Why don t people take the tusks of old and dead elephants, but hunt healthy elephants?

Businessmen, of course. Because healthy elephants have a very high commercial value and can be sold for a lot of money. And ivory is especially valuable, if it is an elephant that dies of old age, it will not sell for much money.

This is the case because the tusks of healthy elephants are very strong, while the tusks of old and dead elephants are very fragile.

Because the value of ivory is particularly high, there are many people who will pull out the tusks from mature elephants for personal gain, which is particularly cruel and they have no quality.

Because the quality of elephants' teeth was not particularly good at that time, they were very concerned about quality when they took these things.

Because the quality of the ivory of the old and dead elephant is not particularly good, it cannot be made into something, and it is not of great value.

In fact, compound elephants have two kinds of tusk teeth - molars and anterior bai, which we usually call "ivory."

du"zhi refers to the specialized upper front teeth of elephants. Only male elephants have upper front teeth, while African elephants have both male and female teeth. The upper front teeth will not fall out for life, one-third of them are grown in the elephant skull, and the molars will continue to grow with wear, and can be replaced up to 6 times in a lifetime with a total of 24 molars, and when the old elephant loses the last set of molars, it will starve to death because it cannot eat.

In the wild, ivory is an important tool for elephants to feed, defend themselves and find mates, all of which can lead to constant wear and tear or even breakage. Because there are no nerves in the exposed upper front teeth, elephants will not feel pain and will not be life-threatening if they lose these teeth in their natural state. It's just that daily activities and finding a mate will be affected to a certain extent.

But now, the reason most elephants lose their tusks is due to poaching. About one-third of the root of intact tusks is the part of the tusk that grows inside the elephant's skull, and it is also the thickest part of a tusk. The ** of an elephant tusk is directly related to its length, thickness and weight, so killing elephants for ivory is the only practice for poachers.

In fact, the vast majority of elephants found to have died as a result of poaching had their faces cut off.

As a result, elephants that lose their teeth under natural conditions survive normally, while elephants that lose their tusks at the hands of poachers often lose their lives.

Because the ivory connects many blood vessels and nerves, if the elephant dies and then takes the ivory, it will waste a lot of time and energy, and if you directly kill the elephant and extract the ivory, you can save a lot of time and cost.

Because after the elephant dies, the ivory will become colorless, and the quality of the ivory will deteriorate, so people will pull the tusks while the elephant is alive.

Because elephants live so long, ordinary people can't wait, so in order to get high profits, they take ivory while the elephant is alive.

Because humans are very greedy, and humans want to take out the whole ivory, if the elephant dies, the tusks will break.

It's because some people think that the ivory of a living elephant is more valuable, so they don't wait for them to die.

Mainly because the merchant wants to make money, he doesn't wait for the elephant to die before extracting the tooth.

It's because people think that the ivory is very good when they are alive, but when they die, there is some solidification, so the quality of the ivory is not very good.

Because if the elephant dies, it will be very difficult to get the ivory, and the ivory will be very dull.

Because many people can't wait for the death of elephants, because elephants have a very long lifespan, and they can't get enough economic profits at all.

This is because these people are very greedy and want to make money from these ivory items.

Ivory is so precious, if it is stipulated that dead ivory can be picked up at home, then many people must rush to pick it up! You're sure you can pick it up!

The current rule is that no matter whether your elephant is dead or alive, the ivory cannot be traded (except for mammoth ivory), since it is not legal, how can the thieves have so much time to wait for your elephant to die of old age??

This is because these ivory people don't care about these lives at all, they do anything for profit.

It's hard to marry a beautiful woman, why don't you wait until she's eighty years old before marrying her.

What does ivory mean to elephants?

Unlike ordinary teeth, ivory here refers to tusks, which extend from the inside of the mouth and are long and exposed.

The biggest effect is **.

Elephants use their tusks against other predators, such as lions and hyenas on the grasslands. In addition, it will also be used against other elephants.

Elephants also use their tusks to feed, dig and carry things.

In general, ivory is a very important thing for elephants and is used very frequently.

As a result, teeth are also prone to wear and tear in use, and sometimes it can be seen from documentaries that some elephant tusks are incomplete or may have been damaged during daily fighting.

Worn teeth, although they cannot be the same as before, can slowly recover over time.

In other words, without tusks, in essence, elephants don't die, but life can certainly make a big difference.

Although ivory is very precious, it is indeed very cruel to pull out ivory. Elephants that have their tusks removed are basically short of life. Basic survivability is already lacking.

Yes. Because after the elephant's teeth are cut off, it does not affect the life of the elephant, so it can still live.

Elephants can still live after their tusks are cut off, because there are no nerves in the tusks.

The essence of ivory is teeth, and the main cost is phosphate and organic matter. So, strictly speaking, elephants don't die if they lose part of their tusks. Many elephants are now born without tusks, and people live a normal life.

But the problem lies in human greed. The exposed part of the ivory is only two-thirds of the total length of the tusk. This part of the ivory is solid in the middle, with no blood vessels and no nerves.

Even if it is sawn off, it will not cause any harm to the elephant. It's like cutting your nails, it's not a big deal. However, the remaining 1 3 tusks grow in the cranial cavity of elephants, which involves a large number of blood vessels and nerves, so it is also called "blood teeth".

Because whole ivory can be sold for more expensive, under the influence of greed, criminals choose to kill the elephant and take the whole ivory with them. Therefore, taking away the exposed tusks will not lead to the death of the elephant, but it is extremely cruel to take away the blood tusks and poachers' methods, so the elephant will die. So why not wait for the elephant to die before taking the ivory?

It's not illegal, but it can also be sold for money, isn't that the best of both worlds? This relates to the characteristics of the elephant species. Normally, it takes 4-5 years for a female elephant to go from conception to the end of lactation.

Generally, it is a single fetus, while a baby elephant takes about 15-20 years to truly mature.

Because an elephant's tusks grow for life, that is, the older the elephant is, the longer the tusks will be. Paradoxically, elephants live too long, with an average lifespan of up to 70 years. For example, a customer says, "I want a piece of ivory."

The merchant said, "Okay, we'll help you find out if there's a dead elephant." "As a result, I searched for several years, but I couldn't find it.

If I had waited, maybe all the customers would have died, and the elephant would still be alive. On top of that, there are still people looking for ivory, which has led businesses to decide to hunt live adult elephants without humanity and get the ivory directly. Even today, on average, each elephant is illegally hunted for 15-20 minutes, and tens of thousands of elephants die every year.

Under the influence of this tragic fate, elephants are also evolving, and the direction of evolution is "ivory". In the past, only about 3% of African elephants could not grow ivory in the absence of poaching environments. It is reasonable to say that these African elephants are "abnormal".

In modern times, however, the proportion of female African elephants without tusks has risen to more than 35%, and this proportion is steadily increasing.

Elephants are long-lived animals, generally able to live to about 50 or 70 years old, I think not many people can afford to wait for elephants to grow old naturally and then take ivory, let alone African "poachers" with "shorter lifespans", but one of the main reasons is the value of "blood teeth".

Elephants have their own unique burial grounds, which ordinary people simply cannot find. Elephants have high intelligence, spirituality, docile personality, revenge, they are huge, can be used as herbivores, but also often bullied by carnivores, in order to die right, an elephant herd has its own cemetery. Generally, this place is very secluded, it may be a remote cave, or it may be a natural deep pit, and the elephant will also pile up some stones, wood and other items at the entrance that it can move to hide people's eyes and ears.

Knowing that it is dying, the elephant will leave the herd alone, go to their secret place, burrow in, wait quietly for death, and if it detects an intrusion nearby, it will use the soles of its feet to stomp on the bones of the bone to transmit sounds, even if the herd is 11 kilometers away. Herds of elephants will drive away intruders, but more often than not, they will be stopped and killed so that outsiders will not know about their graves.

Due to the old age of the elephant, the ivory is no longer particularly strong, and the luster of the ivory has also decreased. The saying is that the elephant dies old, the ivory has no value, nor does it have any nutrition, and the luster is not particularly good.

There is no way to preserve the old and dead elephant teeth, and the surface coating on the elephant teeth is very thin, and there is no way to carve them well, so they are unwilling to do so.

In the first half of 2021, the excavation of Sanxingdui site in China attracted a lot of attention on the InternetUnder the brilliance of the unearthed ** mask, the ivory is very easy to be overlooked, but in fact, the ivory occurs in every Sanxingdui site, which shows that the ivory has been an object used for worship by the tribe as early as ancient times. In addition to Sanxingdui, the most enthusiastic about ivory products is Africa, and for thousands of years, African tribes have also loved to use ivory as a worship thing.

Ivory has been given a halo of "sublime" and "pure" since ancient times, and even many myths and legends have the shadow of baby elephants, causing many people to wear ivory products out of spiritual needs. Gradually, ivory products became "luxury brands", which caused many wealthy merchants, even if they had no feeling for ivory, to collect some ivory products. In addition to being used as a ** equipment, ivory is a special tool used by baby elephants for "dining", and ivory can be used to overturn flowers and trees, peel tree roots and dig up soil to find water resources.

And ivory is also a big plus item for courtship, the thicker and longer the tusks of the male elephant, the easier it is to win the favor of the female elephant. Ivory: For baby elephants, people's greed is boundless and impatient. Originally, the indigenous people of Africa hunted baby elephants just to get better food, but since the price of ivory has been hyped into the sky, the goal of Africans to hunt baby elephants is no longer pure, and poachers from all directions have also poured in.

The key is twofold. The first effect is to be used as a ** equipment for courtship.

In order to better compete for the other half, male baby elephants will carry out fierce battles during the breeding period, and the key equipment they use in duels is long tusks. The longer and thicker the tusks, the more beneficial they are in duels, so that in the difficult course of development, the tusks of male baby elephants have grown longer and longer, and the tusks of African elephants can reach meters. The second effect is the convenience of survival.

The ivory of baby elephants also serves as a powerful tool in their daily livesAssist baby elephants in digging up water resources, digging out underground stems of green plants, stripping tree roots, etc.

Because if people want to remove the ivory from the old and dead elephants, the waiting time will be too long, and the human demand for ivory is too great, and the contradiction between supply and demand is seriously imbalanced.

Because elephants live a long life, man's greed for ivory is infinite and anxious. It is also rumored that ivory can be taken from aging elephants to cover up illegal hunting.

In fact, the structure of ivory and some other mammalian teeth are actually the same, the only difference is that the two tusks of the elephant are too big, it is suitable for hand-carving some objects, but because in ancient times, it was difficult for everyone to kill an elephant, so the ivory was also very difficult to obtain, resulting in the ivory ** very expensive.

With the improvement of people's skills in hunting elephants, the supply of ivory has gradually increased, and all kinds of strange ivory products are also varied, such as kitchen utensils, white piano keys for electronic organs, chess and cards, and even billiards. However, the total number of elephants has decreased dramatically, and the remaining African and Asian elephants on the planet are now rare.

The ivory trade is illegal in most countries around the world today, but ivory is so precious that some illegals, driven by profits, still take chances and poach elephants to obtain and sell ivory.

Elephants are the largest animals on land on Earth, and they were once found all over the globe, with mammoths in cold high latitudes and few hairy elephants in hot low latitudes. But the rise of people has caused the planet's large animals to suffer devastating and severe blows. Today, the range of elephants has been greatly reduced, and there are only two species living on earth, the African elephant and the Asian elephant.

African elephants are tall and large, females are 3 to 4 meters and weigh up to 8 tons, Asian elephants are shorter, females are 2 to 4 meters and weigh 3 to 5 tons; The middle part of the back of the African elephant is dented, while the Asian elephant is raised. In addition, African elephants, both male and female, produce elongated tusks when they reach adulthood, while Asian elephants are only male elephants.

When we talk about ivory, we actually refer to the second pair of incisors of the elephant, which begins to grow and develop from the age of 2 years old, and follows the elephant until death, and will continue to grow and develop during the period, so the older the elephant, the thicker and longer the tusks will be.

The effect of ivory on elephants is mainly twofold: first, elephants can help males compete for mating rights, and second, ivory can help elephants peel tree bark or dig up the rhizomes of underground plants to eat. From two aspects, if the elephant does not have tusks and is inconvenient to live, but it is not impossible to survive, then if the tusks are taken off the elephant's body, it is probably a different situation.

Now do you know the answer? What are your thoughts on this?