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Elephants are scared around bees
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoDo elephants ever get anaphylactic shock from bee stings, or have allergy to bee stings (ie a much more severe reaction). Perhaps it's a cargo-cult type learning?
- ru552 3y agoElephants have very sensitive ears. The buzzing of a hive is what drives them away.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago>The buzzing of a hive is what drives them away. When a hive becomes queenless, it begins humming differently (demonic chords). This sound change is a good indicator (to an observant beekeeper) that it is in chaos and should be left alone. Drives mammals away — the sound is EERIE (think of a cheezy 1920's vampire movie's soundtrack).
- FinnKuhn 3y agoFor anyone else interested in how each one sounds: https://youtu.be/QDIapC2_Ptg?si=BldfTZuMf3DVnmIn https://youtu.be/QDIapC2_Ptg?si=BldfTZuMf3DVnmIn
- plus 3y agoI know I'm anthropomorphizing the bees, but the queenless hive almost sounds like it's in mourning.
- cryptonector 3y agoThey're fanning their wings to try to spread the [missing] queen's pheromones -- they're searching for their queen. This also serves the purpose of informing the other bees that they don't have a queen. This in turn will cause nurses to look for eggs they can raise queens from by feeding them royal jelly.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago"Mourning chords" sounds better, anyways =P
- cryptonector 3y agoIt's not that different. If you're doing a split then you can either find the queen and put it in the new hive, or you can just split the hive without looking for the queen then listen to hear which hive is queen-less -- you can hear the difference in that case. But it's not that huge a difference that if you open a hive you can instantly say "oh oh, this one is queen-less".
- whywhywouldyou 3y agoThis kind of over dramatizing is tiresome. "Demonic chords" (what's a demonic chord, anyway? Are bees buzzing in a tritone? Are bee hives playing chords?), talking about it sounding like a 1920's vampire movie, etc. Sure makes it sound like nothing in the world could be more creepy. Then you go and watch a video demonstrating this effect, and it's more like the humming/buzzing sound from the hive is... slower. That's it. It's just slower, lower frequency.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago>That's it. It's just slower, lower frequency. Yes, a good perception (yours). As a beekeeper, I "feel" these things differently.
- mvidal01 3y agoqueenright adjective of a colony of bees : having a queen in the hive. Not to be confused with Queensrÿche which is a heavy metal band.
- em500 3y agoDoes that mean that you don't actually need to keep bees to drive them away, just replay their sound?
- bloak 3y agoThe elephants might learn after a while which sources of sound are genuine. Then you'd have a load of useless loadspeakers and no honey.
- cushpush 3y agoThis makes me laugh out loud because a buddy of mine, while I was visiting family in Europe, mentioned there's a song, "how big is the heart in that bumble bee, that he can steer an ox clear out of the shade."
- meitham 3y agoMore than once I had flies flying full speed into my nose and get trapped there! If I was an elephant with a nose bigger than a Henry hover sucking stinging flies I would be scared too!
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoYeah - that was my first thought .. A bee sting inside your trunk would be no joke !
- dheera 3y agoThe actual stinger of bees doesn't hurt that much, it's the venom that really hurts. I always wondered whether a bee stinger would get deep enough in an elephant's (presumably very thick) dead skin layer to inject venom.
- hot_gril 3y ago"Of course, a bee’s stinger can’t penetrate the thick hide of an elephant. But when bees swarm—and African bees swarm aggressively—hundreds of bees might sting an elephant in its most sensitive areas, like the trunk, the mouth, and eyes. And it hurts."
- lbourdages 3y agoI've been stung by a bee inside my mouth (inner lip) as a kid. I would not recommend.
- reason-mr 3y agoCame here to say this. If you had a super long, very sensitive, trunk with a huge bee attracting hole at one end that bees could fly into and then sting inside, you'd be scared of them too .....
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ourmandave 3y agoBut when bees swarm—and African bees swarm aggressively—hundreds of bees might sting an elephant in its most sensitive areas, like the trunk, the mouth, and eyes. It would be nice if they could form a mutual relationship with honey badgers that don't care how many times they're stung. Except therein lies the problem, honey badgers don't care about anything.
- felipemnoa 3y agoExcept honey?
- bitwize 3y agoAnd larvae. A honey badger will go right into a house of bees to get some larvae. How disgusting is that?! It eats larvae!
- shultays 3y agoIt beats flower sperm
- codr7 3y agoThank you
- nicolas_t 3y agomy grandfather who happily let his cheese age on the countertop until larvae appeared because it improved the taste would not be shocked at all by that.
- aziaziazi 3y agoIs it a personal habit or a local speciality? If the later, any name/recipe will be appreciated.
- 3y ago
- prettyeyes83 3y agoThere is a great TED talk, How bees can keep the peace between elephants and humans https://www.ted.com/talks/lucy_king_how_bees_can_keep_the_peace_between_elephants_and_humans https://www.ted.com/talks/lucy_king_how_bees_can_keep_the_pe...
- swader999 3y agoI bet any kid across the world would be able to guess the result of Dominique's theories about bees and elephants . "Mom, that lady at the party today, doesn't she already know the answer? Does she really get paid for that?"
- jollyllama 3y agoDogs too, apparently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37948121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37948121
- pharaohgeek 3y agoMy son befriended one of the leading African elephant researchers who is now one of the big wigs at Disney's Animal Kingdom. When we met him, he explained how researchers used this knowledge to teach African villages how to become beekeepers. Elephants would often trample their crops or other areas of the village, so they taught them how to keep bees around the perimeter of the village. The elephants stay away and the villagers are able to use the honey, etc. as a trade. The net result was fewer elephants were being killed and the villagers gained a new skill.
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoAdditional net effect: crops were better - fertilized. Random bee fact: each workerbee trip returns ~40mg nectar to the hive. <3 Not Your Beekeeper
- cushpush 3y ago40mg nectar might have to be a new band name
- randomdata 3y ago> crops were better - fertilized. You had my hopes up that I could keep some bees to apply fertilizer to my crops for minute.
- liotier 3y agoRest assured that workers bees do shit upon your crops.
- randomdata 3y agoOccasionally while passing through, perhaps, but being wind pollinated crops you are not exactly going to find swarms of bees in said crops.
- voisin 3y ago> Random bee fact: each workerbee trip returns ~40mg nectar to the hive. And it takes them approximately 1 hour and 1,000 flower visits in order to collect enough nectar or pollen to fill up for the return trip. It is so taxing that the muscles in their wings wear out after around 2 weeks.
- RobotToaster 3y agoSo are humans, I guess it makes sense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Obscurity4340 3y agoThey're just like us
- alehlopeh 3y agoThere’s a brief mention of a study that found that “merely playing recordings of angry bees through speakers in the field was enough to cause the elephants to flee” but it seems like that would be a far cheaper solution than putting actual beehives all over the border.
- amelius 3y agoWhen being attacked by an elephant, would it help to make bee noises? And is there a similar trick for dogs?
- lgas 3y agoYes, but it's hard to teach a dog to make bee noises.
- bitwize 3y agoElephants, and other savannah wildlife, apparently fear humans more than any other predator, so... make human noises?
- plonk 3y agoThe elephant's reaction to fear of humans might not be what you expected though? Do they flee humans more often than they charge?
- bitwize 3y agoWell, the test involved playing recordings of human voices, lions, hunting sounds, or control sounds at animals gathered at a watering hole and measured their responses. What they found was that the animals ran from the human sounds much more than the lion sounds; and elephants and rhinos ran particularly fast: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01169-7 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)... That said, elephants are smart, and have been known to seek out human camps for medical attention when injured: https://www.itv.com/news/2016-06-03/wounded-elephant-shot-by-poachers-seeks-out-humans-for-help https://www.itv.com/news/2016-06-03/wounded-elephant-shot-by...
- eterevsky 3y agoMy cats have been bitten by various insects more than once and are still not at all "scaredy" around them.
- pstuart 3y agoCats got attitude.
- polartx 3y agocattitude
- dghlsakjg 3y agoWe have three hives in our yard. My dog still gets a kick out of snapping at bees no matter how many times he's stung. He probably gets stung 5-10 times per year while I have only been stung once in 3 years of having the hives in the yard.
- rootusrootus 3y agoMy dog is the same way. I thought maybe she was uniquely dumb, but I guess not. She snaps at bees, and once in a while she actually catches one. And judging from her immediate reaction, it isn't too pleasant. But a few minutes later she's snapping at the next one.
- t-3 3y agoMy cat has had close calls with various mammals but is never afraid of them. Buzzed by a bumblebee or fly? He won't go outside the rest of the day. Screeched at by flocking birds? Hiding under the table, inside. He likes to eat ants, though.
- kjs3 3y agoThey have a sour/lemony taste. Maybe he likes that. Don't ask me how I know.
- 3y ago
- scionthefly 3y agoIf I had a nose large enough for a bunch of bees to fly up and sting, I would be very interested in avoiding bees too.
- stronglikedan 3y agoWell, the average human nose is at least big enough for two bees to fly up and sting.
- mywittyname 3y agoThe average human is pretty scared of bees.
- cryptonector 3y agoIf you're not wearing appropriate protection then bees can kill you easy. De minimis you need a) a smoker, b) a veil for your face, head, and neck, c) a long sleeve shirt and long pants both made of fabric they can't easily sting through, and d) preferably tall boots with the pants legs cinched over them so they can't sting your ankles. You need gloves too if you don't know what you're doing. That's if you're beekeeping, but if you're not and you happen upon a beehive you may be in serious trouble. Bees fly faster than you can run. They fly farther than you can run when panicking from tens of stings. When they give chase they're committed to dying for the colony, so they will sting. So don't approach beehives if you're not prepped for it. Bees will warn you before they attack, unless they're already attacking someone else, in which case they'll just attack you without warning.
- burnished 3y agoI thought you were only at risk if you were allergic?
- cryptonector 3y agoIf you're allergic then one sting can kill you. If you're not allergic then 200 hundred stings can kill you. There can be a quarter million bees in a large colony. Hundreds, even thousands of stings is a pretty common thing to happen to -for example- tree trimmers who find themselves disturbing a colony in the same tree. Here's a few examples: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-swarm-of-bees-attack-death-b2084428.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-swar... https://www.kktv.com/2022/08/31/man-coma-after-stung-by-bees-20000-times-family-says/ https://www.kktv.com/2022/08/31/man-coma-after-stung-by-bees... https://abcnews.go.com/US/bees-sting-tree-cutting-parks-worker-hundred-times/story?id=56689705 https://abcnews.go.com/US/bees-sting-tree-cutting-parks-work...
- uuddlrlrbas 3y agosame
- karaterobot 3y agohttps://archive.ph/BVhkz https://archive.ph/BVhkz
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoJust a few days ago, a 27-year old elephant died at the St. Louis Zoo when a dog got loose outside his enclosure. The elephant was inside but heard the alarms of the other elephants which caused it to panic and have heart failure.
- lostlogin 3y ago> dry seasons, too, can dampen bee populations in hives as they flee and search for moister climes. This seems unlikely. The bees likely died. Bees don’t just leave their brood and fly off.
- bregma 3y agoBees don't just leave their queen and fly off. If there's a queen there's brood but if the queen dies the workers begin to disperse, and also start to lay (haploid) eggs that only hatch into drones which also disperse. On the other hand, colonies will migrate if their environmental conditions are not ideal. It's a phenomenon called "swarming" and it happens all the time even with domestic livestock.
- lostlogin 3y agoIs swarming migration? The original colony remains in place (though can fail and die due to starvation, disease etc). The new swarm could be described as migrating, I suppose, but the OG remains.
- spandextwins 3y agoThe more you know!
- mvidal01 3y agoAfrican bees are super mean and aggressive. I’d be afraid also.
- aitchnyu 3y agoDoes this apply to Indian elephants and bees? Hope our elephants evolved the same fear, since they are also threatening our crops and towns.
- animal531 3y agoThere are something like 2755 species of bees in Africa spread out over the continent. Each individual country probably hosts around 1/3rd of the total species. So overall don't be too worried about only one species.