Games with Great Apes

A toxic (at least to my productivity) trait I've developed in recent years is that, upon sitting down at a computer with nothing immediately pressing to do, I start to play minesweeper.  I've had an entire hour disappear as game after game flashes by.  Sometimes I'll quit in a huff of self-loathing, but inevitably return, sometimes the hiatus lasting months.  There's always some background curiosity as to what the draw is with this simple but frustrating game.  Is it the problem solving?  The sense of satisfaction that, even if nothing else is going right today, at least I beat this one game?   Surely there's nothing ingrained in human evolution or nature that would leave me wanted to click on this little minefield?

It's just fun, though.

I think of that sometimes when I see zoos that have computer game stations to challenge the cognition of their apes, especially orangutans.  Orangutans are among the most intelligent of non-human primates, sometimes overlooked because of their more solitary nature and, I suspect, because adult males look much less like us than adult male gorillas and chimps.  The orangutans really seem to enjoy the problem solving aspect of the games.  You know what orangutans in zoos don't seem to enjoy doing?

Climbing.

It was amazing how many of my orangutan photos I had to go through to find a picture of one that was actually off the ground.

Despite being the world's largest arboreal mammals, orangutans in zoos have proven hellishly difficult to get to, you know, climb.  They seem to prefer loafing around on the ground, comfortably swaddled with bedding.  Part of it may be an exhibit design flaw, but I'm not 100% sure - lots of zoos have tried more and more outlandish plans to encourage their apes to get off the ground and up into the trees.

This got me thinking - what if orangutans actually don't like to climb?  What if, in the wild, they do it simply because they have to, whether to find food or escape danger?  I've heard it said that, in the wild, the Bornean orangutan is more terrestrial than the Sumatran.  Sumatra has tigers, whereas Borneo does not.  Perhaps the absence of large, ground-dwelling predators allowed the Borneo orangutans to relax on the forest floor a bit more?

There's an interesting philosophical discussion to be had - should zoos build their enclosures around the natural behaviors of the animals in the wild, and try to replicate that?  Or should they base it on their actual experiences of keeping animals under human care, and focus on what the animals seem to actually want to do?  Cheetahs are difficult to coax into a run if they don't have to in order to catch prey.  In the absence of a need, beavers won't build dams or lodges.  And orangutans?  Something tells me that, if you were to find a way to set up several computer stations in the middle of an Indonesian rainforest, the orangutans would be happy to play video games all day.