How do we know?  Our monkeys work there, of course.  But, seriously, that IS a huge sale.

“We all know the expression monkey see, monkey do. But should the saying really go monkey hear, monkey do? Recent studies are finding that the language abilities of some monkeys are more sophisticated than previously believed. Much more sophisticated.”

Sanctuary Chimpanzee. Jane Goodall does not handle wild chimpanzees.
Photo by Michael Neugebauer

Dr. Jane Goodall, naturalist, renowned primatologist, and United Nations Messenger of Peace, will make a special appearance at this year’s Ape Awareness Day at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Dr. Goodall, who is at the Zoo for the Jane Goodall Institute’s ChimpanZoo conference, will make a brief stop at Treetops Terrace at 12:35 to share experiences from her 40-year field study of chimpanzees in Tanzania, and answer questions from those in attendance. Dr. Goodall is best known for her groundbreaking work with wild chimpanzees in Tanzania, founding the Jane Goodall Institute, and establishing Roots & Shoots, a program that inspires youth of all ages to make a difference in the world by becoming involved in their communities.

This daylong festival will include educational displays, hands-on activities, animal talks, and art projects. There will be several stations throughout the Zoo with different activities:

Kids Crafts: Zoo visitors can create an origami gorilla
Roots and Shoots/Recycling: Visitors participate in a recycling game.
Nature in Balance: Visitors try to keep “balance in nature” with the use of a set of scales and elements of the ecosystem.
Strength Test: Visitors experience how strong apes are, by comparing tubs of water equal to what an orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee can lift.
Gorillas: gorilla biofacts, such as hand prints and a gorilla standee. Visitors participate in a grooming activity, where they pick items out of the fur on the gorilla standee.
Ape Self Medication: Display of plant items apes may use to self medicate. Berries that contain compounds active against parasites, clays to relieve digestive pains, leaves to relieve pain due to intestinal parasites, bark from trees to kill the malaria parasite.
Orangutans: orangutan biofacts including hand prints and an orangutan sitting in a circle of leaves on the table
Behavioral Enrichment: examples of enrichment devices used for the animals throughout the Zoo.
Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance (PASA) formed to coordinate eighteen primate sanctuaries in Africa: information booth.
Botany: Examples of some of the plant life sharing an ecosystem with apes.
Gibbons: gibbon biofacts including hand prints and a gibbon sitting in a circle of leaves on the table.
Keeper Talks at orangutans, chimpanzees, and gibbons/siamangs
All activities are free to GLAZA members and with paid Zoo admission.

Thousands of gorillas took the streets of London to support the the Gorilla Organization.  Our monkeys, of course, watched and cheered during the entire race and barely tossed any poo at the T.V.

Check out their sweet gorilla video.

Of course, monkeys have drawbacks in a depression study. “Diagnosing depression requires figuring out a patient’s feelings and thoughts — [this is] very hard with children and impossible with Cameron’s subjects. ‘Monkeys, it turns out, are terrible at questionnaires,’ Cameron said.”

Maybe if they just gave the monkeys some more time to answer the questions….