Recordings of bees had elephants on the run in Kenya. The study’s findings may help protect crops and elephants. (Lucy King via Associated Press/ File 2007)
That is going to be a hard herd to hide.
Now AmeriKan MSM coverage, that is something else.
"How do you make an elephant vanish?; Researchers say that bees get the giants to flee" by Katharine Houreld, Associated Press | May 6, 2010
JOHANNESBURG — Lore has it that elephants are afraid of mice, but scientists have now discovered that elephants are truly afraid of bees — and that the pachyderms even sound an alarm when they encounter them. The researchers hope this discovery can help save farmers’ crops from elephants.
And they hope it will save elephants, too.
Conflicts between humans and elephants in countries such as Kenya occur often.
Why does the paper have to make everything a conflict?
A single hungry elephant can wipe out a family’s crops overnight.
There has to be an answer to this, and not just bee recordings.
Farmers will huddle by fires all night during the harvest season. When an elephant nears, the farmers spring up with flaming sticks while their children bang on pots and pans. Not all fields can be guarded, and sometimes the elephants are not frightened off.
Farmers sometimes kill elephants for raiding their crops. Rampaging elephants have also killed people, and they are then hunted down by park rangers.
The discovery that elephants emit low-frequency alarm calls around bees could help lessen these conflicts, said Lucy King, an animal behavior researcher whose paper on the calls was published in a journal of the Public Library of Science last week.
Farmers could make “bee fences’’ by stringing up hives on poles about 10 yards apart, King said. A strong wire connecting the poles would cause them to swing if an elephant walked into it, disturbing the bees. The swarm would bother elephants so much that they would flee, emitting low rumblings inaudible to the human ear to warn other elephants.
If you can keep the bees alive:
The Buzz in France
Honey Bees and Herbicides
No More Bee Buzz
"Is it only a coincidence that this malady appeared shortly after genetically altered crops (GMO) were grown extensively? Maybe bats eat insects that have eaten their final meal and the genetic alteration somehow changes the bats hibernation functions. Monsanto and Bayer haven’t done much, if any, research in this area. Incidentally, honey bees started experiencing “colony collapse disorder” at that same time.... We still don’t know what affect GMO foods will have"
I have seen a few bumblebees so far, but no honey bees yet and that is odd for around here.
“It’s impossible to cover Africa in electric fences,’’ King said. “The infrastructure doesn’t exist in many places and it would restrict animals’ movement. This could be a better way to direct elephants away from farmers’ crops.’’
Would not want to; they are entitled to freedom just as we are.
King’s findings are based on two separate experiments, part of a project by Oxford University and Save the Elephants. In the first, she played recorded bee sounds near elephants, causing them to flee. The researchers noticed that elephants distant from the sound also moved away, leading them to speculate the elephants were communicating an alarm below the range of human hearing.
For her second experiment, King hung ultrasensitive microphones from trees. She recorded elephant rumblings over a two-month experiment in Kenya’s Samburu park.
She then played the sounds back to elephants. When they heard the recordings they moved away, confirming the researchers’ hunch about alarm calls.
King said further research is needed before her findings can be put to wide use. But she is hopeful they can help find a solution to some of the 1,300 complaints the Kenya Wildlife Service records about elephant-human contact each year. Many elephants in Africa don’t live in the protected confines of a national park.
The findings have generated some excitement.
“This sort of initiative is very encouraging in helping prevent human wildlife conflict,’’ said Paul Udoto, a spokesman for KWS.
Hey, ANYTHING that PRESERVES LIFE is considered GOOD around here!
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Yeah, nice trick.
