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Do poachers have an incentive to kill tuskless elephants too, then, so they don't become more dominant than tusked ones?
by lazugod 10y ago
Do poachers have an incentive to kill tuskless elephants too, then, so they don't become more dominant than tusked ones?
- praxulus 10y agoCollectively they do, but no individual poacher has much to gain from killing an individual tuskless elephant. It's like a tragedy of the commons, but one that works out well for the elephants.
- adamnemecek 10y agoThey do kill them so that they don't try to track the animal again in the future.
- hueving 10y agoApparently they don't. Otherwise we wouldn't be reading this story.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gjolund 10y agoYes. It is so they don't waste time tracking tuskless elephants.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoThey have a larger incentive to kill fewer elephants overall so there continues to be an elephant population to profit from. It doesn't change anything because a poacher is interested in getting big money now, not establishing a sustainable income stream for future decades.
- inimino 10y agoAccording to the article, after a civil war half the female elephants left alive were tuskless, because they weren't killing the tuskless ones.