Banana ban as primates turn over 
a new leaf

Animal nutritionists have likened giving bananas to the primates at Paignton Zoo in Devon to humans eating too much cake and chocolate.

To most people, monkeys and bananas go together like a horse and carriage, but it seems that this cliche is now redundant.

The monkey troop at the zoo have been on a health kick and have been avoiding food that is too sweet and sugary – including bananas.

Amy Plowman, head of conservation and advocacy, said: “People usually try to improve their diet by eating more fruit – but fruit cultivated for humans is much higher in sugar and much lower in protein and fibre than most wild fruit because we like our fruit to be so sweet and juicy.

“Giving this fruit to animals is equivalent to giving them cake and chocolate.

“Compared to the food they would eat in the wild, bananas are much more energy-dense – they have lots of calories – and contain much more sugar that’s bad for their teeth and can lead to diabetes and similar conditions.

“It can also cause gastrointestinal problems as their stomachs are mostly adapted to eating fibrous foods with very low digestibility.”

Dr Plowman said it had not been too hard to wean the monkeys off bananas and give them vegetables instead.

“We reduced the amounts slowly so they had a long period to get accustomed to their new diet,” she said.

“They didn’t get a choice but – unlike children – they couldn’t complain.

A typical monkey diet now features lots of green leafy vegetables, smaller amounts of other vegetables and as much browse – leafy branches – as possible, especially for the leaf-eating monkeys.

A spokesman for the zoo stressed that the primates were not unhealthy before the phasing-out of fruit from their diets.

“This is a process of continuing improvement and change,” the spokesman said.