Give it a few thousand years, and tusks could completely disappear from the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). The beautifully smooth, elongated ivory incisors neatly bordering a long trunk are iconic in the public mind. The reigning hypothesis is that tusks evolved to help male elephants fight one another, as demonstrated when males compete over females. However, a recent study published in the journal Animal Behaviour has shown that tusks may not be key factors in tussles, at least as far as elephants are concerned.
Size seems to matter. Studies of African savannah elephants (Loxodonta Africana) in Amboseli, Kenya, have shown that larger males tend to win jousts. But the role of tusks during interactions between male elephants has not been determined until this study.
Karpagam Chelliah and Raman Sukumar from the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, decided to study which factor gives fighting male elephants the biggest competitive edge. They needed a population that had all three variables: both tusked and tuskless males, and males of varying sizes.
