If the African elephant needs water to live, then it evolved tusks to dig for water during the dry season. Through natural selection, only animals who could retain water well or find water could live during the harsh dry seasons of the savannah. This trait of large tusks evolved over time when the elephants with the mutation of a larger tusk survived because they could find water, so the elephants with large tusks reproduced, passing down their genes and making more elephants with large tusks until it evolved into all African elephants.
In the future elephants, are supposed to evolve without their tusks because humans are poaching them to use the ivory. This will impact elephants because they will not be able to use their tusks to dig up water and will have no source of water; this will make them die of dehydration. Without water, the elephants will not be able to maintain homeostasis, which they need to be alive because their water levels will be too low. Elephants with the genetic mutation of having no tusks have survived because the poachers don’t kill them, so those elephants survive and reproduce without tusks. Eventually, all elephants will evolve to not have tusks.
African Elephants 