Whether a female elephant has tusks depends mostly on which kind of elephant she is. In African elephants, tusks are the norm for females as well as males, while Asian females rarely show any. In parts of Africa, decades of ivory poaching have tipped the balance, so herds with many tuskless females now exist.
Female African Elephants Usually Have Tusks
Tusks are enlarged upper incisor teeth that grow out past the lips. An African female’s tusks grow from the same teeth as a bull’s. In populations left alone by hunters, only about 2 to 4 percent of females lack them.1EarthDate. Tuskless Elephants Some estimates put the natural share as high as 6 percent.2National Geographic Education Blog. How an Elephant Loses Its Tusks: A Lesson in (Un)Natural Selection Among newborn females in a setting without human interference, about 4.6 percent lack tusks.3PubMed Central. Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness A cow’s tusks are usually slimmer and shorter than a bull’s, but they still jut clearly from the mouth.
Tusks are teeth, not horns or bone. They have the same basic parts as other teeth: a core of living tissue, a layer of dentine, and a coating of enamel at the tip that wears off early in life. Unlike human teeth, they never stop growing from the base, which is why the visible part keeps lengthening unless it wears or breaks. About a third of a tusk sits hidden in a socket in the skull, so a photo understates the length of the whole tooth.
In Kruger National Park in South Africa, where hunting is banned, about 3 percent of elephants are tuskless.4PubMed Central. Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness Another count in Kruger found fewer than 5 percent with no tusks at all.5PubMed Central. Effect of the habitat and tusks on trunk grasping techniques in African savannah elephants Counts of tusklessness usually mean neither tusk is present; a cow that has broken or lost one tusk is not tuskless.
Asian Elephant Females Rarely Show Tusks
In Asian elephants, full tusks are a male trait.6Acta Theriologica. Remarks on body growth and phenotypes in Asian elephant Elephas maximus Both males and females can instead have tushes, small stub incisors that barely show past the lip.7Acta Theriologica. Remarks on body growth and phenotypes in Asian elephant Elephas maximus Some Asian elephants of either sex have no upper incisors at all.8Acta Theriologica. Remarks on body growth and phenotypes in Asian elephant Elephas maximus So a tuskless male Asian elephant is normal, while all males in some African study herds had tusks.9Pachyderm. A possible case of congenital tusklessness in a male African elephant (Loxodonta africana)10PubMed. Tusklessness and tusk fractures in free-ranging African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) Tushes may appear only when the mouth opens or the lip lifts, so they are often mistaken for no tusks at all. They are the same teeth that form tusks, just small. A tusked elephant in an Asian setting is very likely a male, and a bull with no visible tusks is ordinary, not a sign of poaching or injury.
Telling the two kinds apart is easy from the head. African elephants have much larger ears, shaped somewhat like the African continent. Asian elephants have smaller, rounded ears and a domed or twin-humped head.
How Female Tusks Differ From Males’
In African elephants, males’ tusks are clearly larger than females’.11Pachyderm. Growth characteristics of tusks of elephants in Kruger National Park A bull’s tusks keep lengthening and thickening throughout his life, gaining mass faster with age.12Pachyderm. Growth characteristics of tusks of elephants in Kruger National Park A female’s tusk growth, by contrast, seems to stop at about 40 years old.13Pachyderm. Growth characteristics of tusks of elephants in Kruger National Park After that, her tusks tend to lose length and weight, probably from breakage and wear.14Pachyderm. Growth characteristics of tusks of elephants in Kruger National Park In the bulls measured, tusks were still growing at 55 years old.15Pachyderm. Growth characteristics of tusks of elephants in Kruger National Park
So the size gap widens with age: young bulls and cows carry similar small tusks, but by old age his tusk can be far heavier than hers. That is why photos of enormous tusks nearly always show males. Size alone can mislead: even in extinct mastodons, a young male’s tusk was hard to tell from an older female’s.16Paleobiology. Sexual dimorphism of structures showing indeterminate growth: tusks of American mastodons (Mammut americanum)
Other features help. Bulls have a more rounded forehead, cows a more angular one. Adult bulls are much larger and often travel alone or in bachelor groups, while family herds led by a matriarch are made of related females and young.
Why Some Females Are Born Tuskless
A tuskless elephant is one born without tusks, and the trait is passed down in families.17EarthDate. Tuskless Elephants In Mozambique, family patterns fit a dominant gene carried on the X chromosome.18PubMed. Ivory poaching and the rapid evolution of tusklessness in African elephants Every elephant gets an X from its mother. Daughters also get a second X from their father, while sons get a Y. A daughter therefore has two copies of any X-linked gene, whereas a son has only one. If the gene is dominant, a single copy in a daughter is enough to make her tuskless.
The same gene appears to kill male calves that inherit it, likely before birth.19Pachyderm. A possible case of congenital tusklessness in a male African elephant (Loxodonta africana) A daughter can carry it on one X and still survive, but a son with the gene on his only X has no backup copy. That means tuskless females tend to have more daughters than sons.20Pachyderm. A possible case of congenital tusklessness in a male African elephant (Loxodonta africana) The genes involved also play known roles in tooth growth in mammals.21Science. Ivory poaching and the rapid evolution of tusklessness in African elephants
No tuskless males were seen in that Mozambique population.22Pachyderm. A possible case of congenital tusklessness in a male African elephant (Loxodonta africana) So in African elephants, tusklessness is mostly a female trait, unlike in Asia.23Pachyderm. A possible case of congenital tusklessness in a male African elephant (Loxodonta africana) A rare possible case of a tuskless male African elephant has been reported, though.24Pachyderm. A possible case of congenital tusklessness in a male African elephant (Loxodonta africana) Tusks that break off often leave a visible stump, while a truly tuskless elephant shows no tusk at the lip at all, though a tusk broken off at or inside the lip can be hard to tell apart.
How Poaching Made Tuskless Females Common
Poachers shoot elephants for their tusks, so tuskless ones are often spared. As tusked elephants are killed over time, the tuskless share can rise from about 4 percent to 60 percent in older animals.25National Geographic Education Blog. How an Elephant Loses Its Tusks: A Lesson in (Un)Natural Selection Older animals show the highest share because they lived through the most years of hunting. The share of tuskless elephants can also hint at past ivory hunting in a herd, though a small founding group can raise it too.26PubMed Central. Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness
Tuskless females survive in higher numbers and have more calves. Daughters inherit the gene from their mothers, so each generation has a larger tuskless share than the last. It is selection driven by people, and it moved fast: elephants breed slowly, yet a few decades of heavy killing were enough.
Real places show the range. Tusklessness is about 10 percent in Mana Pools, Zimbabwe.27PubMed Central. Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness It is over 70 percent in Addo Elephant Park, South Africa, after heavy ivory hunting in the 1800s.28PubMed Central. Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness In Gorongosa, Mozambique, the 1977 to 1992 civil war cut elephants from about 2,200 to fewer than 200.29Pachyderm. The Gorongosa elephants through war and recovery: Tusklessness, population size, structure and reproductive parameters Tusklessness remains common in post-war generations there, even as numbers recover.30Pachyderm. The Gorongosa elephants through war and recovery: Tusklessness, population size, structure and reproductive parameters In some herds, it was also high where a small founding group started the population.31PubMed. Tusklessness and tusk fractures in free-ranging African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana)
Even tusked survivors carry less ivory. Among elephants that survived heavy poaching in the 1970s and 80s, tusks were 37 percent shorter in females than before.32PubMed Central. Illegal tusk harvest and the decline of tusk size in the African elephant Males’ tusks were 22 percent shorter.33PubMed Central. Illegal tusk harvest and the decline of tusk size in the African elephant
What Losing Tusks Means for a Female
Elephants use tusks to dig, strip bark, lift and defend themselves. Cows dig for water in dry riverbeds, which also helps other animals reach it. They strip bark from trees and pry roots out of the ground to supplement their diet. Tusks also push and lift objects, and help protect a calf from predators or other elephants.
One account says tuskless cows rank lowest in the herd and may fail to breed because tusked cows dominate.34PubMed Central. Ivory Harvesting Pressure on the Genome of the African Elephant: A Phenotypic Shift to Tusklessness That comes from a single account, not a settled finding, and tuskless females clearly do breed in poached populations, as their spread shows.
Tuskless elephants manage by relying more on the trunk for grasping and stripping food. They can still dig and feed, and herd members help each other in many tasks.
A broken tusk is a dental injury. A tusk has a soft core of living tissue, the pulp. Most of that core is rich in blood vessels but has few nerves,35PubMed Central. Structure and innervation of the tusk pulp in the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) so elephants seem to feel little pain from tusk damage.36PubMed Central. Structure and innervation of the tusk pulp in the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) Infection is another matter: in zoo elephants, breaks exposing more than half a centimetre of pulp were about 24 times more likely to become infected.37PubMed Central. Treatment and Outcomes of Tusk Fractures in Managed African Savanna and Asian Elephants (Loxodonta africana and Elephas maximus) across Five Continents
Can Tusks Come Back to Poached Herds
Wild elephants tend to avoid breeding with close relatives.38Oregon State University. Decline in population and tusk length of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) due to the AMEL-X gene proliferation from poaching and conservation methods to successfully reverse this decline Moving tusked bulls into affected areas could therefore spread tusked genes.39Oregon State University. Decline in population and tusk length of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) due to the AMEL-X gene proliferation from poaching and conservation methods to successfully reverse this decline Testing could also identify females carrying the tuskless gene.40Oregon State University. Decline in population and tusk length of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) due to the AMEL-X gene proliferation from poaching and conservation methods to successfully reverse this decline Stopping poaching is still the step that lets tusked elephants survive to breed. Moving bulls is costly and risky, and the approach only works if the area is already safe from poaching, otherwise tusked bulls just become targets again.
Recovery takes generations. Females first calve in their teens, each calf takes nearly two years of pregnancy, and gene shares change only over many births.