Don't believe the myth that monkeys eat bananas

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I'm not sure where the myth that monkeys eat bananas started — I personally suspect Curious George — but it's time for it to stop.

Wild monkeys don't eat them.

"The entire wild monkey-banana connection in fact is total fabrication," Katharine Milton, who has studied the diets of primates for decades, told Tech Insider. "The edible banana is a cultivated domesticated plant and fruit. Wild monkeys never encounter bananas at all ever unless they are around human habitation where bananas are or have been planted."

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Monkeys do eat fruits, but they wouldn't encounter bananas like we could get at the grocery store in the forest. They also eat leaves, flowers, nuts, and insects in the wild.

A zoo in England even decided to stop feeding its monkeys bananas, because they're too sugary.

"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," Paignton Zoo's head of conservation and advocacy Amy Plowman said in a press release.

Monkeys do enjoy bananas. A study from 1936 even offered monkeys fruits, vegetables, nuts, and bread to see what they would choose to eat more of. Bananas ranked right behind grapes; nuts and bread were last.

"Of course monkeys and apes are not stupid and relish eating them once they are exposed to them," Milton said.

But they don't get bananas in the wild.