Pics or it didn’t happen!

Image by Rohan Kar, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons I was mulling around the Lincoln Park Zoo today with a friend when a man stepped on me. He was filming a Siberian tiger with a high-end digital video camera, which he held on an expensive mounting. He was fidgeting with all of the camera's features, backing up to get the perfect shot, and he stepped all over my feet. The foot-stomping didn't bother me so much as the man's intent focus on something other than his present surroundings. A beautiful creature stood before him, but his attention was directed at the camera and the filming of the tiger more than it was the tiger itself. Not much later, something similar occurred in the Tropical Birds House. As I was watching the bleeding-heart pigeons, a man, family in tow, came around the corner with a massive video camera. He also had it placed on an expensive mount. Obliviously, he nudged forward until his lens nearly leaned on the display's glass. He fiddled and fidgeted. He zoomed on the critters for a moment, and left. "Do you think he'll ever watch that footage?" my friend asked. "No," I guessed. Without much thought I noted, "It isn't about the footage. He probably just bought that camera, and is filming because he wants to play with it." "So the actual footage is useless," he observed in return. I intuited that the man's camera was a new purchase because I've done the exact same thing with a fresh 'toy'.

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What if there weren’t any other living great apes?

During my recent visit to the St. Louis Zoo, I wondered how it would have been had humans been the only species of great ape still alive on the planet. I suspect that there would have been quite a few preachers out there suggesting that the animals represented by the fossils of other species of great apes were not at all similar to humans. I can imagine them preaching with great confidence that there wasn't any credible evidence that any other living animal was ever remotely similar to humans in physical appearance or facial expressions, regardless of the fossils. Image by Erich Vieth They would call it laughable to suggest that any other species of great ape was a tool user, or that any other species of great ape exhibited emotions akin to those displayed by humans. And they would have argued without any doubt that it was silly to suggest that communities of the other great apes would have ever exhibited such things as reconciliation, empathy and proto-morality.

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Orangutan trying on a t-shirt

While visiting the St. Louis Zoo today I photographed a young orangutan trying on a t-shirt. It was a delightful display, though not unexpected, given the long-documented tool-use of orangs:

Many wild orangutans have developed an amazing ability to use tools to help them exploit what food they can find. They’ve been observed using probes like twigs to extract insects and honey from tree orang-1trunks (held in their hands or their teeth), as well as blunt tools to scrape seeds from spiny fruit cases. In addition to food-gathering tools, wild orangutans have been observed making tools to scratch themselves, fashioning leafy branches into “umbrellas” to shelter themselves from sun and rain, and using branches as swatters to repel bees or wasps that are attacking. Many have also been seen using “leaf gloves” to handle prickly fruits or branches, or creating “seat cushions” to sit comfortably in thorny trees. Tool use hasn’t been observed in all orangutan populations, and it shows great variations even when itorang-2 exists. This suggests to scientists that tool use is the result of innovation and learning that’s passed on from one generation to the next – one of the hallmarks of culture. orang-3 [More photos . . . ]

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Langurs fighting and then reconciling

Today, my daughters and I had the opportunity to observe two male langurs fighting and then reconciling at the St. Louis Zoo today. First of all, here's the fight (this is the tale end of a rough play session that turned noticeably unpleasant--the entire episode lasted about 3 minutes): [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfilzJkHtBo[/youtube]…

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