A pair of elephants at the Berlin Zoo have discovered a way to use a hose as a makeshift flexible shower head. Not only do they use water to clean themselves, but they have also been observed turning off water, potentially as a kind of prank. These behaviors are yet another example of tool use in non-human animals and are detailed in the following documents: The study was published Nov. 8 in the journal Cell Press current biology.
Tool usage is known throughout the animal kingdom. chimpanzee Use the stick as a tool to get various larvae and honey. Crows also use sticks to explore hidden food sources. Humpback whales catch fish with “foam nets,” which some scientists believe is a form of tool use. Now, it appears that some elephants at Germany’s Berlin Zoo, especially an Asian elephant named Mary, prefer to use hoses.
Video summary of a 2024 Current Biology paper on water hose tool use in elephants.Credit: Urban et al./Current Biology
Video: Video summary of a 2024 Current Biology paper on water hose tool use in elephants. Credit: Urban et al./Current Biology
“Elephants are amazing at using hoses,” said study co-author Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University in Berlin. stated in a statement. “As is often the case with elephants, horse tool usage behavior varies greatly from animal to animal. Mary the Elephant is the shower queen.”
Study co-author Lena Kaufmann, a doctoral student at Humboldt University Berlin, witnessed Mary using the hose as a shower and captured some footage. The team was immediately impressed by this behavior, and co-author Lea Urban decided to analyze it further.
“I hadn’t really thought about hoses as tools before, but Leah’s research shows that elephants understand these tools very well,” Brecht said. I say.
[Related: Neanderthals likely used glue to make tools.]
they found mary take a systematic shower her body. She uses her hands and feet to adjust the water hose. She usually uses her trunk to grab the hose behind the tip and use it as a hard showerhead. To get her back she will spend even more lasso strategy. She grabs the hose further up and swings it over her body. When Mary was presented with a larger, heavier hose, she used the trunk to wash clothes instead of the bulkier and less useful hose.
According to the teamthese behaviors provide a new example of goal-directed tool use in animals. But what surprised them most was how a fellow Asian elephant named Anchali reacted while Mary was taking a shower.
Both elephants exhibited aggressive interactions before and after shower time. At one point, Anchari started pulling the hose toward herself and away from Mary. This caused the hose to lift and twist, blocking the flow of water. While the team is I’m not entirely sure what Anchari’s intentions are behind thisit appears that she was exhibiting some kind of second tool usage behavior, perhaps as sabotage.
A “trunk stand” on the hose further obstructs the flow of water within the hose. Credit: Urban et al-Current Biology
Video: A “trunk stand” on the hose further obstructs water flow through the hose. Credit: Urban et al-Current Biology
“What was surprising was definitely Anchali’s twisting and constricting behavior,” Brecht said. “No one thought she was smart enough to pull off a trick like that.”
According to Brecht,there was a lot of discussion in the lab about Anchari’s actions and what they meant. The team then observed that Anchari found another way to sabotage Mary’s shower. In this second case, she did what researchers call a “trunk stand” to stop the flow of water. Anchali placed her torso on top of the hose and lowered herself onto it.
Anchari kink and clamp action. The authors of this study were very surprised by this behavior. Credit: Urban et al-Current Biology
video: Anchari kink and clamp action. The authors of this study were very surprised by this behavior. Credit: Urban et al-Current Biology
Elephants are trained not to step on hoses and rarely do. So the researchers speculated that Anchari may have devised a more difficult workaround to stop the flow of water during Mary’s shower without stepping on it.
“When Anchari came up with the second action of disrupting the flow of water to Mary, I was pretty sure she was trying to disrupt Mary,” Brecht said.
[Related: Female sea otters use tools more than males.]
According to the teamthe results remind us of how well elephants can manipulate and use tools. This is made possible by the strong grip of their trunk. These appendages include; Estimated 150,000 muscle units and that is most sensitive organ Found in mammals. The research team wants to investigate what this finding about elephants in captivity means for elephants in their natural habitat.
“Do elephants in the wild sometimes play tricks on each other?” asked Brecht. “When I first saw Anchali’s Kink and Clamp, I laughed out loud. So I wonder if Anchali thinks it’s funny, or is he just being mean?”
