Asian elephants bathing, Sri Lanka (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

8 August 2025

Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) love to take baths. Sometimes, when there’s not enough room for everyone in the pool, the elephants left out challenge those hogging the water.

Asian elephants in a small pool, Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Australia (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

In the wild elephants bath in rivers, lakes and watering holes, lolling in the water and using their trunks to spray their backs. At the Berlin Zoo Asian elephants are provided with a hose to take a shower, similar to using their trunks.

In 2023 the keepers noticed that an elderly elephant, Mary age 54, had developed new ways to use the hose so they initiated a year long study on elephant tool use. They filmed Mary’s hose techniques, praised her for using the hose, and gave her extra hose time. She reveled in the extra attention.

But the study prompted jealousy in a younger elephant, Anchali age 12, who has loved hoses since she was a baby. In her youth she played with them until they broke so the keepers restricted her hose use and taught her proper handling. Now another elephant was hogging the water and the keepers let her do it. Anchali started to sabotage Mary’s shower sessions.

Anchali had a potential motive, too: Mary was occasionally aggressive toward the younger elephant, who seemed to retaliate by disrupting the shower around the same time as Mary stomped toward her or slapped her with her trunk. What’s more, Anchali didn’t kink the hose when other elephants were spraying themselves, suggesting she was targeting Mary in particular.

Watch Mary’s fancy hose techniques and Anchali’s reaction.

“Hey, don’t hog the water!”

Read more in Science Magazine: This elephant learned to use a hose as a shower. Then her rival sought revenge, 8 Nov 2024

p.s. Do you know that Asian elephants are the last living relative of woolly mammoths? Find out more here.