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At my recent reading at Warwick's bookstore, I was asked why monkeys peel bananas "upside-down." My flippant answer was that I don't answer "monkey questions," but the truth is that I just didn't know. However, Slate, the online magazine that usually writes about important things, answered the question in 2002. "Monkeys are the real experts" in peeling bananas, writes Steven E. Landsberg during a discussion of whether bananas are better eaten - by humans - from the bottom up. (I vote against. He's non-committal; Landsberg also claims to know a guy who "scoops out the seeds" before eating a banana. Since bananas are seedless, this is a miracle, and whoever this fellow is, he needs to talk to banana breeders immediately.)

Some other general monkey/banana questions:
Q: Do monkeys eat bananas?
A: Yes.
Q: Do they peel the bananas prior to eating.
A: Yes - see above.
Q: Why do monkeys eat bananas?
A: Because they're delicious and available - same reason we do.
Q: Do gorillas in pet shops eat bananas?
A: See first picture.
Q: Do they get them from banana vending machines?
A: See second picture.

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If you've bought my book, then you know that the subject - saving the banana from a disease that currently threatens it - has, as its background, the notion of monoculture: relying on a single crop, rather than diverse ones, leaving that crop open to all-in-one-blow disasters.

One way to expand bananas beyond the modern monoculture would be to recognize that the fruit is usable for other products. One of the most intriguing of these is paper. The banana "tree" isn't a tree at all - it is a giant herb. That means a lot of things (for example, a banana plant has no bark), but for the sake of making paper, the big advantage is this: a banana plant grows like crazy. A productive plantation can see tiny stems reach as high as twenty feet in a single year. Each "tree" produced one bunch - about 150 individual bananas - of fruit per year; it then gives "birth" to another tree. The process can continue virtually forever. The big question has been what to do with those giant trees, which quickly fall over one they've fruited, and usually are discarded after they've been.

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There was recently some debate on a blog over whether the loss of the endangered Cavendish might not be such a big problem; a poster from Brazil pointed out that there are many unique bananas available in that country.

True enough, though all have problems that most likely make them poor candidates for global Cavendish replacement. Nevertheless, if you get to Brazil, you should try them. Here - again, inspired by the Brazilian blog poster - are three of the "Fabulous Five."

NANICA: This is a banana that stays a bit green, even when ripe. But that doesn't mean it isn't a good-tasting banana. The Brazilian Fruit Web site describes it as "sweet, tender and pleasantly aromatic."

PRATA: The Prata is a less-sweet banana that grows very well and resists lots of diseases. It is a bit sour, which makes it a less-than-great Corn Flake candidate - but a great potential superstar in a market that might diversify to include varietal bananas (just as we've seen the number of apple types available in stores explode from the days when we simply got red delicious and granny smith fruit.)
Here's a recipe for the Prata banana pastry pictured to the left from the "Taste of Brazil" Web site.

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The Bananeros - or "Banana Men" - were the gringos who tamed the Central American jungle and established the banana industry that we know today. They were railroad builders and cowboys, botanists and explorers. In my book, I explain the more-than-problematic history of the bananero culture, and how it led to a century of misery and bloodshed. Here's a first-hand account by one of the few surviving bananeros I met during a visit to Honduras...

THE NIGHT AFTER I VISITED FHIA, THE EXPERIMENTAL BANANA FARM IN HONDURAS, Juan Fernando Aguilar and his wife picked me up in their battered pickup truck; we drove past a few roadside markets – huge bunches of plantain hung, old style, in open-front, tin and plywood shacks – to meet one of the last “United Fruit” men living in Honduras; "George" (I've changed his name) was burly and cheerful, and I instantly recognized a New York accent, surprising him, because he hadn’t been to the city in 50 years. We sat on the patio of tiny restaurant outside of San Pedro Sula, the city closest to Chiquita’s old La Lima compound. We ate fried fish and salad with shredded cabbage and tomatoes, washed down with bottles of the local Salva Vida – “Lifesaver” – beer. I found myself alternately charmed and horrified as he described his four decades working for the big banana company. The tale wasn’t terribly heavy with political awareness. It felt more like I was listening to a nostalgic boy, spinning tales of the Wild West.

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Dan Koeppel is our guest blogger during the week of January 21st. If you have any questions for Dan Koeppel, add a comment to any of his posts. Here is some brief information about Banana : The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World:

To most people, a banana is a banana: a simple yellow fruit. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In others parts of the world, bananas are what keep millions of people alive. But for all its ubiquity, the banana is surprisingly mysterious; nobody knows how bananas evolved or exactly where they originated. Rich cultural lore surrounds the fruit: In ancient translations of the Bible, the “apple” consumed by Eve is actually a banana (it makes sense, doesn’t it?). Entire Central American nations have been said to rise and fall over the banana.

But the biggest mystery about the banana today is whether it will survive. A seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system, every banana is a genetic duplicate of the next, and therefore susceptible to the same blights. Today’s yellow banana, the Cavendish, is increasingly threatened by such a blight—and there’s no cure in sight.