HOME |
RSS | 
A 27-year-old elephant named Devidasan developed a painful 19-inch crack in his tusk over the past five years. CV Pradeep, a dentist in Kerala, India, did some research and decided to fill the crack with the same resin used to repair human teeth. The difference: repairing the tusk took 47 tubes of resin in a two-hour operation!
“It was literally an elephantine task, because we had to find specialist equipment and modify it,” Dr Pradeep said.
“The main difference between this and a similar operation carried out on humans is that we were not able to use X-ray screening, because none of our mobile X-ray units was large enough to suit the elephant’s needs.”
Dr Pradeep, a professor at the PSM dental college in the town of Trichur, said that if the crack remained untreated dirt would have gathered inside it and potentially caused a deadly infection.
The elephant was not tranquilized, and remained cooperative through the procedure. The repair seems to have eased his toothache. Link -via Arbroath
Comments Off
Photo: Dr. Ian Redmond
Kitum Cave in Kenya used to be a lot smaller than it is, but over hundreds of years it has been dug out deeper and deeper. In theory, the excavators turned out to be area elephants; along with other mammals the pachyderms gather in the cave to partake of its natural saltlick properties. In the process, they have been using their tusks to scrape and remove the cave’s walls throughout time. Atlas Obscura has the story, along with another piece of trivia.
The Kitum cave is more recently famous for a very different sort of lifeform, a deadly virus. In 1980 and again in 1987 visitors to the cave contracted Marburg virus, a deadly virus very similar to Ebola. The cave and Marburg virus rose to notoriety when it was featured in bestseller “The Hot Zone.” It is believed that the bats in the cave may carry the virus and that their powdered guano may act as the disease vector.
Comments Off If you think about it, an elephant’s tusk is a big tooth. And like any tooth, a tusk can break or otherwise get damaged and the elephant would then need to see a dentist (shudder!). That’s exactly what happened in the North Carolina Zoo.
But how exactly does one operate on an elephant’s tusk? Dainty dental equipments surely aren’t enough… Enter Dr. Gary Spodnick and his power tools!
Disclaimer: This version of the video, although no blood is spilled, may be disturbing to some viewers, since the power tools are shown in use on the animal.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
You may be familiar with Scrat, the “saber-toothed squirrel” from the Ice Age movies, but a real one lives in Niagara Falls, New York. This squirrel has an unusual tusk growing out of its lower jaw! Mary Jo Sutter has been feeding the squirrel since it was young. Watch the video of the squirrel who has no fear of humans or cats. Link
