Ivory

Where Found

Ivory is obtained from the large teeth and tusks of several mammals, including the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, extinct wooly mammoth, and narwhal. In these animals, an upper incisor grows throughout life into a large tusk. In elephants, for example, the average tusk weighs 7 kilograms, but in large males the weight might be much more. A major factor endangering the continued existence of these extant mammals has been the value of their ivory.

Primary Uses

Ivory has been used by humans for thousands of years, often as a medium for carving. The art of scrimshaw makes use of ivory, and many other ornamental objects are carved from ivory. In the past, most ivory was used in the manufacture of piano keys, but billiard balls, bagpipes, flatware handles, and furniture inlays were other products made from ivory. Today, most ivory is used for the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean seals known as hankos; these small seals are used on official business documents.

Technical Definition

Ivory is the hardened dentine of the teeth and tusks of certain large mammals. In both male and female elephants, one incisor on each side of the upper jaw grows throughout life. In females, growth of the tusks tends to slow after age thirty, but in males both the length and bulk of the tusks increase through the life span, thus making old male elephants prime targets for ivory poachers. In walruses, the tusks form from upper canines and grow throughout life in both sexes. Narwhals have only two teeth, both in the upper jaw; these lengthen to become long, straight tusks, usually only one in males and sometimes two in females. Hippopotamuses have tusks of ivory that do not yellow with age, as elephant tusks tend to do.

Description, Distribution, and Forms

Both the Asiatic elephant, Elephas maximus, and the African elephant, Loxodonta africana, have been extensively exploited for the ivory in their tusks. Asiatic elephants are now restricted in range to southern Asia, although historically, they had a much larger distribution, from Syria to northern China and south to Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and perhaps Java. Fewer than 50,000 wild Asiatic elephants remained throughout the present range of the species, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2024. These elephants were found on the Indian subcontinent, in the continental Southeast Asia, and in Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and Borneo.

The African elephant includes two major kinds, which some experts consider subspecies: the forest elephant, Loxodonta africana cyclotis, of west and central Africa, and the savanna or bush elephant, Loxodonta africana, of the savanna areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Intense pressure from both legal and illegal ivory hunters caused the entire African elephant population to fall from around 1.3 million in 1979 to 625,000 in 1989. By 2024, this population dropped to about 415,000. In 1990, the United Nations Convention on Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) put a ban on the international trade of ivory, and this slowed to some extent the killing of elephants.

A now-extinct relative of the elephant, the woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, once ranged throughout the cold, northern areas of Asia and portions of North America. Global change has exposed the bodies of many mammoths and their tusks have been gathered, mostly by Russian workers, as a source of ivory.

The walrus, Odobenus rosmarus, occurs in coastal areas of the Arctic Ocean and adjoining seas. This species has been heavily exploited for the ivory of its large upper canines, which may be more than 100 centimeters long in males and about 80 centimeters in females. Biologists are concerned that with the decline of the African elephant population as a source of ivory, poachers will turn to the killing of walruses.

Narwhals, Monodon monoceros, are found in the Arctic Ocean and nearby seas, primarily between 70° and 80° north latitude. Their normal range is entirely above the Arctic Circle. Narwhals have two upper-jaw teeth; in males, one of these remains embedded while the other erupts and grows in a spiral pattern to form a long, straight tusk. This tusk may be about one-third to one-half of the animal’s total body length, sometimes becoming as long as 300 centimeters with a weight of 10 kilograms. Occasionally, one or two tusks are grown by a female narwhal. Most researchers believe that the narwhal uses the tusk as a defensive weapon because extensive scarring is often found on the heads of males.

The hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius, occurs throughout Africa in suitable waterways south of the Sahara Desert and also in the Nile River to its delta. It has disappeared throughout most of western and southern Africa, partially because it is killed for its ivory tusks. Some of the lower canine tusks of male hippos are just as large as many elephant tusks entering the ivory market, causing the hippo to be a target for illegal trafficking in ivory.

History

The trade in ivory is thought to date to the time of Cro-Magnon man, approximately thirty-five thousand years ago. The Asiatic elephant has been exploited for ivory for at least four thousand years; upper classes in both Asia and the Middle East greatly desired items made of ivory. Ivory demand in Europe in the 1600’s drove the killing of many thousands of elephants around the Cape of Good Hope. From 1860 to 1930, 25,000 to 100,000 elephants were killed each year for the ivory trade, mostly to obtain material for piano key manufacture. By the early nineteenth century, the ivory-carving industry in India was being supported by imported African elephant tusks, as the Asiatic elephants had already been seriously depleted. The overall number of elephants in Africa in the early 1900s was still several million and remained so until after World War II.

The mid-twentieth century had a lag in commercial ivory hunting, but in the 1970s hunting resumed in earnest as the raw ivory price increased from five to one hundred dollars per kilogram. The African elephant was placed on appendix 2 of CITES in 1979, listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and listed as threatened by the United States Department of the Interior. However, these listings did little to prevent poaching, and the African elephant population plummeted to 600,000 by 1997. In 1990, CITES banned the international trade of ivory, but in 1997, the convention approved the sale of more than 54 metric tons of ivory from Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. This stockpiled ivory was sold to Japan. CITES reinstated a trade ban again in 2000, then once more allowed an exception in 2002 for Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. In 2004, Namibia’s proposal to allow tourist trade in ivory carvings was approved; many conservationists believe that CITES’ imposing and then temporarily lifting ivory bans has encouraged poaching in the African countries where larger populations of elephants still exist. In 2007, in response to public pressure on the ivory trade issue, eBay banned all international sales of elephant ivory products and in 2009 disallowed any sales of ivory by users of its website.

China’s growing economy has driven illegal trade in ivory as well as attracted organized crime related to its sale. A kilogram of ivory brings about $750. Estimated illegal shipments to China total approximately 218 metric tons, an amount that would cause the deaths of at least 23,000 elephants.

One tool available to conservation law enforcement is DNA testing. A genetic test developed by Samuel Wasser of the University of Washington helps to track illegal shipments to their source. For example, an extremely large illegal shipment of 532 tusks and 42,000 hankos was seized in Singapore in 2002. Genetic testing traced this ivory to Zambia, and the tusks in the shipment weighed approximately 11 kilograms each, indicating that they came from old elephants.

Obtaining Ivory

Generally, ivory is obtained by the killing of the animals that possess ivory teeth and tusks. As mentioned above, these include elephants, hippopotamuses, narwhals, and walruses.

Mammoth ivory is obtained primarily in Russia by those who find recently thawed mammoth carcasses. Because of global climate change, this has become a more common occurrence. Mammoth ivory has been used by Russian merchants in the manufacture of items to sell to Asia. About 90 percent of mammoth ivory exported to Asia is used to make hankos for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean markets. This ivory, because it comes from an extinct mammal, can be legally imported into the United States. More than 46 metric tons were imported in 2007. However, state legislators have been submitting bills to ban the sale of both modern and fossilized ivory. By 2023, several US states have made it illegal to import ivory.

Native subsistence hunting of walruses, by harpooning or clubbing, has been occurring for thousands of years and probably had little negative impact on populations of the species. However, with the hunting of walruses by Europeans for ivory, hides, and oil, beginning in the sixteenth century, numbers of the animals on both sides of the North Atlantic declined dramatically. The last large populations in the Canadian Arctic were gone by the 1930s, and only about 20,000 of the Atlantic population remained as of 2022. Surveys of the Pacific population indicated that some 129,000 walruses were alive, but there was considerable concern among biologists that ivory demand in Asia would drive poaching of the remaining animals.

Hippopotamuses have been extensively killed for hundreds of years for meat, hides, and ivory. As populations of African elephants have steadily declined, there has been increased pressure on hippos for their ivory. The lower canine tusks of males are often as large as elephant tusks now entering the illegal market, and a sharp rise in the export of hippo ivory coincided with the placing of the African elephant under the more protective listing of appendix 1 of CITES.

The Vikings were probably the first culture to exploit the narwhal extensively for its tusk, which sold for high prices as early as the tenth century. The tusks were also in great demand in Asia, where they were used for carving and as medicine. During the late 1900s, narwhal tusks were sold for as much as forty-five hundred dollars. The annual kill of narwhals in Canadian waters was estimated to be approximately one thousand. The species has received little firm protection from any conservation law.

Uses of Ivory

For many years, the use of ivory centered around decorative items, such as carved figurines and various gewgaws, primarily for customers in Europe, Asia, and the United States. The manufacture of ivory piano keys and billiard balls was a major factor in the demise of both Asiatic and African elephants. Estimates indicated that of ivory—for the making of piano keys—in Great Britain in 1831 accounted for the deaths of four thousand elephants. More modern uses of ivory have been for flatware, jewelry, and furniture inlays, but by far the greatest recent use of ivory has been for hankos. These small ivory seals are used as a means of signing official documents in China, Japan, and Korea. A vegetable ivory from the ivory nut palm could be used in place of animal ivory, but, so far, the vegetable ivory has not been accepted by Asians as a suitable substitute.

Bibliography

Feldhake, Glenn. Hippos. Stillwater, Minn.: Voyageur Press, 2005.

Harland, David. Killing Game: International Law and the African Elephant. New York: Praeger, 1994.

Nowak, Ronald M. Walker’s Mammals of the World. 6th ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Ray, G. Carleton, and Jerry McCormick-Ray, eds. Coastal Marine Conservation: Science and Policy. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004.

Sukumar, Raman. The Living Elephants: Evolutionary Ecology, Behavior, and Conservation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

"What Is Ivory?" International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), 4 June 2024, www.ifaw.org/about. Accessed 23 Dec. 2024.