Everyone loves looking at exotic animals and most of us only get to do that at zoos. But, of course, there is a lot to be said about the morality of keeping those animals in captivity. So, good zoos put a lot of effort into keeping their animals healthy and happy. For more intelligent animals, like elephants, enrichment through intellectual stimulation is a solid strategy. With that in mind, a team of Georgia Tech students worked with Zoo Atlanta to give elephants a musical toy to enrich their lives.

Like the toys you get for your dog, this device’s purpose is to give the elephants some mental stimulation. It provides them with an activity that they can enjoy, thus improving their lives. It works by playing specific tones (known to please elephant ears) when the elephants stick their trunks in holes in a wall. In essence, it is similar to an electronic toy piano for kids — just optimized for elephant physiology.

An Arduino Mega 2560 board plays the tones through a DY-SV5W media player module, which outputs an audio signal to an outdoor speaker system. Each hole in the wall has a VL53L0X ToF (Time of Flight) sensor to detect trunks. Those sensors were paired with ATtiny85 microcontrollers that tell the Arduino when a trunk is present.

The researchers also added a real-time clock and an SD card reader to log activity, giving the team the ability to evaluate the response from the elephants. In the same way that you can tell your dog loves his new toy by how much he plays with it, the team was able to determine that the elephants enjoyed their musical device over the course of about a week.

Image credit: A. Mastali et al.