Elephants and Tusks

Elephants, apart from their massive sizes, are also known for their tusks, considered to be an essential elephant feature that everyone knows about, regardless if a person in question has actually ever seen an elephant or not.

Though tusks have become readily identifiable elephant attributes, not everyone is aware of the 1980 movie entitled Tusk, telling the tale of a young girl and an elephant who happened to be born on the same day.

Based on the novel written by Reginald Campbell, the French language movie has been considered by many as a waste of time, but as it is based on the realities of the threats elephants are faced with in poaching, the movie’s message is far from being that of trivial.

As a part of the elephant’s physiology, tusks are actually the “teeth” of an elephant, defined as their second upper incisors. Unlike how humans and other mammals use their teeth, an elephant uses its tusks for digging, pushing, and other tasks that their trunks can not effectively do.

Thinking of them as “arms” is also apt, since elephants are known to have certain inclinations with which tusk they are more prone to use, with “left-tusked” and “right-tusked” elephants being around. Also, unlike human teeth, the tusks of an elephant is known to grow like how fingernails would grow.

The tusks of elephants are often valued for their ascribed exotic value, with many finding the ownership of real elephant tusk items as a symbol of wealth. Utilized in the making of jewelry items, souvenirs, accessories and other items, elephant populations are threatened by illegal poaching activities, primarily targeting the tusks of elephants as the “score”.

Though elephants are large, their size makes them big targets, which doesn’t really do anything in protecting them from being taken down. Their tusks, an important part that elephants need to have to survive, continue to be hunted by poachers, and as the movie Tusk shares, encouraging the demand for elephant tusks stands to be the best move in protecting them as a species.

Warthog

Warthogs were shown in a different light in the 1994 Disney Animated classic The Lion King with Pumba, the second half of the internationally popular Timon and Pumba duo.

Bonded together under the pretext of being banded as outcasts of their own kind, Timon and Pumba’s funny antics gave significant focus on the meerkat (Timon) and the warthog, one which audiences of all ages and from different parts of the world were quick to follow up on.

With Pumba’s rise to fame, the warthog’s popularity as one of Africa’s savanna creatures also rose, no longer pegging them as deadly wild pigs that are wired to only kill what comes their way or eat whatever they find.

Taking their name from the protrusions found on their heads, the “wart” like bumps of the warthog are actually body fat reserves which are often used as a defense mechanism of the species. Male warthogs are known to make frequent use of their “warts” benefits, particularly when two males are engaged in a fight.

Africans, at one point in time, called warthogs as vlakvark, which translates to “pig of the plains”, with their warthog name being one that only recently came up after the first new age naturalists found their way to Africa’s shores.

Being “wild pigs”, the warthog is not often known for their pet friendly attribute, that plus the fact that they are not exactly territorial animals, but are rather described as “home range” animals.

Though Pumba from the Lion King is depicted as a laid back, cool, calm and reserved character, real warthogs are not known for being calm when they feel stressed or threatened. In fact, the warthog is considered as one of the more dangerous animals one could get to encounter in Africa, with a number of poachers still considering them to be prized trophy catches, dead or alive.

Simply put, Pumba’s character is quite the opposite from real warthogs, though this fact hasn’t really made a dent in their popularity as a species.

Elephants

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

That’s the moral of the story of Horton Hears a Who, a film based on the Dr. Seuss book of the name, which tells the story of Horton the Elephant, who encounters a talking speck, which actually turns out to contain the community of Whoville, home to the Whos. Since Horton is able to hear the people of Whoville’s pleas for help thanks to his big ears, he happily does all he can to protect them from harm. However, the rest of the animals around Horton ridicule him for talking to a speck, leaving him to find a way to prove their existence. In the end, Horton and Whos make their existence known, proving that “a person’s a person, no matter how small.”

The book further cements man’s fascination with elephants. Elephants, recognized as the largest animals on land anywhere on earth, are perhaps the most easy to recognize creatures on earth. As such, these giant animals are among the most beloved creatures known to man. Elephants are divided into 3 species, namely the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the smallest of the 3, the Indian or Asian elephant.

Although their ancient ancestors once roamed virtually all parts of the world, wild populations of elephants are now boxed in continually decreasing swaths of land across Asia and Africa. Ever since the advent of the ivory trade, elephants have been hunted mercilessly for their ivory tusks, which is the most valued source of the material. As such, elephants are at constant threat of poaching, adding to a list of growing problems that include loss of habitat and human encroachment.

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