In the Asian elephant, tusk development is sex-linked in a way it is not in African elephants, where both sexes routinely bear tusks. Asian females do not grow true tusks; a minority carry tushes, small upper incisors that seldom extend past the mouth. Among males, the proportion of tusked animals varies widely by region, and populations in Sri Lanka and parts of northeastern India are largely tuskless.
The pattern has a demographic history. Where ivory hunting has been intense, tusked males are removed disproportionately, and the frequency of tusklessness in surviving males rises. Regional differences therefore reflect both inherited variation and generations of selective killing.
What is often misreported is the direction of the comparison. Asian elephants are not simply small-tusked versions of African ones; the tusk is an incisor, grows continuously, and in a large African bull can exceed two metres. A tuskless Asian bull is not a juvenile or a female, and misreading it as either has caused repeated errors in field counts.