Reckon you've mastered the art of the perfect selfie? Well, not so fast, because this orangutan from Borneo can give even the most seasoned of trout-lipped pouters and filter fanatics a serious run for their money.
Credit: Ian Wood
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For decades now, wildlife photographer Ian Wood, who also runs annual Borneo orangutan fundraising tours, has built a solid career on snapping great apes in their natural habitat.
However, after setting up one of his hidden jungle cameras and watching the footage from afar, we'd not be surprised if he was fretting about being put out of a job.
"I had decided to hide a GoPro camera near to where orangutans often appear, hoping to get some close-up wide-angle images of them in the forest," Ian wrote in The Guardian.
"I figured that in the worse case, if an orangutan found my camera it would realise it wasn't food and discard it."
But Ian had underestimated the artistic prowess of one particular young orangutan, who was much less concerned with eating the camera, than he was with taking a few selfies.
Credit: Ian Wood
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At first, Ian was worried about the 3-year-old ape choking on the GoPro camera, as he watched him put it in his mouth. But his concern soon turned to amazement when the hairy creature turned the camera around and pressed the main button, inadvertently capturing hundreds on Instagram-worthy shots.
"I watched through my iPhone which I'd connected to the camera by setting up a wifi connection," Ian continued.
"After about 30 minutes he ran off with it up a tree and I thought that was the last I would see of it.
"Eventually he dropped it and I was able to recover my damaged - but still working - camera."
And it's a good job he did, because these photos are perfect.
Credit: Ian Wood
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Meanwhile, in other orangutan-related news, a touching video went viral in late November, showing a young lad interacting with one of the great apes at the zoo.
The little boy blew kisses through the glass of the enclosure, to which the ape responded by puckering his lips.
A Redditor who was familiar with the zoo in Texas commented to say that that the orangutan in the clip is named Kerajaan, but goes by the nickname KJ.
"One of his favorite things to do is give kisses and fist bumps through the window while he is on exhibit," the zoo wrote on Facebook.
KJ lives at the zoo with his mate, Mei, and their young son, Razak.
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Source: Guardian
Topics: Viral, World News, Animals