Elephants at Gorongosa Still Remember 15-Year Civil War; Traumatic Experience Is Written in Their Genes

Elephants have vivid memories of war. Elephants at Gorongosa National Park reportedly remember the Mozambican civil war after three decades.

Gorongosa Elephants Never Forget War

Elephants in Mozambique's wildlife sanctuary Gorongosa National Park likely recall the country's civil war better than some humans. The memories of the nation's 15-year civil war, which lasted from 1977 to 1992, are so ingrained that they were encoded in the surviving elephants' genes.

More and more elephants at Gorongosa are being born without their second most recognizable appendage - their tusks - due to the massive slaughter by the warring soldiers who traded ivory to finance weapons for their protracted struggle. Natural selection is deftly intervening to make the species less attractive to poachers.

They have become somewhat of a churlish group as a result of that. The trunk-swinging pachyderms of Gorongosa are more likely to charge at people in Jeeps and Land Rovers because they perceive them as being death on wheels compared to the populations of elephants in Kenya. Whatever peace has been established over 30 years since the war ended, it is fragile and subject to change in the elephants' eyes.

According to Joyce Poole, scientific director of Elephant Voices, who has spent over 50 years researching elephants, the animals also have a small amount of attitude. The younger elephants in Gorongosa take cues from the older elephants. Many of them are old enough to recall vehicles carrying soldiers, and they teach it to the young ones, and the whole experience leaves them with "transgenerational trauma."

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How War Is Written on Elephants' Genes?

Natural selection made elephants much less appealing to poachers. A tusk is essentially an expanded tooth, similar to the structure that develops where human incisors do in our mouths. Elephants' tusks could reach up to seven feet.

Mammal teeth contain three layers, and these teeth are where ivory is found. Hard enamel makes up the outer layer. The nerves and blood arteries that supply the tooth form the inner layer. Dentin, also called ivory, is a softer substance that makes up the intermediate layer.

Ivory is not a stable substance. It is a network of incredibly tiny tubes filled with a liquid that makes it simple to carve. Additionally, it gives polished ivory a warm, glowing tone, making it so valuable.

Elephants and humans once shared a common ancestor in another placental animal before natural selection separated us into distinct mammalian species. Elephants utilize their tusks for various purposes, such as gathering food and water, digging up minerals, self-defense, and lifting objects like a forklift. In contrast, our much smaller teeth are made to gnash and grind.

Additionally, tusks shield the elephant's trunk, a skilled and powerful organ similar to our tongues. Only the males of Asian elephant populations have tusks. However, in African elephants, tusks are sexually monomorphic, which means that both males and females have them. According to Poole, only approximately two or three percent of female elephants are born tuskless in safe environments, where generations have grown up shielded from poachers.

But till a few years ago, the elephant population in Gorongosa was anything but secure. Elephants in Mozambique had already been frequently poached before the start of the war. Poole said that roughly 19% of female elephants in the Gorongosa region lacked tusks, and she could attest to this claim by looking over old camera footage and current sighting reports. It shows that the poaching-driven adaptive selection against tusks started to take hold long before the war.

The number of tuskless elephants increased after the battle. 51 percent of the 200 female elephants Poole tracked that were 25 years old or older and survived the war lacked tusks. These progeny then appeared to inherit this loss of tusks from their parents. Following the war, about 32% of the female elephants were born tuskless.