Why Elephants Hate Pigs, & Pigs Hate Romans
As you may or may not be aware, Elephants were the tanks of the
ancient world. Wild Elephants were stalked by hunters, who
incapacitated the gentle giants by hacking large chucks of flesh
away from their legs (I know its gruesome but stay with me, it
gets worse).
Once captured, they were no use to the military due to their
injuries and were instead used as breeding animals, lame studs
if you will. Any offspring produced in this way were tamed and
sold on to armies to become a fearsome spectacle used to
frighten/destroy marauding tribes or other 'bad' guys.
Every major army of the day used elephants, a seemingly
unstoppable weapon. That was until one day, some insightful
Romans noticed that Elephants were easily spooked by the sound
of a squealing pig. Those clever Romans discovered they could
turn this to their advantage by sending squealing pigs running
towards their enemy's Elephants. However, pigs do no squeal on
demand, so the simply answer was to set the little porky's on
fire (told you it got worse) and let them loose on the
battlefield!