A sense of fashion can be a primary instinct.
Earlier this week, an orangutan at a zoo in Indonesia put on a pair of round sunglasses after a visitor dropped them in an aviary, and it was all videotaped.
“So I don’t have sunglasses, but I have a very good story,” wrote social media user Lola Tetsu in a caption to a video uploaded to TikTok.
After putting the sunglasses in the orangutan’s enclosure, Tetsu decided that they were gone forever. When an orangutan approached him to investigate what she had missed, a voice in the clip exclaimed, “Oh no! Don’t eat it! ”.
But the orangutan was too smart for that. The monkey had seen people wearing this strange thing before and knew exactly what to do with her new toy.
@minorcrimes So I’m down a pair of sunglasses but up a very good story #monke
Carefully approaching the fallen object, the orangutan realized that he needed to pull out the handles of sunglasses and bring them to his face. Soon the sunglasses were attached to her nose, and she was already sitting in the sun with a carefree expression.
The orangutan even chased away the interested monkey, who wanted to try on new glasses. She enjoyed a few brief moments with her sunglasses before deciding that was enough and tossed her sunglasses back behind the fence.
Several TikTok commenters noted how humane the orangutan’s behavior was, saying he knew how to wear glasses after seeing zoo visitors wear them.
“I swear, they can talk, but they just don’t want to pay taxes,” wrote one TikTok commenter.
Orangutans are large monkeys that can mimic human behavior. According to the World Wildlife Fund, humans and orangutans have 96.4% of the total genes. In 2016, an orangutan named Rocky, imitating human language, was recorded at the Indianapolis Zoo. Researchers watched Rocky to learn more about how humans have developed the ability to control their voices and how large monkeys can do the same.