Monkey Business! Canadian Zoos are Using Apps to Teach Apes

By: Kuljit Grewal  |   September 15th, 2012   |   Apple, Business, iOS, Living, News, O Canada, Tablets

Of all the incredible uses and purposes mobile apps serve, the following is an amazing tale of how truly wide ranging apps’ audiences can be. Zookeepers across Canada and the U.S. are discovering that mobile apps can be used to train, educate and stimulate apes that call their zoos home.

 

Mobile apps are being used as part of a large program called Apps for Apes being conducted at 12 zoos across both of the aforementioned countries. Through the use of iPads, Orangutans, some of the largest and most human-like apes in the world, are having their usual enrichment time enhanced in ways we have become quite familiar with thanks to apps and tablets.

 

As part of the program, the orangutans are given 15 to 30 minutes each with tablets, each using various apps depending largely on their attention span. Orangutans are very intelligent animals, possessing learning skills and intelligence in line with young human children. This intellect level allows them to enjoy various short YouTube videos as well as stimulating learning and teaching apps such as Doodle Buddy, Montessori Counting Board and Activity Memo Pocket. Each of these games helps the apes in various ways including memory, communication and hand-eye coordination.

 

Incredibly, the orangutans have taken to the tablets extremely well with the excitement and engagement visible in their faces. One such ape, who doesn’t even have arms uses her feet to navigate the tablets.

 

Part of the program’s goal is to raise awareness about endangered apes including orangutans which are native to the Malaysian and Indonesian island of Borneo. “We’re hoping that in that moment we can make a breakthrough with (zoo visitors] and say, ‘Listen, these are beautiful animals that are obviously curious and intelligent and not too far from us and this is what they’re dealing with in the wild,'” said Richard Zimmerman, founding director of Orangutan Outreach, the non-profit that runs the program.

 

 

SOURCE: Yahoo! Canada News

PHOTO: Dawn.com