Intelligent Elephant Teaches Herself to Peel Bananas

A beautiful and incredibly intelligent Asian elephant named Pang Pha, who lives at the Berlin Zoo, remarkably taught herself to peel an overripe banana with her trunk after watching her caretaking humans peel the fruit for her. This behavior has not been seen before in elephants.

Pha was handraised by human caretakers in the Berlin Zoo, who fed her peeled bananas, but never conditioned her to peel them: we suggest she acquired peeling through observational learning from humans.

Pha enjoys green or yellow bananas whole but prefers her the darker bananas peeled and completely rejects brown bananas completely. Pha also figured out how to save her bananas for later.

Pha peels only the last banana during social feeding.

via Boing Boing