Watch an elephant peel a banana with her trunk in incredible first-of-its-kind footage

Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2023

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Scientists recently discovered a new elephant behavior that is simply bananas. An Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) at the Berlin Zoo can use her trunk to peel bananas before eating them, a new study reveals.

She wasn’t trained to do this; instead, researchers believe she picked up the skill by watching zookeepers peel bananas for her.

An incredible video shows the elephant, named Pang Pha, first grasp the banana with the end of her trunk. Then, she twists her trunk around on itself, breaks the banana by ripping off the stem end, and throws the rest on the ground. She then picks up the banana again, this time by pinching the frayed peel with her trunk, and uses the banana’s weight to methodically peel the fruit. This might not be exactly the way keepers peel bananas, but it’s a remarkable feat for a thumbless animal.

Related: Do elephants really “never forget”?

Study first author Lena Kaufmann (opens in new tab) , a doctoral student at Humboldt University of Berlin, began working with the elephant to study how the animals sense touch sensations with their trunks. Soon after, the zookeepers began to mention other intriguing behaviors they had spotted, like banana peeling. Kaufman didn’t believe it at first. To see for herself, Kaufmann began to feed Pang Pha bananas to see what would happen.

“I started bringing bananas for her,” Kaufmann told Live Science. “And I didn’t see anything. She just took the banana and ate it. So I started doubting it.”

But Kaufmann was bringing green bananas, fresh from the supermarket, and Pang Pha would simply swallow them whole. When Kaufmann offered Pang Pha a more ripe banana, one with little brown spots on the peel, the elephant grasped the banana and carefully opened it to get at the pulp inside.

It turned out that Pang Pha has preferences. She will eat green bananas whole when offered them, but will take time to peel sweeter, more ripe bananas. She does not, however, like extremely ripe bananas.

“At first, I gave her a [brown banana] and she basically dropped it and left it on the floor,” said Kaufmann. “After that, I gave her a second one, and immediately she threw it at me.”

Through repeated experimentation, Kaufmann learned that Pang Pha will occasionally peel and eat an overripe banana, but she clearly doesn’t seem to enjoy them. RELATED STORIES—Asian elephant mom carries dead calf for weeks, new eye-opening video reveals

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Kaufmann next studied how and when she peels bananas in social situations, where she is being fed bananas as a part of a group. In these cases the vast majority of Pang Pha’s bananas were eaten without being peeled. That is, until she was on her last banana, which she would take her time to peel 60% of the time.

Kaufmann believes that Pang Pha’s reluctance to peel bananas during group feeding is a sign that she optimized the behavior for her benefit. When alone, Pang Pha is more likely to carefully peel each banana, but when eating communally, she has to eat very quickly, or the other elephants might leave her with no bananas. In that case, she swallows them whole, but chooses to savor the last banana.

Pang Pha’s remarkable feat was described April 10 in the journal Current Biology (opens in new tab) .

Sports

Ted Williams’ 1946 MVP award sells for over $500K

Published

3 hours ago

November 17, 2024

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Ted Williams' 1946 MVP award sells for over 0K

Associated Press

Nov 17, 2024, 06:55 PM ET

A rare souvenir postcard picturing Hank Aaron as a rookie with the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues sold for nearly $200,000 at a baseball memorabilia auction that also included Ted Williams’ 1946 AL MVP award, which went for $528,750.

The Aaron postcard from the scrapbook of scout Ed Scott, who discovered Aaron, went for $199,750 following a bidding war that soared past the pre-sale estimate of $5,000-$10,000, Hunt Auctions said.

The auction included 280 items from Williams’ personal collection that had been held by his daughter, Claudia, who died last year. Among the other items were a silver bat awarded for his 1958 batting title, which sold for more than $270,000, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to him by fellow naval aviator George H.W. Bush, which went for $141,000.

The sale also included items from the collection of Rutherford Hayes Jones, the business manager of the Washington Giants, one of the earliest Black baseball teams. The trove was discovered in 2001 in a suitcase, where it had been unseen for 40 years.

A first batch of items from Claudia Williams’ collection went up for auction in 2012 at Fenway Park and garnered more than $5 million.

World

It’s a stunning shift in US policy – but Biden’s announcement will trigger fury and fresh threats from Moscow

Published

5 hours ago

November 17, 2024

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It's a stunning shift in US policy - but Biden's announcement will trigger fury and fresh threats from Moscow

Joe Biden’s belated decision to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied, long-range missiles inside Russia will be cheered by Kyiv and will almost certainly prompt the UK to follow suit.

But the stunning shift in US policy – just weeks before Donald Trump takes over as US president – will also trigger fury and fresh threats from Moscow at a time of increasing uncertainty about the future course of its war.

President Vladimir Putin has warned the West they would be playing with fire if they allowed Ukrainian forces to launch Western-supplied cruise and ballistic missiles at Russia, saying it could even trigger a global conflict.

British and US officials, though, have repeatedly advised their respective capitals not to be intimidated by Moscow’s sabre rattling.

Ukraine war latest: Biden lifts ban on Russia strikes

Yet there has been hesitancy, particularly in Washington, over the unleashing of US Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles beyond the borders of Ukraine.

However, it seems that a move by North Korea to send thousands of its troops to fight with Russia has changed US calculations.

The New York Times, which was among the US media organisations to break news of the Biden administration’s decision on long-range missiles, reported that the first time the American weapons will be used inside Russia will likely be against Russian and North Korean troops battling a Ukrainian incursion in the Russian region of Kursk.

While a significant step up in support for Ukraine, the ability to use American long-range missiles inside Russia is not a war-winning development.

But it does expand Kyiv’s capacity to hit important military targets deliberately positioned by Russian commanders far back from the frontline. This includes stockpiles of missiles, drones and other ammunition used to strike Ukraine.

Just as important as the military impact, though, is the political signal that the US decision sends to the Kremlin about Washington’s willingness to defy Russian warnings about dire consequences should Mr Biden dare to grant Ukraine the permission it’s so long been seeking.

The dramatic move by the United States comes after months of lobbying by Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A key thing to watch now will be how Mr Putin reacts the first time an American missile kills Russian soldiers on Russian soil.

Moscow does not want a direct war with the United States and NATO – nuclear-armed forces with far greater combined firepower – but the Kremlin could well ramp up an already heightened campaign of sabotage and other forms of hybrid warfare across Europe.

Another important reaction to track will be how Mr Trump responds to Mr Biden’s move and whether he continues to allow Ukraine this permission once he takes over as the US commander-in-chief.

The president-elect has vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine quickly but he has not said how. Yet he has voiced fierce opposition to the continued gifting of vast quantities of American weapons to the Ukrainian military.