Hi All,

For those of you Ele-enlightened individuals out there, you might be able to clarify something I heard.

I have some Sri-lankan freinds and the Elepant is a very important animal to them in their culture. they are stil useed extensively in many mountain industries and generally quite reveered.

Neil told me that some elephant tusks contain like a pearl. this is naturally ivory, and found in the nerve channel, being about the size of a marble. He claimed they were perceived to be a good luck charm but were very rare.

Has anyone ever heard of something like this before? Not sure if this is just another case of the Folklore they all beleive in the villages.

Rgds,

FB

Hi Fallow,
I have actually cut one out of an elephant nerve myself - it looked pretty unimpressive when I pulled it out, and probably was only about the size of a dried pea, but I can confirm that these pearls are occasionally found. I was looking for the pearl under instruction of the PH I was assisting at the time and unluckily for me he smiled with glee and promptly pocketed the pearl...after which I have never seen it again. I have checked the nerves of all the elephant I have subsequently been involved in hunting/butchering and always finished off empty handed... I am not sure if they really do have any commercial value or whether they are true ivory, but it does seem like a pretty cool thing to have.

Best regards,
Tigerfish

PHC, in one of his videos shows pearls found in the Elephant he killed. I would consider these to be great trophies as the are rare. I have never seen one (personally) but on the video they looked very nice after cleaning. I would think they could be used in a fine piece of jewlery.

PHC, in one of his books , which is at my home in my library, has a picture of some elephant pearls.

When I get home I'll get it out and post the title (unless someone beats me to it).

Yes your friends are correct, they do exist and like you said they seem to be very rare..

There is a photo of elephant pearls in PHC's "Sands of Silence," page 203.

Yes, the Sands of Silence book ties to his Elephant video. With the two you can put faces on the people in the book.

I too have seen the pics but the people I hunted elephant with seemed to be quite ignorant about "Pearl Ivory".

Mark

I've occasionally found the same sort of thing (obviously smaller) in warthog tusks - although I've heard of them in Elephant ivory I've never seen one....

I would say the longer this string goes it just proves how rare they are, maybe harder to come across than a 100 lb. Elephant outside a park.

http://www.lankalibrary.com/myths/elephant.htm

WWW Virtual Library - Sri Lanka
"Elephant Lore - in myth, legend, religion and war"

The pearls are mentioned in the last two sentences under "Old Testament".

I remember years ago reading a book called ''The elephant Stone'' ,from what i remember it was a a true story ? about a fellow searching for this ''stone'' which was the rarest and most valuable jewel which was worth a fortune to wealthy Arabs .It was according to this fellow to be found in tuskless elephants which way back then, were rare animals ,and the stone would only be found in one in a thousand of these elephants ,called budas.Anyway after many years of shooting and never finding it ,he ended back in London and with a pile of ivory chips. Like a lot of us hunters,ended up penniless and broken.

When the elephant skull came out of the dirt after a week underground and my friend and PH Ken Morris slid the tusks out and began to clean them he found these:

Elephant Pearls