Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Walls are meant to be
Speaker 1: protective four walls in a roof for a part of
Speaker 1: a person's basic needs, along with food and clothing. Of course, however,
Speaker 1: walls can also be confining. The stone walls of a prison,
Speaker 1: for example, aren't seen as protective to the people inside,
Speaker 1: even if they are meant to protect those of us
Speaker 1: on the outside. Food didn't see walls as a shelter.
Speaker 1: He saw them as a hindrance, something to be overcome. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: Food was resourceful. He had been locked up since the
Speaker 1: early nineteen sixties, back before security cameras and censors adorned
Speaker 1: every corner and corridor. He learned the guard's schedules. He
Speaker 1: knew when they patrolled his cell and when no one
Speaker 1: was in the vicinity. The first time Foo escaped, he
Speaker 1: got as far as the tree line before he was
Speaker 1: captured and thrown back in. The guard in charge, Jerry Stones,
Speaker 1: was furious. He threatened to fire anyone taking shortcuts and
Speaker 1: not doing their job, security was of the utmost importance.
Speaker 1: The second time Food got out, he was captured on
Speaker 1: a nearby roof. Then one day one of the other
Speaker 1: guards noticed something odd. He watched the prisoner from a distance,
Speaker 1: taking note of his behavior. Foo produced something from his mouth.
Speaker 1: It was a piece of metal he jimmied into the
Speaker 1: lock on his door. The guard didn't know how he'd
Speaker 1: gotten it. More importantly, he had no idea how Foo
Speaker 1: was able to pick the lock by himself. But like
Speaker 1: I said, Foo was resourceful. The authorities were at a
Speaker 1: loss for how they could keep losing track of him.
Speaker 1: They thought they were doing everything right, and technically they were.
Speaker 1: There was just one thing they hadn't counted on. Animal intelligence.
Speaker 1: You see. Foo's full name was Fu Manchu, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight he wasn't a prisoner per se, but
Speaker 1: he was certainly behind bars in the Omaha Zoo. He
Speaker 1: was an orangutang and did not enjoy staying trapped in
Speaker 1: his enclosure. Foo liked climbing down the exterior of an
Speaker 1: air vent into a dry moat that led to a furnace.
Speaker 1: He would use his strength to pry the furnace door
Speaker 1: open just enough so he could slip the wire, which
Speaker 1: he kept tucked between his bottom lip and his gums,
Speaker 1: into the crack. He'd slided upwards to unhook the latch
Speaker 1: and then roam around the zoo. The head zookeeper, Jerry Stones,
Speaker 1: couldn't believe the ape had figured out a way to
Speaker 1: break out on his own, But almost twenty years later
Speaker 1: in San Diego, another male orangutan managed to do the
Speaker 1: same thing. This one named Ken Allen had become very
Speaker 1: good at scaling the walls of his closure. Zookeepers there
Speaker 1: eventually brought in a team of professional rock climbers to
Speaker 1: find ways to keep Ken from climbing his way to freedom,
Speaker 1: or worse, teaching the other apes to do the same. However,
Speaker 1: to animal researchers at the time, these escapades weren't as
Speaker 1: interesting as what was going on in other zoos around
Speaker 1: the country. The famous gorilla Coco in California could communicate
Speaker 1: with American sign language. She knew over one thousand different
Speaker 1: signs and was able to convey emotions as well as
Speaker 1: ask for things from the researchers. And then there was Colo,
Speaker 1: a female guerrilla at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. Colo
Speaker 1: couldn't sign, but she had other ways of getting what
Speaker 1: she wanted. One day, zookeeper Charlene Gendri learned Coco had
Speaker 1: taken possession of something her colleagues couldn't identify, and she
Speaker 1: was keeping it hidden. Thinking it might be something dangerous,
Speaker 1: they tried to bargain with her. They offered her peanuts
Speaker 1: to try and coax it out of her hand, but
Speaker 1: she wouldn't let go. She wanted more, Charlene and added
Speaker 1: a slice of pineapple to the deal. That's when Colo
Speaker 1: showed her what she had been hiding, a key chain.
Speaker 1: But rather than give her the whole thing, Colo saw
Speaker 1: an opportunity to increase her earnings. She broke the key
Speaker 1: chain into pieces and only gave a new piece away
Speaker 1: when Charlene presented a new piece of pineapple. The object
Speaker 1: in Colo's hand hadn't been anything dangerous after all, but
Speaker 1: the experience had taught Charlene something important about the apes.
Speaker 1: They knew how to negotiate, Foo Man, Chew, Ken Allen, Coco,
Speaker 1: and Colo had all learned how to perform different tasks
Speaker 1: once considered only teachable to humans, the ability to pick
Speaker 1: locks outwit zookeepers communicate via sign language and barter for
Speaker 1: stolen goods apparently came naturally to the curious creatures, and
Speaker 1: however scientifically inaccurate it might be for me to swap
Speaker 1: animal names in this particular story, the old adage couldn't
Speaker 1: be more relevant given the circumstances. After all, monkey see
Speaker 1: monkey Do. Easter Island, just off the coast of Chile,
Speaker 1: was settled by the Rapa Nui people sometime around d
Speaker 1: It's perhaps most famous for its Moi statues, the giant
Speaker 1: carved stone heads that populate the island. It's people have
Speaker 1: been through a lot over the last eight hundred years, deforestation,
Speaker 1: European imperialism, the slave trade, and the introduction of foreign diseases,
Speaker 1: and yet there are still things we don't know. Every
Speaker 1: culture has its own myths and mysteries. The giant statues,
Speaker 1: of course, are the largest and best known examples on
Speaker 1: the island, but there are also wood carvings, houses made
Speaker 1: of stone, and writings. The writings are perhaps the most
Speaker 1: fascinating remnants of the ancient Rapa Nui. Petroglyphs or rock
Speaker 1: carvings have been cataloged all over the island as territory markers.
Speaker 1: And headstones. Many ancient petroglyphs have been translated over the years,
Speaker 1: giving researchers a better understanding of Rapa Nui history, but
Speaker 1: there's one type of script that has perplexed them for years.
Speaker 1: It's called Rongo Rongo, and word of its existence was
Speaker 1: first spread outside the island by a French missionary. His
Speaker 1: name was Eugene A. Rod and he'd been a mechanic
Speaker 1: and a minor by trade, but later in life he
Speaker 1: developed a passion for missionary work, which took him to
Speaker 1: China in the mid eighteen hundreds, than to Chile, Tahiti,
Speaker 1: and finally Eastern Island in eighteen sixty four. It was
Speaker 1: during his first tour when he encountered Rongo Rongo. He
Speaker 1: would enter the homes of the native people and see
Speaker 1: wooden tablets on display featuring unfamiliar glyphs. No one, not
Speaker 1: even the locals, knew how to read them. He didn't
Speaker 1: see anything of note in them. To him, everything about
Speaker 1: the island was strange and knew though. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: five years later when a colleague of his accidentally unveiled
Speaker 1: Rongo Rongo to the rest of the world. This colleague
Speaker 1: had presented one of the wooden tablets as a gift
Speaker 1: to a bishop who had been working alongside him. It's
Speaker 1: differences from the main language of the island were immediately apparent.
Speaker 1: First of all, nearly every instance of it had been
Speaker 1: carved in wood, not stone. It's been said that wood
Speaker 1: was so valuable on the island only expert scribes ever
Speaker 1: used it in their writing. And Secondly, the bishop could
Speaker 1: find no one on the island who could read the
Speaker 1: tablet to him. One person knew its contents by memory,
Speaker 1: but not what any of the symbols meant. These glyphs,
Speaker 1: which were comprised of shapes representing different plants, people, and animals,
Speaker 1: were arranged in a technique called reverse boustrepadon. To read
Speaker 1: the carving, the reader would have to start in the
Speaker 1: bottom left corner and read toward the right, then rotate
Speaker 1: the tablet degrees and continue to the next line. However,
Speaker 1: despite the obvious pictorial style of the text, Rongo Rongo
Speaker 1: has remained nearly undecipherable for over a century. Part of
Speaker 1: one tablet has been translated into some kind of lunar calendar,
Speaker 1: though it can't be read or understood, and there are
Speaker 1: over fifteen thousand known glyphs within this system, and no
Speaker 1: contextual texts or artifacts to compare them against. This makes
Speaker 1: Rongo Rongo arguably an unknowable language. Some historians have claimed
Speaker 1: it really isn't a language at all, but rather a
Speaker 1: proto language, a way to convey information to anyone who
Speaker 1: already knows what the symbols really mean. However, with so
Speaker 1: few texts remaining and no one with any knowledge of
Speaker 1: what any of them say, it's possible that a definitive
Speaker 1: Rongo Rongo translation may never come. A picture may be
Speaker 1: worth a thousand words, as they say, but a glyph
Speaker 1: carved into a wooden tablet could very well be priceless.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.