Gorilla addicted to smartphones is having his screen time cut

Teenagers glued to phones is nothing new – but it’s less common when the youth in question is a 30-stone, eastern lowland gorilla.

But that’s the case of Amare, a resident at Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, who’s grown so fond of staring at a phone screen that he didn’t notice when another gorilla charged him.

Not his own phone, of course. Amare’s reported addiction comes from zoo-goers showing him countless pictures and videos through the glass divider of his enclosure.

The problem has got bad enough that zoo staff have put up a rope to keep people back from the glass partition. If they see anyone attempting to show the gorilla a selfie or funny video, they will gently step in to dissuade them and explain the situation.

They suggest that Amare gets distracted by the bright displays and they are trying to cut down his screen time.

‘We are growing increasingly concerned that too much of his time is taken looking through people’s photos, we really prefer that he spend much more time with his troop mates learning to be a gorilla,’ Stephen Ross, the director of the zoo’s Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, told the Chicago-Sun Times.

Unfortunately, it seems that phone addiction can be a self-perpetuating problem. The more interest Amare shows in phones, the more eager people are to show him their snaps.

The 16-year-old primate lives with three other ‘bacheor’ teenage gorillas and they’re kept apart from a dominant adult male in another enclosure.

While Amare was fine after the surprise attack from one of his housemates, there is a cause for concern.

During development, male gorillas will often get aggressive with each other and play fight to establish dominance and heirarchy. If Amare gets too distracted by people and their gizmos, he will miss out on that interaction and will have a lower social standing in the group.

It could lead to bullying and, as the zoo puts it, ‘severe developmental consequences.’

Which is why the officials have had to step in to make sure that Amare’s screen time is gently but firmly cut back.

‘As parents, we think about we want to give our children choices, we want them to grow into adults, but every once in a while we have to sort of guide those choices for their good,’ Ross added.

‘And rather than maybe allowing them to sit inside and watch TV all day, maybe encourage them to go outside and interact with their friends. That’s something that I think all responsible parents think of and, in many ways, it’s similar to what we’re doing here.’

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