The problem with reality TV is that reality inherently changes when it’s being filmed for TV. As soon as the subject is aware of its broader audience, every word and gesture is filtered through the context of that audience’s perception. Nature videos, on the other hand, have the benefit of their subjects never knowing they’re on TV–or what TV even is, for that matter. That great white shark didn’t eat that seal to create a viral gif. He did it because he had the munchies.
Paradoxically, it’s the lack of audience-awareness that makes these gorillas posing for selfies so fascinating.
Everybody knows that primate content peaked with Amy the Gorilla in Congo drinking a sky-martini, but these photos may be a close second. Park rangers at a gorilla orphanage in Virunga National Park, DR Congo, took these selfies with the gorillas in the background oozing unflappable ease and confidence. But the gorillas aren’t doing so in an attempt to become the first generation of Gorinfluencers on Instagram or whatever; they took them because gorillas innately know how to copy human behavior, and all humans do now is take selfies.
As BBC News reports, “Because they’ve grown up with the rangers who rescued them [in July 2007], [Virunga deputy director Innocent Mburanumwe] said, ‘they are imitating the humans’–and standing on two legs is their way of ‘learning to be human beings.'”
This is both true and not true. At one point, merely standing on two legs would indeed count as learning to be human beings. But if looking at the relaxed posture and playfully insouciant attitude these gorillas are serving, it’s clear they are aiming higher than mere humans; they’re learning to be social media stars.
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