A Very Special Asian Elephant Named Pang Pha Learned to Peel Bananas on Her Own

Elephants enjoy bananas, but unlike humans, they do not usually peel them first.

However, according to a new report published on April 10 in the journal Current Biology, one very special Asian elephant named Pang Pha learned banana peeling on her own while living at the Berlin Zoo.

She saves it for yellow-brown bananas, breaking them first and shaking out and collecting the pulp while leaving the thick peel behind.

According to the study's authors, the female elephant learned the unusual peeling behavior by watching her caregivers peel bananas for her.

According to the researchers, the findings in a single elephant demonstrate that elephants in general have special cognitive and manipulative abilities.

Elephant's Self-Taught Banana Peeling Offers Glimpse Of Elephants' Broader Abilities

(Photo : RIZWAN TABASSUM/AFP via Getty Images)

"We discovered a very unique behavior," said Michael Brecht of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, as per Phys.org.

Pang Pha's banana peeling is distinguished by a combination of factors-skillfulness, speed, individuality, and a presumed human origin-rather than a single behavioral element.

Pha, like other elephants, consumes whole green or yellow bananas. She flatly refuses brown bananas. However, she only eats yellow bananas with brown spots, such as those used in banana bread, after first peeling them.

Brecht and colleagues, including Lena Kaufmann of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Andreas Ochs of the Berlin Zoological Garden, made the discovery after learning about Pha's unusual banana-peeling ability from her caretakers.

They were initially perplexed. They brought Pha beautiful yellow and green bananas, which she never peeled.

When a group of elephants is offered yellow-brown bananas, Pha's behavior changes, according to the report. She eats as many bananas whole as she can before saving the last one to peel later.

As far as anyone knows, banana peeling is uncommon in elephants, and none of the other Berlin elephants do it.

Why Pha peels them is unknown. However, the researchers point out that she was raised by humans in the Berlin Zoo. They never taught her how to peel bananas, but she was given peeled bananas.

According to the researchers, she learned peeling through observational learning from humans.

Previous research on African elephants has shown that they can interpret human pointing gestures and classify people into ethnic groups, but complex human-derived manipulation behaviors, such as banana peeling, appear to be rather unique, according to the researchers.

Nonetheless, the findings in Pha suggest that elephants have surprising cognitive abilities as well as impressive manipulative skill.

The researchers are surprised that Pha picked up on banana peeling on her own. It makes them wonder if such behaviors are typically passed down through elephant families. They are now investigating more sophisticated trunk behaviors, such as tool use.

Also Read: Understanding an Elephant's Playful Side

Elephants Have Surprising Level of Self-Understanding

The mirror self-recognition test is used to determine whether animals and young children understand that the reflection in front of them is actually their own, as per Sci News.

So far, only great apes, dolphins, magpies, and elephants have demonstrated self-recognition.

However, critics argue that this test is limited in its ability to investigate complex thoughts and understanding and that it may be less useful in testing animals that rely less on vision than other species.

A test of 'body awareness' could be used as a supplement to the mirror test as a measure of self-understanding.

This test examines how individuals may perceive their bodies as impediments to success in a problem-solving task.

A task like this could demonstrate an individual's understanding of their body in relation to their physical environment, which may be easier to define than the distinction between oneself and another demonstrated by success in the mirror test.

Dale and her colleague, University of Cambridge researcher Dr. Josh Plotnik, devised a new test of self-awareness in Asian elephants.

We created a new body-awareness paradigm for testing an animal's understanding of its place in its environment by adapting a recent study done with children.

The stick was unattached to the mat in one control arm of the test, allowing the elephant to pass the stick while standing on the mat.

The scientists discovered that elephants stepped off the mat significantly more frequently during the test than during the control arm: elephants stepped off the mat an average of 42 out of 48 times during the test, compared to just three times on average during the control.

According to Dr. Plotnik, who is also an assistant professor of psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the founder of the conservation charity Think Elephants International, this is a deceptively simple test with profound implications.