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Elephants Text Message Rangers To Warn Villages Of Their Impending Doom

October 14, 2008 / africa, animals, cell phones, conservation, good ideas, huge, life, life isn't fair, messages, relationships, sure why not, text messaging, texting

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Several elephants (including a male named Kimani) in Kenya's Ol Pejeta conservancy have special collars that send text messages to park rangers should they start to venture too close to a village.

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers' crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Not a bad idea. The texting comes as a result of having to kill several other elephants as a result of their crop-destroying behaviors. Kimani is the last of a group of six regular raiders, and has already been deterred 15 times by his texting. Now if I could just rig up something similar for my girlfriends when they venture too close to the house unexpected....

UPDATE: F*** it, I'm going with shock collars.

Kenya's elephants send text messages to rangers [yahoonews]

Thanks to Romeo and Jason, who have both put on shock collars and taken turns running across an invisible fence.

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