Elephants fear bees, and will make noises, stir up dust, and flap their ears when they hear a buzzing beehive. An elephants skin cannot be penetrated by the stinger of a bee, but when they are stung in the eyes, mouth and trunk, it is painful. Using the elephants fear of bees, researchers have convinced farmers to use elephants for crop protection. By hanging fake and real beehives every twenty meters, African researchers have shown eighty percent of elephants will stay away from the crops.
A recent study revealed Asian elephants are afraid of bees as well. The researchers are trying to prevent endangered species from being shot when foraging in a farmers crops. Save the elephants is working in Africa to build beehive fences. These fences are being tested or used in four Asian countries, and eleven in Africa.
Another study involves mosquitos. The question is if a person continually swats at a mosquito, will the mosquito leave. According to scientists, some mosquitos will put their life in jeopardy for a blood meal, others will take another alternative. When a person consistently swats and misses, the mosquito may associate the vibrations with the persons scent. A mosquito can retain a memory for 24 hours, and will remember the smell of a person that swatted them. This may cause the mosquito to seek another target. For more details, please visit http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/science-news-in-brief-elephants-fear-bees-and-an-effective-way-of-avoiding-mosquito-bites-a8185031.html.
Plastic pollution has been confirmed on 159 reefs in Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia and Australia. The estimation is the Asia-Pacific region contains over eleven billion pieces of plastic. If this plastic was placed in a line, it would circle the Earth almost fourteen times. Corals littered with plastic had a possibility of disease twenty times greater than the unpolluted corals. Researchers surveyed 12,000 square-miles of reef, combined how much plastic pollutes the ocean in each country, factored in poor methods of dealing with this pollution, and estimated the amount of plastic in the Asia-Pacific region.
The figure the researchers reached was a staggering 11.1 billion pieces of plastic in this region. The projection is within the next seven years, this number will increase to 15.7 billion. This is because the projected increase for plastic pollution in the ocean is ten times greater than it is now. The study did prove if countries make a sincere effort to stop plastic from finding its way to the ocean, the impact on the reefs can be controlled.
