We humans have an outsize influence on this planet, and our winged, finned, and four-legged neighbors are in their tough time. Many animals have died out in response to the pressures, but some survivors are adapting. Some animals are showing off never-before-seen behaviors, shifting their diets, and even evolving different shapes, sizes, and colors.
The shifts can't be avoided and are likely permanent: There's no going back to when wildlife was still completely wild. "There's no place anywhere on the planet in its original condition. There are micro plastics at the bottom of the ocean, and Antarctica is melting. The world has changed because we're in it," says Tag Engstrom, a biologist at California State University.
African elephants in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park are some daring members of the animal kingdom, who have found a will and a way to change right along with it.
Normally elephants use their 6-foot-long tusks to dig wells in search of water, lift objects, rip bark off trees, and even battle lions. In other words, the ivory appendages (附属品) are not just impressive to look at — they are highly useful tools. So it might seem strange that a significant number of African elephants in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, once an illegal hunting wildlife area, are now being born without tusks.
According to a 2021 DNA analysis published in the journal Science, that the elephants are born without tusks is no coincidence. After decades of being shot by ivory brokers, the leading elephants in some herds have passed down a trait that prevents the females' prize possessions from growing in — and helps them avoid being hunted. No one knows yet how widespread these genes might be in the greater population of African elephants, or how the loss of tusks might affect the mammals' survival overall. But the findings are a powerful, if depressing, reminder of the extremes a species might endure to escape from extinction.
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