If I just settled down to watch a movie in my living room, and a squirrel jumped out from under the curtains and ran across the floor, I would be amazed! If the same squirrel had crossed the road right in front of me when I was walking the dog, I probably wouldn’t have blinked. The same squirrel, but a different scenario. Is that why people think that elephants are afraid of mice? Are mice common in their habitat? Are the elephants scared or just scared? Are elephants and squirrels afraid?
Let’s see where this idea came from and if there are elephants Indeed I’m afraid of mice!
Why are elephants afraid of mice?
It is not known where the story of how the big elephant feared the tiny mouse came from, but many sources say it began with the ancient Greeks telling tales of mice climbing into the trunks of elephants and driving them crazy. Others speculate that, in their opinion, elephants are afraid that a mouse will crawl into their trunk, plug it up and prevent them from breathing. These stories are passed down from generation to generation and are popularized in books, films and cartoons. But is there any truth in this?
MythBusters Decides if elephants are afraid of mice?
On Discovery Channel Show MythBusters, show hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman hid a little white mouse under a pile of dung and then waited for the elephants to arrive. When the elephants were nearby, they pulled on the wire to release the mouse and watched to see if the elephants noticed. Results, achievements? The elephants did not stand on their hind legs, but trumped with their trunks and hid in the corner. But they noticed the mouse, as if they shuddered and took a step away from it. The owners were shocked by the results, but does this prove that elephants are afraid of mice? Let’s see what others have found.
20/20 Finds elephants NOT Afraid of mice
Another show ran its own experiment to find out if elephants are really afraid of mice. On 20/20 the presenter contacted the circuses of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. Elephant trainer Troy Metzler allowed the host to show one of the elephants a small white mouse. He then took a white mouse and showed it to several other elephants. Results, achievements? The elephants didn’t seem to notice the mouse at all.
So elephants INDEED Afraid of mice?
Both of these examples cannot be called research. The sample size of each experiment was no more than 2-4 mice, which is not a representative sample size of elephants. Second, there were multiple controls in each experiment. There was no group of elephants familiar with mice and a group less familiar with mice. And as one little girl pointed out, MythBusters used a white mouse, which would be rare in an elephant habitat, so what if the experiment was done with different colored mice? In experiment 20/20, the mouse was held and shown to the elephants; he was not scampering on the ground. So what does a true elephant researcher think?
Elephant researcher Josh Carpenter describes what elephants fear in the wild
According to Cambridge University researcher Josh Carpenter, “in the wild, anything that suddenly runs or glides past an elephant can scare it.” He further explains that it is not so much a mouse as any animal that makes a sudden movement. Elephants have a keen sense of smell, but poor eyesight, so it is likely that elephants are programmed to be frightened until they know if the animal that moves is a threat.
Final judgment on elephants who are afraid of mice
So elephants Indeed are you afraid of mice?
May be. Elephants seem to be “scared” by mice, but obviously more research needs to be done before we pass our cartoon tales to the next generation.