Tinder for Orangutans: Dutch zoo to help female choose her 'Mr Right' on tablet!

Female orangutans look at videos of male orangutans at a German zoo, in a similar experiment. (Image courtesy: Animal Press/Barcroft Images)

New Delhi: Tinder has managed to acquire quite a status as one of the most downloaded dating apps in the technology world.

It's quite possible that most couples around the world found their 'soulmates' through Tinder – all they had to do was swipe right!

We have also heard various accounts of people – mostly funny and some downright hilarious – who tried to find their 'Mr/Miss Right' on the dating app.

Well, seems like humans are not the only ones resorting to Tinder to find love, orangutans are about to do the same!

A Dutch zoo, it seems, is going to be playing matchmaker to increase the breeding chances of a female orangutan by seeing if she will choose a preferred mate on a touchscreen before they are introduced.

This move is a part of a four-year experiment called 'Tinder for Orangutans'. The subject is Samboja, an 11-year-old female orangutan, who will be shown pictures of possible partners from an international great ape breeding programme.

Through this experiment, the Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn aims to gain greater insight into how female orangutans make their mating choices, Thomas Bionda, a behavioural biologist at the zoo, told Dutch broadcaster NOS, The Guardian reported.

Since there are possibilities of the male orangutan arriving from as far away as Singapore, the zoo is leaving no stone unurned to increase the chances of a successful encounter.

“Often, animals have to be taken back to the zoo they came from without mating,” Bionda said. “Things don’t always go well when a male and a female first meet.”

The research is part of a broader programme looking at the role of emotions in animal relationships, the biologist said. “Emotion is of huge evolutionary importance. If you don’t interpret an emotion correctly in the wild, it can be the end of you,” The Guardian said.

Tablet tests were earlier done on bonobos, who, along with chimpanzees, are the closest living relatives to humans, which showed that they demonstrated heightened interest in photos containing “positive stimuli”, such as other bonobos mating or grooming one another.

As per The Guardian, The scientists’ main problem has been building a touchscreen tough enough to withstand Samboja’s attentions, Van Berlo said.

One tablet, reinforced with a steel frame, was tested successfully for the first time two weeks ago on two older orangutans, she said, but did not survive long when Samboja – whose mother, Sandy, is affectionately known as Demolition Woman – got hold of it.

Once the scientists have a strong enough screen, Bionda told NOS, they would examine whether appearance alone is enough to create a spark of attraction between two animals.

“This is completely digital, of course,” he said. “Usually, smell plays an important role too. But with the orangutans, it will be what you see is what you get.”