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TROPHY HUNTERS, by eliminating the most magnificent specimens of a species, enact reverse selection. It’s the opposite of natural selection. The hunters remove the healthiest and fittest males from the gene pool by targeting the largest bears or the lions with the darkest manes. The same sort of reverse selection has had disastrous consequences for elephants, in which it combines with ivory poaching. In many populations, bulls with large tusks have gone virtually extinct. One of the devastating side-effects has been that young bulls have become unruly and dangerous. In Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa, marauding gangs of juvenile elephant bulls went berserk. Like a blood sport, they began to chase down white rhinoceroses, stomping them with their feet and goring them to death with their tusks. They harassed other animals as well. The park resolved this problem by setting up a Big Brother program. Park staff flew in six full-grown bull elephants from Kruger National Park. Bulls keep growing larger throughout their lives, and the oldest ones often roam with younger bulls in tow. Like warriors in training, the latter follow and watch their mentors. The hyperaggressive state of musth—when testosterone levels increase fifty-fold—is curbed when young bulls are exposed to dominant males. A young bull may lose the physical signs of musth within minutes of being put in his place by a bigger one. At Pilanesberg, hormonal suppression and reduced risk-taking in the presence of intimidating adults made all the difference. After the Big Brother program, signs of random violence disappeared. In previous years, elephants had killed over forty endangered white rhinos. The civilizing influence of older bulls stopped the carnage.
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