My news story of the day comes from CBC News. It is a piece about elephants and being a lifetime elephant fan, I naturally had to check it out.
Unfortunately this story turned out to be sad and shocking.
The first shock came from how fast elephants are evolving in some areas. Elephants in Mozambique are rapidly losing the beautiful tusks that they have historically used to dig for water, strip barks from trees for food, and joust with other elephants. These tuskless animals are all females and they now make up two-thirds of live elephant births in that area of the world.
The second shock is that, the reason this elephant evolution became necessary, was to avoid extinction at the hands of illegal ivory hunters. These hunters were decimating the elephant population in Mozambique to finance both sides of a war effort there.
The third shock was a little side note. When authorities in Sri Lanka seized a massive amount of ivory tusks from these illegal elephant hunts, they ultimately destroyed them! I cannot believe they could not be turned over to some historical agency to be preserved or sold for a legitimate purpose. The funds from such sales could have provided financial help (medical assistance, food, housing, etc) for people in Mozambique. Surely that would have been far better than just destroying these tusks!
Altogether a sad news story today. It is hard to imagine that humans can be so greedy, bloodthirsty, and destructive. It makes one wonder what else the warmongers around the globe are destroying. Obviously, countless innocent human victims are just the beginning.
That is it for today! Take care, take care of each other and our vulnerable animal population, and have a great day. 💞
Seclusion 101 with AnneMarie 
That’s sickening! Our species is disgusting at times. How are the tusks going away, genetic manipulation by humans?
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I don’t think so. The elephants are just evolving to save themselves I think. I read the article three times and I wasn’t sure. In my first paragraph the ‘news story’ is always a link to the original article.
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OK, I obviously didn’t read the article, sorry. I can’t understand why the heck the governments don’t crack down hard on these evil people killing the elephants! Once they are gone, that’s it. Not acceptable.
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Fascinating.
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Certainly shocking
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That is amazing about the elephants changing to survive because of hunters.
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Nature is definitely amazing!
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Thanks for this interesting info on elephants. My husband loves elephants and has a huge collection of elephant figurines.
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You are welcome! That is cool! At last count I had over 200. Most are small and relatively inexpensive but a lot of them have sentimental value for where and when I got them.
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We have downsized and my husband keeps saying he needs to get rid of some – but so far he has not.
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Good luck with that. 😊. I don’t think I could part with any of my elephants and Dan cannot part with anything!
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I read that sad story too, heartbreaking. When Hubs was a little boy his neighbor lady collected elephants and had thousands (she was older) of pretty big and minuscule ones in her house. Her name was Marie and she loved talking and showing them to little Johnny. Where she got them when she traveled. He still talks about her and the elephant collection…
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We usually think of evolution as being a reaction to circumstances, but our actions impact the environment so ultimately our evolution and the evolution of other species. https://petersironwood.com/2017/04/11/ripples/
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This is true. Sometimes unfortunately.
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