This initiative consists of painting eyes on the hindquarters of cows to scare off predators that ambush them from behind like lions.<\/p>\n
Working with Botswana Predator Conservation and local herders, we painted the cattle of 14 herds that had recently suffered lion attacks. Over four years, a total of 2,061 cattle participated in the study.<\/p>\n
Before coming out of their night pen, we painted about a third of each herd with an artificial eye patch pattern on the rump, a third with simple crosses, and left the remaining third of the herd unmarked. We did 49 painting sessions and each lasted 24 days.<\/p>\n
Individuals painted with artificial eye spots were more likely (statistically) to survive than unpainted or cross-painted control cattle in the same herd.<\/p>\n
None of the 683 painted “eye cows” were killed by ambush predators during the four-year study, while 15 (of 835) unpainted cattle and 4 (of 543) painted cross cattle were been killed.<\/p>\n
These results confirmed our initial intuition that creating the perception that the predator had been seen by the prey would cause it to give up the hunt.<\/p>\n
One of the main possible limitations is that the predator can get used to this lure over time, more or less quickly depending on the context and the individual.<\/p>\n
This is why it is often recommended to combine several initiatives to minimize the chances of predator attacks on livestock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3161,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1428","simpinitiatives","type-simpinitiatives","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","type-deterrents-and-repellents","type-preventing-access","type-visual-deterrents-and-repellents","species-carnivores","species-leopard-en","species-lion-en","countries-africa","countries-botswana-en","issues-livestock"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/simpinitiatives\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/simpinitiatives"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/simpinitiatives"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/simpinitiatives\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3818,"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/simpinitiatives\/1428\/revisions\/3818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/encosh.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}