The use of tools is not exclusive to humans. Chimpanzees use sticks to catch termites. Dolphins cover their noses with sponges to protect themselves when searching for food on the seabed. Crows make hooks to get food. And there are elephants that use branches to swat flies or scratch themselves. ‘Mary’, an Asian elephant from the Berlin Zoo, is even more sophisticated. He is capable of using a hose to take a good shower, manipulating it with skill to reach every corner of his voluminous body. That is if his partner ‘Anchali’, who has figured out how to turn off the water, allows it, it is not clear if to ‘annoy’ or as a kind of ‘joke’.
“Elephants are fantastic with hoses,” says Michael Brecht of Humboldt University in Berlin, one of the lead authors of the study published in the journal Current Biology. «As is often the case with elephants, the behavior when using hoses is very different in each animal; the elephant ‘Mary’ is the queen of the shower,” he says.
The researchers made the discovery after the paper’s other lead author, Lena Kaufmann, also from the Humboldt University of Berlin, witnessed ‘Mary’ showering at the Berlin Zoo one day and filmed her. He took the video to his colleagues, who were immediately impressed. The study’s first author, Lea Urban, decided to analyze the behavior in more detail.
“What emerged from Lea’s work is that elephants have an exquisite understanding of hoses as tools,” Brecht says.
lasso strategy
The researchers discovered that ‘Mary’ showers systematically, coordinating the hose with her limbs. Typically, you grab the hose behind the tip to use it as a rigid shower head. To reach his back, switch to a lasso strategy, gripping the hose higher and swinging it over his body. When presented with a larger, heavier hose, the elephant uses her trunk to wash herself instead of the bulkier, less useful hose.
The researchers say the findings offer a new example of purposeful tool use, but what surprised them most was the way another Asian elephant, Anchali, reacted while Mary was showering.
The two elephants showed aggressive interactions around shower time, the researchers say. At one point, ‘Anchali’ began pulling the hose towards herself and away from ‘Mary’, lifting and bending it to stop the flow of water. While the researchers can’t be sure of Anchali’s intentions, it seemed as if the elephant was displaying a kind of second-order tool-using behavior, disabling a tool that another elephant was using more conventionally, perhaps as an act of sabotage.
“The surprise was undoubtedly the behavior of ‘Anchali,'” says Brecht. “No one had thought he was smart enough to pull off such a trick.”
In fact, Brecht acknowledges that a great debate arose in the laboratory about ‘Anchali’s behavior and what it meant. Then, they saw ‘Anchali’ find another way to interrupt Mary’s shower. In this case, ‘Anchali’ made what researchers call a “standing trunk” to stop the flow of water. For this feat, Anchali places her trunk over the hose and then lowers her huge body onto it.
Brecht explains that the elephants are well trained not to step on the hoses, for fear of being scolded by their keepers. As a result, he says, they almost never do. Researchers suspect that’s why Anchali has come up with more complicated solutions to prevent water from flowing during Mary’s showers.
“When ‘Anchali’ came up with a second behavior that disrupted the flow of water to ‘Mary,’ I became pretty convinced he was trying to sabotage her,” Brecht notes.
The findings serve as a reminder of elephants’ extraordinary tool-using and manipulation skills, made possible by the grasping ability of their trunks. Researchers wonder if the behavior seen at the zoo is replicated among elephants in their natural environments.
“Do elephants play pranks on each other in the wild?” Brecht asks. “When I first saw the flex and pinch of ‘Anchali’, I burst out laughing. “So I wonder if ‘Anchali’ also thinks this is funny or if she’s just being mean.”
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