In what it says is a unique experiment, Denmark's Copenhagen Zoo has added two new primates to its collection of baboons, orangutangs, chimps and lemurs - a local couple representing Homo Sapiens.
Living out their daily lives in a Perspex-walled mini-apartment between the baboons and a pair of ruffed lemurs, acrobat Henrik Lehmann and newspaper employee Malene Botoft say they hope to make visiting humans think about themselves and their origins."The most visited animals in the zoo, apart from the predators, are the apes, because we see in them something of ourselves. This puts that similarity into context," Lehmann told Reuters Wednesday over a beer in the couple's small but cozy air-conditioned enclosure.
"It's a mirror, you can look at yourself," he added.
Lehmann and Botoft moved in Sunday, doing much of the installation work themselves.
"We were near fainting from exhaustion and I could hardly get up, but I made a cup of coffee with warm milk," Botoft wrote in her diary, published in the Danish daily Berlingske Tidended, where she works as a secretary and motorcycle writer.
"I drank it on the sofa and ate a meatball with cheese while people looked at us. Henrik slept," she wrote.
They will remain on display until Sept. 15.
Botoft finds the neighbors, particularly the baboons, entertaining during the day but the lemurs next door are an annoyance at night.
"There are only two of them but they make a noise as if they were at least 30. Exactly once every hour they mark their territory with uninhibited screaming," she said.
On Wednesday the enclosure, complete with a standard zoo label giving details of Homo Sapiens' habitat, diet and other key statistics, was surrounded by enthusiastic children and slightly more reticent adults.
"I think it's cool," said 10-year-old Peter Hansen.
"It's certainly an interesting idea," his mother added.
Lehmann said that adults seem to feel more comfortable looking at "the real apes," where they are uninhibited by social conventions against staring, while children have no reservations about pressing their noses against the humans' Perspex walls.
He said he is frequently asked if the couple intend to publicly display the more intimate areas of human activity, but said that was not their intention as "it's not interesting."
The enclosure has a combined kitchen-living room, an adjoining bedroom and a small workshop where Lehmann works at his passion - restoring classic British motorcycles.
It also boasts a sofa, chairs, bookshelves and other typical features of the human habitat; fax, computer, television, stereo and telephone.
Zoo information official Peter Vestergaard said the Homo Sapiens display was partly for fun but, like Lehmann, he hoped it could also encourage people to confront their origins.