This article in the the London Daily News cracked me up. Nothing like half-witted tourists."A troop of mischievous monkeys at London Zoo have had to be re-trained after showing too much interest in mobile phones.
The ring tones and bright lights proved just too attractive to the squirrel monkeys in their new no-barrier enclosure.
Visitors who held out their phones to video or take photographs attracted attention from the monkeys who attempted to take the object.
A short training programme was developed which put an end to their interest and the monkeys are once again roaming their environment in a more natural state of play.
Staff at the zoo used old mobile phones that some of the keepers donated and put sticky substances on them that squirrel monkeys don't like.
'They soon learned not to touch the phones. They are back to their usual pastimes of sleeping and foraging now," said Malcolm Fitzpatrick, curator of mammals at the Zoological Society of London. '"
If sleeping and foraging are indicators of simian behavior I have a couple of people I would like to recommend to the Zoological Society. One of my favorite comments to the story was posted by Bob from Nevada, MO:
Instead of re-training them, can we breed the phone-grabbing instinct into them, then deploy the monkeys on buses, subways, and in stores and theaters? Sounds like a good way to enforce cell phone etiquette to me.
I would like to second Bob's motion and amend it by adding that if that plan doesn't work, we send in the Trunk Monkeys to finish the job.
(full story at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=382180&in_page_id=1770)
2 comments:
Trunk monkeys are great. The only down side is that they tend to get carsick. So my car vaguely smells like hydrocloric acid and bananas.
Haha,
Thats really cute! He wants to talk to you Keith! Aww
Brooke
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