TIL that conflict between farmers and elephants in India brings an increased mortality rate for the farmers; their alcohol intake increases, which in turn increases the lethality of animal encounters

submitted 4 days ago by

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93wildlife_conflict#Hidden_dimensions_of_the_conflict

BougieBirdie@piefed.blahaj.zone

One day at work we’re sitting around swapping stories about trouble with raccoons and stray cats, you know like getting into our trash or taking up residence in the garage. One of the guys is on a visa from India and he says he’s really home sick and worried about his family because it’s elephant season in his village.

So we’re like, elephant season? He explains that the melons have just been harvested and the elephants love them. They’ll literally smash through houses and buildings to get to them. The village will band together to fight off the elephants, sometimes getting seriously injured or killed, but they also don’t want to kill the elephants either because they’re endangered, or sacred, or there are legal repercussions. Plus they’re just doing what elephants do and trying to get a bite to eat and you can’t really hate that.

Anyway it really put into perspective my trouble with the trash pandas getting into my compost.

GreatWhiteBuffalo41@slrpnk.net

4 days ago

Maybe they just need to plant decoy melons somewhere else. But I’m sure someone has thought of that and there’s legit reasons why that’s not feasible.