Outside the Beltway

World’s Hottest Chili to Repel Elephants

James Joyner · Monday, November 19, 2007 · No comments

Now, here’s a headline you don’t see every day: “World’s Hottest Chili to Repel Elephants.”

Wildlife experts in northeastern India are experimenting with a new weapon to prevent marauding elephants from destroying homes and crops and trampling people in villages close to their habitat – super-hot chilies.

[…]

More than 600 people have been killed by wild elephants in Assam in the past 16 years and villagers have reacted with an anger that has shocked conservationists. In 2001, in Sonitpur district, 112 miles north of the state capital of Gauhati, villagers poisoned 19 wild elephants to death after they feasted on crops and trampled houses.

And you thought you had problems.

via OTB News