Mystery of the Missing Tusks

This activity explores images of elephants with and without tusks, which serve as phenomena for learning about selection and human impacts on the frequency of traits within populations.

This absence of tusks, which is called tusklessness, is a natural, but usually rare, trait in African elephants. Scientists are studying how rates of tusklessness in elephant populations have changed, and are continuing to change, due to poaching. These images from Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique show two different African elephants: an elephant that has tusks and an elephant that does not.

The “Educator Materials” document includes background information and implementation suggestions for using the images as phenomena. The “Student Handout” includes the images and background information.

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.