Big body like elephants are afraid ... bees

Meeting herds, African elephants shook their heads constantly and immediately covered them with sand, and Asian elephants screamed and fled in fear.

This sounds strange: the largest animal on land is afraid of a small insect. But elephants have nothing to be ashamed of : thanks to these small animals, elephants will be "protected" in the long run.

Big body and thick skin but elephants are very afraid of bees - (Photo: Live Science).

According to The New York Times, the bee's nozzle cannot penetrate the thick skin of the elephant. But all the bees, especially the most aggressive ones in Africa, "attacked" an elephant in sensitive areas such as taps, mouths, and eyes that would be extremely painful.

A recent study by the University of Oxford (UK) shows that Asian elephants are also extremely afraid of bees . In places like Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, elephants are 10 times more threatened than African elephants.

However, Asian elephants reacted not to African elephants who did not "face" the bees. While African elephants shook their heads constantly and immediately covered their bodies with sand, Asian elephants screamed again, fled the swarms of bees, brought their taps into their mouths and smashed the tap on the ground in fear.

Not only elephants, brutal like lions are also shy about small bees - (Photo: Getty Images).

Today, scientists use this fear to help forest elephants.

Elephants are one of the most endangered animals in the world, in which one of the main threats is that elephants often go to villages to find food that can be repelled by farmers, even shot and killed.

Therefore, scientists have pushed farmers to use this " biological weapon" to establish a safety barrier to protect the farm from being attacked by wild elephants.

Specifically, the Oxford team set up a honeycomb fence in Africa, each set about 20 meters apart. As a result, this protection system can chase 80% of the elephant "sharpened" to the farm.

The beehives must be firmly fixed on the fence, but can still be flexibly flexible to help the bees easily fly out of the nest when there is an intruder.

Subsequently, the Save The Elephants non-governmental environmental protection organization organized the installation of honeycomb fences for farms for $ 1,000 per sample. This option is only one-fifth the cost of using the grid.

In addition to protecting property, protecting elephants, farm owners also have more profits with annual honey revenues.

Bee fences are being tested in 11 countries in Africa, 4 countries in Asia and responded enthusiastically by farmers. By the end of 2017, the number of voluntary volunteer farms in this model has reached 200.

Farmers make bee fences in Sri Lanka - (Photo: Lucy King).

"At first, when we persuaded the farmers to follow this method, they thought we were crazy. At that time we had to give the beehives to the farmers for free. As a result, they are now lining up to be used. products, " said Dr. Lucy King from Oxford University.

However, Dr. King also said that with large farms, bees "soldiers" are not strong enough to protect. "It is necessary to take advantage of other" fears "of elephants such as barking dogs or celestial bullets , " King said.

So if we design "fake" beehives to scare elephants? The answer is no, because elephants are very smart. Scientists have tried to tape the bees of the bees and give the elephants a try, but the elephants quickly realize there is no danger threatening them.

Forest elephants are very uncomfortable when facing bees - (Photo: Getty Images).

Steeve Ngama, a scientist from Liège University (Belgium), says her team has done a similar study and thinks it is a good idea to use bees to chase elephants.

However, she said that in many cases, elephants are smarter than bees and will find ways to overcome protection from bees, especially in front of valuable food sources.