Here's the Buzz on What Frightens Elephants

It has often been said that elephants are afraid of mice, but now it is proven that they do, in fact, steer clear of bees. Oxford University's Lucy King and her colleagues in the Samburu National Reserve in Northern Kenya found that in most cases elephants fled when they heard the buzzing sound of aggressive bees. This new finding could be a very important tool when it comes to keeping elephants away from humans in areas in which they coexist. The elephants even reacted strongly to hidden loudspeakers that simply played the sound of the bees buzzing.

"We expected the elephants to respond to the threatening sound of disturbed bees, but we were really surprised by the speed of their reaction," said Lucy King who undertook the study as part of her PhD in a press release. "Almost half of the groups we studied moved away within seconds of the bee buzz being turned on. This suggests that they already knew the sound and really did not like it."

Some previous studies performed by Dr Douglas-Hamilton, of the Save The Elephants organization, and Professor Fritz Vollrath, from Oxford's Department of Zoology, found that elephants did not like to go around beehives. They figured this out by noticing that trees with beehives were not damaged as often as those trees without beehives. Loki Osborne, of Zimbabwe, also found that elephants would not go near a beehive placed in their trail to a field of maize. Even local farmers in Nepal had made such observations.

The new study performed by Lucy King consisted of playing a digitalized recording of angry local bee noises. The speaker was placed ten meters away from groups of elephants taking a noontime nap. An amazing 16 out of 17 family groups fled within 80 seconds of hearing the angry bees buzzing. Eight of those groups fled quickly within a ten second timeframe. A control noise of white noise (a waterfall) was played and it was noted that the elephants did not move nearly as fast. Out of 15 control groups, only four were disturbed enough to even move after 80 seconds.

"It is vital that we find new approaches so that we avoid extreme solutions such as shooting problem animals," said Lucy King. "More research is needed to understand to what extent beehives could be used to keep away elephants but we are hopeful that this approach might work. Using bees in this way would enable local farmers to reduce elephant crop-raiding and tree destruction while at the same time providing some income through the sale of honey. This would be a valuable and significant step towards sustainable human-elephant coexistence."

SOURCE:

University of Oxford Press Release. URL: (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/071008.shtml)