What Happened to the Four Tusked Elephants?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.พ. 2020
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Up until 8,000 years ago there were many different types of elephants, with different tusk and trunk shapes. Most common of these living alongside modern elephants for many years were the four tusked elephants. Why did these elephants evolve? What did they use their tusks for? And why did they die out just leaving the two tusked elephants.
Sources:
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
digital.csic.es/handle/10261/1...
www.britannica.com/animal/gom...
Incidentally, your pronunciation of "Cuvieronius" is off. Cuvieronius is named after the French naturalist Baron Georges Cuvier. So the "C" is pronounced as a "K".
I hate when they pronounce Latin words using church Latin pronunciations
@@bdsingletary Pronouncing a "c" like an "s" before a "u" is definitely not "Church Latin pronunciation." It is just a mistake.
And as for "enlargened"...Good Grief, man! The word is "enlarged".
@@bdsingletary English words derived from Latin follow English pronunciation. Two words in that previous sentence that are latinate ("derived" and "pronunciation") is not pronounced according to any form of Latin.
@@gregcoogan8270
First of all the latin in english comes from French. Not from direct latin.
"Mainly their large tusks."
We're just gonna ignore the whole giant face tentacle in a terrestrial mammal part?
More like elongated nostrils
I mean, more than anything on their face, I’d say the thing that sets elephants apart from other living terrestrial mammals is the whole size thing.
I don't think being mammal or terrestrial contributes to the absurdness of face tentacle.
I hate it when people put stuff we take for granted like that
What's wrong with your Faaaace?
Its so sad that modern elephants are selecting for no tusks, its also amazing how evolution can save the species watching natural selection working in real time, I'm torn...
It is also a lesson in evolution that changes and being pressured are what influences evolution, not becoming placid. If a species hit a point where they get what they need there is no reason to evolve or develop further.
@@theherrdark4834In this instance in seems that evolving to lose tusks is only better to survive due to human pressure, which makes it sad
Tuskless is the only way for their species to survive.I'll rather have tuskless elephants than no elephants in the future TBH.It's a choice they didnt want but a must.
Not natural selection at all! Tuskless elephants were unnaturally selected by the despicable humans simply because they don't have tusks for humans to poach!
@@grandwonder5858 Tuskless elephants aren't being selected for by humans though as they might be in true 'artificial selection'. Humans, in this instance, are predators of elephants and tusklessness is a by-product of that predatory selection pressure. True artificial selection implies a deliberate, guided selection by humans. I think this is an example of 'natural selection'.
I see an obvious advantage of not having chin tusks: the trunk has more freedom of movement.
We have to look at what they ate vs trunk movement. Things that don’t work well don’t evolve. For some time four tusk had to serve as an advantage. Then something changed
Another advantage of only having two tusks is that its cheaper to grow. What I mean is that maybe 4 tusked eleohants did not face any major extinction events (if someone wanna look that up that would be cool) so they just kinda evolved. Then when an extinction event like the end of ice ages happened having 4 tusks was simply too expensive energy wise to grow and maintain for such a large animal
Dynamo that’s a good point dude, I didn’t think about that
You have to keep time spans in mind, these creatures lived for a long long longer time than the time span modern elephants have been around, so these changes were definitely better suited (than having no tusks) for their environments.
Plus it looks like a badass beard
4:23 "Elephant duck isn't real, it can't hurt you"
Elephant duck:
How do elephant s mate
Sherri Tartt same as in smaller animals: the male climbs on top and has a bit of fun ;)
@@katyungodly AhhshshshshhHahHASHSH😂😂🍑🍑
Elephant Pog
SCOOP
4:19 those ones became extinct when all other elephants started bullying them for the way they looked
That's mean. Poor shovel phants
It actually makes more sense than having a tiny mouth and a huge ass nose
Looks like Jar Jar Binks lol
@@dv9239 maybe for scooping up food but tusks are way more versatile and useful, like a human arm but even more flexible. Definitely more useful imo.
@@SoulDelSol they’re called Platybelodons
I just have the greatest smile on my face whenever you upload a video. Palaeobiology channels on TH-cam are many but few delve into such interesting and unique creatures like you do with so much good information and effort put into it. One of my favourite channels on YT overall.
Thank you that's very nice to hear
Marxists have an understandable preponderance towards paleobiology, Comrade. As they adhere to paleopolitical theories.
@@andy99ish Yes
@@andy99ish hahaha fellow Marxist here. You might be up to something ;)
Cringe
32.4 million years from now , when the octopus evolves into the next intelligence on this planet , they will find a long extinct skeleton of a platypus and wonder " wtf was this "
J. B. I can only imagine when they find a whale skeleton, they look NOTHING like their live counterparts
@@corncrackerkid5092
Right ..change is the only constant
@Ghettobible It is not necessarily a problem, it's just that they can't/don't teach the following generations.
@Tecumseh
Go back far enough and our ancient ancestors had to do just that very thing .
@Ghettobible 32million years would be plenty of time for a long lived social octopus to possibly develop with the right evolutionary pressures.
There are a couple reasons as to why lower tusks were lost.
1.) Overall, the climate became cooler starting from the middle-late Miocene. The highest amount of heat transfer in an elephant occurs at the head, particularly the ears, trunk, and tusk tips. Having four tusks means more surface area for heat loss, which is disadvantageous when the climate gets colder. As such, losing the lower tusks decreases the amount of surface area for heat loss, allowing proboscideans to retain more heat.
2.) True elephants (elephantids) lost their lower tusks because they became increasingly more specialized to masticate their food a certain way. They went from a gomphothere-like grinding and shearing rotary motion to a front-and-back power shearing motion with their lower jaws. A number of different cranial and dental features needed to evolve so elephants could perform this action more efficiently, among them shortening the skull and mandibular symphysis, and getting rid of the lower tusks. All of this appears to be a result of the changing climate during the late Miocene that called for greater specialization towards grazing.
I just wanna know how the shovel mouth lips work.
It's sad to think that such a successful species is now nearly teetering on the edge of extinction.
Well, we've already killed off other megafauna like mammoths.
I mean thats not very uncommon since most species that have existed are now extinct
The elephant is one of these species who does terraform their living space, just like humans. Where elephants live forrests are turned into savanahs. Tusks aid the elephant to harvest from trees. So it's probably ok for them to loose their tusks. Yet they also need these tusks to dig for water in the pretty dry savanahs that they keep from becoming forrests . So this might make them more weather dependent in a time where weather becomes less stable.
@@Raison_d-etre scientists believed that a mixture of climate change and overhunting played a role in the mammoths extinction so even if we humans hunted them to near-extinction they were still doomed due to the changes in the climate that’s the reason why elephants are still around because Africa and Asia’s climate didn’t change as much since the last ice age
That’s how they survived while the mammoths and mastodons didn’t mammoths and mastodons lived in a temperate climate meaning that any climate change occurred their food sources would die out and forests would expand thus mammoths and mastodons couldn’t adapt to the climate changing or the arrival of humans killing them for food
while African and Asian elephants lived in tropical climate so their food sources and habitats weren’t affected as much by climate so they wouldn’t be drastically effected by humans hunting them because they’d still have a climate suitable enough for them to continue on thriving
That’s the reason why elephants are still alive while mammoths and mastodons are extinct
@@TremereTT elephants don’t turn forests into savanahs they keep forests how they are. Elephants are one of the major dispersers of seeds. They help other plants grow they eat the seeds and then poop out a large variety of seeds. As well as when they use their trunks to shake the plants of off trees their seeds fall into the ground leaving them to grow into full trees
“Mammoths still survived in Beringia until 13,000 years ago, and a subset that evolved to be small (about the size of a large horse) survived on arctic islands until as recently as 4,000 years ago.”
🤯
It would’ve been so cool if they’d survived and we’d ended up with Pygmy mammoths living along side polar bears in the arctic
If chin tusks disappeared during the most recent ice age, the reason might be very simple. Upper jaw tusks could be used with closed mouths. Lower jaw tusks likely required opening the mouth for most strenuous tasks like digging or scraping. Opening mouths more than necessary in very cold climates would be a significant caloric drain, even if not deadly. Fewer calories leads to smaller size and less mass to engage in battles for dominance in breeding season.
*"Humans may have had something to do with the decline of gomphotheres."*
Ancient humans, looking at the monstrosity of 4:23 in fear:
@@deepwubbinz7919 humans are considered major factor for most large animal extinctions.
@@deepwubbinz7919 yes the animals that evolved along side us do better than animals that didn't. The evidence that it was humans is that when humans showed up, the population suddenly just plummeted
@@minusshoot1736 yes,but mostly changing the enviroment,not hunting,at least not until guns became a thing.
@@deepwubbinz7919 Bruh, you're something else lmao. You should brush up on your knowledge of fossilization.
@@deepwubbinz7919 source: "trust me bro"
The first thing I see when I look at an elephant is its nose. It's the length of an elephant's nose that always astonishes me; the tusks only sometimes.
You were, by very far, the best discovery I've had on youtube this year!
That's great to hear, thank you
I can't get over how ridiculous Gomphothere's look 😂Then I made myself sad imagining their extinction was due to depression😔
"what happened to 4 tusked elephant?"
Me: 2 tusked elephants are struggling with being killed for tusks.... 4 tusked one would have no chance
Maybe 4 tusked elephants would have oversaturated the market and have caused the prices and demand of the ivory trade to go down so less people would want to hunt elephants. But probably not, China loves to destroy entire species for the sake of traditional medicine.
@@AnimePlusUltrah fr
@@AnimePlusUltrah their so called TCM's actual medical properties have been highly disputed by true medical professionals though
@@AifDaimon It isn't just highly disputed, it is scientifically proven that Ivory and Pangolin etc. have no mystical properties what so ever.
@@aczeartk7032 In short, TCM is nothing more than superstitious bullshit.. Right?
What the hell, man!? Not a single mention of the olyphants of middle earth....
Love this comment.
That was the first thing I thought of.
“That still only counts as one!!!”
Thats the exact reason I clicked on this video😂
Mumak, Mumakil.
I always say, humans happened because Nature accidentally clicked on the "fast forward" and "shuffle" buttons at the same time.
It's like nature kept pressing the "upgrade" button and now it's frantically spamming the "oh shit go back" button
Yes 👍
@@roha5220 Oh shit go back.exe does not respond... Quit without saving?... Windows Earth.exe does not respond.
Poacher:Twice the no of tasks twice the fun
after 2 minutes
proceeds to get killed
Hear's a fun game:
Take a shot for every time Moth says 'tusks'.
Hdhx z hxh
@@abhithakur3709 ah, i can clearly see of you won the game.
4 tusked elephant:*exists*
Bad poachers:stonks
Double the tusks for the price of one!
A poacher's dream come true.
i wonder why they dont stop poaching
@@treeperson3178 money
Sometimes the poachers r poor and its only theyre option
It's sad
Just a small bit of feedback: around 2:30, you're using the term "deinotherium" interchangeably with "deinotheres" or "deinotherids" generally. This is somewhat confusing, given that you identify it as the first branch of proboscidea, but deinotherium itself is actually a relatively recent genus
i think i see a trend where when the tusks on the top jaw are smaller they need tusks on the bottom jaw to compensate the range of foraging abilities. But as the top tusks become more predominately used the bottom tusks become less useful, reducing in size; until eventually shrinking back and dissapeairing all together as only their main tusks are needed for all of their uses.
Whats more interesting is that this selection could be for any number of reasons, food availability, competition for mates.
Like that the chin tusks can be effective for scraping, but more useful in semi-aquatic lifestyles.
@@jossypoo could just be random, maybe it is much easier DNA wise for non harmful mutations to occur to enlarge top tusks vs lower tusk.
“Mainly their large tusks”
Pretty sure it’s mostly the fact that they literally grab stuff with their noses.
And their huge ears
4:20 One of the times when the designer had a day off.
...when he hits the "random" in the create character menu
It’s weird but it’s true
Thanks for this marvelous video! Beautiful AND beautifully informative.
Another great video @Moth Light Media. It’s a shame however that a four tusked elephant today wouldn’t stand a chance against the modern demand for ivory. Albeit, they do look cool.
Because people suck and want to destroy everything!!
elephants must be protected forever imo.
All animals should to be honest
except ticks and mosquitoes, they need to just stop.
@@eolgrillo they're all part of the chain yo, although we as people drove more than a few species to extinction so who's to say what's right.
@@eolgrillo i mean every animals no matter how bad they are are important. You need to know some animals eat mosquitoes only for survival, and when we drew them away, some animals that eat exclusively on mosquitos would die off
@@eolgrillo How about pathogenic microbes: malaria, cholera, chlamydia, etc?? and larger harmful organisms such as tapeworms, heartworms, leeches, lice, flesh flies, murder hornets, and so on. But many of what we humans consider harmful or undesirable have their valuable places in ecosystems regardless of what discomfort and pain they cause us.
@@zezekingyo2374 Many bats and birds among them.
Four tusked elephants were mentioned in the Hindu sacred books like Ramayanam , it is said that when Lord hanuman went to Sri Lanka , he had seen four tusked elephants guarding the doors , I think these animals were extint all over the world , but a small population would have remained on the island of Sri Lanka , and went extinct much lately
Amazing informative channel... cannot believe so few subscribers for the quality you are pumping out ... keep it up and you'll be on 1 million soon
I love these videos, well made, well thought out. Great narration. Thank you
omg this channel is growing very fast! it deserves so much.
"Often with a twist" while showing an elephant cousin with inward curved tusks. lol nice pun
I'm quite sure that trunks are the most distinct feature of elephants ;)
Ant eater and tapir disagree
Have you ever seen them poo?
In Hindu text of Ramayana, they mention elephants with 4 tusk guarding Ravana's fort🤯🤯🤯
@Wacky Venky atleast tell the truth there is no mention of elephant with 3 tusks in any hindus text.
Do your mother teach you to be so arrogant, pity on her.
Evolution can be an amazing process. Thanks for some insight on the elephant's ancestry. Quite fascinating. :)
Not only is evolution a far more reasonable conclusion to the diversity and history of species compared to creationism, but it's far more interesting as well! Every year or month archaeologists, biologists, and ecologists discover new insights into Earth's life history and reveal surprising explanations to the mechanisms and reasoning behind all the adaptations that life has developed. Imagine how boring it must be for creationists. They are inclined to believe because of their fear of what might happen to them in the afterlife so they miss all these amazing discoveries and explanations. I'm glad that I'm not under such dogma and can constantly learn everyday from what the scientific process has uncovered rather than just shrugging at the origin of peculiar life forms and stating "Welp, that's just how god wanted it." And question no more.
Losing a tusk has nothing to do with evolution. My god study evolution before saying something so horrendous. Evolution ie a species evolving to a completely different species ( still a theory that's completely false according to major scientists including Darwin himself) that is still an elephant.
@@yesyoureright Evolution is the process of change in heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. Perhaps you got "Evolution" confused with "Speciation", the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution.
@@catatoblob8598 evolution a THEORY. A change to a different kind in species. Stop talking nonsense.
@@yesyoureright no? Look up the definition of evolution you illiterate pleb.
1:43 reminds me of "The Big Book of British Smiles" and Lisa's computerized dental progression from The Simpsons (dental plan! Lisa needs braces)
Amazing channel. Thank you.
weird to think how elephants lost their four tusks (likely naturally), but now because of our poaching and greed elephants are evolving to lose their tusks entirely. the impact we have on nature and the amount of animals we've killed off through human history is sad
Yeah thankfully elephants losing their tusks will save them from extinction
Meh. Whatever, life changes, goes extinct. Either for natural reasons or us. We are natural too.
I don't want to turn this into that OTHER comment thread but... both are natural. It's just we're the evolutionary pressure this time.
@@logansmith2703 Except that we have both the power and the common sense to realize when things are going out of control and fix that
Hey, we’re the top predators on the planet. We are part of this whole evolution process. Let’s not forget we are animals. Arrogant ones at that.
Moth: "Elephants are so iconic for a few reasons"
Me: oh, like their giant face tentacle or massive size
Moth: "mainly for their tusks"
ok
I have an old African Hunting book somewhere that has black and white photos of a four Tusked Elephant. Not the famous skull you see on the web. But rather on a living Elephant...
What's the title and author of the book. I'd be interested to see it. I have a book with a photo of a 3-tusked elephant.
@Mike Spencer
Laughed out loud, thanks
Did all of the Mastodons have curved tusks? My moms uncle found a tusk in southern Minnesota decades ago but it was fairly straight. The outside looked like dried Ivory soap with flakes when I last saw it in 1994. He was trying to get $10,000 for it but he died in 1994. His son told me he was donating it to a museum.
That's probably because you're getting mastodons confused with mammoths. Mastodons largely had smaller, straighter tusks in comparison to the massive curved tusks of mammoths. Not to say mastodon tusks weren't curved, but not nearly as much as mammoths
He donated it? What a sucker.
chin tusks/shovels might have been used for digging for roots and other stuff in the ground. In the ice ages with frozen soils digging is not possible and the animals with "mouth shovels" would go extinct.
Wouldn’t the chin tusks have disappeared with the warming of the ice age? Without the snow and ice the shovel like tusk and or teeth are mostly unnecessary. My assumption is the shovel like chin appendage is for scooping snow and ice out of the way so the animal can graze on plant matter. When the ice age was gone they no longer needed the scoop teeth/tusk but now just needed tusks for defense.
They can barely avoid the hunters with two imaging four would be hard 😣
Bless you for this awesome channel!
Humans: *hunt elephants for their tusks*
Evolution: You have lost ivory privileges 🔫
They were all killed off in the Battle of the Pelanor Fields. ;)
Dammit! *I* was going to say that!
Well done, all the same.
...and here I am thinking all you nerds were sticklers for spelling. Turns out I'M the biggest nerd of all - it's *Pelennor* Fields.
Elephants being selected to have no tusks... because of us.
Good Job, Humans. :/
It can be beneficial for elephants as tusks r unnecessary because they r heavy and not good for defending as they make the elephant slow, and elephants have thick skin protection anyway against claw and bite attacks, I see this as a win for elephants
@Borko Borko we kill elephants, leave the bodies to rot and take the tusks to sell to superstitious idiots. feel sad.
TERRARIA IS AWESOME Are you aware that elephants are still going to have a hard time defending against predators and other pack mates without tusks?
@@NoName-xc4hk -- Well, they're still big and fat.
@@Starklar
No.
I will not feel sad for belonging to a successful species, especially one that can make a natural force like evolution itself bend to our will.
another great one! thank you again!
I don't want a world where wild elephants no longer have tusks. Poaching, especially of elephants needs to stop. Great video.
I never knew any of them ever had more than 2 tusks! Good thing they're not alive today. Poachers would finish them off in no time.
Another great video, maybe you should do one that focuses on the first evolutionary wave of Proboscians: the Deinotheres
Thank you and yes I think that would make a good video
@@mothlightmedia1936 and the true elephants
Having viewed videos showing zoo vets, elephant rescue vets working on doing infected/diseased elephant tusk extractions, medical attention to inflamed, sore places around the elephant's tusks into their skull & surrounding tissues, tusks in use by the elephant can risk medical problems. Looking at the four-tusked elephant, I can't imagine the X4 medical problems, accidents, disease, etc., for those elephants.
Elephants are losing their tusks while humans are evolving mouth shovels.
Very interesting video indeed and I had no idea on all the subspecies and 4 tusk either. Many prehistoric animals had strange unexplainable skeleton structures though that I find unique myself.
"And now, they are facing losing their tusks altogether."
he probably couldn't pay his dental bills
that was great , thanks mate . Subscribed
When "social distancing" was implemented, two of their horns had to go...
it feels like its been that long as well!
Great video! I always found fascinating the evolutionary history of elephants!
Great video
I love the fact that you used "Nils Frahm-Says" very subtle way❤️❤️
This is a worthy battle mount.
Elephants are useful friends,
Equipped with handles at both ends;
They have a wrinkled, moth-proof hide;
Their teeth are upside down outside. . .
(Ogden Nash)
Grate channel! informative presentation and straight to the point.
Another great video
I just want to hear this guy say "gumphotheres" forever
I’m always fascinated at how evolution seemed to throw everything to the wall to see what stuck and came out at the other end of different extinction events.
That mostly occurred due to just how many niches were left open following the extinction of the dinosaurs
Elephants losing their tusks the same way rattlesnakes are losing their rattles.
Regarding that tusk loss in new Elephant populations - Our shame is endless.
Thank you for another great video.
I pray and hope some day in some way, the 4 tuskers will return, but i know it isn't gonna happen.
Humans will sooner grow wings or another pair of arms before a 4 tusk elephant reemerges.
@@LiezAllLiez I disagree. Modification of existing teeth, or activation of dormant psudo-genes for extra tusks, however unlikely, is still far more likely than creating an entirely new set of limbs, regardless of species. All modern elephants are descended from animals with 4 tusks, but no human, or elephant for that matter, has an ancestor with 6 limbs. Evolution works by modifying existing structures, not producing ones out of nothing.
BSKE C not true, new modifications can happen from nothing.
Elephants are actually evolving not to have their tusks thanks to poachers
@@joela6895 it's never from nothing, evolution tweaks and repurposed what is, and very rarely combines a number of smaller structures to create larger structures. Legs don't come from nowhere, they are repurposed from earlier uses, same with basically everything else. Evolution is supremely lazy, it will never create complex structures completely ex nihilo and will only change small things at a time.
tbh 4 tusked elephants look kinda wierd. I feel like elephants, like us, have evolutionary fashion trends. at one point it was trendy to have 4, but then the 2 tusks came in and proved to be better suited for life [and more appealing] so they went to having just 2. But because poachers target tusked elephants, they're now opting to just go tuskless.
Opting isn't the appropriate word here. Being born tuskless looks like a gene fault which happens to do the elephant's survival chances a favour.
its sad that elephants are losing their tusks, but at the same time its incredible that we're witnessing evolution before our eyes due to our own impact on the natural world
Never knew that tuskless elephants even existed. Interesting development.
It’s so sad to think how elephants are hunted down for their tusks. At least they seem to be adapting to this.
They look like predator in "Alien vs Predator"
That profile pic does
Love your content
New sub! great video.
:( ivory poachers are impacting evolution.
No China is impacting evolution by paying poachers to get ivory and other parts from animals.
What happened to the Four Tusked Elephant that we were promised in the thumbnail?!
He disclude Stegotetrabelodon, the elephant in the thumbnail, due to limited info on that genus
Wow! That last bit hit me!
4:19 Imagine how surreal it would be to look at one of these things in person.
They were OP, and had to be nerfed.
4 tusks would be too op for damage and don't forget confusion and fear debuffs towards non elephants
I believe our rendition of the elephant's ancestors are too hideous, I mean give them some more lip muscle..., they look so gross and weird...
Very nice video, when I was a kid in grade school in the 80's another life time ago, I usted to checkout books at our school library on these ancient species and always wondered why they looked the way they did, great info.! I enjoyed it
the idea of humans hunting these creatures that lived 10 million years ago just fucks with my sense of time so much.
Imagine now how a group of half naked men about 3/4 our size , would then hunt down and kill several of these things ata a time 🧐
It’s just a mistake, many of these animal that died ten million years ago is because competition from other animal and also changing climate
I love these videos. But in this one I feel you are focusing a bit too much on what made two tusked elephants more fit than four tusked or lower tusked ones, while presenting little or no evidence (or even discussion) that they actually were more fit becuase of their tusks. :)
"... living from America to Mexico..."
And where is Mexico supposed to be? Australia?
👍👌😉
Love this video
Very interesting Thanks
Stegotetrabelodon - Nature made hybrid
"Elephants are losing their tusks due to selective pressure by humans"
:(
That's so fucking depressing
Awesome, thanks
I suspect that shovel-tuskers used their shovel-tusks to dig for water in dry river beds in droughts.
They were wiped out during the battle of Gondor.
You completely ignore sexual selection. It's likely sexual selection caused the differences... since we know that animals who live in groups and are fairly protected from predators tend to develop more extreme secondary sexual traits (mandrill, Irish Elk, peacock, etc).
Probably both since genes can't be passed on if the animal they are from dies
Excellent topic
Cool. Nice video.
Thank you