World's Weird News

Snap-happy Vienna orangutan opens Facebook gallery

VIENNA (Reuters Life!) – A 33-year-old furry photographer is winning fans on social networking website Facebook for pictures of her daily life as an orangutan in a Vienna zoo.

Orangutan Nonja’s photos, taken with a camera that dispenses raisins as she snaps, have won over 500 fans on Facebook since the zoo launched an online photo album on Tuesday.

Although the slightly blurry images of Nonja’s climbing rope, food and companion’s shaggy red-brown fur have won lots of admiring comments from fans, the photographer herself is not so interested.

“Of course the apes don’t care about the pictures, they are just an accidental side product,” zoo spokesman Gerhard Kasbauer told Reuters. “They just know that when they press the button, a raisin pops out.”

The Vienna Tiergarten set up the project to help keep Nonja and her three hairy ape friends entertained in their enclosure. The album is online at: here

(Reporting by Alexandra Zawadil, Writing by Sylvia Westall, editing by Paul Casciato)