Even in this advanced age of iPads and handjob robots (they have those, right?), mankind is still fighting a battle against nature. Whether the challenge is invasive swarms that we created through our own stupidity or simply trying to find a way to protect ourselves that doesn't include outright extinction, we're constantly being reminded that we're not the only link in the food chain. But damn it, we're humans, and we just need to use our big, tool-making primate brains to get an edge. And that's how we wound up ...

5 Taking on Rampaging Elephants With Ping-Pong Balls

Photos.com

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

On the one hand, elephants are constantly under threat of being poached out of existence, thanks to their carrying valuable ivory around in their faces. On the other hand, it's hard to feel sorry for them when you're an African village watching a herd of them ruin your life -- one elephant raid can wipe out an entire village's food supply for a year. It's estimated that the annual damages per farmer range from $60 in Uganda to $510 in Cameroon. Many farmers feel that they have no other alternative but to use poisons like Furadan to kill marauding pachyderms. What the hell else is going to deter them? They're freaking huge.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Fortunately, the U.N. put their best and brightest on it, and they came up with an effective, if unconventional, solution: Ping-Pong balls.

Wildhorizontrust.org

Filled with C4.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

It being the United Nations, they likely first sent the elephants a series of increasingly strongly worded letters in the hope that they would self-disarm. When that didn't work, their Food and Agriculture Organization recommended the use of a device called a Mhiripiri Bomber -- a gun that launches chili-pepper-filled Ping-Pong balls up to 150 feet. Research has proven that elephants do not like getting shot in the face with them. So poor African villagers have an effective, nonlethal way to deal with Dumbo and kin, and all it took was marrying a spicy South American seasoning blend with NERF technology.