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This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Annie Sneed.

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学。我是安妮·斯尼德。

Humans and elephants don't always g?et along. In Africa and Asia, elephants damage infrastructure¹, farmers' crops, and natural habitat critical for other species. If an elephant becomes a problem, humans may kill it. So local people and conservationists are trying to find better ways to keep elephants away from sensitive places. Now, researchers think they have a good tool to deter² elephants: honeybee pheromones.

人类和大象并不总能和睦相处。在非洲和亚洲，大象破坏基础设施、农民的庄稼和对其他物种至关重要的自然栖息地。如果大象成为问题，那人类可能会杀掉它们。因此，当地居民和自然资源保护论者正试图找到更好的方法，让大象远离敏感地区。现在，研究人员认为他们拥有了阻止大象的好工具：蜜蜂信息素。

"Elephants deplore³ being stung in the trunk, so it's an extremely sensitive organ. Imagine being stung in your nose by a bee, and multiply that a few thousand times." Mark Wright, a professor of entomology at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

“大象极其讨厌象鼻被蛰，所以象鼻是非常敏感的器官。想象一下你的鼻子被蜜蜂蛰了，然后再将其乘以几千次。”夏威夷大学昆虫学教授马克·莱特说到。

Kenyan farmers have long known that if they hang live beehives around their farms, they will repel⁴ elephants. "The problem is logistically, how do you manage hundreds of thousands of hives, if you have a huge area to protect? And then the idea came up to look at the alarm pheromones, which are chemicals that the bees release to launch an attack on something that's marauding the hive." Because elephants have a highly developed sense of smell, Wright and his team thought they might be able to use the bees' chemical alarm signal to affect elephant behavior.

肯尼亚农民早就知道，如果他们把还有蜜蜂生活的蜂巢放在农场周围，他们就能击退大象。“问题在保障方面，如果你有一片巨大的区域需要保护，那你要如何管理成千上万个蜂巢？之后我们想到一个方法，即观察警报信息素，这是蜜蜂释放的化学物质，用来向掠夺蜂巢的东西发动攻击。”因为大象拥有高度发达的嗅觉，莱特和团队认为他们也许可以利用蜜蜂的化学警报信号来影响大象的行为。

So the researchers tested out a synthetic⁵ blend of chemicals that mimics⁶ honeybees' alarm pheromones. In Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa, the team hung white socks treated with the synthetic mixture as well as untreated control socks around an elephant watering hole, and then observed the animals' behavior. "Elephants are really curious organisms, they'll walk along and see something like a sock hanging on a branch in the environment, and they'll inspect it, and if it's not treated with the alarm pheromones, they'll pick it up, throw it around, try to taste it, things like that. And in the case of the treated ones, we found that they would show immediate⁷ signs of unease or uncertainty⁸, and they'd eventually back off from them. Very seldom would they go pick them up and play with them."

因此，研究人员对模仿蜜蜂警报信息素的合成混合物进行了测试。在南非大克鲁格国家公园，研究小组将经过合成混合物处理的袜子和未经处理的对照袜子，挂在一个大象水坑周围，然后观察大象的举动。“大象真的是充满好奇心的生物，它们沿着水坑向前走，看到一只袜子挂在树枝上，它们会上前查看，如果那是未经警报信息素处理的袜子，那大象会做出‘捡起'、‘扔来扔去'、‘试着品尝'等行为。而如果是经过处理的袜子，那大象会立即表现出不安或不确定的迹象，最终它们会远离这些袜子。它们很少会捡起袜子去玩。”

The study is in the journal Current Biology.

这项研究结果发表在《当代生物学》期刊上。

Next up, the researchers plan to refine the synthetic pheromone mixture, in order to get an even stronger avoidance response from elephants. That way, these remarkable⁹ animals will stay far away from wherever they should not be going—and both elephants and humans can coexist a bit more peacefully.

接下来，研究人员计划提炼合成信息素混合物，以便从大象那里获得更强的躲避反应。这样一来，这些非凡的动物就会远离它们不应该去的地方，而大象和人类也能以更和平的方式共处。

Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Annie Sneed.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是安妮·斯尼德。