Music

Peter Gabriel gives video equipment to monkeys

by Jeremy Mersereau

Has science gone too far? Some things man just wasn’t meant to know, such as: the ingredients of carnival hot dogs, whether or not calling your child “Saint” qualifies as abuse, and what will happen if we give monkeys access to videoconferencing equipment.

Peter Gabriel, a longtime advocate of monkey experimentation (and interesting headgear) is planning to conduct an experiment on the former at a primate rescue centre, Monkey World, in Dorset, England. Can anyone stop this flute-piping mad scientist?

As part of the Interspecies Internet Project, Gabriel is interested to see if chimpanzees will be able to recognize and communicate with each other through video software like Skype, over cameras set up throughout Monkey World. “I am absolutely certain the monkeys will use the video cameras in Monkey World to communicate with each other. I am also interested in how they would use the internet to communicate,” Gabriel told The Sunday Times.

The experiment is still in the very planning early stages, but the methodology used will presumably be more rigorous than watching the chimpanzees fool around with Google Hangouts (we already know apes are proficient with Vine) and saying “Damn, they’re just like us!” over and over. Fair warning though: this is probably the first step to the dystopian future world portrayed in that famous science fiction movie series… you know the one… it’s on the tip of my tongue… oh, yeah: MVP: Most Vertical Primate.