Earlier this month at the Dutch Rotterdam Zoo, an eleven year old male gorilla named Bokito escaped and ran rampant through the Zoo’s food court, injuring a woman when he bit and dragged her some distance. Now, health insurance company FBTO is distributing eye-contact disguising glasses that allow zoo visitors to stare all they like, a behavior that is threatening to most of the great apes.

A boon to the shy, the voyeuristic, and anyone who wants to look pensive or, frankly, a little weird, the glasses may also be useful to anyone who goes to zoos with sketching in mind.

From the blog of Dinotopia creator James Gurney:

If you want to draw portraits of great apes, you have to approach them in the proper way. You can’t just march up to a great ape enclosure and start staring at them, or they’ll get all shy and disgusted and turn their back on you, because staring is a threat to them… I approached the glass with a submissive posture, looking down at the ground and backing up with my hand out. The gorilla loved it. He had never seen a human act like a polite ape before. He came right up to the glass and posed for me while I did this half-hour portrait from just two feet away. It was like sketching someone on a subway. I tried to just glance at him discreetly out of the corner of my eye.

Hooray for unintended uses! To print and assemble your own ridiculous eye-wear, look no further than this PDF file.

(via Geekologie.)

Correction: Bokito actually broke out in 2007, not “earlier this month.” Whoops. Better take these glasses off so you can see that we’re ashamed.

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