Creature Gear — 6 Pieces of Technology We Should Give to Zoo Animals

Pandas and Blu-Ray Players

So, in order to convince pandas to make new pandas, zookeepers often show them, uh, “panda porn” to get them in the mood. No, seriously, they do. It still doesn’t work a lot of the time, because pandas are silly living teddy bears. It’s kind of hard to get hot and bothered when you’re looking at a panda bear, even if you’re another panda bear.

Maybe it’s just a problem of resolution though. I say get them a 50-inch HDTV and a Blu-ray player to watch their panda porn with. All the shiny new technology might give a lot of dude pandas a boner on its own.

Too cute to survive.

Hippos and Wii Fit

A lot of people say hippos are meant to be big. That’s just the way they were born and they’re beautiful as is. I don’t buy it. Hippos just need a healthy dose of reality — once they get on that balance board they’ll be appropriately shamed. Look for a new generation of sleek, Victoria Beckham-esque hippos at your zoo soon.

Sloths and Segways

People think sloths are lazy, but it’s not true — they have plans and aspirations, they’re just betrayed by their own bodies. Sloths are designed for tree climbing — they don’t do particularly well on land, and so they just sit up in the trees, depressed, thinking about what life could be if they had the ability to move around on land more freely.

Enter the Segway — suddenly sloths will really be living up to their potential. Just making their way around their cage wearing fedoras and getting s–t done.

As a bonus I’m pretty sure Kristen Bell would totally do the first person that teaches a sloth to ride a Segway.

She’ll probably cry all the way through it though.

Bonobos and Xbox 360s with Call of Duty

This one’s actually kind of serf serving — I just figure they’d raise the level of civility of your typical online Call of Duty session. I mean, there’d be a little more poop throwing, but probably a lot less homophobia.

What about you guys? What kind of tech do you think zoos should give their animals? Oh, and thanks for sticking it out to the end of this very, very silly article.

Orangutans with an iPad pic via Macleans

Panda pic via Shutterstock