Growling Speakers Could Keep Pesky Pachyderms at Bay

Elephants may seem like gentle giants, but sometimes they can become thieves in the night. Farmers have long struggled with hungry endangered Asian elephants that raid their livelihoods in the dead of night. Now however, researchers have thought up a novel way to keep these crop-plundering pachyderms at bay that won't harm them in the process.

Much like wild wolves, leopards, and even chimpanzees, shrinking habitats for Asian elephants has forced them to live closer to humans. Living in areas that cannot even support their dwindling numbers, these animals then turn to raiding farms to survive.

Traditional means of keeping elephants out of farms involve deep tranches and even electric fences - obstacles that could understandably stress or hurt a species of elephant that has been declining for centuries, with total global populations estimated between 40,000 and 50,000 - the great majority of which can be found in India.

And that certainly seems unfair, especially because the hungry animals - who can consume a stunning 285 pounds (~130 kg) of food a day - are losing valuable habitat space to agricultural development.

That's why researchers from the University of Nottingham and the University of California, Davis, have been investigating more harmless and humane approaches to keep elephants out of fields. The results were published in Oryx - The International Journal of Conservation.

Researchers tested three new approaches in all, where elephants trying to sneak into a field would trigger speakers to play the sounds of growling tigers, leopards, or the angry shouts of human villagers. (Scroll to read on...)

Of 41 attempted raids, tiger sounds stopped 90 percent of them. The other sounds proved less effective, with leopard and human cries stopping only 73 and 57 percent of elephant raids, respectively.

Researcher Vivek Thuppil, a Nottingham researcher working out of Malaysia added that despite its effecitveness, this approach still has some issues to work out.

"Although the elephants shied away from the specific area they would eventually find another way into the field," he explained in a statement. "So [stationary] recordings like this would work in locations where there is a narrow path of entry to farmland."

The researcher and his colleagues now plan to investigate whether a network of speakers would prove more effective, as it could follow an elephant via motion sensors to simulate a predator tracking its prey.

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