How ants put the wind up elephants
Mice are bad enough, according to the myth – but the creature that really fills an elephant with dread is a lot smaller.
Ants are getting the better of an animal one billion times bigger to protect the African acacia trees they rely on.
Any elephant who approaches an ant-protected tree is liable to find swarms of the angry insects crawling up its trunk and so elephants stay away ‘like a kid avoiding broccoli’ said scientists who made the discovery.