Shock collars could be an effective way to keep elephants from raiding crops in Sri Lanka, and researchers think this approach could be more humane than other strategies for tackling the problem.
Sri Lanka has perhaps the highest density of elephants in the world. Conflict between humans and elephants is a longstanding issue in the country, leading to the deaths of
To keep the animals away, some farmers use electric fences, but elephants can easily break them by pushing them over, says at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia.
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She decided to see if shock collars — like those used by some pet owners to keep dogs under control – might work better. Some farmers use modified versions of these collars fitted with GPS devices to set up “virtual fences” for cattle.
Cabral de Mel and her team modified dog shock collars so they were big enough to fit an elephant and took them to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in Rambukkana, Sri Lanka. They first tested various shock strengths of the devices on a few elephants to see where on their necks it would be most effective.
Then they trained five elephants to walk a 100-metre path to find food at the end. After the training, they placed collars on the elephants, with a small mobile phone attached. When the elephants got within 70 metres of the food, the phone would ring as a warning. At 50 metres, it would ring again. At 40 metres from the food, the researchers would remotely trigger the shock.
The five elephants were tested on three consecutive days, and three of the elephants were tested again one to four months later. In many cases, elephants that had been shocked once wouldn’t start moving down the track on subsequent days, so further trials couldn’t be conducted.
Out of 36 trials in total, the elephants stopped or turned around 17 times before getting to the shock phase. Out of the 19 times elephants did make it to the shock phase, they continued to the food only eight times. Overall, the elephants didn’t reach the food 78 per cent of the time.
“Most elephants learned from the first instance,” says Cabral de Mel. “That could be a positive thing for managing human-elephant conflict.”
The idea of putting shock collars on elephants could be seen as cruel, says Evan Bittner at the University of Melbourne in Australia, who has studied the use of thrown near elephants in Sri Lanka to scare them away. “However, in comparison to the [human-elephant conflict] impacts, and current alternative methods like pressure mines and shootings, this is a far better alternative.”
Cabral de Mel’s team is currently working on follow-up research to gauge public perception of the new technique in Sri Lanka. Preliminary studies show that in elephants receiving the shock, an initial spike in their stress level drops back down to normal soon after the shock.
She also points out that the shock isn’t nearly as strong as one they would receive from an electric fence, and elephants are much larger than the dogs these collars are designed for.
Bittner also wonders about the practicality and cost of sedating wild elephants to fit them with collars, but he believes the idea warrants further investigation.
Applied Animal Behavior Science
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