Kicker - Where elephants don’t boogie

BRIAN BASHAM, HOST: If you’ve ever tried to grow tomatoes, you know how hard it is to keep the squirrels from stealing them. 

Pity the farmers of Botswana. 

Some farm in a floodplain where 8,000 pound elephants come for water. Along the way, they trample the crops. 

The solution is to reroute the elephants. But how? 

Well, a scientist from Australia figured it out.  

Tempe Adams thought that maybe elephants aren’t big fans of disco lights. The farmers offered to try out the idea. So Adams rigged a system of multicolored strobe lights to flicker on and off at night.  

According to her research, published in a journal earlier this month, 75 percent of the time … the disco lights stopped the elephants from trampling the crops.

MR: Hey, I grew up in the 70s. I like disco.

BAHSAM: It’s The World and Everything in It.

Elephants drink water in the Chobe National Park in Botswana. (AP Photo/Charmaine Noronha/File)

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