This is Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Andagata.

We humans often navigate using road signs and GPS. Elephants, though, they can navigate

over long distances using their incredible memories. An elephant never forgets, right?

But it's also being suggested here and there that maybe all-faction and their exceptional

sense of smell is what's critical in these long distance movements.

Johnny Allen is a behavioral ecologist at the University of Exeter in the UK. She and

her colleagues investigated that idea by testing African elephants' ability to tune in on a

very specific smell, urine. You see, elephants pee a lot, up to 15 gallons a day, and that

urine can contain an array of chemical cues. But first, to test all this, the researchers

needed some pee. So they headed to a spot along Botswana's Boteti River and waited.

We would wait for elephants to urinate and within 20 minutes go and collect these fresh

urine samples.

Then they set up camera traps on seven elephant trails. You can actually hear an elephant

brushing against a bush here. After observing the elephant's natural behavior on those paths,

they noticed that a majority of them investigated sense along the trail, especially elephants

traveling alone. Then that's an indication the researchers say that sense may serve

as signposts along the trail.

Next, they placed those urine samples they'd gathered along the trails. And they found

that for at least two days, passing elephants train their trunks on the samples, especially

samples from mature adults. That's another indication that scent might be a potent navigational

cue. Their findings appear in the journal Animal Behavior. And based on these results,

they hope conservationists might be able to use elephant pee as a decoy.

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