انتبرو و اورانگوتان های شگفت انگیز

Attenborough and the Amazing DIY Orangutans

You might think that this orang-utan is washing socks as some kind of circus trick for which she has been specially trained, but not so. She is doing this entirely on her own initiative. She has seen others doing it and she’s copying.

And that ability to imitate as well as to use tools is something which started among monkeys but has been brought to a much greater level among the apes. And those two talents were ultimately to lead to the transformation of the world.

Camp Leakey in Borneo is home to a special group of orangs who have been rescued from captivity and returned to the wild. Because they’ve lived partly in our world as well as theirs they can give us an insight into what we have in common. This old lady loves DIY. So does her son, who was born in the wild.

Even her infant is interested. It’s very striking when you sit as close to an orang-utan as this, to see how similar they are to human beings. We are both, of course, great apes. But look how human her hand is, the skill with which she picks things up, the way that she can grasp a tool like that. The way she uses her brain to imitate what she’s seen others doing. But the most important thing we share is our big brain. It’s that that has produced so many of the talents and abilities that we have in common.