{"id":18291,"date":"2018-11-13T23:42:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T05:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=18291"},"modified":"2018-11-13T23:42:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T05:42:09","slug":"big-adaptations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/11\/13\/big-adaptations\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Adaptations"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Geographic<\/strong><\/em> describes<\/a> Nature’s adaptation to humanity’s lust for ivory<\/em>:<\/p>\n

THE OLDEST ELEPHANTS wandering Mozambique\u2019s Gorongosa National Park bear the indelible markings of the civil war that gripped the country for 15 years: Many are tuskless. They\u2019re the lone survivors of a conflict that killed about 90 percent of these beleaguered animals, slaughtered for ivory to finance weapons and for meat to feed the fighters.<\/p>\n

Hunting gave elephants that didn\u2019t grow tusks a biological advantage in Gorongosa. Recent figures suggest that about a third of younger females\u2014the generation born after the war ended in 1992\u2014never developed tusks. Normally, tusklessness would occur only in about 2 to 4 percent of female African elephants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope elephants taste bad, too. Or are even poisonous. Massacring these big animals for their tusks may be perfectly acceptable to local morality, but I am a child of Western Civ – and find that activity to be consumeristic and repellent.<\/p>\n

My best wishes to the elephants of Africa. Perhaps your legends will speak of the time when you bore the great tusks – and paid the ultimate price for the privilege.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

National Geographic describes Nature’s adaptation to humanity’s lust for ivory: THE OLDEST ELEPHANTS wandering Mozambique\u2019s Gorongosa National Park bear the indelible markings of the civil war that gripped the country for 15 years: Many are tuskless. They\u2019re the lone survivors of a conflict that killed about 90 percent of these \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18292,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18291\/revisions\/18292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}