I stumbled across something that works even better than milk to deal with hot peppers. It sounds crazy, but blue Gatorade works amazingly well!

That was [B]weird

Do you know what the reasoning behind it is?

You could revisit "elephants are afraid of mice?" and use small animals in general such as guinea pigs, rats, or other small rodents.

elephants are color blind, aernt they?

he could pull the mouse out of his pocket when it got close like at the end of the show

I was watching this episode and they come to the conclusion that milk is the best thing to cool down your mouth after eating something hot. According to a few experts on the food network, bread is the best thing for cooling a hot mouth. The bread soaks up the Capsicum of the hot pepper. I would like this myth revisited.

I agree with the color discrepency and the general idea of avoidance of movement. As there are just soooo many blindingly white mice in the African habitat, of course the elephants have learned to avoid them....

Come on guys, do it again with a wild type mouse and perhaps a variety of other small animals just to be sure that your ghost mouse in the savannah isn't the cause of the scare!!!

I agree with brenscog. The fact of the matter is that the mouse had an effect on the elephant.

The particular reason could be anything, but all the same, both elephants gave the mouse its space both times the myth was tested.

Cbiz, I don't know if elephants are color-blind, but as far as I know, all animals with vision can see the color white.

The ele being "afraid" of the mouse surprized me.
maybe they should use one that blends into the ground better, thats a real test there... i mean you wouldnt see a little brown mouse as much as a white one on the ground. ;p

OK this is what I've heard... Elephants are afraid of mice because they are afraid tripping on the mouse and breaking there leg... In Africa they capture elephants by digging a shallow ditch around the elephant...

Because elephants live in a very Predator heavy environment falling down and breaking a leg means death...

This is at least what I heard... now you might ask wouldn't the elephant just smash the mouse... I would think so.. but maybe they don't like taking the chance that it would trip them...

You know, reading through this thread, I thought of another age old saying that the Mythbusters could irrefutably confirm right here:

"Everybody's a critic."



Hehe, now back to the topic, I'm curious as to exactly why it would be so illogical for a mouse to run up an elephant's trunk? That seems somewhat logical, and, there's really no way to predict if a mouse would or would not do that, nor predict the results should it occur. Of course, I'm no master of elephant/mouse attitudes, but, I believe there is the possibility that they are, indeed, afraid of mice.

It may have not been (or, we may simply have not seen) the most complete test, but it does prove the saying that elephants are afraid of mice- or, at least, supports it enough to say it's plausible. Now, whether they truly are afraid will remain a mystery, because, even if you put another small animal in and the elephant reacts similarly, who's to say that the elephant is not afraid of ALL small animals? There's just too many possibilities and too little actual involved data (I don't think the elephant's going to tell us it was scared ) to determine if it was scared or not, in my opinion.

Besides, I'd bargain to say that the Mythbusters are limited in what they can use in that environment. They were allowed to use a lab rat for testing, as, well, that's what lab rats are for. However, other types of animals, or even other species of rats may very well be less easy to acquire a "liscense to test," if there is such a thing.

I am in agreement with the many other posts that say the test needed many more variables. The test itself was a suprise to me because the basic scientific method was ignored. I mean, even in the chili myth, they had a plan, they had a control, and they had several variables. C'mon guys - what are you if not self-proclaimed science geeks?!?! This is basic stuff! But I am only giving you a hard time.
Regarding the whole business of the mouse crawling up the trunk, and the ridiculousness of it -- I do believe it is those kinds of ideas that make a myth, no?
In regards to the idea that the Elephant did not want to "harm" another creature. It is true that Elephants are very intelligent, very kind creatures. They have families, and they seem to show great affection for those in their families. However, I tend to believe that the Elephant would most likely be more concerned about injuring their own foot, as opposed to the other creature. As someone else stated, an Elephant has extremely sensitive feet, and they even use their fleshy pads on the bottom of their feet to sense vibrations from miles away, as a form of communication from other Elephants. Not to mention that a foot or leg injury to any quadrupedal animal can cause serious complications to the animals overall health.
So, I believe that the Elephant is much more concerned with #1 than he is for the po' wittle mousie.
We can't bash the MB too badly, because as far as we know, they had limited time with the Elephants. Which brings up another question I have -- earlier in the program, the MB stated that they needed "untrained" elephants for their experience, but the last thing we see is Adam and Jamie giving Jumbo a friendly pet on the snout. ??? Not trained, maybe, but certainly very friendly.

Just a bit of clarification about this show segment.

The show segment was shot while they were in South Africa shooting the Great White segments for the Super Size Special. They shot this in order to get something in "the can" as the weather was not cooperating for the ocean segments. This particular segment was almost literally "thrown together" as to not waste the down time they were experiencing because of the weather.

MythMod

Whatever the logistics around the segment, this was a truly cool piece of video. I had myself obtained from reliable sources (porfessional elephant handlers) a verification that indeed elephants are wary of small animals, but seeing this put to an empirical test was really a great experience.

Now *WHY* elephants are wary of small creatures is another matter. It's puzzling.

I have been using SALT to reduce the "burn" of spicy foods for years. Plain and simple.......it works.

I started using salt on my own when I learned that salt "cleanses the palate", being one of the reasons cheese and crackers are served at wine tastings, and we lick the salt before we shoot the tequila.

Although I have to give some credit for some of the rememdies they tried (who in their right mind would try petroleum jelly? **retch**), I'll have to say the list was quite limited)

Definately needs to be revisited.

So far on these forums there are four other "cures" submitted. How many were tried on the show? 7 or 8? We already have about 50% more.


Your idol,
Teflon

i definitely agree with running the experiment again with a "wild type" mouse. a white mouse would never survive in the wild naturally due to the lack of camoflauge. i would definitely like to see this one redone in a myths revisited episode.

Ok, in my research into elephant vision (short though it may be) I found that elephants have EXTREMELY poor vision, very limited sight range, and have dichromatic sight.... essentially, this means that colors like yellow or WHITE stand out like neon signs. I understand if the segment was litterally "throw together" but hte least the MB could have done was spoken with an expert on elephants, or tried a different colored mouse.... I think that if I saw something like a neon sign appear suddenly out of nowhere when I didn't have my glasses on I might be a little startled too. I also agree that they should have tested other small animals of similar size to a mouse, but really my big point is that they should have taken the color variable into account... at least test THAT part with the zoo elephants when they arrived home if they didn't have the time to do it while they were in Africa; at the bare minimum, they could have told us that the test was not completely valid since, as science guys, they SHOULD have known they didn't test all the practical variables.

pen in a gun- can a pen be shot out of a gun with gunpowder