Tusk tusk: description and photo. Interesting Facts

The elephant's tusks are modified, well developed and continuously growing teeth - incisors or canines (depending on the animal's belonging to this or that species).

Elephant Teeth

In the mouth of these terrestrial animals, in addition to the outward tusks, there are four more molars (two in the upper and lower jaws), consisting of a number of enamel scales connected to each other and allowing the elephants to grind food. In the Asian elephant chewing teeth are ribbon-like, and in African - diamond-shaped.

The change of molars occurs about six times during the whole elephant life, and the new teeth grow behind the old ones.

As for the shape of the tusks, in the Indian (Asian) elephant they are thin (in females there are no tusks at all). The tusks of the African elephant are thick and huge, and their length sometimes reaches two or more meters.

What is the difference between an Indian elephant and an African elephant?

The tusks of the largest adult Indian elephant grow to a maximum of 1.5 meters long and weigh 20 to 25 kg. The growth of this animal can reach 3 m, and weight - 5 tons.

The tusk of an elephant grown in northern India is thick and strongly curved, and the tusks of its relatives settled in southern Africa are thin and sharp, and the farther south the territory, the thinner and sharper these formations.

Indian elephants, unlike African, live exclusively in the forest, with preference given to undergrowth from bamboo thickets.

African elephants settle both in the forest and savannah, and are the largest terrestrial mammals, as evidenced by the record in the Guinness Book of Records.

A typical African elephant weighs up to 5 tons, and a elephant - more than 2, but less than 3 tons. The maximum length of the tusk of the African elephant is 3 m.

The largest representative of this elephant species was shot in 1974 in Angola. We hung this male over 12 tons.

Amazing Details

Elephants do not feel panic at all when meeting a mouse - it's fiction. To blow out such a tiny animal, and with it stones and other heavy objects that were nearby, the elephant should breathe out enough.

These giants are really afraid of ordinary honey bees. Hearing the buzz of the approaching bee swarm, the elephants immediately begin to run. But these animals are difficult to call cowardly creatures. They are very cautious and smart. By the way, the elephant is listed in the list of the most intelligent animals of the Earth.

Few people know that the elephant - the owner of an exceptional hearing, as well as a beautiful memory and smell. The elephant is able to remember the landmark places for him, as well as people who badly (or well) treated him. But the most amazing quality of an elephant is a good musical ear, which allows him to remember and subsequently learn a melody of three notes. True, low notes like him much more than high and sonorous.

Unlike other representatives of the animal world, the elephant seems to have an idea of death. Elephants are able to identify corpses (and even bones) of their fellow tribesmen. Researchers were amazed at how the indifference with which elephants relate to the remains of other living beings was replaced by a manifestation of care and compassion for the corpses of relatives.

Seeing the skeleton of an elephant, these animals can not pass by: they begin to tense the remains of the trunk tensely, paying special attention to the head of the deceased. Truly probing the skull with proboscis, as if trying to identify the untimely departed friend, the elephants do not abandon his lifeless body to be torn to scavenger animals, but fall asleep with dry foliage.

When one of the members of the herd is fatally wounded, healthy elephants, as if escorting a relative to a better world, are on duty near him and do not disperse until the very end ...

What for an elephant of a tusk?

With the help of this "tool" the elephant uproots trees and sometimes defends itself against enemies, the main one being a man. An enraged elephant with tusks (photo below), whose length is sometimes equal to its own height, poses a serious danger both for its fellow humans and for man, but rabies of elephants is a rare phenomenon. Elephant tusks are more a punishment from nature than a gift. Particularly sad is the fate of African elephants, tusks of which have always been very much appreciated.

With the arrival of the white man with the gun on the "black" continent, Africa ceased to be an "elephant paradise". Ruthlessly exterminating good-natured giants for the sake of precious tusks, European poachers left their carcasses to be eaten by hyenas and vultures.

Where is the "elephant cemetery"?

An interesting fact: no one has ever found the tusks of the dead African elephants. This circumstance formed the basis of numerous legends that the ingenious local population never tire of compiling. In the existence of mysterious elephant cemeteries, the most notorious smugglers were already ready to believe ... but here researchers of wildlife took up the matter.

According to information provided by naturalists of the 20th century, elephant tusks serve as a source of mineral substances for porcupines, which, with the arrival of the rainy season, completely deprive the minerals contained in the soil.

The issue of the disappearance of tusks remained open for a long time because porcupines are nocturnal animals.

Ivory Features

The elephant tusk is characterized by a soft, plastic texture with a small number of cracks, but due to the fact that transportation across national borders, as well as storing ivory products, is prohibited, the purchase of this material is meaningless.

Outside, elephant tusks, mostly smooth and light, and from the inside resemble hollow cone-shaped pulps, with internal voids reaching almost to the middle of the length of the tusks.

How to distinguish an elephant's tusk from a fake of another material

Specialists working with antiques, note that very often the role of elephant ivory is attributed to a completely qualitative plastic or ceramic counterfeits, apparently very similar to carved ivory. Some falsifiers give out for elephant tusks synthetic materials with a filler made from bone chips, which are also difficult to distinguish from natural material.

For the manufacture of counterfeits in most cases apply methods of casting and hand painting. If you look at the work of counterfeiters with an armed eye, you can find lines of stitches and traces from the gates. But the main difference is the unnatural smoothness and lightness of non-natural products.

For elephant tusks are often given out another, cheaper bone, but not always the reason is the high cost of natural material. Just often, sellers, being, in fact, resellers themselves do not know what they are selling.

There are also cases when items made from the ivory ivory were made from the bone of their ancient ancestor, the mammoth. By the way, tusks of mammoth are forbidden not only to transportation, but also to processing.

An interesting experiment was decided in March 2015 by the Thai authorities, legalizing the storage of ivory. The population was asked to register illegally kept elephant and mammoth tusks in their homes, in order to turn them into law-abiding citizens from smugglers.

As it turned out, souvenirs from ivory are kept almost by all inhabitants of the country. Those who decided to register their treasures, as promised, the state freed from responsibility for the illegal possession of contraband goods.

As it turned out, in many families elephant and mammoth bone products played the role of relics and were kept for descendants. Now the owners of family values can be calm.

The citizens of Thailand, who did not respond to the appeal of the authorities, expect a fine of $ 200,000 or 3 years in prison.

What distinguishes the mammoth tusks from the elephant

Mammoth tusks have no voids. Having a uniform solid texture, they delight the eye with a variety of colors (from pale cream to thick black) and pronounced chiaroscuro.

The transverse section of mammoth tusks has a heterogeneous color, reminiscent of the alternation of dark and light rings, dotted with radial or circular cracks. The white color of the tusk and the friable texture are characteristic features of a low-quality material.

The main sign by which you can determine that the "tusk of an elephant" actually belonged to a mammoth is a pattern in the form of a "net", which opens when cross-cutting. The mesh forms the interlacing of thin ruts and nerve fibers.