Elephant tusks are derived from which type of tooth?

Elephant tusks are derived from incisors.

More precisely, an elephant’s tusks are modified second incisors in the upper jaw. Unlike ordinary human incisors, they continue growing for much of the animal’s life and are composed chiefly of dentine, the tissue commonly called ivory. Tusks begin as deciduous “milk tusks” and are replaced by permanent tusks during the first year of life.

Tusks are multipurpose tools rather than merely weapons. Elephants use them for digging, stripping bark, moving objects, marking trees, and fighting. Wear patterns can even reveal whether an elephant favors one tusk—the dominant tusk is often shorter and blunter.

African elephants typically have large tusks in both sexes, although size varies. In Asian elephants, large tusks are mainly found in males; females may have only small vestigial tusks or none visible outside the mouth. Molars, by contrast, are the grinding teeth used to process vegetation and are not the source of tusks.