Title: The Truth About Tusks - The Dodo
Headings: The Truth About Tusks
The Truth About Tusks
A True/False Quiz
All elephants grow tusks.
No two tusks are alike.
If an elephant breaks a tusk it will grow back.
All elephant teeth are ivory.
We can tell an elephant's age by the length of its tusk.
A tusk can be removed without killing the elephant.
Like an iceberg, much of an elephant's tusk is below the surface.
Only elephants produce ivory.
We can prevent poaching by dying or scarring the tusks of living elephants.
There is an alternative to ivory.
It is okay to buy and sell "antique" ivory items.
The United States has banned the sale of ivory.
There isn't much you can do to stop poachers.

Content: All elephant teeth are ivory. False! Only the tusks are made of ivory-an extremely dense dentine covered with a carveable calcified rind called cementum. The rest of the elephant's teeth are made from enamel, dentin and pulp, like ours. Photo Credit US Fish & Wildlife Service Forensics Lab
We can tell an elephant's age by the length of its tusk. True! As long as the tusk hasn't been broken, it can reveal an elephant's age relative to other elephants of the same sex and species. Because most of the elephants with the longest tusks have been killed, their genes are no longer passed along. That is one of the reasons authorities are confiscating shorter and thinner tusks every year. Another reason: