Tusk, tusk: lifting the ban on ivory

 
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Phun elephant phacts
The heaviest recorded pair of tusks, from an elephant in Kenya, weighed almost 200 kilograms. During the 1980s, such a pair was an irresistible lure for poachers and was tantamount to a death sentence for any tusker unlucky enough to wander within gunshot.


 
bulletElephant trails became the basis
for early African roads.


  bullet pablum anyone? Elephants live up to 60 years, and die when they run out of teeth -- assuming poachers don't get them first. Huh? Right: Elephants have only two molars in each jaw at a time. As molars wear out, they are pushed forward by new molars. But the elephant can only make six molars, so when the the chompers run out, the animal can't eat and it dies.


  bullet Elephants begin breeding at about age 15. A new-born calf, after 22 months of gestation, weighs about 100 kilograms.


Elephants can communicate using sounds that are below the human hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz.

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  bullet Some forest tree seeds have evolved to pass throughsprout an elephant's gut and sprout in the dung heap, fertilized and ready to go.

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