It turns out elephants have a playful side, too! Zookeepers at Berlin Zoo recently caught one of their Asian elephants, Anchali, pulling off a clever prank on her friend Mary during shower time.
In a humorous display, Anchali lifted and kinked the water hose, disrupting Mary’s refreshing shower.
This unexpected behavior has piqued the interest of researchers, who now wonder if wild elephants may also play tricks on one another.
“Do elephants play tricks on each other in the wild?” mused Professor Michael Brecht from Humboldt University of Berlin, who led the study.
Professor Brecht described his reaction to Anchali’s actions: “When I saw Anchali’s kink and clamp for the first time, I broke out in laughter. But it raises a question—does Anchali find it funny, or is she just being mischievous?”
The playful interaction and Mary’s showering technique were documented in a report published in Current Biology.
According to Professor Brecht, elephants have a remarkable skill with hoses. “Elephants are amazing with hoses,” he shared. “As is often the case, hose tool use varies greatly from one elephant to another. Mary, for example, is the ‘queen of showering.’”
Researchers first observed Mary’s impressive shower skills when a team member filmed her using a hose.
Mary holds the hose just behind its tip, creating a stiff, controlled spray to shower her body. To reach her back, she cleverly adopts a “lasso” technique, grasping the hose higher up and swinging it over her body.
When faced with a larger, heavier hose, Mary simply switched to using her trunk as a more practical tool for rinsing.
The team concluded that Mary’s technique offers a new example of goal-directed tool use in elephants, a skill previously noted in other animals like chimpanzees, dolphins, and crows.
What surprised researchers most, however, was Anchali’s response during Mary’s shower. Not only did the two elephants interact aggressively around shower time, but Anchali went so far as to pull the hose toward herself and kink it, cutting off Mary’s water supply.
While the team can’t be sure of Anchali’s intentions, her actions suggest a sophisticated form of tool use—a possible attempt to sabotage Mary’s shower.
Professor Brecht admitted the prank caught him off guard: “The surprise was certainly Anchali’s kink-and-clamp behavior. Nobody expected she’d be clever enough to pull off such a trick.”
This playful episode has opened new questions about elephant intelligence and social behavior, adding an entertaining twist to the study of these fascinating animals.