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12.5 Training Animals to Recognise Predators 295

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Figure 12.4 Photograph of the habitat in Kakadu National Park, Australia, where ‘toad‐smart’ quolls were
reintroduced. Note that the photograph was taken in December, when young quolls begin foraging in woodland.
Inappropriate burning of habitat at the study site has created large open tracts of woodland between the rock
outcrops. The lack of a suitable understorey of shrubs and grasses means that young quolls that forage in
woodland have little protection from predators such as dingoes and feral cats. Source: Jonathan Webb.

wild boar, kangaroos, and badgers. Lethal (Baker et al. 2008). Thus, it may be possible
control methods for problem herbivores are to protect cereal crops from badger damage
often ineffective and their use has raised eth- by deploying cereal baits paired with a taste-
ical and conservation concerns in recent less, odourless nausea‐inducing chemical
years. Thus, there has been an increasing and a non‐toxic novel odour just before the
interest in developing alternative methods grain ripens. When the crop ripens, farmers
for discouraging herbivores from damaging could spray the non‐toxic novel odour onto
crops. Studies on European badgers (Meles the crop to deter badgers from eating the
meles) suggest that it ought to be possible to grain (Baker et al. 2008).
train wild animals not to eat certain crops
(Baker et al. 2005, 2008). In England and
Wales, badgers create substantial financial 12.5 Training Animals to
losses for cereal farmers by flattening and Recognise Predators
eating the crops (Moore et al. 1999). To train
badgers not to eat maize, researchers offered Animals living in isolation from predators,
free‐ranging badgers maize treated with either on predator‐free offshore islands or in
ziram (a potent emetic) paired with a novel captivity, often lack the ability to detect or
odour (clove oil). The badgers that ate the respond appropriately to predators (Griffin
maize treated with the ziram/clove oil et al. 2000). Consequently, predator‐naive
became ill, and these animals subsequently animals often suffer high mortality from
avoided the maize treated with clove oil predation following their reintroduction to