality and they could well be trapped in a small area without it.
If they live in an area without many roads it probably doesn't really matter.
Seems like instead of following the "war on drugs" model we should stuff the market full of practically identical synthetic ivory? Or focus on mass elephant reproduction.
One of the comments suggests money to fight poaching - I fear again, wrong approach.
That implies that less ivory makes it to the market which means that more elephants make it through life without getting killed for their tusks.
Ivory isn't as easily produced as most drugs so the price of ivory is dictated by scarcity even absent any other controls.
You could make as much of most drugs as bulk chemistry or farming allows.
So the value of ivory going up as a result of being tougher on poachers would be proof that it is working.
Have you taken Economics 101? You do remember what happens when the selling price of a good gets too high? Lots of profit to be made will encourage poachers to hunt. They will take even larger risks (e.g. Being shot by drone) to obtain ivory since the profits are too high.
Yes, have you?
If the price of Ivory rises then yes, more people will be driven to poaching but unless the price drops to the previous level due to the subsequent increase in supply still more elephants will make it.
Only if the price of Ivory drops relative to the baseline could you conclude that a program to target poachers has failed.
If what you write is true then we should simply not do anything about poaching at all... but ideally the price of Ivory would rise to incredible heights because none of it makes it to the market because all poachers are caught.
I think the correct term is survivor bias.
Update re downvotes: The title literally says "Elephants without tusks are a response to the selective pressure of poaching".
The body text says "2% of female elephants are naturally tuskless" (emphasis mine).
So "Elephants without tusks" per se are natural.
"(Massive) Increase in % of tuskless offspring as a result of selective killing of tuskfull adults (given that tusklessness is an inheritable trait)" seems like a more accurate, yet obvious (almost tautologically so) observation. It seems to be true when the trait is inheritable and strongly discriminated against - the children of the survivors look more like the survivors than those who were killed because they (the killed) were different. You don't say!
"[Survivor Bias] is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility.
>Microevolution reflects changes in DNA sequences and allele frequencies within a species over time.
Allele frequencies changed from ~2% to ~33%. Mutations are not necessary for the process, unless the allele is at 0% frequency to begin with.