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To avoid being pitilessly killed by defensive hunters, elephants now evolve to no longer cultivate them. Hunters have exterminated nearly 90% of elephants in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique.
Helpless elephants have become a common sight. African elephants were slaughtered for their ivory in order to finance weapons in 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.
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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."
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Other countries have also seen a decrease in the number of growing elephant tusks.
In southern Kenya, poaching has reduced the size of the defense in some highly hunted areas.
Scientists say that elephants with this disability can also change their behavior.
The tusks are used to dig water or to get food for tree bark, which means that elephants will have trouble finding food.
"The defenses are used to dig for food and water, to dig up trees and branches and to move them, to defend themselves and to be sexually active," the BBC reported.
"Environmentalists say that a defenseless elephant is a crippled elephant."
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