Elephants Are Scared of Bees
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Just in case you're wondering, there are specific plants that elephants prefer. If anyone wants to move to Africa and plant an elephant garden surrounded by a butterfly garden, please invite me.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/science/swatting-mosquito...
> Some blood meals are worth a mosquito risking its life. But if there’s a more attractive or accepting alternative to feed from, a mosquito may move on to that someone or something instead. That’s because if you keep trying and missing, the mosquito may learn to associate your swatting vibrations with your scent, a study published Thursday in Current Biology suggests. And it just may remember: This is not a person who will tolerate me
Animals can hear way more frequencies than us, in one direction or another - typically the high registers. The recording may sound totally different.
> we used a recording of a disturbed hive of cavity-dwelling Asian honey bees (Apis cerana indica) and conducted sound playbacks to 120 wild elephants in 28 different groups resting under trees in Uda Walawe National Park in Sri Lanka. Elephants responded by moving significantly further away from their resting site in bee playback trials compared to controls. Elephants also increased vocalization rates, as well as investigative and reassurance behaviours in response to bee sounds, but did not display dusting or headshaking behaviour
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)3...
Fear of bees is clearly a learned behavior in elephants.
Citation: King, Lucy; Pardo, Michael; Weerathunga, Sameera; Kumara, T.V; Jayasena, Nilimini; Soltis, Joseph; de Silva, Shermin; Cell Current Biology Vol 28, Issue 2 January 2018.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.018
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.018
Summary: Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are threatened primarily by habitat loss and human–elephant conflict. In addition to establishing protected areas and corridors for wildlife, empowering farmers to protect their crops is crucial for Asian elephant conservation. Elephants can habituate to artificial deterrents, hence natural biological alternatives are of great interest. African elephants (Loxodonta africana) avoid African honey bees (Apis mellifera scutellata), inspiring ‘beehive fences’ as a successful means of small-scale crop protection. Here, we used a recording of a disturbed hive of cavity-dwelling Asian honey bees (Apis cerana indica) and conducted sound playbacks to 120 wild elephants in 28 different groups resting under trees in Uda Walawe National Park in Sri Lanka. Elephants responded by moving significantly further away from their resting site in bee playback trials compared to controls. Elephants also increased vocalization rates, as well as investigative and reassurance behaviours in response to bee sounds, but did not display dusting or headshaking behaviour.