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upstart writes:

Studying the rare ability may shed light on how the animals learn:

Do you peel bananas from the top or bottom? One elephant goes with a third option.

When handed a slightly browning banana, Pang Pha, an Asian elephant at Zoo Berlin, will use her trunk to break the fruit, shake the pulp onto the ground, discard the peel and then shove the pulp into her mouth, researchers report in the April 10 Current Biology. The rare behavior, previously recorded in just a few elephants, could help shed light on how the animals learn complex movements.

When a zookeeper first told neuroscientist Lena Kaufmann of Humboldt University of Berlin that one of the elephants peeled bananas, she decided to test it out for herself. For weeks, Kaufmann and colleagues couldn't get Pang Pha to replicate the behavior. That's because the way the elephant eats bananas seems to depend on ripeness.

Pang Pha ate green and yellow bananas whole — peel and all. It was only when Kaufmann offered the gentle giant a brown-spotted banana that she revealed her peeling prowess. But the fruit can't be too brown, Kaufmann's team found. Pang Pha rejected completely brown bananas. Initially she would place them gently on the ground in protest. Now she throws them aside.

[...] The new study shows the value of studying individual animals, Kaufmann says. "There's such a rich landscape of behaviors that we lose if we only look at what all elephants have in common," she says. "If you look at each individual elephant, you can see that they're able to do really amazing things."

Journal Reference:
L.V. Kaufmann et al. Elephant banana peeling. Current Biology. 33, April 10, 2023. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.076

Original Submission