And the behavior of showering with the hose was 'lateral', that is, Mary preferred to focus on her left side of the body rather than her right side. (Yes, Mary is a “left romper.”) Mary even adjusted her showering behavior depending on the diameter of the hose: she preferred showering with a 24mm hose over a 13mm hose and preferred to use her hair when showering. fuselage instead of a 32mm hose.
It is not known where Mary learned to use a snake, but the authors suggest that elephants may have an intuitive understanding of how snakes work because of the similarity to their trunks. “Bathing and spraying oneself with water, mud or dust is a common behavior in elephants and important for body temperature regulation and skin care,” they wrote. “Mary's behavior fits with other cases of tool use in elephants related to body grooming.”
Perhaps even more intriguing was Anchali's behavior. Although Anchali did not use the hose for showering, she still exhibited complex behavior when manipulating the hose: lifting it, kinking the hose, re-grasping the kink, and compressing the kink. The latter in particular often resulted in a reduced water flow during showering. Anchali eventually discovered how to further disrupt the water flow by placing her trunk on the hose and lowering her body onto it. Control experiments were inconclusive as to whether Anchali deliberately sabotaged Mary's shower; the two elephants had had a fight and were behaving aggressively towards each other while showering. But similar cognitively complex behavior has been observed in elephants.
“When Anchali came up with a second behavior that disrupted the flow of water to Mary, I became quite convinced that she was trying to sabotage Mary,” Brecht said. “Do elephants play tricks on each other in the wild? When I first saw Anchali's nod and clamp, I burst out laughing. So I wonder: does Anchali find this funny too, or is she just mean?
Current Biology, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.10.017 (About DOIs).
