Tool use isn't unique to humans. Chimpanzees use sticks as tools. Dolphins, crows, and elephants are known for their tool-use abilities, too. Now a report in Current Biology on November 8, 2024, highlights elephants' remarkable skill in using a hose as a flexible shower head. As an unexpected bonus, researchers say they also have evidence that a fellow elephant knows how to turn the water off, perhaps as a kind of "prank."

"Elephants are amazing with hoses," says Michael Brecht of the Humboldt University of Berlin, one of the senior authors. "As it is often the case with elephants, hose tool-use behaviors come out very differently from animal to animal; elephant Mary is the queen of showering."

The researchers made the discovery after the paper's other senior author, Lena Kaufmann, also of Humbolt University of Berlin, witnessed the Asian elephant Mary at the Berlin Zoo showering one day and captured it on film. She took it back to her colleagues, who were immediately impressed. First study author Lea Urban decided to analyze the behavior in more detail.

"I had not thought about hoses as tools much before, but what came out from Lea's work is that elephants have an exquisite understanding of these tools," Brecht says.