Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
An elephant's tusks are among its defining features -- they help the animal lift heavy branches, topple trees, strip bark, fight, and dig holes for water and minerals.
But an increasing proportion of female elephants in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park have been born without these crucial tools, and scientists say it's an evolutionary response to the brutal killing of elephants for their ivory tusks during the country's 15-year civil war.
Elephant experts working in the park had begun to notice the phenomenon after the war ended in 1992. Field data and analysis of old video footage from the park found that the proportion of tuskless female elephants increased more than threefold between 1972 and the year 2000. It was a period during which the elephant population plummeted from roughly 2,000 to about 250 individuals, said Ryan Long, an associate professor of wildlife sciences at the University of Idaho.
"During the war, Gorongosa was essentially the geographic center of the conflict," Long said via email. "As a result there were large numbers of soldiers in the area and a lot of associated motivation... to kill elephants and sell the ivory to purchase arms and ammunition. The resulting level of poaching was very intense."
Scientists now have a better understanding of the genetic basis for this tusklessness and why it only appears to affect female elephants, according to a study that published in the journal Science on Thursday.
The analysis showed that tuskless females were over five times more likely to survive during the 28-year period than their tusked female counterparts, hence the adaptation was very unlikely to be a chance occurrence.
Tusklessness does occur naturally -- and only in females -- even in the absence of poaching, but usually only in a small minority of elephants. In Gorongosa in the 1970s, 18.5% of female elephants didn't have tusks, while three decades later 51% did.
"Evolution is simply a change in heritable characteristics within a population over successive generations, and based on the results of our study, the shift toward tusklessness among female elephants at Gorongosa fits this definition perfectly," said Long, an author of the study.
"The fact that it occurred so rapidly is rare indeed, and is a direct function of the strength of selection," he said via email. "In other words, it happened so quickly because tuskless females had a MUCH higher probability of surviving the war, and thus a MUCH greater potential for passing their genes on to the next generation."
But what about the male elephants? After taking blood samples of 18 female elephants, with and without tusks, the researchers sequenced their genomes. They found that the females with no tusks had a genetic variation in a very specific region of the X-chromosome, which plays a role in tusk development.
"Females have 2 X chromosomes. In tuskless females, one of those chromosomes is 'normal' and the other contains the deleted information," Long explained.
"When a tuskless female conceives a male offspring, that male has a 50/50 shot of receiving the affected X-chromosome from its mother. If it receives the 'normal' chromosome then it will survive and be born with the necessary genetic information to produce tusks."
However, if the male elephant fetus receives the chromosome with the genetic variant, it dies in the womb because the variant that produces tusklessness females is lethal to males, Long said.
The exact genetic and developmental mechanism that leads to tusklessness in females and the loss of male elephants during an elephant's 22-month pregnancy was not yet understood, according to the study.
Elephant numbers have rebounded at Gorongosa to around 800, Long said. Having no tusks doesn't appear to significantly hinder the female elephants, but this is something researchers want to study further. He said dietary analysis suggested that females without tusks eat a greater proportion of grasses.
"The population is doing well and there's a lot of tuskless elephants. They've clearly adapted to life without tusks but there's a lot we don't know."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
The CFL suspended Toronto Argonauts quarterback Chad Kelly for at least nine regular-season games Tuesday following its investigation into a lawsuit filed by a former strength-and-conditioning coach against both the player and club.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.