These Orangutans Play with iPads

The orangutans also seem particularly enchanted with videos.

“We’ll show the orangutans videos of themselves, videos of wild orangutans, and other animals that reside at the zoo,” Engel said. “This has been very successful and really seems to hold their interest. In fact I think orangutan MJ has a crush on David Attenborough. Whenever he comes on to narrate a scene, her eyes light up and she just stares.”

The notion of enrichment at zoos is incredibly important, especially with orangutans which are highly intelligent creatures that require mental stimulation to keep from growing bored or depressed, Zimmerman said.

“Orangutans are very tactile and their natural curiosity is perfect for a device like an iPad,” he said. “They are open to all types of enrichment and we think that the touchscreen ‘games’ will be really good for them— especially during the winter months in northern climates when they spend long periods of time indoors. Orangutans love painting with their fingers as well as brushes, and they seem to take quickly to using their fingers to paint on the touchscreen. We have a lot of different ideas we want to try with them and a lot of interest in the zoo community around the country.”

Zimmerman hopes to extend the iPad program to Zoo Atlanta next, where they already have touchscreens built into an “enrichment tree” in the orangutan enclosure. Keepers there are ready to kick off the program, he said. Zoos in Toronto, Phoenix, Honolulu, Memphis and Florida are also on board with the idea.

“As long as the orangutans are the decision-makers, the enrichment can be great for them,” Zimmerman said. “If the iPad games can help alleviate any boredom they might otherwise feel, we are all for it! And if zoo visitors can see this in practice and then go home with a better appreciation for the orangutans as sentient, intelligent beings who need to be protected in the wild, then everybody wins!”

Once the program is more established, and once the have a solution for protecting iPads from the incredible strength of an orangutan, Zimmerman hopes to kick off a second phase of the program.

“One of our goals is to be able to have the orangutans interact and communicate amongst themselves… essentially being able to go online and see who else is online… and contacting them to be able to ‘play’,” he said. “We’ve been calling it ‘Primate Playdate’.”

And the hope isn’t just that orangutans will go online to play video games with each other, from zoo to zoo, Zimmerman thinks it’s possible that zoo visitors could download the same apps and play with and against the primates with their own iPhones and iPads.

“Play is a huge component of this type of enrichment and I’ve found that a simple app like the camera app on the iPad is wonderful,” Engel said. “The awesome thing is that when I arrive at the orangutan area, Mj and Mahal come over to see me and they seem to look forward to our enrichment sessions. The super amazing thing about the whole experience is that they don’t get any reward for this – no food or treats, they just get to play. They chose to greet me and let me hang out with them. That is the best thing about it. They get to decide something. I’m just along for the ride.”

Be sure to click through the gallery for more images and video of the orangutans playing with their iPads for the first time. Don’t forget to click on the bottom right expand button to see them full size.