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Previous studies have suggested that elephants may manipulate their breath to acquire unreachable food, but there has been limited opportunity to test this behavior.
To investigate whether elephants use their trunks to achieve goals, researchers from the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies studied two captive Asian elephants, named Mineko and Suzuko.
The scientists predicted that the further away a piece of food was, the more frequently the elephants would blast it with air to bring it near to them.
To test this theory, they digitally mapped out a grid in a ditch in the elephants’ enclosure, placed food in various locations on the ‘virtual’ grid, and filmed the elephants trying to reach it.
“The experiment was conducted for 32 days (spilt into 128 trials) from late August to early October 2013. Each day, the subjects were released into the outdoor exhibition compound, which was surrounded by a dry moat,” they explained.
“The foods were placed in two areas, separated by 13 feet (4 m), within a U-shaped ditch of the dry moat. This means that two subjects could attempt to acquire food at the same time in separate areas.”
The scientists used five different types of food: hay, bamboo, apple, fallen leaves and potatoes.
“A trial began when it was audible that the elephants had started blowing and finished when they grasped the food or gave up.”
The team analyzed the frequency and duration of blowing, the position and shape of the elephants’ trunks, and their success and skill by tracking the movement of food across the grid.
Their results reveal that on average it took three blasts of air for the elephants to reach inaccessible food.
“The blowing behavior we observed was goal-directed,” the scientists explained. “Both elephants blew the inaccessible food until it reached an accessible range and blew even more to drive food towards them.”
“Mineko, the dominant female, was more proficient, particularly when it came to adjusting the position of her trunk to target the air at a specific point on the food to push it in the right direction.”
“By blowing air through their trunks to obtain inaccessible food, the elephantsappear to exhibit an advanced understanding of their physical environment. Their skills to manipulate air might be related to those elephants commonly use,” said study lead author Dr Kaori Mizuno, of the Wildlife Research Center of Kyoto University and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies.
“Does this blowing behavior count as tool use? A classic and standard definition of tool use is “the external employment of an unattached environmental object to alter more efficiently the form, position,” the scientists said.
“Breath or air may not fit this definition because it is part of the environment. However, several types of behavior have been difficult to define or rule out as tool use.”
Dr Mizuno and co-authors conclude that their study offers an opportunity to critically rethink the definition of a tool, focusing on the psychological process behind problem-solving behavior, rather than the use of a physical object.