In August, zookeepers at Apenheul ape park in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, said they had arranged with counterparts at a park in Borneo to establish a live Internet video connection to provide companionship to their respective rare orangutans, treating the connection as sort of a visual dating site. An Apenheul spokeswoman suggested the apes might learn to push buttons to transfer food to each other, creating a mutual fondness that might lead (if transportation can be arranged) to mating. [Toronto Star, 8-15-06]

Heh.  It sounds not too unlike my last online dating experience, some time ago.

I wonder, though, if the orangutans will start miscommunicating, making online cliques, flaming and ranting and indulging in the d-word.  Then maybe Chinese government officials will have to create programs for apes who are additicted to this online interaction and therefore shun the contact of orangutans in the flesh.   Will they begin to lie about their height and weight?  Their prowess in the trees?  Or even create alternate ape personalities that they don when they speak to each other.

And maybe there’s one, who will become the Keyser Söze of their little world, about whom stories and myths will abound, leaving little room for the stone truth, that she’s really a very ordinary ape.  Will she have young apes writing to her for advice on everything from grooming to nettiquite?  Will she ever get tired, and get wistful for the quiet anonymity of her old habitat?  Will she contemplate these things?

I hope these zookeepers thought these things through.  Sure it’s all about love and connection now, but you just can’t always see where these roads lead.  And we call ourselves the civilised ones.

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