Do you believe: Elephants can sniff at miles away?

This can happen in some dense forest - and also in desert, ocean or far-field grassland. It helps animals to recognize their enemies. While many animals differentiate between their predecessors and their enemies, there are a few species that can distinguish between predators based on their characteristic threat. Even animals have a much more beneficial ability when they can identify which single carnivores are the most worrisome enemies.

It turns out that African elephants are the species with this ability. Two researchers Lucy A. Bates and Richard W. Byrne of the University of St. Andrews of Scotland and his colleagues have demonstrated that by using the sense of smell and visual cues these elephants can group carnivores. They are really ' smart ' people when they do this. Because in reality, there are only animals that think like humans have this ability.

(Photo: Chris Gash) In a statement on the famous Current Biology website, the team described their observations at the Amboseli National Zoo in Kenya. The elephants here met with local groups of people showing different behaviors to them. The Maasai ethnic men who used the spear threatened to stab them, and the farmers in the village did not threaten them at all.

The team has also observed how these elephants differentiate the smell from the clothes worn by the Maasai, the Kamba people and the clothes no one wears . The smell from the Maasai clothes brings the strongest reaction. These elephants are fast and far away from where they stand to the point where the smell appears usually stops only when they encounter tall trees in front of them. It also took a long time for them to regain their composure after discovering the smell of Kamba clothes and clothes that were not worn.

Because traditional Maasai people wear bright red costumes. So the team tried to find out if color had a different effect on this elephant's perception than lighter-colored costumes of other Kenyan groups. They discovered that red clothes that no one else wore would cause reactions to elephants, although this reaction was different from the reaction caused by aroma. Far from being scared and hiding, these elephants, when they saw the red cloth, became unusually angry and aggressive, rushing straight towards the cloth.

The elephant said it reacted because it was images that they perceived by sight, not through smell. If the Maasai's' smell 'does not create a sense of fear, then perhaps the elephants' resistance will be more restrained.

Truong Giang - Viet Hang