African elephants, both male and female, and many Asiatic males, have tusks.. They are located in the upper jaw and are in fact incisors, not canines as is the case with the walrus and certain species of pig.

Just like the trunk, an elephant's tusks have a number of uses.

First and foremost, an elephant uses its tusks as weapons: that is the reason they developed in the first place. In the past their main enemy was the sabre-toothed tiger and that is why the early elephants needed strong weapons. Young bulls sometimes fight each other using their tusks as dangerous weapons.

Secondly, tusks are tools: elephants can dig holes with them, strip away the bark of a tree, push things away, etc.

Thirdly, the tusks are a status symbol to be proud of: they are a sign of strength.

An elephantís tusks start growing when it is two years old. Asiatic females often have shorter tusks called tushes, which are hardly visible. Only two thirds of a complete tusk is ever visible, the rest is rooted inside.

Just as people are right- or left-handed, so elephants are often right- or left-tusked, meaning they use one of them more often than the other. It is often easy to tell whether the elephant is right- or left-tusked, as one of the two tusks will be more worn down than the other because it will have been used more.

Although tusks are clearly useful, they are the reason behind some of the elephantsí most serious problems. Well, thatís not quite true: it is not the tusks themselves that are the cause of the problems, but the humans who want the tusks. Humans have always coveted the elephantsí ivory tusks, which used to be called white gold, in order to make, for instance, objets díart. Instead of only picking up dead elephantsí ivory, humans have always killed elephants with big beautiful tusks. More will be said on this matter in part 17 where the problems facing elephants, especially concerning the threat of extinction, will be discussed further.

Due to the fact that a great number elephants with big tusks were killed in the latter part of the 20th century, the average weight of a tusk has sharply decreased. In 1970 an average tusk weight about 12 kg, whereas by 1990 the average weight had dropped to about 3 kg. The heaviest tusk ever found weighed an enormous 102 kg.

Elephants have six molars on either side, both in the upper and in the lower jaw, but these are not behind each other, but on top of each other. The four molars which are on top, wear off little by little, and finally the next set appears. When the last set of molars has been worn off - which happens when an elephant with a normal life is about sixty - the elephant cannot chew its food properly. The animal slowly gets weaker and weaker and eventually dies. This system has developed because of the fact that the lower jaw could not grow in proportion to the rest of the body, because the trunk took too much space. The result was that the molars had to take a different position.

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