To stay cool, and protect their skin, elephants wallow in mud, bathe in dust and use their trunks to spray themselves with water. Now, an Asian elephant named Mary, who lives at the Berlin Zoo, has developed a more advanced technique, using a large hose to give herself a shower.
Mary’s hose-wielding appears to be the latest example of tool use by animals, researchers say in a paper that was published in the journal Current Biology. “Mary is so superb at showering,” said Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University of Berlin and an author of the paper.
Another elephant also proved handy with a hose. A youngster named Anchali developed two techniques for interrupting the flow of water through the hose — and thus, Mary’s showers.
The observation raises a provocative possibility: By disabling the tool Mary was using, Brecht thinks, Anchali was engaged in a “kind of a sabotage behavior.” The study provides more evidence that elephants can use manipulate objects in sophisticated ways. Other studies showed them peeling bananas and using branches to swat flies away.
Lena Kaufmann, a doctoral student in Brecht’s lab and an author of the paper, said that an elephant might have “a somewhat intuitive understanding for a hose, because it’s super similar to the trunk.” Kaufmann initially noticed Mary’s showering skills while watching the zookeepers make their rounds, using a hose to rinse off each elephant. But when they got to Mary, they simply handed her the hose. — EMILY ANTHES / NYT
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