Dn the great bestiary of the world, the elephant holds a special place. Its mass, its memory, the attention it pays to its young, to its elders… and to its dead are proverbial. In terms of records, the pachyderm still stands out as the smallest sleeper, around two hours per night. But few people imagine behind his clumsy appearance a tool manipulator of exceptional dexterity.
Footage taken at the Berlin Zoo by Humboldt University researchers shows the experienced Asian elephant Mary using a garden hose to take a shower. The tube delicately held by means of its trunk, it sprays its head, its ears, its body, one paw, the other paw, in front, behind, with a precision worthy of us humans.
She can't reach the back of her body, even with her trunk raised? No matter, she grabs the hose a little further from the mouth and uses the elasticity of the rubber, “like a lasso”underlines the German team in the article which accompanies the video, published Friday November 8 in the magazine Current Biology. All the more surprising since Mary never benefited from the slightest example in this area.
Unique Abilities
Biologist Lena Kaufmann made this observation by chance, while working on task learning with another Asian elephant at the zoo. She quickly recorded it with her phone and showed it to her colleagues. “We were very impressed by the elegance of the gesture”says Michael Brecht, the head of the laboratory. A research project was launched to see how far Mary could go, and if her four peers could do the same.
This is because tool use is a major area in the study of animal behavior. For a long time, we saw it as human exclusivity. Jane Goodall, the first, brought the chimpanzees into this exclusive club. Since then, dolphins, crows and even otters have joined them. Elephants too, who use branches to keep insects away. Except that the flexibility, the extension or even the liquid flow make the garden hose a tool “exceptionally complex”.
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In this game, Mary demonstrated unique abilities. The male and the three other females who share his life at the zoo do not display the same dexterity, favoring the use of their trunk. Mary uses the hose to drink, to fill her trunk before spraying herself, and directly to shower, deploying, as we have seen, different strategies depending on the part of the body targeted. Not just any pipe, however. Alongside his favorite shower with a diameter of 24 millimeters, the researchers offered him one with a section of 32 millimeters and another with a section of 13 millimeters. She used the widest pipe, but less regularly, and largely avoided the narrower one.
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