Give a bunch of chimpanzees cameras and you're bound to get monkey business
How it will differ from typical American network fare is anyone's guess, but the BBC intends to air what is being billed as the world's first film footage shot entirely by chimpanzees.
You can get a taste of the results in the YouTube clip above, provide you're not put off by chimpanzee slobber.
From a BBC story posted this morning:
The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists. The film-making exercise is part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other.
Over 18 months, (a researcher) introduced video technology to a group of 11 chimpanzees living in a newly built enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo. ... Despite the fact that the chimps had never taken part in a research project before, they soon displayed an interest in film-making.
The documentary, if we want to call label it so, will air on British television Wednesday night. The researchers responsible for the project are careful not to stretch any claims as what they and their primate partners have achieved, witness this line from the bottom of the story.
The apes are unlikely to have actively tried to film any particular subject, or understand that by carrying Chimpcam around, they were making a film.
Again, demonstrating an uncanny similarity to network television producers.
Chimp technology has been in the news regularly as of late, as in this report about them using tools to chop their food and this one contending that they use spears to hunt.
Can't be long before we have chimp-phone.
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