Tuesday, May 12, 2009

"Magna" Karta

This is Karta, an orangutan at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia. Karta dumbfounded zoo officials by figuring out how to short-circuit the electric fence around her enclosure, then piling debris into a makeshift ladder to successfully climb onto the top of the now-neutralized fence. You can read the MSNBC article on it here. . After 30 minutes atop the fence, Karta apparently determined further escape was impossible, so she climbed back into her enclosure. For now. One gets the feeling she hasn't given up. This proves two things. First, the great apes and chimpanzees are a heckuva lot smarter than what we give them credit for. And second, don't let the zoo spokespeople fool you - the animals hate being caged up and yearn for freedom.
Oh yeah, my gorilla friend, Kong, also asked me to post his message to the zoos on my blog. Happy to oblige, dude.

2 comments:

Amanda said...

I don't know how much research went into Life of Pi, but it talks a lot in the beginning about zoos and animal escapes, and how animals will oftentimes come back to their enclosures because they are familiar. I did hear about this story. That orangutan was pretty smart.

terry said...

the Life Of Pi bookcover looked interesting on your blog. but my TBR shelf is overwhelming right now, and i figure it's a book that i should be able to find at the local library. so i stayed out of the lottery.