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The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting African Big Game Hunting Are Elephants Evolving To Be Tuskless?Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
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Yes its true ! There is a phenotype shift in African Elephant populations brought on by the pressure of selective removal of tusked individuals Normally both males and female African elephant have tusks with a small number of individuals carrying a sex linked "tuskless gene" By selectively removing individuals with tusks and leaving the tuskless the latter prevail and their offspring show an expression of the tuskless trait | |||
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 If memory serves me right, the Game Dept. then under the colonial Brits used to request licensed hunters to shoot any tuskless elephant that was encountered and the license would be replaced. They obviously knew something more about genetics than our current day scientists. | |||
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I do not think it is evolution to avoid being poached/hunted but rather a function of higher occurrence of the tuskless gene due to over-harvesting of tusked elephants and overall, lower ele populations. If there were 1000 tuskless ele in a populatiuon of 20,000 elephants and poachers wipe out 15,000 tusked elephants form that population over a decade, then it will appear that there are far more tuskless ele's then before. Of course, the tuskless continue breeding passing on their tuskless gene at higher occurrences. This is what I believe is happening. What is the tuskless to tusked rato in increasing elephant populations like Zim and Bots? Is it getting higer or stable or smaller? "...Them, they were Giants!" J.A. Hunter describing the early explorers and settlers of East Africa hunting is not about the killing but about the chase of the hunt.... Ortega Y Gasset | |||
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As a parallel to your topic, for a number of years the Georgia plantation dog trainers have said they notice more and more rattlesnakes that do not rattle. They do have rattles but try to escape quietly. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times. | |||
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Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
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Simple mendelian genetics in action | |||
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Interestingly, the rattlesnakes on Santa Catalina Island have evolved into a rattle-less species. And it would be a good guess that it is as much because of the very low population density of snakes as the threat from humans.
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This is being way over-simplified, but then again it's not the unexpected way for things to go. The elephant in the room  is what is meant by a population. There's no such thing as an African elephant population, a Zimbabwe elephant population, and so on. A population is a group of animals of the sames species which are free to interbreed. A Gonarezhou elephant may be able to cross-breed with a Kruger elephant, but not with a Hwange elephant, &c. So when you talk of population genetics, you are talking of small, isolated groups, not the species as a whole across Africa. Tusk size does seem to be decreasing generally, but my guess is it's more noticeable because of smaller population sizes (and it is but ONE of myriad other characteristics that will also be changing, not necessarily in parallel, so the possibilities for out-breeding in future are interesting). Poaching and hunting are going to be only two environmental selection pressures on tusk size in elephants. | |||
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