Bernstein members involved: Michael Brecht

Female Asian elephant Mary showed stunningly elaborate showering behaviors using a trunk-held water hose. Mary systematically showered her body and coordinated the water hose with limb behaviors. Usually, she grasped the water hose behind the tip, using it as a stiff shower head. To reach her back, however, she applied a ‘lasso-strategy’. Specifically, she grasped the water hose further from the tip and swung it on her back, using hose flexibility and ballistics. Mary showered more with the trunk and less with the water hose when given a heavy water hose with a big diameter. Taken together, she adaptated one tool to reach all her body parts and changed her showering behaviors to reach the same goal in different ways with tools of different usefulness, making this a fascinating case of goal-directed tool use in elephants.

Aggressive interactions between Mary and the younger female elephant Anchali ensued around Mary’s showering time. At some point, Anchali started pulling Mary’s water hose towards herself, lifting and kinking it, then regrasping and compressing the kink. This kink-and-clamp behavior sometimes disrupted water flow to Mary and was repeated over and over again. While there is no certainty about the goal of her behavior, the observations suggest that elephants do not only use tools, but might also be capable of sabotaging each other’s tools.