No, we’re not talking about your co-workers playing around with filters and virtual backgrounds; this is real monkey business, with chimpanzees in two Czech zoos keeping in touch through virtual video conference.
At both zoos, human visitors have been banned, and keepers were concerned that the chimps were missing the company of outsiders to their troop. Huge screens were set up at the enclosures in Prague’s Dvur Kralove safari park and another in Brno, 150 miles away.
“At the beginning, they approached the screen with defensive or threatening gestures, and there was interaction,” according to one keeper. Now, she says, “it has since moved into the mode of ‘I am in the movies.’ When they see some tense situations, it gets them off the couch, like us when we watch a live sports event.”
The call, which is also available to humans on the zoo’s website, will run through the end of the month, when it will be evaluated for future.
