11 April 2023 , 09:58
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A picky elephant has learned how to peel browning bananas to get to the tasty fruit inside.
Pang Pha, who lives in Berlin Zoo, is said to be a huge fan of the bendy snack and happily munches away on yellow and green varieties.
However, she is less keen on ones which have started to brown.
Rather than throwing them away, the Asian elephant throws them to the floor and peels away the offending skin and then eats the fruit inside, says journal Current Biology.
Michael Brecht, from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin’s Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, said: “We discovered a very unique behaviour.
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Pang Pha is not a fan of brown bananas (Current Biology/Kaufmann et al.)“What makes Pang Pha's banana peeling so unique is a combination of factors—skillfulness, speed, individuality, and the putatively human origin—rather than a single behavioural element.
“It was only when we understood that she peels only yellow-brown bananas that our project took off.
“Elephants have truly remarkable trunk skills and that their behaviour is shaped by experience.”
The report into Pang Pha’s banana habit says none of the other elephants in the zoo show the same behaviour.
It adds she rejects brown bananas entirely and Pha’s daughter, Anchali, has not picked up the behaviour.
The elephant peels bananas which are starting to go brown (Current Biology/Kaufmann et al.)It suggests the skill is “not easily transmitted by learning.”
The report continues: “Banana peeling appears to be rare in elephants and none of the other Berlin elephants engage in peeling, raising the question why only Pha peels bananas.
“Pha was hand raised by human caretakers in the Berlin Zoo, who fed her peeled bananas, but never conditioned her to peel them: we suggest she acquired peeling through observational learning from humans.
“African elephants appear to be able to interpret human pointing gestures and to classify human ethnic groups, but complex human-derived manipulation behaviours like the banana peeling reported here appear to have only rarely been observed.
None of the other elephants at the zoo show the same behaviour (Current Biology/Kaufmann et al.)“Initially, Pha’s banana consumption patterns appeared random. We would offer Pha bananas for weeks without her peeling a single one.
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“With time, however, we understood that not all bananas are peeled or even eaten by Pha and that her behaviour strongly depended on banana ripeness.
“Accordingly, we grouped each banana into one of five categories: green, green-yellow, yellow, yellow-brown and brown. Peeling behaviour varied strongly with banana ripeness.
“African elephants appear to be able to interpret human pointing gestures and to classify human ethnic groups, but complex human-derived manipulation behaviours like the banana peeling reported here appear to have only rarely been observed.”