Have you ever tried 'salak' or snakefruit?

Snakefruit is native to Indonesia and takes its name from its hard skin scales that resemble a reptile's. That skin can hurt your fingers when you peel it, since it can get between nail and flesh when you try to separate it from the edible part.

I was often getting hurt like that in Lombok but still eating the fruit because I like it very much, until a little monkey approached me and looked at me with begging eyes. Well, it actually looked at my half a kilo bag of salak that I had just bought at the market and definitely seemed to recognise the content. I decided to spare one piece of fruit and tossed it to the monkey, who grabbed it in mid air, skillfully peeled it in less than a second and ate it. I was so surprised that the monkey had managed to do that so quickly, that I decided to spare another snakefruit to watch carefully how to do it.

And that is when I learned that you need to pinch the pointy part of the fruit with your index and thumb fingers in order to tear the skin and get half of the job done painlessly. Thank you monkey!