Is it ivory or cow bone?

[Otis the 3rd]

Looks like Bone to me. It sure aged like ivory, but I would expect the grain on ivory to be finer and black pits are a trait of bone.

[Ridgegrass]

I think it's bone. J.O'.

[Gunsil]

Bone

[1967redrider]

Paki Stan only uses the finest cow bones available.

[herbva]

Must be pakibone.

[Ridgegrass]

KZ:Here are two very old knives, 1860's and earlier. The top one is bone the bottom is ivory. the close up of the bone shows small specks that are the remains of the blood supplying capillaries found in bone. The ivory has none, it is non-living, dental material and needs no blood supply. Also notice the shaded striations (stripes) in the ivory. The ivory has yellowed in spots probably due to oils or other chemicals over time.
Picture 3 is bone, picture 4 is ivory. Hope this helps. J.O'.

[Ridgegrass]

You're welcome. Ivory comes from walrus tusks too. With all the modern synthetics, using ivory is unnecessary. The antique stuff is fun to have. J.O'.

[Thomasg]

Paki Stan only uses the finest cow bones available.

I believe it is camel bone .

[1967redrider]

Paki Stan only uses the finest cow bones available.

I believe it is camel bone .

I should have said, "finest bones available," that covers all animals.

[GSPTOPDOG]

Paki Stan only uses the finest cow bones available.

This one we calling the "T-Bone" or in Pashtoon "Tali-bone".

[GSPTOPDOG]

I guess elephants don't get cavities? Weird.

Elephants wear their teeth out too fast typically to suffer loss from cavities, and more importantly, they don't eat very much ice cream... Their teeth get worn down by the enormous amounts of vegetation they eat. So, the older teeth fall off after a couple of years and get replaced by new teeth.

Elephants starve to death once their teeth wear out. They produce six sets of teeth in their lives, 24 teeth in total, including the premolars and molars, with each set pushing forward from the back of the jaw to replace worn teeth at the front. For example, the fifth set lasts until the elephant is 40.
The final set, i.e., the sixth set, lasts for the rest of the elephant’s lifetime.

After six such sets, elephants run out of teeth, cannot chew food, lose condition and either fall prey to disease or predators or starve to death. Loss of teeth is one of the significant causes of death in older elephants.

[GSPTOPDOG]

It could also be ivory.

If you look at the post that Ridgegrass left in the thread, he showed an example of ivory next to bone and explained why the one my friend found was not ivory. So, based on that it's some sort of bone.

That I am not quite sure, I have both camel and cow bone handles... It is a little harder to tell w/o holding it in your hands...

[GSPTOPDOG]

Well that's just plain depressing and sad. I thought your unofficial job was to make us all laugh. Why hasn't some animal organization taken up making dentures for them yet???

I always remembered that fact about elephants ... that they don't really die from old age... they more likely starve to death when the get old... I suppose that is a good project for an NGO... elephant dental implants... (except tranquilizing large wild animals is somewhat problematic... (I had a friend that went to Africa... I went too for the same project w/o sedating the rhinos and after he worked on the project... and he was involved in sedating rhinos to remove their horns in order to prevent them from being poached).

[GSPTOPDOG]

Interesting. What did they do with the rhinos' horns after they removed them? How were they able to defend themselves without a horn?

You sure have been to a lot of places!

Rhinos are so big they really aren't in danger from predators.

[GSPTOPDOG]

What did they do with the horns though after they removed them?

..... .......Uhmmm I'm not really sure... ...