The New York Times, purveyors of excellent 360-degree video via their The Daily 360 section, inadvertently took the concept of “chimping” to a whole new level.
While filming at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Laikipia, Kenya, a curious chimp eyed journalist Sam Wolson’s 360-degree camera and then decided that she wanted to make the camera her own, reaching for it (successfully) with a stick. Another chimp comes over and the two examine the camera for a while before turning their attention to the aptly-named GorillaPod that the camera was mounted on. You can hear the journalist kindly ask the chimps partway through the video to not “eat the camera.”
The camera was returned unharmed to the journalist after 25 minutes in captivity. The chimps exchanged it for a Fanta.
No word yet on whether People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans to file a lawsuit on behalf of the chimpanzee claiming copyright to the video, as they did in the case of a monkey who grabbed a British photographer’s camera in Indonesia in 2011 and proceeded to take some wickedly funny selfies. In that case, the courts ruled that the monkey could not hold the copyright to the photo, though some entities — notably Wikipedia — seemed to side at least partially with PETA on the photo and list it as in the public domain.
[via The New York Times]
That was a bit of a letdown.
Where was the hilarity?
Worse yet, we now have to listen to 5 years of discussion over the monkey owning the image rights.