What was an essential function of mammoth tusks for accessing food during winter months?
Answer
Sweeping aside snow to access buried vegetation
The massive, continuously growing tusks of the woolly mammoth served several critical functions beyond defense against predators like saber-toothed cats or use in social displays for mating. Perhaps one of the most vital, especially during harsh winters when food sources became scarce, was their use as a practical tool for excavation. Mammoths utilized these long, curving structures to actively sweep away heavy snow cover in their grassland habitat, thereby gaining access to the underlying grasses and sedges necessary to sustain their massive metabolic requirements when surface vegetation was inaccessible.
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