However, bees are known to be
attracted to the water around elephants' eyes and when they get up their
trunks, elephants can go berserk, say researchers from Oxford
University.
Lucy King of the department of zoology said: "We weren't surprised
that they responded to the threatening sound of disturbed bees, as
elephants are intelligent animals that are intimately aware of their
surroundings, but we were surprised by how quickly they responded to the
sounds by running away.
"Almost half of our study
herds started to move away within 10 seconds of the bee playback."
By contrast, elephants ignored a
recording of white noise, according to the findings in the journal
Current Biology.
Local people in Kenya helped
prompt the line of research with anecdotes that suggested elephants
preferred to steer clear of bees.
Reports suggested that elephant
damage to acacia trees hosting beehives, occupied or empty, was
significantly less than in trees without hives. In Zimbabwe, scientists
have observed elephants forging new trails in an attempt to avoid
beehives.
Miss King added: "African
bees emit a pheromone that triggers the bees to attack. You can have
10,000 bees attacking at once. Elephants remember that sound and are
terrified by it."
The recordings of bees used were
taken from the most common form of African honey bee.
Sixteen out of 17 elephant
families - most elephant herds are female, with males either solitary or
hanging out in small groups if they are younger - left their resting
places within 80 seconds of hearing bee sounds and most left within 10
seconds.
Researchers are now going to
start trials with beehives on farms to see if bees can be used to reduce
human-elephant conflicts which are growing across Africa as development
spreads.
Miss King added: "We have
no idea how successful this can be against crop-raiders but if we can
reduce crop raiding by 40-50 per cent and people can get honey to sell
we could have a win-win on our hands."
