Photo by timkelley

Yes, really.

The National Zoo is at it again, this time letting 36-year-old Asian elephant Shanthi play a harmonica. No, this isn’t something they do after-hours and with a few drinks in them—this is how zoo employees allow Shanthi to play:

The keepers provided the instruments after they noticed that Shanthi, more so than the Zoo’s two other elephants, likes to make noise with objects. According to keepers, she will use her trunk to cover anything with a hole in it and blow until it makes a sound—and will often coax the objects to get different types of sounds from it. She taps objects with her trunk and flaps her ears against objects that make noise. Now they give the melodious pachyderm noisemakers as a form of enrichment.

What will they think of next?