A photo of a young woman and gorilla watching videos of baby gorillas at the Louisville Zoo in the US state recently made rounds on the Internet, garnering an extreme amount of comments. What you see in the picture is actually happening more and more in zoos around the world, raising the question: could this be dangerous for the animals?
This photo of Lindsey Costello and the gorilla Jelani went viral after being posted on Instagram. Image credit: Lindsey Costello
As with humans, it’s not only adult gorillas that show excessive attention towards smartphones – teenagers are equally interested, or even more so. Take Amare, for example, a 16-year-old 188-kilogram (415-pound) gorilla, who was reported developing an addiction apparently caused by waves of visitors approaching the gorillas’ glass enclosure at his home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, Illinois, to show him pictures and videos on their smartphones.
This seemingly harmless behavior can have a detrimental effect on the unsuspecting ape. As for Amare, he once got so absorbed by a zoo-goer’s mobile screen that it got him by surprise when one of the three other “bachelor” teenage gorillas living in his enclosure charged him. Here’s Amare, all absorbed:
Although this kind of aggressive interaction is normal with gorillas and no injury was inflicted this time, Amare’s distracted behavior could, according to zookeepers, result in his social standing fall within the group, eventually leading to “severe developmental consequences”.
“We are growing increasingly concerned that too much of his time is taken looking through people’s photos, we really prefer that he spend much more time with his troop mates learning to be a gorilla,” Stephen Ross, the director of the zoo’s Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Jelani, the other gorilla shown at the beginning of this article, reacts to pictures of other gorillas with a similar enthusiasm.
But back to Amari, the teenage gorilla. In his case, the staff members at the zoo eventually got a rope line in place to keep visitors and their mobile phones away from him. The zoo hopes that this physical buffer zone will cut down on time Amari spends in front of the screen.
So apparently, modern technology does not have a good effect on gorillas, as far as their ‘original’ instincts are concerned (that’s probably true of us humans too, though). Or does it, after all?
According to IFLScience, some zoos have used modern Internet technology and screen time for a wide variety of enrichment programs, offering stimulating and engaging activities for animals. These activities seem to keep them happy and healthy, especially in times when they may suffer from isolation - during lockdowns due to a pandemic, for example, when zoos and parks are closed.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, a Czech zoo (Safari Park Dvůr Králové), which was closed to the public at the time, decided to connect its chimpanzees with other captive individuals via a Zoom call. While some of the chimps didn’t really care to take part, others interacted very positively. In a similar program involving both Dvůr Králové and Brno Zoo, two big screens were installed in the chimp enclosure to create a common living room for the animals. Apparently, it was huge a success with the animals.
Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki had an even more interactive way to go about it – the white-faced saki monkeys there were given their own on-demand video player. It allowed them to choose what they wanted to watch and when, which appeared to reduce stress-related behaviors, such as excessive scratching, for example.
So, after all, we cannot conclude that all technology is bad for animals. Especially the ones we have deprived of their natural environments.
