Elephants are masters at using a hose – considered a complex tool because of its flexibility, length and the physics of flowing water.
Researchers studying three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) at Berlin Zoo were surprised to see how nimbly they manipulated a hose to shower themselves and seemed to understand how to get the best use out of it. They even appeared to play pranks on each other by stopping the flow mid-shower – either by kinking the hose or compressing it with their trunks.
To reach more distant parts of the body, the elephants used a lasso-like technique, holding the hose further from the end and swinging it over their backs.
Michael Brecht at the Humboldt University of Berlin says the elephant behaviour around hoses reminded the team of the way children might play together.
“Elephants are exceptionally good with hoses and we very much wonder if this is related to the functional similarity of trunks and hoses,” he says.
Just as humans are either left-handed or right-handed, African and Asian elephant individuals are either left or right “trunkers”, preferring to bend their trunk in one direction. The researchers noticed that the elephants also had a side preference when they manipulated the hose. One of the elephants, named Mary, used her trunk for showering the right side of her body but used the hose more for the left side.
Another of the elephants, named Anchali, showed five different behaviours to disrupt water flow when Mary was trying to shower – hose positioning, lifting, kinking, regrasping the kink and compressing.
“This sabotage-like behaviour, if that’s what it is, has been seen in only very few animals,” says Brecht.
Brecht’s previous research suggests elephant trunks are one of the most sensitive body parts in the animal kingdom, enabling them to handle objects with similar precision to the human hand.
“The research reiterates the idea that elephants show very sophisticated trunk behaviours,” he says.
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