More about: Peter Gabriel

‘Sledgehammer’ singer and former frontman of Genesis, Peter Gabriel, will take part in a new experiment which aims to teach chimpanzees to use videoconferencing technology. No, really.

Gabriel will work with the Monkey World rescue centre in Dorset, alongside a host of academics, as part of the Interspecies Internet project. Its objective is to test whether internet-enabled technologies could be expanded to sentient species like apes, dolphins and elephants.

As The Guardian reports, Gabriel said: “The idea is to extend a big video network that already exists in labs at [MIT] so that different species including our own have a chance to communicate. I am also interested in how they would use the internet to communicate.”

Plans for the project are still very much in the early days and a spokesperson for Monkey World has refused to comment further.

Dr Bridget Waller, director of the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Portsmouth, is unsure whether the experiment will play dividends. Talking to The Guardian, she explained that touchscreens had been used at a research facility, with macaque monkeys. “We know what some of their facial expressions and gestures mean. Whether videoconferencing will help that, I’m not entirely sure,” she said. “Primates are complex creatures and they need to be stimulated when we keep them in captivity.”

It is still unclear what part Peter Gabriel will play in the experiment, but for the artist who once sang ‘Shock the Monkey’, he is clearly compelled by our primate brothers.

More about: Peter Gabriel