Ha, so true.

For a number of years my job was to develop the interpretive program for a zoo and aquarium. This included sound-scapes, audiovisuals and interactive touch screens, but the bulk of the work was on-site signage. Now and then, when the budget allowed, I'd investigate new materials or styles for displaying the information. On more than one occasion I'd be visiting a signage manufacturer and the owner of the company would look surprised, on showing me some new material or mounting technique, at seeing me walk up to the sign and start pulling it from various angles, trying to find the weaknesses. Then I'd tell them that we were getting up to 1.25 million visitors a year, so to make it as safe as possible I would try to imagine 1.25 million chimpanzees running riot through the place and would view everything in that light. "If a chimpanzee got ahold of this, how could it break it/hurt itself/hurt others?" Despite these precautions, we'd still have things destroyed or go missing. There was a series of fish images, mounted on thick, die-cut acrylic and around 600mm in length, leading down one hallway and often when the aquarium hosted an evening function involving alcohol, one would go missing. The acrylic mounts were screwed into the wall, so the absence of the fish was highlighted by the giant holes in the wall and missing paint. It happened frequently enough that I had a pile of spares in my office but eventually ran out.

I've always wanted to get a t-shirt with the English translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's famous quote: Hell is other people. edit: maybe I should have paraphrased it as 'heck is other people' for the forum, but it loses its punch!

Back to the chimps - years ago, when I was working at another zoo that had a large troop (25+ adults at the time, plus juveniles and infants), the largest captive colony in the world at the time, I can recall that the system of buttons used to open the gate to let the chimps out into the main enclosure was akin to the set-up one would see in a James Bond style movie for releasing a nuclear weapon. Two buttons had to be pressed at the same time, by right and left thumbs, placed far enough apart and in such a position that there was no possibility of accidentally leaning on them both at the same time. The reason for this was the keepers had to do the rounds of the outdoor enclosure every morning before the chimps were let out, making sure it was cleaned up of any unwanted debris, and the last thing one would want is having the chimps being let out of their night quarters while a keeper was still out there. None of the big cats, bears or any other animal had similar precautionary equipment, at least not to the same standard.

I was one of the keepers that would be doing those daily rounds and we had to be extremely careful not to leave any equipment behind and to double-check all locks, slides and doors. If anything was left behind, the chimps would find it in under five minutes, which is impressive considering that the enclosure was roughly the length of a football pitch and half as wide. If one were to leave a rake behind in a reptile enclosure, no matter how dangerous the reptile, the reptile would smell it briefly and then slither or crawl over it on its way to something more interesting. A tiger would smell it, then perhaps lick the salt off the handle before ignoring it. A chimpanzee would be weighing it in its hands within a minute, trying it out as a weapon on the heads of other chimps within five and attempting using it as a means of escape within the hour, by smashing glass or trying to pry open a gate.