A Nose For Rice
Could perfume fool dangerous elephants?
The toll is horrendous. Each year, some 100 people – and 50 elephants – are killed in farmer-pachyderm clashes around some of Sri Lanka’s lush rice paddies. Now, two researchers are wondering if a rice “deodorant” could reduce the carnage.
The tiny island nation of Sri Lanka is home to 20 million people and about 4,400 Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), or about 10% of the world’s population of Asian elephants. Less than one-third of the elephants live in protected preserves; the rest wander freely through forests and farms, frequently raiding crops. And twice a year, just before Sri Lanka’s semi-annual rice harvests, the raids increase dramatically – and so do the potentially deadly conflicts with farmers.
In other nations, farmers and researchers have found some innovative ways to prevent pachyderms from chowing down. Kenyan farmers, for instance, use honeybees, and in western Thailand, villagers hang glittering compact discs. So far, however, such techniques have had limited success in Sri Lanka.
But perhaps a bit of perfume might do the trick, speculate Charles Santiapilla of the University of Perdeniya in Sri Lanka, and Bruce Read of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation. “Elephants have an excellent sense of smell,” they note in the journal Oryx, and it’s possible they know when the rice is ripe by a smelly chemical the plants produce. Maybe farmers could fool the animals by spraying “an alternative substance… that either nullifies or masks the emitted substance.”
There’s a lot of work to do before a rice deodorant or perfume becomes a reality, however. First, researchers need to identify elephant-attracting chemicals, and then test masking agents. And even if the concept works out, the researchers note it “will not be a universal panacea,” and would probably need to be used in combination with other kinds of deterrence. Still, they say, “the elephant’s sophisticated chemosensory system… may hold the key to resolving human–elephant conflict.” – David Malakoff |October 22, 2010
Source: Santiapillai, C., & Read, B. (2010). Would masking the smell of ripening paddy-fields help mitigate human–elephant conflict in Sri Lanka? Oryx, 44 (04), 509-511 DOI: 10.1017/S0030605310000906
Image © Ilya Postnikov | Dreamstime.com
