Chimp fascinated by stage magic

[nancylebov]

Things to check.....

Would the chimp try to see more stage magic? Can chimps learn to do stage magic? Would it work in sf to have a slightly mad scientist teach stage magic to chimps who can live in the wild so that stage magic becomes a part of chimp culture? Can this be used as a plot element?

Link thanks to Marginal Revolution.

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

One of the umpty-zillion story ideas I never got around to working out^* hinged on related questions... at the time web research was a lot tougher and I frankly couldn't afford the time to crawl libraries. And then I forgot about it until now.

-- Steve hates it when that happens.

^*Anthropologists training chimpanzees in ASL and rudimentary flint-knapping techniques find that their subjects have been "liberated" by animal rights extremists. The liberators (who don't know ASL) smuggle their live cargo to Africa and turn them loose... and then, twenty or so years later, chimp prides with lower paleolithic technology and their own dialect of sign language start fighting back against human encroachment on their territories. I didn't know how well chimps would be able to pass down ASL and tool-making to succeeding generations. (And I didn't know if chimps could think in the abstract enough to create legends or campfire stories.)

[andrewducker]

What I largely saw there was a chimp fascinated by _everything_. Look! A giant ear! Look, some pieces of paper! Look! a watermelon! Look a glass of orange juice! Look a penny!

There's a couple of bits where the chimp seems genuinely baffled, but mostly it just seems playful and inquisitive.

And if the chimp actually thought it's minder was in danger for the last trick I'd have expected the magician to be in pieces on the floor...