Elephants love eating bananas, and feast on them whole whenever they can. But Pang Pha, a 36-year-old Asian elephant who lives at the Berlin Zoo, is a little more precious: she happens to prefer her bananas peeled.
While growing up, Pha was under the custody of an attentive caretaker who used to peel her bananas for her. Now, she seems to have taught herself to break the banana against her trunk and wriggle the insides of the fruit from its peel, discarding the latter and savoring just the pulp.
Pha's story is detailed in a recent elephant study in Current Biology, which suggests her behavior could be an example of an animal learning from copying somebody else’s behavior — in this case, her caretaker. Some critics, however, argue it’s just an example of learning through trial and error instead.
Either way, Pha's experience has re-ignited discussions about whether or not elephants can learn by observing others — and what we know about their potential for mimicry.
