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: Tusks are teeth and just like our teeth, if one is broken, it stays broken. But unlike our teeth, a tusk can continue growing from the root if that isn't damaged. It's not unusual to see an elephant with only one tusk because the other was injured to the point that it stopped growing. The tusk is the equivalent of our incisor teeth (the tooth on either side of our two front teeth). It is made of ivory, a material soft enough to be carved, which is the root of the poaching problem. 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.