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Rhett Brucker
BIO 107
Jason Shahan
12 December 2015
Evolution of Elephants
Modern day elephants have made fairly large jumps, evolutionary wise
that is, much more quickly than what people often think that they have.
What many people see as Wooly Mammoths and many other species only
went extinct about 10,000 years ago according to Bob Strauss in 50 Million
Years of Elephant Evolution (Strauss). Many people have no idea that the
elephants that we see in our world today is, in comparison to other members
of the proboscidae order, a very young member, as its ancestors died off
only a mere 10,000 years ago. There are actual cave drawings and records of
mammoths where there are essentially no human kept records of other
extinct animals such as dinosaurs. About 80 Million years ago, the genetic
linage of elephants split from primates. The tree shrew is considered our
nearest common ancestor (Elephant Evolution). This quote from the eleaid
website shows when our split from elephants happened. Where elephants did
not seem to find their specific root until about 50-60 million years ago.
Which, contrary to popular belief was actually after the dinosaurs went
extinct. The movies with wooly mammoths and dinosaurs living together are
completely implausible. According to Anna Lorenc in "The Evolution of

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Mammoths and Their Living Relatives," Wooly Mammoths ranged from Spain
to North America and some of the most recent remains are dated back to
only 3,700 years ago (Lorenc). The evolutionary history of the current
elephants today has been a fairly busy but a quick one. The first animal to
appear even similar at all to a current day elephant, which was an animal
comparable to a pig, did not come about until about five million years after
the dinosaurs went extinct. Even still at this point the modern day elephant
was a long ways away from being formed from the evolution of other
creatures.
Over the history of the elephant there have been an estimated 352
species of Proboscideans, which is the order classification for elephants
(Elephant Evolution). All of these species have since gone extinct, less for the
two remaining species of the African and Asian Elephants of our time. The
Asian Elephant first appeared about the same time as the Mammoths and
therefore have a stronger tie to them than what African Elephants do. Asian
elephants ironically originated in Africa but now populate India, Sri Lanka,
China and Bangladesh. African elephants came about around 1.5 million
years ago. The African elephants are considered the newest species of
elephant. African elephants have evolved to now have infrasonic hearing and
moaning which allows them to communicate with each other over the
extremely vast plains of Africa. It is an extremely advantageous adaptation
because their predators, may that be lions, poachers looking to take their
tusks or anything else that could cause them harm, cannot hear the

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extremely low decibel of sound they are using to communicate with. The
infrasonic noises primarily serve as a warning system for the elephants. The
elephant evolved from just a snout to a large trunk because the animal
continually got bigger and bigger so its head got further from the ground. A
trunk would allow it to drink water or dig for food standing up and reach
anything else on the ground as well as reach higher into trees for vegetation.
The trunk for the elephant would be the same as the elongated neck of a
giraffe.
Elephants are still evolving and adapting to their environment even
today. Poaching of elephants has driven them towards dangerously low
numbers and pushed them into much smaller areas to reside in. Research at
the Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda, showed that 15% of female
elephants and 9% of males in the park were born without tusks (BBC). In
response to poachers wanting to kill them for their tusks they have started to
evolve by slowly getting rid of their extremely valuable ivory tusks. It was
only an anomaly at first, but once it was realized to be an advantage the
number of elephants without tusks has grown much more quickly and
substantially in numbers. There are a whole slew of disadvantages to not
having tusks for elephants such as not being able to dig for water, move
large objects with them, or fighting. In contrast though being alive and not
being continuously hunted down for your tusks by poachers is quite a bit
more advantageous than having tusks and being dead and then having them
removed and sold. Tusks are used for sexual display with elephants, but I feel

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it is safe to predict that, that will be changing as females will start picking
males without tusks as those are the ones who are living for a longer time,
which will further enhance the loss of tusks. Elephants have, in the past,
grown substantially larger upwards of 10 tons and have recently gotten
smaller with a max of about 6 and a half tons for the African Elephant. It is
really unpredictable as to what new evolutionary adaptations that elephants
will take on in the future.

Bibliography
BBC News. BBC, 25 Sept. 1998. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.

"Elephant Evolution." Eleaid. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2015.

Lorenc, Anna. "The Evolution of Mammoths and Their Living Relatives."Version
2.0 Case Stu (2011): 2-12. 2011. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.
Strauss, Bob. "Witness the Slow, Slow Parade of Pachyderm
Evolution."About.com Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Dec. 2015.