Weird1 min(s) read
Published 10:29 26 Aug 2020 GMT
There have been many innovative and revolutionary developments in the farming industry over the last 200 years, but 2020 proves that we may have peaked.
Conservationists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have been working with farmers in Botswana to come up with an ingenious way of protecting cattle from predators like lions... by painting big eyes on their butts.
Yes, scientists from the university developed the low-cost strategy, that relies on a bit of "psychological trickery".
The idea is that the intimidating eyes will fool the lions into thinking they've been spotted, causing them to give up on the hunt.
Check out more on this method below:
[[facebookwidget||https://www.facebook.com/tarongazoo/videos/3287045414674675]]
Now, it may look silly, but it is actually incredibly important for two reasons.
Firstly, if lions eat cattle and other livestock, then the livelihood of the rural farmers is immediately negatively impacted.
Secondly, in an effort to protect their livestock and income, many farmers are left with no choice but to shoot or poison lions and other predators if they spot them in their paddocks - which can have a devastating impact on these vulnerable species.
Dr Neil Jordan, a conservation biologist from UNSW’s Centre for Ecosystem Science explains:
"As protected conservation areas become smaller, lions are increasingly coming into contact with human populations, which are expanding to the boundaries of these protected areas."
Dr Jordan added that as a result of farmers using deadly force, the number of lions is "draining away".
[[facebookwidget||https://www.facebook.com/wildheartwildlifefoundation/photos/a.489824864456563/871563896282656?type=3]]
Per a UNSW press release, "the African lion is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with declining adult numbers currently in the range of 23,000 to 39,000. These are down from population estimates above 100,000 in the 1990s, according to the BPCT."
The idea came about when Dr Jordan was observing a lion hunt an impala. He said: "Lions are ambush hunters, so they creep up on their prey, get close and jump on them unseen. But in this case, the impala noticed the lion. And when the lion realized it had been spotted, it gave up on the hunt."
In an interview with Taronga.TV, Dr Jordan added that results over the last four years have been promising, saying:
"Ultimately we found that cows that were painted with eye patterns were significantly more likely to survive than any other treatment. In fact, we had no eye-painted cows killed over the entire four-year study."
In a world where the farmers have got earn money and the lions have got to eat, let's hope a nice middle ground can be found - and all thanks to a bit of paint.
