Korkeasaari Zoo

This guide to Korkeasaari Zoo in Helsinki opens with a question about a group of white-faced saki monkeys in 2020: is reaching out to touch a lit-up screen a human habit, or a monkey's too. Researcher Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas and her team built the monkeys a play tunnel wired with a camera and sensor, and let the animals themselves decide which footage to watch, from drifting fish to abstract art. You'll hear what the sakis chose, and how their behavior shifted once they had control over their own entertainment. The guide also traces the island's own history of the same instinct, back to a disorderly nineteenth-century lakeside pleasure park that became a zoo in 1889.