castration, produces the same effect.
The tusks of the elephant, in the different species or races, differ
according to sex, nearly as do the horns of ruminants. In India and
Malacca the males alone are provided with well-developed tusks. The
elephant of Ceylon is considered by most naturalists as a distinct
race, but by some as a distinct species, and here not one in a hundred
is found with tusks, the few that possess them being exclusively
males. (20. Sir J. Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, 1859, vol. ii. p. 274.
For Malacca, Journal of Indian Archipelago, vol. iv. p. 357.) The
African elephant is undoubtedly distinct, and the female has large
well-developed tusks, though not so large as those of the male.
These differences in the tusks of the several races and species of
elephants the great variability of the horns of deer, as notably in the
wild reindeer the occasional presence of horns in the female Antilope
Bezoartica, and their frequent absence in the female of Antilocapra
americana the presence of two tusks in some few male narwhals the
complete absence of tusks in some female walruses are all instances of
the extreme variability of secondary sexual characters, and of their
liability to differ in closely-allied forms.
Although tusks and horns appear in all cases to have been primarily
developed as sexual weapons, they often serve other purposes. The
elephant uses his tusks in attacking the tiger; according to Bruce, he
scores the trunks of trees until they can be thrown down easily, and he
likewise thus extracts the farinaceous cores of palms; in Africa he
often uses one tusk, always the same, to probe the ground and thus
ascertain whether it will bear his weight. The common bull defends the
herd with his horns; and the elk in Sweden has been known, according to
Lloyd, to strike a wolf dead with a single blow of his great horns.
Many similar facts could be given. One of the most curious secondary
uses to which the horns of an animal may be occasionally put is that
observed by Captain Hutton (21. Calcutta Journal of Natural History,
vol. ii, 1843, p. 526.) with the wild goat (Capra aegagrus) of the
Himalayas and, as it is also said with the ibex, namely that when the
male accidentally falls from a height he bends inwards his head, and by
alighting on his massive horns, breaks the shock. The female cannot
thus use her horns, which are smaller, but from her more quiet
disposition she does not need this strange kind of shield so much.
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