I’ve always thought my Aunt Jill had one of the coolest jobs in the world. She is an elephant keeper at the Indianapolis Zoo. One of the perks of having an Aunt who is an elephant keeper is that we grew up getting some behind the scenes “Meet and Greets” with elephants that few people will ever experience. Because of my close encounters with elephants, they have always been one of my favorite animals.
Elephant Facts
Elephants are the largest land mammal, can weigh up to 7 tons, and have a 50-60 year life span. They have a matriarchal society and the females nurture the young elephants and teach them how to find food and water to survive. According to the Ted Talk by Lucy King, entitled “How Bees Can Keep the Peace Between Elephants and Humans”, the elephant population has seen a significant decline in Africa over the past five decades, from a population of 1.2 million elephants in the 1970s to close to 400,000 today. In the same period of time the human population has quadrupled. There is clearly a need to find a balance between humans and elephants in their natural habitat.
Recently, I have become very concerned about how quickly the elephant population in Africa has been declining due to humans encroaching on their habitat. In her Ted Talk, Lucy King, who is a zoologist and heads the Human-Elephant Coexistence program for Save the Elephants, discusses the problems between humans and elephants and one solution that is showing great promise at keeping the peace between the two.
The Problem
While elephant conservationists were once primarily focused on stopping the ivory trade and observing elephants to understand them as a means to help them, times are changing. The increasing human population means that humans and elephants are competing for space more often. New villages develop in the path of elephant migration areas. Crops can get trampled and destroyed, homes can be destroyed by elephants searching for food and water, and people who once had a great deal of patience for elephants are losing the desire to see elephants protected. Humans are using whatever means necessary to protect their families and property from elephants who are simply trying to live their lives in what used to be their territory. For all their large size, elephants are losing the battle for land. King explains, “And sadly, we’re losing these animals by the day and, in some countries, by the hour — to not only ivory poaching but this rapid rise in human-elephant conflict as they compete for space and resources.”
The Challenge
How do you stop a seven ton elephant, or specifically ten to twelve, seven ton elephants from destroying poor, rural farms? One solution has been to build electric fences around the communities as a means to divide the areas between humans and elephants. However, as King explains, “these elephants don’t think much of it either, particularly if they’re blocking a really special water hole where they need water, or if there’s a very attractive female on the other side. It doesn’t take long to knock down one of these poles. And as soon as there’s a gap in the fence, they go back, talk to their mates and suddenly they’re all through, and now you have 12 elephants on the community side of the fence.”
A New Solution
Lucy King was determined to find a more organic means to solve the clash between humans and elephants and spent a good deal of time talking to rural pastoralists in Kenya to find a better solution. She eventually “discovered this story that they had that elephants would not feed on trees that had wild beehives in them. As the elephants were foraging on the tree, they would break branches and perhaps break open a wild beehive. And those bees would fly out of their natural nests and sting the elephants.” The African bees would sting the elephants around their eyes and inside the trunk. Their stings also release a pheromone that tells other bees to come sting the same spot. King wanted to test the theory about bees and elephants and set up a test. She played the sounds of African bees through wireless speakers near a herd of elephants to see their reaction. “You can see the ears going up, going out, they’re turning their heads from side to side, one elephant is flicking her trunk to try and smell.” “And one elephant triggers a retreat, and soon the whole family of elephants are running after her across the Savannah in a cloud of dust.” Nearly every time King repeated the experiment, the elephant reacted and fled.
King’s research led her to create beehive fences. She explains, “So there’s a hive and a dummy hive and a beehive and now dummy hive, every 10 meters around the outside boundary. They’re held up by posts with a shade roof to protect the bees, and they’re interconnected with a simple piece of plain wire, which goes all the way around, connecting the hives.” If an elephant tries to enter the area, the beehives swing as the wire hits the elephant. The elephant hears or sees the bees and runs away. They have found an 80% reduction in elephant raids. An added benefit is that the bees help pollinate the crops and the farmers have valuable honey providing additional income. Although the bee fences are not a guarantee of peaceful coexistence between humans and elephants, it is a great start.
What do Baby Yoda, High School Musical, and Marvel all have in common? They are all currently available on Disney’s new streaming service, Disney +. Disney + is basically Disney’s version of Netflix and provides users the ability to watch old Disney classic movies, old Disney television series, Star Wars movies, Marvel movies, and also includes new, original series, such as 
The Mandalorian
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If you find yourself wondering, “Hey, where’s Perry?”, the answer is on Disney +. I don’t know about you, but I miss the good old days when Phineas and Ferb was on the Disney Channel. This show was my childhood and none of the newer cartoon series on Disney can hold a candle to this classic. Disney + now offers all 222 episodes of Phineas and Ferb whenever you want to watch them. Now, it’s time to see if I have time to watch all 222 during winter break!
While I admit I am not the biggest Marvel Comics fan, my youngest sister and parents liked the Avenger movies and some of the other Marvel Movies. My Mom commented after seeing