By 
Eeek! A mouse!
In a recent podcast, Matt Castellvi fervently insisted that elephants are not scared of mice, despite conflicting opinions from Brian and the Myth Busters. Sadly for Matt Castellvi, all the insisting in the world doesn’t change the fact that he’s wrong!
After the podcast went live we got a ton of emails about how wrong Matt is, and I’d like to share a few of them.
During the podcast, Castellvi did some research trying to disprove the Myth Busters episode which tested and confirmed the myth that elephants are scared of mice. He found an article that described a different test done with circus elephants. Tod Bimple of Pardeeville Wisconsin wrote in to disagree.
I would like to point out that the source Castelvi used is no good. The reason being the elephants the trainer used were circus elephants. There animals are trained to ignore most anything aside from it’s trainer and food. In the wild elephants do have an adverse reaction to mice. Brian is correct. I also viewed the Mythbusters episode he referred to and couldn’t find anything wrong with their experiments.
Tod also included a link to the YouTube of the Myth Busters’ perfectly valid experiment.
But the final blow to Castellvi’s argument came from Emily Bowling. Emily works at a real live zoo and once dated an elephant trainer.
Are you ready for this? Elephants use infrasound, which means they frequently communicate using sound frequencies lower than what humans can hear. A theory scientists have is that they also use their feet to pick up these vibrations as well. Infrasound is also created by earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. The elephants in asia ran for cover long before the 2006 tsunami hit land because they heard it coming. Elephants are also ungulates, which means they are walking on the tips of their toes. Because their feet are so sensitive and their sense of sight is weak (not to mention that their eyes are often ten feet off the ground) they often feel things moving around them and don’t know what they are. We found that what the zoo and Grant’s Farm Elephants are afraid of differs between Elephants, much like people. Mickey the Elephant did not like anything shorter than 6 feet running around her feet. She doesn’t like women or children because they move fast and she can feel them moving all around her but cannot see what they are immediately. However, Bud couldn’t care less what was running around his feet, as long as he eventually got a donut.
So to make a long story longer, Elephants can be startled by what they can’t see. But you could say the same about people. A mouse scurrying about around their feet could make them uneasy, but it depends on the Elephant. I would compare it to spiders with people. They can startle you if you suddenly see them out of nowhere, and unless you have an unreasonable fear of them, once you know what it is you are no longer uneasy about them.
Does that help?
Suck it Castellvi. Elephants are scared of mice.
Thank you to everyone who wrote in, we’re always stoked to hear from you. Send us stuff at info@octavarius.com.
