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A comment on Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due to ivory poaching. Parent comment

Re:Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due t... by dheera on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @03:03PM (#29017595)
As sad as this is, how does this kind of evolution happen?

I imagine the poaching process doesn't actually differentiate tusked and tuskless elephants, both types of elephants would fall into the trap and die? And then if it has tusks the poachers take them, if it doesn't have tusks the poachers just abandon the dead elephant?

Or does their trap actually trap them by the tusk?

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Re:Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due t... by jsnell on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @03:06PM (#29017642)
They're hunted interactively by people with guns, not passively with traps.
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Re:Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due t... by cabalamat on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @03:18PM (#29017794)
Traps wouldn't work because the authorities would get to the elephant in a trap before the poacher returned, thus the poacher would lose their prey.

The poacher could always hang around near the trap, but if you're doing that you might as well just shoot the elephant, not trap it.

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Re:Female African elephants are evolving without tusks due t... by varenc on Wednesday October 27, 2021 @03:13PM (#29017726)
Yea I assume poachers shoot elephants, not trap them. So they only want to shoot ones with visible tusks.

Edit: I found an article[0] describing some poaching methods and apparently they do use traps! Including snares and a spiked board. But that it appears homemade shotguns and rifles are the most common method.

[0] http://www.open-earth.org/document/natureR_main.php?natureId...

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