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Biotech

Remember When Elephants Had Tusks? 113

Posted by jamie from the selection dept.
Boing Boing links to an interesting story today. If an antibiotic kills 95% of a germ species, but 5% bear a gene for resistance, indiscriminate use of it will result in a surviving line of entirely resistant germs. But on a slightly larger scale, genetically tusk-free elephants are gaining ground relative to their tusked brethren, says one study, thanks to a nasty antibiotic called poaching. If elephants don't have the decency to go extinct, maybe they'll just hang around to tusklessly remind our grandchildren where billiard balls originally came from, and to invite us to ponder what the last poacher was thinking as he shot the last tusked elephant.
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Remember When Elephants Had Tusks? More

Remember When Elephants Had Tusks?

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  • One has to wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ZSpade ( 812879 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:08PM (#13108025) Homepage
    How that poacher is going to get that gun past zoo security...

    I seriously doubt they'll go extinct, but tusked elephants may go extinct in the wild.

  • It is part of a trend. (Score:5, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:10PM (#13108047)
    It is part of trend. Tens of thousands of years ago, elephants had 6 tusks [games-workshop.com] instead of just 2.

  • Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by quark101 ( 865412 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:13PM (#13108082)
    While the bacteria example has been around for a very long time and is commonly known, it is not very often that the same trend is extrapolated to the larger, more relavent world.

    What we have to ask ourselves though, is, are we doing this to any other animals as well? Forcing evolution, as it could be called? What will be the long term effects? Tuskless elephants is one thing, but there could potentially be something very dangerous coming, besides super bacteria, of course.
    • Godzilla is coming!!!

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TheSloth2001ca ( 893282 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:23PM (#13108185) Homepage
      This same phenomenon has been observed in lakes where extensive sport fishing takes place. Since either by regulations or due to the angler's behaviour the larger fish seem to have the most fishing pressure applied to them. Over time the abundance of large fish decline, and remain low even after many years where not fishing is permitted on the lake. What happens is those fish with the genetic disposition to grow very large have a much lower success rate when it comes to mating, and there fore the genes that allow fish to grow large become increasingly rare.
      • In some lakes, some species of fish are subject to a "slot limit" which says that if that fist is too small or too big, you have to throw it back - only fish in the "slot" between those two limits can be kept.
      • What happens is those fish with the genetic disposition to grow very large have a much lower success rate when it comes to mating, and there fore the genes that allow fish to grow large become increasingly rare.

        But it takes time for fish to grow that large -- they aren't born that way. Surely they must have a chance to reproduce in their earlier years, before they grow to a more enticing size? This theory has a slight ring of truth to it, but I don't think it's cut and dry.

        • But it takes time for fish to grow that large -- they aren't born that way. Surely they must have a chance to reproduce in their earlier years, before they grow to a more enticing size? This theory has a slight ring of truth to it, but I don't think it's cut and dry.

          This is not always the case as fish come to sexual maturity at a certain age. In certain species there can be a large variation in the size of the fish as it enters sexual maturity. in these species the large fish will have a lower success
        • There is an interesting article here [iiasa.ac.at] (PDF) that describes how northen cod in southern Labrador and eastern Newfoundland fisheries suffered as a result of maturing at ever-earlier ages/smaller sizes (a trend caused by the way the fisheries were managed).
          • northen cod in southern Labrador and eastern Newfoundland fisheries suffered as a result of maturing at ever-earlier ages/smaller sizes (a trend caused by the way the fisheries were managed).

            I don't understand your use of "suffered." The fish seem to be evolving to be able to evade the fishing nets. Instead of ending up on people's dinner plates, they are still swimming in the sea. Don't you see this is a good example of a species evolving to fit its changing environment?

            As people, we look at the circ

            • I think your missing a large part of the picture. There are other factors which caused the development of large fish. This implies by forcing them to adapt to a smaller size they are less well suited to their natural environment. Thus, while a fish might not notice it's smaller the species is probably suffering because of its smaller average size.
              • Thus, while a fish might not notice it's smaller the species is probably suffering because of its smaller average size.

                Clearly not, because if getting smaller were a disadvantage, it wouldn't be happening. What you mean is that if human fishing was removed from the picture, the fish might no longer be adapted to their environment. Well, yes. But if they could adapt in such a short time to the pressures of modern fishing, chances are they can adapt back to a more "natural" state in a comparable amount of

                • No. By introducing fishing your making a more difficult environment for the species to survive in. Humans have hunted a lot of species to extinction and it's not about weather they can adapt to us so much as can they deal with us and the rest of their environment because it may be a lot harder to be a small fish in the ocean that does not have to worry about man than it was to be a large fish before we showed up.
            • The fish didn't suffer (except those who wriggled to death in a net, contributing to evolution by dying before spawning). The fisheries suffered, collapsing when the evolved fish breed became too small to be worth catching. It's the humans in the food chain who are vulnerable.

              BTW, does a fish have the buddha-nature? Bloobwoop.
    • On CNN the other day, I heard this referred to as "survival of the fittest," which was one of the dumbest things I had heard in weeks. The anchor implied that because tuskless elephants used to be 5% of the elephant population and now they're 8%, this means that more elephants are being born with the tuskless gene, which could be completely false. If I have 100 elephants, 5 of them tuskless, and I kill 37 of the tusked elephants, 8% of the elephants are now tuskless - Darwin it ain't.
      • well the anchor was half right. what happens over time is that elephants with no tusks are able to repoduce in high numbers (due to the lack of elephants with tusks) and they pass they tuskless genes in ever greater numbers to the next generation, thus increasing the amount of tuskless elephants. It can be considered Darwinism, but we must look at poaching as a selective pressure on the population. this does not make it acceptable as a chief concern amongst many biologists in the loss of biodiversity, wh

      • Do you know what "survival" means? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @08:04PM (#13109091) Homepage Journal
        On CNN the other day, I heard this referred to as "survival of the fittest," which was one of the dumbest things I had heard in weeks. The anchor implied that because tuskless elephants used to be 5% of the elephant population and now they're 8%, this means that more elephants are being born with the tuskless gene, which could be completely false. If I have 100 elephants, 5 of them tuskless, and I kill 37 of the tusked elephants, 8% of the elephants are now tuskless - Darwin it ain't.

        THIS was one of the dummest thing I've read in weeks.

        If you kill elephants, and some survive because of a genetic trait: It's survival of the fittest.
        In this case, the fittest being the ones less likely to be shot due to a genetic predisposition to refrain from growing big shiny tusk with high resale value.
        • You're missing the point.

          You're assuming tusklessness is a genetic trait -- how do you know for sure that it is? Maybe tuskless elephants are just as likely to have tusked offspring as tusked elephants. Not that this is likely, but let's rule out the wacky-but-possible first.

          Now here's the trick, you can't just say that tusklessness is passed on genetically because of the rise of tuskless elephants. As GP was pointing out, you get an increase in the incidence of tusklessness if you cull tusked elephants,

          • You're assuming tusklessness is a genetic trait -- how do you know for sure that it is? Maybe tuskless elephants are just as likely to have tusked offspring as tusked elephants. Not that this is likely, but let's rule out the wacky-but-possible first.

            It's either genetic or environmental. And it appears to be occuring in all elephant populations (asian, indian, african, et al). So if it's environmental, it's a very widepread but subtle change. The chances of it not being genetic are vanishingly small.

        • If you kill elephants, and some survive because of a genetic trait: It's survival of the fittest.

          To clarify, though, you're defining fittest in a narrow scope. Tusks serve a valuable purpose in the lives of elephants. For one, elephants use the tusks to scrape rocks (the one image I remember is scraping the top of a cave) and liberate necessary salts. These new tuskless variants will be unable to do this and their independent survival (without tusked brethen to liberate the salt for them) is questionable.

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)

      by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:32PM (#13108264)
      What we have to ask ourselves though, is, are we doing this to any other animals as well? Forcing evolution, as it could be called?

      I have to strongly object to your terminology. Evolution is not an entity or process which can be "forced" into anything. It is simply an observation about what happens in the world.

      "Selective pressure" is an incredibly loaded term which anthropomorphizes what's really happening. In this case, what is happening with the elephants is that the ones with tusks are being killed off, and the ones without tusks are not (and it's not any more complicated than that). There is nothing putting "pressure" on the elephants to lose their tusks. The mutations are random and happen without respect to environmental changes. It is the environment which makes some of these mutations more or less favorable but it is not the cause of those mutations.

      Suppose you wanted to "force" humans to evolve gills, like fish. Suppose that you did this by rounding up everybody who did not have gills, and drowning them. Do you think this procedure has any chance in hell of causing humans to start growing gills? The reason why not, is that the sort of mutation that could cause that is extremely complex and almost infinitely unlikely. But in the case of the elephants, the tuskless phenotype was present even before the advent of modern hunting.

      Evolution has no will, no path, no agenda, no nothing. It can't be forced, pressured, coerced, etc.

      • Evolution has no will, no path, no agenda, no nothing. It can't be forced, pressured, coerced, etc.

        However by modifying the selective pressures we can have large influences on the directions of evolution. While humans did not create the tuskless phenotype we are contributing to its increase in abundance
        • However by modifying the selective pressures we can have large influences on the directions of evolution. While humans did not create the tuskless phenotype we are contributing to its increase in abundance

          I agree. I am only raising an objection to the terminology.

      • Selective pressure is how we breed various domestic animals. It's simply shorthand for saying, "desirable ones get to breed, and the rest are terminated and/or eaten". Natural examples would be long-term desertification (animals and plants that have genes causing them to be more efficient with water live long enough to breed), or salination (if you have genes which allow you to sequester, transport, or otherwise control salt, then you'll survive long enough to breed and pass on those genes).

        Several yea
        • The foxes were bred at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, in a long term experiment designed to test the hypothesis that domestication is actually prolonged infantilism. Dmitry Belyaev was the researcher.

          After the fall, the institutes funding was cut drastically, and the future of the foxes was threatened, as the 400 they had were too few to stay genetically healthy. AFAIK, the foxes are spread quite widely today.

          Here's an indepth paper. [floridalupine.org]

      • "forcing evolution" is a misleading term, but the parent thread's question is still valid. to re-phrase:

        are we inadvertantly selecting for traits in other species?

        put this way, it pretty obvious that the answer is yes. i guess the real question is: are we doing it to animals that most people will recognize and care about, and are we affecting them in ways we can see?

        the parent thread really down-plays the importance of our accidental artificial selection of bacteria. this is way more relevant to human li
      • What the hell, your post doesn't even make sense.

        "selected pressure" is perfectly anthropomorphic, and appropriate. HUMANS are the direct and single cause of tusked elephants being driven to extinction. No one is saying that humans are "mutating" elephants to have no tusks, and nothing is insinuating it. They are saying that dead-ass elephants don't fucking BREED, so their unique genetic attributes are not retained. "survival of the fittest", doesn't say anything about forcing mutation in there, does it?

        Y

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I wouldn't call it "forcing evolution".

      However, it definitely happens in other areas. In Pennsylvania for instance, the hunting of Turkeys by making a fake gobbling sound so that they respond to you as they come closer, has gone on for so long that in some areas male turkeys don't respond to the call -- if anything, they will silently sneak up on a female call, but that's it.

      Some selection for traits can also be observed in areas where people "trophy hunt", selecting deer to kill based on the size of th
      • Some selection for traits can also be observed in areas where people "trophy hunt", selecting deer to kill based on the size of the antlers instead of taking at random for food.

        Also, it appears that in the areas where deer are mainly hunted for food, the proportion of meatless deer has started to increase.

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TuringTest ( 533084 )
      are we doing this to any other animals as well?

      Dogs? Cats? Cows? Sheep? We've been doing it to pets for millenia, and it has not been harmful (at least not always).
      • Dogs? Cats? Cows? Sheep? We've been doing it to pets for millenia, and it has not been harmful (at least not always).

        Not harmful?

        Look at german shepards -- most are crippled in old age thanks to excessive breeding.
      • And don't forget the poor bulldog [digintodogs.com] (scroll down to the Health section), which is now such a genetic mess that they have to rely human intervention in order to survive (the pups are usually delivered by c-section due to their large heads).
    • In Russia, some scientists have discovered through selective breeding of foxes [www.exn.ca] that it doesn't take very long for a significant change in an animal population to occur. They managed to obtain domesticated foxes within four decades and 30-some-odd generations. They also discovered that, while selecting solely based on behavioral traits in an attempt to get domesticated foxes, the foxes also developed traits such as unusual splotchy coloring and other dog-like features.

      It's also been suggested that splotch
    • Elephant tusks are more relevant than infectious bacteria, resistant plague superbugs? To the elephants, maybe.
  • Heh. I just googled for a link on Rapa Nui history to post in response to the "last tusked elephant" comment before I followed the link and discovered that was mentioned in the first sentence of the article.

    Some versions I've heard of the story indicate that the statues were built to praise the bird-man who would bring back the birds and the trees to the island. So they were cutting down their last trees in an effort to fix their environment. Dunno if that's the way it really played out.

  • I welcome it. (Score:4, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:16PM (#13108123)
    I welcome it, just like seedless watermelons. The dang tusks keep getting caught in my cheek, and you never can find a good place to spit them out without seeming like a total slob.
    • I find seedless watermelon to not taste worse than the old fashion seedfull kind. Also have u thought about how they "plant" new watermelon plants??? They do it by cloning them (very easy to do with some plants), which lowers their genetic diversity. Why is this bad??? Look at what is happening to banana plants. Bananas have been seedless for a long time, and new plants are just cloned from old plants overtime this has lowered the genetic diversity of the banana plants and now there is a pathogen that
      • so one time i was reading slashdot and there was this guy who was writing some crap about bananas or something and he grafted his sentences onto each other without using any kind of punctuation or anything and i think that he must have cloned his sentences or something and i got really bored reading it but then i thought wouldn't it be cool if i wrote a reply so i started typing

        so one time i was reading slashdot...

  • Poacher of the last tusk (Score:3, Funny)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:16PM (#13108124)
    Damn, I'm going to be rich.

  • Tuskless elephant jokes (Score:4, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:24PM (#13108202)
    Q: How do you shoot a blue tuskless elephant?
    A: With a blue tuskless elephant gun, of course.

    Q: How do you shoot a yellow tuskless elephant?
    A: Have you ever seen a yellow tuskless elephant?

    Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw the tuskless elephants coming over the hill?
    A: "Here come the tuskless elephants over the hill!"

    Q: How do you tell if there have been tuskless elephants in your refrigerator?
    A: Footprints in the peanut butter, and no rips in the saran wrap.

    Q: What did Charles de Gaulle say when he saw three tuskless elephants in sunglasses coming down the path?
    A: Ribbit.

    Q: What did Jane say when she saw the tuskless elephants over the hill?
    A: "Here come a bunch of grapes over the hill". She was colorblind.

    Q: How do you get down off an tuskless elephant?
    A: You don't. You get down off a duck.

  • I have advocated this before , but one sure way to stiff up the elephant populations and to eliminate illegal poaching is to create elephant farms.
    In doing so we create a reputable ivory trade , a great source of work for the local communities ,a new source of food and a strong elephant population.
    I am not talking about factory farming as i find that disgusting , It should be rather free range .
    It could also double as a safari trip , ivory could be harvested via profitable hunts (then sold on , including selling of the meat) .
    • an easier way would be to ask the poacher why they poach??? Most poachers are very poor, and only poach because they want things like food water and shelter, if these are provided then poaching can be reduced significantly. The problem with elephant farms are that elephants have huge home ranges and eat lots of food, I cannot image that elephant farms would be feasible, but if they are I do not see this as a bad thing. It's no different than cow farms.
      • In practice that does not work. If you pay the poacher not to poach, they take the money, and poach anyways. Human nature. Give them a real job 60 hour work weeks, stock options, saddle them with some debt, kids in private school. etc. and then when they come home from work, they will be too tired to poach. I am being tongue in cheak here, but their economic situation is a bit more complex. Just giving them food and water will not make poaching go away

    • Re:This one is bound to cause controversy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by molo ( 94384 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:10PM (#13108583) Journal
      Why not just harvest the ivory when the elephant develops maturely sized tusks, instead of killing the animal?

      -molo
    • Call me crazy, but isn't it possible that some smart cookie could extract the gene that is responsible for making tusks and insert that gene into another animals? Then we could have cows with tusks and the dairy farmers could boost their profits with ivory sales. It also means I could have a pet cat that looked like a sabre tooth tiger.
    • Farming qua farming doesn't work so well with elephants, but South Africa already has a program where limited culls for ivory are allowed to those who set aside part of their land for elephants and other wildlife. Zimbabwe had a similar program, but with the recent wave of land seizures the system there has broken down. Kenya is strongly opposed, arguing that poached ivory would be laundered through legal ivory stocks.
    • Farming is not really possible with elephants. Jared Diamond's series on PBS, Guns, germs and steel [pbs.org] mentioned in one episode that elephants have never successfully been farmed. They have work elephants in India, but they have to be caught in the wild and domesticated.

      It might be possible on a free range farm the size of a huge park, but then it'd be the same thing as a nature preserve, and you might as well let them live.

      Besides, do we really need a reputable ivory trade? I don't think billiard balls and

    • I have advocated this before , but one sure way to stiff up the elephant populations and to eliminate illegal poaching is to create elephant farms.
      In doing so we create a reputable ivory trade , a great source of work for the local communities ,a new source of food and a strong elephant population.
      I am not talking about factory farming as i find that disgusting , It should be rather free range .
      It could also double as a safari trip , ivory could be harvested via profitable hunts (then sold on , including s
    • Elephant firearms [clintock.com]. A little competition would really tone up the market for bones.

  • Realities Priorities (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:38PM (#13108312) Homepage Journal
    The fact that actions like this occur is more then likely based on immediate circumstances rather then a long drawn out through process. If I am staving and I find some apples the fact that I could take the apples and plant the seeds and have even more apples is more then likely going to be eclipsed by my immediate need to eat and the real necessity to hunt and gather NOW rather then farm LATER. Concerning the last tree, they may have cut it down for the immediate need of getting a fishing boat in order to eat NOW rather then the fact that there are no more trees to build boats LATER. In modern society, added with a touch of greed and self absorbtion, you get people who satisfy their needs (real or perceived) NOW rather then their kids needs LATER. Look at how many retire in their old age, no planning for LATER.

    Nothing suprising here... move along...
    • agreed. mod him up!!! Poachers tend to be quite poor, and need money for stuff like food, water and shelter give them that and poaching will decrease

      • Good point! Eliminate poverty and hunger, and our poaching problems are over!

        Thank God for you, TheSloth2001ca, you have saved the elephants.

        • well sometimes the amount of money currently being spent on fighting poaching coudl achieve better results of it were used to combat the reasons behind the poaching. No the poaching problem would not go away, but it could be reduced
          • Unfortunately the majority of poaching have a profit motive behind them, not survival.

            There's actually a form of sanctioned "poaching" given to the Eskimos for whales (being that's their only viable food source, and McDonald isn't exactly a healthy food source). The same privilege is given to Japan, again on whales, for "research purposes" on "whale impact" in local fisheries (all of which became sushi, good research indeed).

    • Re:Realities Priorities (Score:5, Interesting)

      by haggar ( 72771 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:15PM (#13108630) Homepage Journal
      My simple objection is that poachers are not starving. They are members of organized crime gangs, often so powerful to be able to challenge the state institutions themselves. Poaching is a sistematic process, and it's very "well" tought out: the reason why poachers don't plan for the future (i.e. why they poach all they can and to hell sustainability) is because poaching gangs are compiting against each other. It's a destructive logic, and it makes me revolt, but it's logic.
      • While there is alot of money in poaching, the ones acctually killing the elephants are most of the time quite poor
        • I agree with the OP. Although there might be a few cases of hungry bread winners thinking it's a quick buck, I would guess it's very rare.

          Game wardens in many game parks are armed with machine guns, and shoot poachers on sight. Poachers, in turn, do the same. It's been like this for a while, and your average villager knows his chances are better robbing the corner store.

  • If the Chinese could own elephant herds, this wouldn't be a problem. The owners would make sure that the elephants would grow appropriately and profitably. They would make sure that the beneficial attributes of the elephants would never disappear.

    Instead, today no one can own the Chinese elephants. And even if you do own them, you can't harvest the ivory in the tusks and sell them in a legitimate market. And because China is a communist society, sustainable profits are actively discouraged. Since no one ow
    • It's very difficult to own an elephant, in the sense that you own cattle. Cattle are domestic; no one has ever domesticated an elephant. Read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel to see the explanation, but it boils down to this: animals need a certain combination of traits to be domesticated for farming, and if they lack one of those traits they are pretty much impossible to domistcate.

      Elephants are just not practical: they live too long and take too long to breed. Domesticating them would take sev
    • Cattle will never go extinct as long as they produce the tasty meat we so love and crave, and as long as people are allowed to own cattle and exploit them.

      Yeap. Those damned communists getting in the way of profit and exploitation again. I feel so sorry for the elephants.

    • Yeah - this really worked for North American Buffalo

    • Best. Satire. Ever.
    • Cattle will never go extinct as long as they produce the tasty meat we so love and crave, and as long as people are allowed to own cattle and exploit them.

      Wow. That's quite a screwed up way of looking at it. The animal that pre-dated the doestication of the cow was the Aurochs. That animal is extinct by the hand of Man. Now, all we have are the decendants of those animals that we specifically bred for their meat quality and milk quality. We have not preserved the animal in its original state, we have
  • ...and to invite us to ponder what the last poacher was thinking as he shot the last tusked elephant.

    "Maybe I can feed my family for one more week"?

    Sorry to say this, people, but some things in life are not that simple.

  • The reason for the lack of tusks isn't evolution, it is evidence of an "Intelligent Designer".
  • "This is, of course, a possibility, but till now there is no clear genetic proof that it can occur," Vivek Menon, executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India, was quoted as saying. But hasn't your population balance just changed? So surely you now have less 'tusked' genes available in the pool?
  • Relax...this is all a grand scheme by the Ministries of Transportation in countries that have native Elephants to improve the safety of their taxi system(s)

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