Once again, a picture of an elephant is circulating on Facebook, with the story that the elephants' tusks would be painted pink to protect them from poachers. What's up with this story?
We received inquiries about a Facebook status post that was recently shared.
Here it is explained that “they” take the same color as banknotes and paint the tusks of elephants with it so that the ivory can no longer be sold.
This is what the post looks like:

Image in plain text:
This is the best thing I've seen in a long time! They use the same color as money bills to paint elephants' tusks. Which means that the ivory can no longer be sold. Nothing happens to the animals - instead it saves their lives!!!
So does this color really exist and do elephants already walk around with it? Not quite…
The fact check
The elephant pictured does NOT have PINK tusks. This is an already edited image. The picture of the elephant can be found on various websites online. Like on that one:
But this doesn't mean anything, because the image can only have a symbolic character.
It's more about the statement:
This is the best thing I've seen in a long time! They use the same color as banknotes to paint elephants' tusks. Which means that ivory can no longer be sold. Nothing happens to the animals - instead it saves their lives!
We did a search and found a lot of pages, mostly on Twitter and Instagram, that also make this claim:
During our research we came across a few sites that all reported the same content like:
In South Africa they have already experimented with this and achieved good results. The tusks were dyed with a special color that can be detected by airport detectors even if the tusks have been pulverized.
The color is the same as that used for banknotes. In order to dye the tusks of rhinos and elephants, they have to be captured and anesthetized.
A small hole is then drilled into the tusk through which the paint is inserted. This is very time-consuming and expensive. Perhaps that is why this method has not yet become widespread. Too bad.. [ source ]
Pink tusks aren't real, but still help combat hunting of elephants for ivory! [ Source ]
Dr. Charles van Niekerk
The inventor of this method is Dr. Charles van Niekerk. He first tested this method on rhinos, but these tests didn't work either (2014).
New study: Infusing rhino horns with poison doesn't work [ source ]
Result:
The image has been changed. The elephant pictured including pink tusks does not exist. There have been a variety of attempts in recent years, but this method has not yet been implemented for various reasons.
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Notes:
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