Pliny The Elderonce wrote of elephants : " Of all other living creatures , they can not brook a shiner or a strikebreaker . " Elephants being afraid of tiny gnawer has become a democratic theme in folklore and cinema – just look atDisney’sDumbo – but is it true ?
Given that African elephants are the largest terrestrial brute on the planet , it ’s hard to imagine they could be brought to their knee by a shiner , but then you might have conceive the same would employ to man ( andjust expect at us ) . So , was sometime Pliny onto something ? Are elephants afraid of mice ?
According to theGlobal Sanctuary For Elephants , there was once a grim theory that a mouse could cower up an elephant ’s luggage compartment . A horrible concept even for someone with a little human olfactory organ , but as luck would have it it ’s in all probability not true as elephant could simply drift them out in the same manner we light up our nostrils . what is more , elephant have afleshy epiglottisthat would obstruct a mouse from reaching any delicate internal structures .
The tiny pygmy mouse Mus minutoides shares habitat with African elephants, but it likely wouldn’t last long inside their trunks.Image credit: grantforbes viaiNaturalist,CC BY-NC 4.0
Elephants ' eyes are located on thesidesof their head . This means they can see very well to their side , but the ground directly in front and behind are blind spots .
It ’s entirely potential , then , that a small critter could sneak up on an elephant which may only realise something ’s there when they ’re scrabbling around on their foot . And whoever order being openhanded stand for you had to be intrepid ?
" In the natural state , anything that suddenly runs or slithers by an elephant can spook it , " Josh Plotnik , a researcher of elephant behaviour and intelligence at the University of Cambridge in England and the head of elephant research for the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation in Chiang Rai , Thailand , toldLive Science . " It does n’t have to be a shiner — bounder , khat , Snake or any fauna that makes sudden bowel movement by an elephant ’s base can startle it . "
Baby elephant VS bird isn’t always the slam dunk you’d imagine.Image credit: Kayleigh Huysamen Moon / Shutterstock.com
So , it seems the fright component does n’t come down to the mouse itself , but or else the seismic disturbance factor of of a sudden retrieve something unexpected very close to their feet . It ’s a comic visual in the context of mice , but consider some of the other neighbour elephants have to contend with and it starts to make sense .
Asiatic elephants partake their home ground withking cobras , the world ’s longest poisonous snakes that are capable of delivering enough venom to theoretically stamp out an elephant agree toNational Geographic . Their tegument and stamping electric potential largely proceed them safe from such bites , but the proboscis and young elephants are particularly vulnerable , so even these giants will give Hydra a wide berth - if they know where they are .
When imperil or surprised , be that from a ophidian or a mouse , elephants can spread their ears – which , in the caseful of the African elephant , are the largest of any animal on Earth . It experience us wondering , why are elephant auricle so swelled ?
