On our walk, we came across an elephant skeleton that was relatively undisturbed. It had been there for 10-15 years based on the decay, but one of the tusks was still present indicating humans hadn't seen it before. In the park, there us a lot of attention paid to protection of the animals against poaching. Unfortunately, elephant tusks and rhino horns still have a lot of value on the black market, resulting in an enormous amount of danger to the animals. When the park guides come upon the remains of an elephant, the GPS tag the location for the park rangers to come out to collect the tusks to prevent them from being collected illegally for sale. The guides could bring the tusks in to the rangers, but there is so much corruption and value that they are afraid of being suspected of poaching just by transporting the items.
This particular tusk was dehydrated and decayed that it had relatively no market value, but was enormously educational! We picked it up, and learned the formula for estimating it's approximate weight. Of course I can't remember the formula (something like length in feet times circumference)... But it was a lot heavier than you would think! We guessed it was about 25+ lbs. At least.
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