Research: Elephants know how to use a water hose and tease each other by interrupting the shower

Money an animal species knows how to use tools. Aids are often used to get food.

Elephants use aids more widely. Among other things, they know how to swat flies with branches. They are intelligent animals in many ways and, for example, recognize themselves in a mirror.

Berlin Zoo’s Mary the elephant turned out to be an amazingly skilled user of a water hose when researchers from Berlin’s Humboldt University observed the elephants’ actions.

Researchers tell about Mary’s washing in a research article in the journal Current Biology.

Morning activities at the zoo include the zookeepers showering the Asian elephants Mary, Pang Pha and Anchal. At the same time, the animals have the opportunity to drink and spray water.

The elephants have been taught not to step on the hoses. The rest of their busyness with the hoses is self-initiated, the researchers report.

Unlike other elephants, Mary is not content to spray water with her trunk. It quickly grabs the free hose and sprays itself with it from all sides.

Mary’s has a habit of systematically washing his whole body with a hose: both sides, back and legs as well.

It usually holds the hose with its proboscis near the mouth of the hose. It washes its back by holding the hose further away and spinning it like a lasso behind its head, so that the water is thrown onto its back. In addition, Mary raises her hind legs to spray them better.

During the study period, which lasted several months, Mary continued her self-administered morning shower for an average of seven minutes each morning.

Animal keepers can’t say how Mary first adopted using the tube.

However, it is not the only elephant that has shown an understanding of the operation of the hose and potentially complex cause-and-effect relationships.

After watching Mary’s shower actions, the younger Anchali intervened in the shower by picking up the hose in his trunk, twisting it to a bend and flattening it so that the water flow stopped.

Anchali started doing this teasing regularly during the wash moments.

Researchers are not quite sure whether Anchali blocked Mary’s water supply on purpose or accidentally while playing with the hose.

When the researchers tested the matter, Anchali could not choose the right one from the many hoses to support.

“However, several lines of evidence suggest that Anchali intentionally sought to interrupt Mary’s shower,” the group writes.

First, the hose had to be twisted and squeezed hard to get it blocked. Anchali did it with a complex, similar repetitive sequence of movements. Over time, it caused even longer breaks in the water supply.

Secondly, Anchal had a motive to make trouble, because the older Mary used to get angry and slap her with her proboscis several times during the morning wash.