IF KING KONG is one of your role models, put down that banana and buy a
plane ticket to Atlanta. A new virtual-reality system at Zoo Atlanta gives
humans the chance to be gorillas. Visitors wear a virtual-reality headset that
transforms them into an adolescent member of a group of gorillas living in a
replica of the zoo鈥檚 gorilla habitat.
The adult male and female gorillas respond to the behaviour of the juvenile
human gorilla. 鈥淚f you get too close or too frisky the adult male won鈥檛 like
it,鈥� says Larry Hodges, a computer scientist at the Georgia Institute of
Technology, who helped to design the system. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 back off he might
start beating his chest.鈥� But if the adolescent is sufficiently meek, he may be
rewarded with a grooming session by the adult female.
Terry Maple, director of the zoo and an expert in gorilla behaviour, says
that the system allows visitors to do something that would be impossible in real
life. 鈥淚t enlarges the scope of the zoo. It allows you to experience something
that you couldn鈥檛 experience before. It鈥檚 an electronic field trip.鈥�
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