— Azy lumbered into a glass-enclosed studio, tossed a barrel aside and clambered onto the platformlike seat closest to a computer touch screen. With a glance at Rob Shumaker on the other side of the glass, he pointed to the computer as if to say, “Well, I’m ready. Let’s do it.”
Shumaker nodded and through his microphone said, “OK.” Azy’s screen lit up with several symbols. Azy’s task was to the match pictures appearing above the screen by pointing to the appropriate learned symbols on his screen. The task changed when numbers appeared — the order of numbers was important, so 1 had to be pointed to before 2.
Katy shyly followed Azy at the studio computer but worked with fewer symbols. After her turn, Knobi returned to do the ones she was going to try before an earlier computer glitch delayed her session. She wanted the space to be clean, so first she tossed waste paper left by her predecessors out to Shumaker.
Then Rocky sauntered in. He wanted the barrel back, so he placed it on the low platform, covered it with a strawlike material, then sat on it for his computer work.
The four computer operators interacting with Shumaker on a recent afternoon are residents of the Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center, which opened May 24 at the Indianapolis Zoo and bears the name of a benefactor.
Another four, Nicky, Lucy, Charly and Basan, also live there. Newly arrived at the center, Basan will join in the computer fun after acclimating to the center and fellow residents. The center is built to accommodate as many as 15.
Yes, those beings working at a computer in the studio were orangutans operating on a level seemingly more human than ape. They are part of a futuristic zoo addition designed to replicate — in function, not appearance — a habitat offering them the kinds of daily choices they would make in their native tropical rain forests of Sumatra and Borneo.
These orangutans came from private ownership in the entertainment industry or other zoos.
The interactive studio is on the second level of the center’s main building, where orangutans play in an atrium. Zoo visitors can find each day’s session schedule posted near the studio. And if you go, it’s OK to call them apes. They are great apes, a primate category that also includes gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees.
Just don’t call the computer session a show. After a recent session, Shumaker, the zoo’s vice president of conservation and life sciences and the center’s designer, told visitors that the orangutans are not like the zoo’s dolphins, which do perform at a show. He categorizes the sessions as research demonstrations of orangutans’ abilities and intelligence.
“The orangutans decide if they want to come,” he said, explaining that he doesn’t know which ones will show up until he sees them. “I love that,” he said. “The whole idea here is that orangutans have control of their lives. We’re not really dictating to them. This is totally voluntary. They have power to decide to come.”
Shumaker said the center’s design incorporated places where orangutans can go either to socialize, climb and swing or to be alone, something they need more than their more social chimpanzee cousins.
“We wanted to make it complex,” he said. “We want them to sort through their options in a way that makes sense to them and take advantage of their choices.”
Many zoos provide limited opportunities for the apes to choose.
“That’s not what we want at all,” Shumaker said. “That environment handicaps them.”
He quoted orangutan expert and author Terry Maple, an advisory board member on Florida’s Center for Great Apes: “Terry Maple said that asking an orangutan to live on the ground is like asking a St. Bernard to live in a tree.”
“The concept here is use. It’s very versatile, very complex,” Shumaker said. “Walls have handles everywhere. They swing on fire hoses and movable cables like they would use vines in the wild so they can move their bodies like in the wild.”
The computer sessions are run by Shumaker and Chris Martin, who recently came to the center for postdoctoral work. Shumaker uses symbols such as a box with a line and dot in it for apple. A happy ding, exclamation mark and his voice indicate a right answer. Wrong is a buzzer and a skinny dumbbell-weight type of shape.
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Martin, who worked with chimpanzees in Japan for his doctoral degree, does pattern matching and game strategy. He is starting out with matching colors but expects to add finger painting this summer and move to games such as rock-paper-scissors in late summer or early fall. Martin’s right answers elicit a chime similar to “Super Mario” video games. Wrong is a buzzer.
He is developing software to allow orangutans and humans to finger paint together on a screen canvas that moves back and forth.
“It will be an interactive touch panel with orangutans and humans on either side of the glass. It could be me or visitors or handpicked groups of kids or adults doing the tasks,” Martin said. “This is less research than enrichment fun for orangutans.”
On a recent day, orangutans interested in computer work lined up high on an atrium wall to climb to a bridge that crosses over to the computer studio.
“Orangutans like challenges every day,” Shumaker said. “We infuse the day for them using as many choices as possible. It’s what they do in the wild.”
Their habitat has become endangered, however, as have the orangutans. “We think if people come here, see them, their intelligence, they will be more concerned about them,” Shumaker said.
He encouraged visitors to stop at a kiosk near the exit to learn how to help reforest the apes’ native habitats. The kiosk also has fun postcard designs that visitors can send to themselves and others.
Watching orangutans try to match an item to its computer symbol fascinated youngsters visiting the new center. They reacted with muffled cheers when an orangutan got the right answer and groaned when it was wrong or the orangutan forgot to press “Send” to complete the task.
“A wrong answer is OK,” Shumaker told the children. “It’s part of learning. What matters is focus.”
What became obvious after watching the orangutans is that they are smart and have very different personalities. Azy, for example, is the center’s adult alpha male. Rocky is young, playful and adventurous.
Visitors are likely to see Rocky climbing inside the center’s east tower up to the outside perimeter cables to get a bird’s-eye view of the zoo and the humans wandering around it. Hopefully more apes eventually will be using the structure. Called the Myrta Pulliam Hutan Trail, the system is built to function like the trees and vines in the wild, though they don’t look like trees. Zoo visitors can take a cable car up to the area.
The center’s towers and cable system are impressive, but visitors approaching the center can be excused for thinking a Space Age vessel has landed in the zoo. A winged main building is topped by the Nina Mason Pulliam Beacon of Hope, which reaches skyward 150 feet. The orangutans can turn on its LED lights so the beacon can be seen at night and remind people that the reforestation of habitats, stripped by palm oil plantations, is necessary so orangutans don’t become extinct.
The beacon was CEO Mike Crowther’s idea. “He wanted it lit, so it could be seen at night in Indianapolis and in the air, so people will know our focus is on orangutans and conservation in the wild,” Shumaker said. “We are trying our best to make a change.”
The Indianapolis Zoo is at 1200 W. Washington St., Indianapolis. 317-630-2001, indianapoliszoo.com. For orangutan information, visit tinyurl.com/indyapes.