Ivory poaching by hunters has led to the “rapid evolution” in tuskless elephants, according to new data released Thursday.
Researchers found that the number of tuskless female elephants in Mozambique‘s Gorongosa National Park increased nearly threefold, from 53 to 108, following the Mozambican Civil War between 1977 and 1992. During that war, tusked animals often fell victim to ivory poaching, according to the study published in Science.
“As the population recovered after the war, a relatively large proportion of females were born tuskless,” researchers wrote. “Poaching resulted in strong selection that favored tusklessness amid a rapid population decline.”
While there has been a reported increase in female tusklessness, there are no tuskless male elephants due to the genetic mutation’s “lethality” in males.
In response to the pervasive poaching of herbivore populations for their horns and tusks, there was a 90% decline of African elephant populations, according to the study.
Researchers found that tusklessness may be beneficial for the species, writing, “The relative survival of tuskless females across this 28-year period was estimated to be more than five times that of tusked individuals.”
Much remains unknown about tusklessness, including its cause.
“We don’t know what the exact changes are causing this loss of tusks, in either one of those genes,” one of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, told the New York Times.
Campbell-Staton told the outlet the group of researchers intends to continue to study tuskless elephants, seeking to answer the question of what their lives are like with this genetic mutation.
“If you don’t have this key tool, how do you have to adjust your behavior in order to compensate?” Campbell-Station asked regarding the tusked elephants.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to Campbell-Staton for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
