An elephant's prehensile trunk is a marvel of biology, featuring as many as 60,000 muscles that enable the animal to not just breathe, eat, and drink water, but also to communicate and pinch or grasp objects, among other abilities. Some elephants have been known to make rudimentary tools with their trunks to scratch themselves, repel insects, or even block roads. And one Asian elephant, named Pang Pha, in the Berlin Zoo learned how to peel a banana, according to a new paper published in the journal Current Biology—a highly unusual ability for a pachyderm, and one the other Asian elephants in the Berlin Zoo don't possess.

大象的鼻子是个生物学奇迹，拥有多达60000块肌肉，不仅能够呼吸，进食和喝水，而且还能够交流，捏或抓物体，以及其他能力。一些大象会用鼻子做一些基本的工具来抓痒痒，驱赶昆虫，甚至堵塞道路。根据发表在《当代生物学》杂志上的一篇新论文，柏林动物园的一头名叫Pang Pha的亚洲象学会了如何剥香蕉——对于厚皮动物来说，这是一种极不寻常的能力，而柏林动物园的其他亚洲象则不具备这种能力。

"We discovered a very unique behavior," said co-author Michael Brecht of Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin’s Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience. "What makes Pang Pha's banana peeling so unique is a combination of factors—skillfulness, speed, individuality, and the putatively human origin—rather than a single behavioral element."

"我们发现了一种非常独特的行为，"共同作者、柏林洪堡大学伯恩斯坦计算神经科学中心的迈克尔·布莱希特说。"Pang Pha剥香蕉的独特之处在于多种因素的结合——技巧、速度、个性和假定的人类起源——不只是单一的行为因素。"

Brecht and his co-authors first heard about Pang Pha's unusual ability from her zoo caretakers and decided to conduct a series of experiments, presenting the elephant with about 10 bananas each round and filming her behavior. The first experiments involved Pang Pha alone, and while she repeatedly raised her trunk—typical begging behavior for elephants—when approached with bananas, for the first few weeks, the elephant didn't peel any of them. Eventually the scientists realized that whether or not Pang Phase peeled a banana depended on its ripeness. She preferred to devour green or yellow bananas whole and rejected brown bananas entirely.

布莱希特和他的合著者第一次从动物园管理员那里听说了Pang Pha的不寻常能力，于是决定进行一系列实验，每轮给Pang Pha大约10根香蕉，并拍摄她的行为。在第一个实验中，Pang Pha独自一象，当拿香蕉接近她时，她会反复举起鼻子——这是大象典型的乞食行为——在最初的几周里，大象没有剥任何香蕉。最终，科学家们意识到Pang Pha剥不剥香蕉取决于香蕉的成熟度。她喜欢整只吞下绿色或黄色的香蕉，完全不吃棕色的香蕉。

It was the yellow-brown bananas that Pang Pha singled out for peeling, and she was able to do it faster than most humans. First, she grasped the banana with the tip of her trunk and then broke it against the side of the distal trunk. Next, she shook the banana until the pulp fell out. She then grabbed the pulp and ate it, discarding the peel. The process continued until there was almost no pulp left inside the peel. Pang Pha made sure of that by checking several times with her trunk in case there was any lingering pulp she might have missed.

Pang Pha挑出来黄褐色的香蕉，她能比大多数人做得更快。首先，她用鼻子的尖端抓住香蕉，然后用远端树干的侧面折断它。接着，她摇晃香蕉，直到果肉掉出来。然后她抓起果肉吃起来，并扔掉果皮。这个过程继续进行，直到果皮内几乎没有果肉。为了确保这一点，Pang Pha用鼻子检查了好几次，以防错过任何残留的果肉。