An organic formulation containing honeybee pheromones has been found to safely repel elephants, offering promise for a new strategy to prevent the world’s largest land animals from destroying crops or causing other damage in areas where humans conflict with elephants, according to a study published July 23, 2018 in Current Biology.
An organic formulation containing honeybee pheromones has been found to safely repel elephants, offering promise for a new strategy to prevent the world’s largest land animals from destroying crops or causing other damage in areas where humans conflict with elephants, according to a study published July 23, 2018 in Current Biology.
The study was conducted at Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa between December 2017 and February 2018.
The scientists placed a blend of pheromones developed by ISCA Technologies that bees release when they perceive danger in a specialized slow-release matrix at locations around waterholes frequented by African bush elephants, Loxodonta africana. The researchers observed that most of the elephants that came near the formulation showed typical signs of increased alertness, signs of uncertainty, and finally calmly moved away, while those approaching control treatments were eager to investigate the foreign object in their environment. The pheromones were dispensed in white socks weighed with rocks hanging from broken tree branches no more than a meter off the ground.
At the park’s Jejane waterhole, 25 of 29 elephants that approached the pheromone-laden socks moved away after getting close enough to smell the formulation. In the same timeframe, control experiments found that all elephants ignored similar looking suspended socks that did not contain the pheromone mix, or they would approach the controls and pick them up, and even try to taste them in some cases.
Read more at ISCA Technologies Inc.
Image: Elephants at the Jejane waterhole at Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa on Dec. 8, 2017. (Credit: Mark Wright, University of Hawaii at Mānoa.)
