Monkeys and bananas. It’s depicted in cartoons and eslewhere that I suppose I’ve always just taken it for granted.
Like elephants and peanuts, or parrots and crackers, the pair have become inseparable in popular culture. Now, I’m sure they love 'em as much as any other primate, but in reality, are bananas really the ultimate, iconic food for these guys?
If not, what made this combo so popular?
*I only ask, cuz I just ate a banana, and monkeys are funny.
Chimps and most monkeys love fruit. Bananas are particularly nutritious, but they’ll go for whatever is ripe at the time. As for chimps, probably their top preferred food is meat, usually monkey meat. It’s a much smaller portion of the typical chimp diet, but is rare in that it will sometimes be shared. The guy with the meat, and it’s almost always a male, will look to get favors in return from the other chimps he is sharing his catch with, including access to females for sex.
What? I couldn’t hear you.
I said, you have a banana in your ear!
Hang on, I have these bananas in my ears, lemme take them out…
Okay, come again?
Mmmm. Monkey meat.
Piranhas prefer fruit as well.
Chimps are old world apes, and bananas are new world fruit. Has Jane Goodall reported them celebrating Columbus Day?
In Eye-Popping 3D!
There are dozens of species of piranhas. Can we have a cite for which ones “prefer fruit”?
Earlier thread, Do monkeys really eat bananas?
The answer to that question was, yes, monkeys in zoos really like bananas.
That’s not a good answer to why cartoonists do it, but it’s a start. And once a cartoonist gets hold of a joke, nothing can shake it. I recently saw yet another cartoon about a “chef’s surprise.” I’ve never seen one of those on a menu in my life.
A monkey with a banana is a great visual. So is a great big elephant eating a tiny little individual peanut. Do elephants in the wild eat peanuts? No. So?
No, but people grow bananas in Africa. Some in chimpanzee territories.
Is that so?
Not really prefer. Just most of the time. They’re omnivores. Imagine if they eat nothing but animal protein, there’ll be no fauna left in the Amazon basin.
Bananas are an Old World fruit. The genus Musa is native to South and Southeast Asia, and they were probably first domesticated in New Guinea.
There’s a great scene in the third Planet of the Apes film where the first words spoken by one of the astronaut apes is “I loathe bananas!”
Well, I’m just not understanding what point you’re trying to make in a thread about primates.
But if you have a cite that some piranha species eat fruit “most of the time”, I’m sure we’d all like to see it. If you don’t have a cite, then it might be better to just give it up.
And here I was worried about my nuts.
Now I’m trying to picture a piranha trying to peel an orange.
They’re omnivores, all of them. Their diets change with the seasons (more dangerous to animals during the dry, no-flood periods.) When the plains get flooded and you have a lot of fruit and seeds falling in the water, it’s food for them. Some like less ‘toothsome’ food like the pacu and this one:
And no, you didn’t get my first point which was more of a joke than anything. It’s all about the subject of monkeys and generally monkeys ~= humor.
