The elephant's tusks are modified, well developed and continuously growing teeth - incisors or canines (depending on the animal's belonging to this or that species).
In the mouth of these land animals, exceptprotruding outward tusks, there are four more molars (two in the upper and lower jaw), consisting of many connected enamel scales and allowing elephants to grind food. In the Asian elephant chewing teeth are ribbon-like, and in African - diamond-shaped.
The change of molars occurs about six times throughout the elephant life, and new teeth grow behind the old ones.
Tusks of the largest adult Indian elephant grow up to a maximum of 1.5 meters and weigh 20-25 kg. The growth of this animal can reach 3 m, and weight - 5 tons.
Indian elephants, unlike African, live exclusively in the forest, with preference given to undergrowth from bamboo thickets.
A typical African elephant weighs up to 5 tons, and a elephant is more than 2, but less than 3 tons. The maximum length of the tusk of the African elephant is 3 m.
The largest representative of this elephant species was shot in 1974 in Angola. We hung this male over 12 tons.
Elephants do not feel panic at allmeeting with a mouse is a fiction. To blow out such a tiny animal, and with it stones and other heavy objects that are nearby, the elephant needs to breathe out enough.
These giants are really afraid of ordinarybees-honey. Hearing the buzz of the approaching bee swarm, the elephants immediately begin to run. But these animals are difficult to call cowardly creatures. They are very cautious and smart. By the way, the elephant is listed in the list of the most intelligent animals of the Earth.
Unlike other representatives of the animalof the world, the elephant seems to have an idea of death. Elephants are able to identify corpses (and even bones) of their fellow tribesmen. Researchers were amazed at how the indifference with which elephants relate to the remains of other living beings was replaced by a manifestation of care and compassion for the corpses of relatives.
Having seen the skeleton of an elephant, these animals can not passby: they begin to tense the remains of the trunk with a proboscis, paying special attention to the head of the deceased. Truly probing the skulls with proboscis, as if trying to identify a friend who was prematurely gone, the elephants do not throw his lifeless body into tearing animals-scavengers, but fall asleep with dry foliage.
When one of the members of the herd is fatally wounded, healthy elephants, as if escorting a relative to a better world, are on duty near him and do not diverge until the very end ...
With the help of this "tool" the elephant uprootstrees and sometimes defends themselves against enemies, the main one being a man. An enraged elephant with tusks (photo below), whose length is sometimes equal to its own growth, poses a serious danger both for its fellow humans and for man, but rabies of elephants is a rare phenomenon. Elephant tusks are more a punishment from nature than a gift. Particularly sad is the fate of African elephants, whose tusks have always been very much appreciated.
According to information provided by naturalists20th century, elephant tusks serve as a source of minerals for porcupines, which, with the advent of the rainy season, completely lose the minerals contained in the soil.
The issue of the disappearance of tusks remained open for a long time because porcupines are nocturnal animals.
The tusk of the elephant is soft, plastictexture with a small number of cracks, but due to the fact that transportation across national borders, as, indeed, the storage of ivory products, are prohibited, the purchase of this material is meaningless.
Outside, the elephant tusks are mostly smooth and light, and from the inside they resemble hollow cone-shaped pulps, and the internal voids reach almost the middle of the length of the tusks.
For the manufacture of fakes in most casesused methods of casting and hand painting. If you look at the work of falsifiers with the naked eye, you can find seam lines and traces from sprues. But the main difference is considered unnatural smoothness and lightness of non-natural products.
For elephant tusks often give another, morecheap bone, but not always the reason is the high cost of natural material. Just often sellers, being, as a matter of fact, second-hand dealers, do not know themselves what they sell.
There are also frequent cases when handicrafts made from the bones of their ancient ancestor, the mammoth, were issued for products made from the tusk of an elephant. By the way, mammoth tusks are prohibited not only for transportation, but also for processing.
An interesting experiment was decided in March 2015Year Thai authorities legalized storage of ivory. The population was asked to register the tusks of elephants and mammoths illegally kept in their homes in order to turn from smugglers into law-abiding citizens.
As it turned out, ivory souvenirsstored in almost all residents of the country. Those of them who decided to register their treasures, as promised, were exempted by the state from liability for illegal possession of smuggled goods.
As it turned out, in many families, products made from ivory and mammoth bones played the role of relics and were stored for posterity. Now the owners of family values can be calm.
Thai citizens who have not responded to the call of the authorities, expect a fine of $ 200,000 or 3 years in prison.
Mammoth tusks have no voids. Having a continuous homogeneous texture, they delight the eye with a variety of colors (from pale cream to deep black) and pronounced light-shades.
The cross section of mammoth tusks hasheterogeneous color, resembling the alternation of dark and light rings, studded with radial or circular cracks. The white color of the tusk and the crumbling texture are characteristic signs of low-quality material.
The main feature by which you canto determine that the "tusk of an elephant" actually belonged to a mammoth, is a pattern in the form of a "grid" that opens during cross-cutting. The mesh is formed by weaves of thin ruts and nerve fibers.
