Henry Doorly Zoo elephants devour banana trees grown in Omaha
By Aaron Hegarty
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OMAHA, Nebraska (KETV) — It’s Nebraska, not Havana. But banana trees can be grown in the Cornhusker State.
For Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, it’s an opportunity to give animals a special treat.
Banana trees grown in north Omaha’s Minnie Lusa neighborhood were harvested and delivered to the zoo on Thursday.
Most of the tree pieces will go to elephants, but orangutans, apes and gorillas will get some too.
Cynthia Ybarra, a Minnie Lusa resident, said she was surprised to learn banana trees could grow in Nebraska when she moved to the neighborhood a few years ago.
While banana trees thrive in the summer, they are not suited for Nebraska’s November weather, she said. Ybarra explained that she pulls out the root balls each winter to protect them.
“Sometimes it takes a long time,” she said. “I’m like, ‘They’re not going to come up this year,’ and they come up every single year and surprise us.”
Although no bananas grew this year, they did last year. But they didn’t ripen.
Dakota Wagner, the browse program supervisor at the Henry Doorly Zoo, said the banana tree is “very, very close to something that they would naturally be eating back home. So it’s really cool to give them that opportunity.”
Browse — tree and plant material — is one of several types of food the zoo provides.
Ybarra and another grower got to see elephants eat the tree they grew for the first time this year. They first began donating to the zoo last year.
“I hope we continue this community tradition. I think it’s pretty cool,” she said.
The Henry Doorly Zoo accepts donations of browse. They rarely get banana trees. Donations need to be fresh and free of pesticides, Wagner said.
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