petition to bring back saying “huzzah!” when something goes your way and “alas.” when it doesn’t
in hindsight, pitching something that would be deemed a fair bit strange by some standards to a site teeming with already incredibly strange people was a mistake. apologies tumblr users i’d forgotten where i was
This was a really cool enrichment project that allowed our orangutans to interact with the public in a way that was safe, engaging, and most importantly on the orangutans’ terms. There is a button on the wall that the orangs could press and would douse visitors with a quick spray of water, and was especially enticing on hot days!
So the handsome fella on the sign is one of the male orangutans named Bajik when he was a kid. Bajik was a very playful and mischievous little guy, and figured the button out pretty quickly. Visitors learned of this and would point to the button to try and get him to press it so they could get a shower, and Bajik would SIKE THEM OUT. He’d go up to the button like he was gonna press it and get visitors all excited BEFORE RUNNING THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION!
It really is incredible, getting to know these animals on such a personal level. Visiting certain animals is like visiting old friends, and really puts into perspective how similar we are with our close cousins. I’m happy to announce that Bajik is now a proud father, and has learned parental skills from his father, Boomer. Boomer was the first male orangutan ever documented to provide parental care to Bajik, playing with him and carrying him around as a baby/child. And it appears Bajik learned these behaviors, and is doing the same for his firstborn son, Fajar. I’ve known Bajik and his mate Leela since I was 13 years old giving talks at their enclosure to visitors. I’m very, very proud of him and Leela for being such wonderful parents.
Here’s the handsome man nowadays! (Photos courtesy of the Toledo Zoo)
Like today’s titans of industry, planters understood that their profits climbed when they extracted maximum effort out of each worker. So they paid close attention to inputs and outputs by developing precise systems of record-keeping. Meticulous bookkeepers and overseers were just as important to the productivity of a slave-labor camp as field hands. Plantation entrepreneurs developed spreadsheets, like Thomas Affleck’s “Plantation Record and Account Book,” which ran into eight editions circulated until the Civil War. Affleck’s book was a one-stop-shop accounting manual, complete with rows and columns that tracked per-worker productivity. This book “was really at the cutting edge of the informational technologies available to businesses during this period,” Rosenthal told me. “I have never found anything remotely as complex as Affleck’s book for free labor.” Enslavers used the book to determine end-of-the-year balances, tallying expenses and revenues and noting the causes of their biggest gains and losses. They quantified capital costs on their land, tools and enslaved workforces, applying Affleck’s recommended interest rate. Perhaps most remarkable, they also developed ways to calculate depreciation, a breakthrough in modern management procedures, by assessing the market value of enslaved workers over their life spans. Values generally peaked between the prime ages of 20 and 40 but were individually adjusted up or down based on sex, strength and temperament: people reduced to data points.
