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A shady orangutan proved that apes are perhaps even closer to us than some might think after hilariously donning sunglasses that a tourist dropped in its zoo paddock.
A video of the primate’s impromptu modeling stint currently boasts over 40 million views — and 10 million comments — on TikTok.
“I accidentally dropped my sunglasses in the orangutan enclosure,” reads the caption to the viral clip, which was reportedly recorded by Lola Testu, known as @minorcrimes on TikTok, at a zoo in Indonesia.
The uproarious clip begins with an orangutan matriarch knuckle-walking toward the pair of discarded aviator frames while carrying a baby. The Southeast Asian ape then picks up the shades — and puts them in her mouth, prompting a female onlooker, presumably Testu, to proclaim, “Oh, no, don’t eat it!”
However, in a shocking turn of events, the mama monkey correctly places them over her eyes in a scene straight out of “Dunston Checks In.”
“Oh my God, she’s putting them on,” the awestruck gal gasps.
The clip then cuts to the orange mother in a different part of her paddock rocking the sunglasses a la David Caruso in “CSI: Miami” as bystanders guffaw in the background. At one point, the sunglass-sporting-simian even puts them on backward.
The quirky clip ends with the great ape chucking the shades back toward the camera as if returning them to the rightful owners.
Suffice it to say, TikTokers were flabbergasted by the shockingly human behavior.
“You have no idea how extraordinary this is,” wrote one impressed commenter of the “Planet of the Apes”-esque display.
“The fact he knew what to do with them kinda scares me,” said one armchair apocalypticist.
“I swear they can talk but just don’t want to pay taxes,” quipped one TikTok wit in a comment with almost 1 million likes.
Many TikTok animal lovers lamented the fact that such an intelligent creature was cooped up in a zoo.
Some wondered how the orangutan knew how to wear the shades, to which one comment section know-it-all replied, “y’all act like these animals don’t see people wearing sunglasses ALL DAY EVERYDAY.”
Indeed, perhaps this anthropomorphic act is not all that surprising given that orangutans share 96.4% of human genes, making them our closest living relatives after chimpanzees. In addition, these critically endangered animals have aped us in the past with one orangutan named Rocky becoming the first to imitate human speech in 2016.
Orangutans aren’t the only primates to exhibit surprisingly humanoid traits.
In one of the more hilarious primatological impersonations, a macaque broke into a liquor store in India in broad daylight and swilled a bottle of wine.
Meanwhile, this past June, TikTok mourned the loss of a capuchin monkey named George, who had amassed over 18 million followers by performing stunts ranging from opening presents to putting keys in the ignition of a miniature car.
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