The Chimpcam Project

Nine years ago John Capener watched a documentary that left him thinking, “a chimp could have shot this!”…and that’s where The Chimpcam Project was born. If we gave chimpanzees a camcorder, what would they do with it? What, if anything, would they film?

Along with the rest of the team at Burning Gold Productions, he launched the idea by approaching potential collaborators and funding organizations. A perfect collaborative match was made with the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the University of Stirling, the BBC’s Natural History Unit, and Animal Planet.

Click here to read more about the beginnings of The Chimpcam Project from producer, John Capener.

Before giving the chimps a camcorder, we wanted to help teach them about the concept of video. This is where science came into play. To work towards this goal and to fulfill the requirements of a PhD project, we designed a series of studies that would teach the chimps about the properties of video and allow us to learn from them in the process. More details can be found on the research page.