The Invasion of Tusk-less Elephants

Hunting gave elephants that didn’t grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa. Recent figures suggest that about a third of younger females—the generation born after the war ended in 1992—never developed tusks. Normally, tusklessness would occur only in about 2 to 4 percent of female African elephants.

i heard about this years ago. I think its wrong.
Instead i would say its not heavy predation that has brought a selection advantage but simply heavy predation has killed off the best males.
So the best males are not making excellent boys and all are getting smaller.
tHe females are only a reflection on the male decrease.
The females only have tusks because one parent was male. This is important.
There is no reason for females to have tusks. So 5 having none is proof of their fathers having got smaller.
its not selection going on but diminishment of the healthy.
Animals always strive to breed with the healthy.

The female elephants only have bodies (not just trunks) because one of their parents was a male. (That is, without a male parent, they wouldn’t exist at all.)

Do you actually think that tusks aren’t useful for the survival of female elephants? Tusks are used for defense (such as when defending their young from attack by various predators), lifting objects, stripping bark from trees for food, digging for water during droughts, and protecting the very sensitive trunk.

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If they were used for that they would not have such small ones or none EVEN before the modern predation.
The males have them to show they are the better males . A common thing amongst animals.
In fact they likely only use them to stab other elephants.
I don’t think they are useful in females but anyways the article is about selection on the tusked ones etc.
So they think the use of tusks is not the point either.

So when we observe female elephants digging with their tusks and stripping bark with their tusks, it is just an illusion? A mirage perhaps?

Needless to say, we’ve reached The Byers Point™ again.

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Wait a minute befiore your mad and insulting and doing poor humour.
Elephants are meant to live in rich eating areas. Yes they could use tusks for desperate things.
Yet thats not why they have them or are selected for them, (to use evolutionists ideas).
I see the tusks as entirely a thing for males to combat males to impress the girls.
The males don’t need them otherwise and the females, none or smaller, or not hurt by this tusk inferiority.
Therefore the females have them, at all, because one parent is male. THEN predation dimishing the males to only smaller ones breeding makes the females smaller represented by a lower tusk curve.
Its not as these folks say a selection creating smaller female tusks. just normal attrition