Usually, elephants just put whole bananas in their mouths. But in the Berlin Zoo, one specimen has developed an astonishingly complex way of dealing with the sweet dish, researchers report. With a skilful technique, the elephant lady “Pang Pha” peels fruit whose quality she apparently finds borderline: the gourmet only wants to eat the flesh of yellow bananas with brown spots. The scientists say that she probably copied the unusual peeling behavior in humans. According to them, the observations make it clear once again how highly developed and individual these fascinating proboscidea are.
They grasp complex relationships, use tools and even recognize themselves in the mirror: elephants are among the most intelligent creatures on our planet, as many studies have already shown. Similar to the human hand, the trunk of elephants is known to take over fine motor tasks: They use it skilfully in many everyday activities and for social interaction. In addition, it is already known that some individuals have discovered special uses for their trunks.
Now researchers at the Humboldt University in Berlin, in collaboration with employees of the Berlin Zoological Garden, are adding a new example to the collection of observations. At the beginning of the story there was a tip from an elephant keeper at the zoo: He had drawn the scientists’ attention to the fact that one animal in the group showed special behavior when handling bananas: the Asian lady elephant Pang Pha sometimes peeled bananas, it was said. So the team decided to investigate the unusual behavior more closely.
She only likes yellow-brown peeled ones
At first they were confused, because Pang Pha did not show the alleged behavior at first: when the researchers offered her beautiful yellow and green bananas, she ate them whole like all the other elephants. But then it became clear that it was all about “quality”: “Our project only got going when we understood that she was only peeling yellow-brown bananas,” says senior author Michael Brecht from Humboldt University in Berlin.
It turned out that the elephant lady does not like overripe, browned bananas. She threw them back at the researchers almost contemptuously. With the “borderline” ones, however, she then showed the special behavior: Pang Pha quickly and skillfully peels yellow-brown bananas, through a partially stereotypical sequence of behavior, the video recordings showed. She breaks open the banana peel and shakes the fruit until the flesh falls out. She then eats it and, after a quick inspection, throws the shell away.
The researchers then examined whether Pang Pha also behaved in the same way in the group: there were many yellow-brown bananas lying on the ground, which the elephants busily collected and ate. Under these circumstances, Pang Pha changed her behavior in a curious way. When she collected them, she also ate the yellow-brown bananas whole – with one exception: the gourmet saved the last one she could grab and then peeled it so that she could only eat the flesh.
Presumably copied from humans
But what could be behind the very special behavior of Pang Pha? Apparently nobody taught her specifically. However, as the scientists found out, she was raised by human keepers who apparently occasionally fed her peeled bananas. The researchers suspect that she may have learned to appreciate the “pure” taste and then learned how to peel it through observing people.
“We discovered a very special behavior,” says Brecht. “What makes Pang Pha’s banana peeling so interesting is not a single behavioral element, but the combination of factors: dexterity, speed, individuality and the presumably human origin,” summarizes the scientist.
Source: Cell press, technical article: Current Biology, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.076