Elephants are Rapidly Evolving Without Tusks to Escape Ivory Poachers, Study Finds

upstart writes:

Elephants are rapidly evolving without tusks to escape ivory poachers, study finds - ABC News:

While the evolution of animals is often thought of as something that takes millions of years, it can also happen much faster.

A new study, published today in Science, provides powerful evidence that human activities are driving rapid evolution of animals.

A population of African bush elephants in Mozambique was found to have adapted to poaching by losing their tusks over a matter of decades.

And while losing tusks might have helped the elephants survive, there's concern this will also come at a cost.

[...] When the researchers analysed blood taken from tusked and tuskless female elephants, they found evidence two gene mutations were responsible for the lack of tusks.

[...] But one of the genes called AMELX is in a region on the X chromosome that the study found differed greatly between tusked and tuskless elephants.

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