WATCH | ‘One-in-a-million’ footage: Scientists find an elephant repellent to keep them away from crops

Farmers in parts of Africa and Asia have long dreaded when an elephant wanders into their fields where they not only trample the crops but are also capable of consuming an entire year’s harvest overnight, reported the New York Times. Theseencounters also turndeadly as the elephants occasionally kill humans and when sometimes farmers fight back the tuskersare killed.

However, scientists have found a way to scare the elephants away, not by hitting or screaming at them but buzzing. Earlier this month, footage filmed during an audio trial by the Liberian-based elephant research and conservation group, ELRECO showed a huge male elephant enteringfrom a remote Liberian forest to farmland. Subsequently, the munching elephant heard an angry buzzing sound and froze mid-chew after which he high-tailed out of there.

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This is where Buzz Box comes in, as the sound that led the elephant to take off was of a disturbed hive of bees and like other tuskers across the world, he has learned to avoid that insect sound. “We were absolutely thrilled when we saw the footage. The chance to get this kind of scene is probably one in a million,” said Dr Tina Vogt, technical director of ELRECO, in a statement.

The German non-profit group is currently in the midst of testing the devices in Liberia. The project is also in collaboration with an organisation called, Save the Elephant, which is helping them deploy the BuzzBox. The deadly encounters between humans and elephants “feeds into the issue of local people being recruited into poaching gangs,” said Francesca Mahoney, founder and director of Wild Survivors, a United Kingdom-based non-profit which developed the BuzzBox, as per the New York Times.

Dr Lucy King, head of the human-elephant coexistence program at Save the Elephants, has been studying elephants’ fear of bees for nearly two decades. She has previously created specialised wire fences with beehives hanging like pendulums. Therefore, when elephants move the fence causes a disturbance in the hives and the bees swarm. The 2017 study led by Dr King also shows an 80 per cent success rate in repelling elephants from farms.

“Finding a natural threat to scare elephants in the most holistic way possible, without terrifying them or making them go into pain, is really useful for management”, said Dr King. First developed nearly six years ago by Wild Survivors’ chairperson, Martyn Griffiths, the current model costs around $100 and is simple enough for local school children to build, reported the New York Times.

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