Orangutans at Miami Zoo Use iPads to Communicate

ORIGINAL: Wired

By Christina Bonnington

May 9, 2012

In this Feb. 21, 2012 photo, an orangutan works with an iPad at Jungle Island in Miami. Photo: J Pat Carter/AP

The iPad is by far the most adored tablet in the human world. The numbers speak for themselves. But what you may not know is that members of the animal kingdom dig the 9.7-inch tablet too — particularly a clan of six orangutans at the Miami Zoo.

At the Miami Zoo’s Jungle Island, handlers are interacting with orangutans using the iPad. The apes use the tablet to identify items they’re familiar with, and express their wants and needs. This is done primarily through an app designed for autistic children that displays an array of object images onscreen.

“We’ll ask them to identify ‘Where’s the coconut?’, and they’ll point it out,” Linda Jacobs, who oversees the Jungle Island program, told Wired. “We want to build from that and give them a choice in what they have for dinner — show them pictures of every vegetable we have available that day, and let them pick, giving them the opportunity to have choices.”

Orangutans are very intelligent, but lack voice boxes and vocal cords, which can make communication difficult. Up until now, zoo keepers have been using sign language to communicate with them. Using the iPad

• gives the orangutans another form of communication with humans, 
• provides them with mental stimulation, and 
• also gives those who don’t know sign language a chance to interact with humans.

The six orangutans at the Miami Zoo —

• 35-year-old Connie, 
• 33-year-old Sinbad, 
• 14-year-old Hannah, 
• 12-year-old Jake, and 
• 8-year-old twin girls Peanut and Pumpkin — 

were first introduced to the iPad last summer. Initially, the orangutans were just shown the iPad to desensitize them. Next the trainers asked them to touch the iPad without pulling it into the cage. “They catch on so quickly, it wasn’t long before we started showing them pictures and identifying different objects with them,” Jacobs said.

Sinbad and Connie aren’t so keen on the tablet. “I like to compare the two older ones to my parents — I keep trying to get them to use an iPad and they’re just not interested,” Jacobs said. The other orangutans, though, are very excited by the tablet. They take turns getting to use it, and all run to be the first one to handle it, Jacobs said.

“They really are so intelligent that I think there’s no limit to what they can learn,” Jacobs said. “It’s just about developing the technology to make it possible.”

Due to their curious nature and tough nails, the orangutans don’t actually get to hold the iPad (which is housed in an Otter Box case) in the cage themselves. Instead, a trainer holds it outside the cage. If left to their own devices, the primates would take it apart to see how it works, Jacobs said, so it wouldn’t last that long.

In the future, Jacobs hopes to set up a form of video conferencing so the apes can meet and interact with their counterparts at other zoos across the world (an organization called Orangutan Outreach is currently working on this with donated iPads at other U.S. zoos). She also hopes that this endeavor will bring more awareness to orangutans, which are greatly endangered in the wild because of deforestation