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Research shows that elephants move to not grow their tusks after years of hunting and killing by poachers.
Nearly 90% of Africa's elephants from Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique were slaughtered for their ivory in order to finance weapons during the country's civil war.
But about a third of women – the generation born after the end of the war in 1992 – have not developed defenses, according to recent figures.
Male elephant tusks are larger and heavier, but due to increased poaching, hunters have begun to focus on females.
Joyce Poole, scientific director of a nonprofit organization called ElephantVoices, told National Geographic: "Over time, with the older population, you start having this very high proportion of women without tusks."
Other countries have also seen an evolution in the number of elephant tusks.
In South Africa, in the early 2000s, 98% of the 174 females in Addo Elephant National Park did not grow tusks.
Poaching has also reduced the size of the defense in some highly hunted areas, such as southern Kenya.
Scientists say elephants with this disability can change their behavior.
The tusks are used to dig water or to get bark of trees to feed. It is therefore possible that mammals travel further to survive.
But researchers believe that changes in elephant life could have greater consequences for the ecosystems around them.
Ryan Long, behavioral ecologist at the University of Idaho, told National Geographic: "Any or all of these behavioral changes could result in changes in the distribution of elephants in the landscape, and these are these large scale changes have consequences for the rest of the ecosystem. & # 39;
The number of tuskless elephants has shown the enduring effect of humans on animals.
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