Even though trading in ivory has been outlawed by international agreement, some piano makers still use ivory, often obtained illegally, to cover piano keys  Recently, experts have devised a synthetic ivory that, unlike earlier ivory substitutes, has found favor with concert pianists throughout the world
But because piano makers have never been major consumers of ivory, the development of the synthetic ivory will ttherefore probably do little to help curb the killing of elephants, from whose tusks most natural ivory is obtained
It costs significantly less to produce the new synthetic ivory then it does to produce any of the ivory substitutes that scientists had developed previously.