Watch how an elephant has learned how to peel a BANANA after observing zookeepers eating the fruit 

Tasty, rich in potassium and provided with its own, biodegradable packaging; bananas really are one of the ultimate snacks.

And it’s not just humans who think so, as the fruit is a popular delicacy with much of the animal kingdom, including gorillas, bats and elephants.

Usually elephants scoop up bananas with their trunks and put the whole thing in their mouths.

However, a particularly picky Asian elephant at the Berlin Zoo doesn’t seem to enjoy eating the hard shell of the fruit, having learned how to peel it off.

Incredible footage shows Pang Pha squeezing the banana to break off the top, shaking out the contents, discarding the peel, picking up the soft flesh and popping it into her mouth.

Because Pang Pha lives alone, scientists believe she probably learned this technique by watching her zookeepers peel bananas themselves.

This suggests that elephants have the cognitive ability to learn “complex human-derived manipulative behaviors.”

“We discovered a very unique behavior,” said Dr. Michael Brecht of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

“What makes Pang Pha’s banana peeling so unique is a combination of factors – skill, speed, individuality and the supposed human origin – rather than a single behavioral element.”

Pang Pha doesn’t peel every banana she gets, as she eats green or yellow bananas whole, just like her peers.

She also flatly refuses brown bananas completely, but when presented with a yellow banana with brown spots, she employs her peeling technique.

This only applies if she only enjoys her fruity snack.

When Pang Pha is presented with a pile of tawny bananas near other elephants, she eats as many as she can, saving the last to peel later.

None of the other elephants at the zoo exhibit this behavior, and there are only a handful of recorded examples of it.

In their study of Pang Pha, published today in Current Biologythe Germany-based researchers say it’s still not clear why she peels her bananas at all, let alone in very specific situations.

Their leading theory is that she learned this by watching her hand-raised keepers peel the fruit in front of her before feeding it.

A: Pang Pha breaks a banana. B: Percentage of bananas Pang Pha peeled according to the color when alone. C: Percentage of bananas that Pang Pha ate based on its color alone. D: Percentage of bananas that Pang Pha rejected based on its color alone

Elephants are known to be particularly dexterous with their trunks, having been seen using them to paint, break into food trucks and tickle a human’s nose.

In addition, they often display advanced intelligence, can understand that something being referenced is interesting, and can guess a human’s age and ethnicity.

But Pang Pha’s banana peeling shows a new level of manipulative and cognitive skills.

Pha peeled bananas faster than humans, the researchers wrote.

Therefore, Pha’s haptic strategy is remarkably efficient, as humans are highly skilled manipulators.

“This impressive performance is consistent with the rich neuronal innervation of the trunk and its complex motor control.”

Scene from the end of a social feeding experiment of about ten tawny bananas. Pang Pha is in the middle. White arrows highlight bananas

Comparison of percentages of directly eaten, rejected and peeled bananas in social food and solitary food. Pha is more likely to peel when she is alone

The authors are still not sure why Pang Pha is the only elephant at the Berlin Zoo to demonstrate banana peeling.

They wrote: ‘The fact that Anchali, the daughter of Pang Pha, was not taught to peel bananas suggests that this skill is not easily transferred through learning.

“Pha’s tendency to only peel when alone may have limited opportunities for observational learning.”

“Still, the other elephants probably saw her peeling bananas several times.”

The team questions whether such habits are normally passed down within elephant families and is now looking at other trunk behaviors to test the theory.