Ellie-Phants

Anyways … todays topic is “Elephants, or why they are being killed just for their tusks”. I asked my hubby to give me a topic, and that is what he choose, so here I am to write about it. EnjoY!

All I know about elephants, are that they are this HUGE animal at Zoo’s and in the African safari area. They seem to be gentle giants. I know their tusks are ivory, so I can see why they could be worth some money. So I did some research, and this is what I came up with.

Both African and Asian elephants are under threat from poachers who kill them for their ivory tusks.

Although early poachers would only kill one or two elephants at a time this would still have had a big impact on the population, mainly because the poachers would kill the older male elephants for their larger tusks. Killing older elephants means that immature elephants are left to grow up without any parents to help them (young orphans may even die). Killing mostly male elephants means that there is a dangerous imbalance between the ratio of male to female elephants. Things are much worse now as modern poachers are more organized and have better weapons so that they can – and do – kill whole families at a time.

Personally I think it’s stupid to kill these animals just to get their tusks. After the poachers get the tusks, they basically just leave the animal to die. Is an ivory tusk really worth that much to someone? It’s like killing a person just because you want their shoes. Could you imagine what the world would be like if we would just go around killing people and things because we wanted an object of theirs? I doubt I would be writing this if that is they way life was, so why are we letting it happen to them?

Now I am going to leave you with some interesting facts about these awesome creatures.

The elephant is the world’s largest land animal.

The elephant can use its nose (trunk) as an extra limb for eating, lifting things and squirting itself with water.

An elephant’s trunk is double-pointed, helping it do delicate jobs like picking berries.

An elephant uses its ears to keep cool; each ear carries many fine blood vessels close to the surface which help disperse heat, especially when they are flapped.

An elephant also uses its ears to express emotion, for example anger.

African elephants have larger ears than Asian elephants.

The patterns on an elephant’s ear are unique – just like our fingerprints.

Elephant feet have soft cushioned soles which help them move around quietly.