The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

The Express November 4, 2000

SAY CHEESE FOR THE CHIMP

BY JOHN INGHAM

IT may not be the best wildlife picture you'll ever see, but it could be one
of the most remarkable. Because the snap of a chimp playing on the grass was
taken by an exciting new photographer called Stephan...who happens to be
another chimp.

Stephan worked out how to operate the camera after just two days of watching
wildlife photographer Andy Rouse at work.

It happened when Andy was visiting the Chimfunshi chimp orphanage in Zambia,
where two-year-old Stephan was taken after being found in a piece of baggage
on a luggage carousel at Moscow Airport.

"I was carrying Stephan around and he watched me loading the film, focussing
the camera and taking pictures," said Hampshire-based Andy.

"But after a couple of days he gently took the camera, held one hand round
the zoom and tried to focus it, peered through the viewfinder, closed one
eye and then pressed the button. He just copied everything I did. It was
quite incredible." Andy, 35, who was in Zambia making a new documentary
series for Channel 5, believes that Stephan's talent for photography is yet
more evidence of the remarkable intelligence of apes which he has witnessed
first hand.

While studying orang utans at a rehabilitation centre in Borneo he claims
one female called Christine treated him for a cut on his arm by pressing the
two edges of the wound together. The Daily Express recently told of another
orang utan that learned sign language.

"The more time I spend with chimps and orang utans, the more I am convinced
they have an intelligence we just do not understand," said Andy.