Orangutans To Skype Between Zoos With iPads 149
MrSeb writes "For the last six months, orangutans — those great, hairy, orange apes that go 'ook' a lot — at Milwaukee Zoo have been playing games and watching videos on Apple's iPad, but now their keepers and the charity Orangutan Outreach want to go one step further and enable ape-to-ape video chat via Skype or FaceTime. 'The orangutans loved seeing videos of themselves — so there is a little vanity going on — and they like seeing videos of the orangutans who are in the other end of the enclosure,' Richard Zimmerman of Orangutan Outreach said. 'So if we incorporate cameras, they can watch each other.' And thus the idea of WiFi video chat between orangutans — and eventually between zoos — was born. It might seem like folly, but putting (ruggedized!) iPads into the hands of apes could really revolutionize our understanding of great ape behavior."
It's so simple an ape can use it (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, I just had to. Still, the fact that we have software that is simple enough for apes to use probably means that we crossed a usability threshold at some point in the past few years. Apes have similar psychology and brain structures to humans (this should make sense) so we seem to have discovered more "natural" computer interfaces.
Re:It's so simple an ape can use it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you might be going a little far here. If you watch the video, the apps they can actually use are things like "touch the screen and it changes color". And it's not like they can actually launch an app themselves, or pick a video and watch it. They're not about to open up a Skype phonebook and say "I want to call Ookokook", the trainer would has to do everything and then hold it up for them.
Re:As much as I hate all things Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I'm autistic myself, high functioning. But I'd say all homo sapiens are little more than apes- about 4% of our DNA is different. Part of that 4% is the power of verbal coherent speech, so yes, low functioning autistics are a bit closer to apes than the rest of humanity, in that neither apes nor low functioning autistics have verbal speech ability.
Much has been proven that apes are a LOT closer to us than some people would like to believe.