Behind The Scenes At The National Zoo

Reported November, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Here’s a trivia question for you. What covers 163 acres and is home to two thousand animals? Need another clue? Nearly a quarter of these animals are endangered. Two of the most popular residents are Panda's Mei Xiang and Tian Tian.

More than two million people check them out each year at the national zoo and few get to see what happens behind the scenes. Primatologist Marietta Dindo works at the Smithsonian National Zoo, behind the scenes, with orangutans. She’s trying to figure out how they think and how they learn.

“I'm very interested in the minds of animals and understanding the world from a different perspective than our own,” Marietta Dindo, Ph.D, told Ivanhoe.

Iris is an23-year-old orangutan with computer training experience. Researchers want her to learn to identify images on a computer screen, all on her own.

“What we want to do is make her a proficient list learner and she knows the name of this game is to put images in order, so that we can then later on look at how she learns new lists from us by observation or independently," Dr. Dindo said.

Three different images are put on a computer screen, when she taps each image in the correct order sequence; she is rewarded with a grape. If she does the task incorrectly, the screen goes blank and she does not receive a reward; she learns by trial and error.

“The images appear randomly on the screen, it always appears in a different location so that you won’t be able to associate it with a fixed action pattern. You have to think about and look at these specific images,” Dr. Dindo said.

Iris has done so well, she’s ready to graduate to the next level of training.

"Iris is trained on three images right now, we’re going to move her on to four because it becomes even more of a difficult task,” Dr. Dindo said.

The behind the scenes research helps scientists learn more about ape behavior, their problem solving skills, and how they think. Starting this fall, visitors can play tug of war with orangutans and a rope. The rope is controlled by hydraulics because of the enormous strength of orangutans.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Enica R. Thompson
Public Affairs Specialist, Smithsonian's National
Zoological Park
Washington, D.C. 20008
(202) 633-3083

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