Years, ago, I had an orangutan at the San Diego Zoo ask through the glass to see what was in my purse. I pulled out chapstick and it ran its fingers across its lips, so I put the chapstick on. I had a package of gum and it pointed inside its mouth, so I chewed some gum. I pulled out a brush and it stroked its head, etc.. Really cool encounter.
Not to be one of those people who anthropomorphizes everything like it's a Disney movie, but I really do think we've only scratched the surface of understanding just how smart a lot of animals are.
Sounds like it knew exactly what those items were for, probably from watching other zoo-goers over the years.
There's a story about some sharks in the Caribbean who figured out that divers with certain pieces of gear (typically polespears) were looking for invasive lionfish. The divers of course sometimes fed the sharks some of the lionfish so they stuck around the dive groups.
Then the divers found that the sharks started to tap the polespears with their noses/heads and then swim to the reefs. When they looked at where the sharks went, it turned out that the sharks were VERY good at finding the lionfish and were signalling to the divers there was a lionfish in a specific place and then telling them to come and spear it, with the hope that the diver then gave them some of the fish.
Dolphins in Brazil have been famous for doing similar- they drive fish into shore where the fishermen wait along the shore in lines with long nets. They catch what swims into the nets trying to escape from the dolphins and then sort the fish for size/type. Of course the dolphins wait and anything that is too small or the wrong sort gets thrown back into the water and they help themselves.
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u/Popular-Web-3739 Mar 03 '25
Years, ago, I had an orangutan at the San Diego Zoo ask through the glass to see what was in my purse. I pulled out chapstick and it ran its fingers across its lips, so I put the chapstick on. I had a package of gum and it pointed inside its mouth, so I chewed some gum. I pulled out a brush and it stroked its head, etc.. Really cool encounter.