SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : GRAY MATTERS ELEPHANTS

 

How do you clean an elephant? Just give her the water hose, will you?

To stay cool and protect their skin, elephant's wallow in mud, bathe in dust and and use their trunks to spray themselves with water.

Now, an Asian elephant named Mary, who lives  at the Berlin Zoo. has developed a more advanced technique, using a large hose to give herself a shower.

Mary's hose-wielding appears to be the latest example of tool use by animals, researchers say in a paper that was published in the journal Current Biology.

'' Mary is so superb at showering,'' said Michael Brecht, a neuroscientist at Humboldt University of Berlin and an author of the paper.

Another elephant also proved handy with a hose. A young elephant named Anchali developed two techniques for interrupting the flow of water through the hose - and thus, Mary's showers.

The observation raises a provocative possibility : by disabling the tool Mary was using, Dr, Brecht thinks, Anchali was engaged in a '' kind of sabotage behavior.''

The study provides more evidence that elephants can manipulate objects in sophisticated ways. Other studies have shown them peeling bananas and using branches to swat flies away.

Lena Kaufmann, a doctoral student in Dr. Brecht's lab and an author of the paper, said that an elephant might have '' a somewhat intuitive understanding for a hose, because it's super similar to the trunk.''

Mr. Kaufmann initially noticed Mary's showering skills while watching the Zoo-keepers make their rounds, using a hose to rinse off each elephant. But when they got to Mary, they simply handed her the hose. [ Emily Anthes ].