Fencing animals in or out isn't really our forte.
Tiny flies zoom right through screens meant to keep them out.
Mice find itty-bitty cracks in our walls.
An average of five crafty creatures escape from American zoos each year.
And wascally wabbits proved that Australia's rabbit-proof fence. . . wasn't.
If we looked at these fences from a fly's or rabbit's perspective, we might have realized that these barriers weren't barriers at all.
But our human-centric view of the world makes it hard to put ourselves in another animal's. . . shoes, paws, wings, or exoskeleton.
And that's precisely the trick to building a critter-proof fence: knowing the critter well enough to find a simple way to stop it.
In East Africa, for example, farmers are building beehive fences to keep out crop-raiding elephants.
Nothing, it turns out, makes these five-ton behemoths turn and run faster than a buzzing bee.
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