Not a bull market: as cows narrow the gender difference with males of the species, are elephants at risk of dying out?
Study by Chinese team suggests female elephants are getting less turned on by bulls as they adopt traits once harboured by them
The world’s biggest land animal,as immortalised in the Disney classic Dumbo and revered in godlike form according to Hindu iconography, may be in danger of dying out - and not for its prized tusks - according to a new study by Chinese scientists.
The Chinese team concluded that cows (females) are getting less turned on by their male partners (bulls) as the physical differences between the two sexes continues to shrink over time, meaning they are mating less often and creating fewer offspring.
Elephants live for up to 60 years but require 22 months’ gestation and can only have one calf at a time.
Their forebears once served as a major source of protein for Homo erectus (“upright man”) and are now hunted for their ivory tusks in Africa and Asia. But the waning pulling power of even alpha males could prove the undoing of the species, according to the Chinese scientists.
Elephants’ early ancestors appeared more than 50 million years ago and thrived during a geological epoch known as the Miocene that began 23 million years ago. But the global population dwindled 5 million years, as did their diversity. Now just three species remain alive on earth.