Okay, brace yourselves for a feeling of pure unadulterated joy: here is a video of Zola, a 14-year-old Western lowland gorilla, frolicking in a kiddie pool at Dallas Zoo earlier this week.
Zola is me when a choooon comes on and I’m in the shower. Or when you’re at the clurrb, a little sloshed, and the DJ plays your song and you spin around and around a few times, from low to high, arms flailing, and that song happens to be ‘Spinning Around’ by Kylie.
The video was taken by zookeeper Ashley Orr during an “enrichment session“.
The Zoo describes ‘enrichment’ as such:
“Enrichment helps enhance the environment and lives of animals, like Zola, by providing them with mental and physical stimulation to increase natural behaviours. Enrichment can take many forms, but for this spunky great ape, it means playing and spinning in his favourite blue pool while off habitat!“
So not only did we just get to see a gorilla dance not knowing that the entire world is watching, but we just learned something too. Neat.
Zola is of course already internet famous for her moves, first strutting her stuff almost exactly six years ago in a video taken at Calgary Zoo in Canada. The original is like seeing those people who only dance with their feet, arms rigidly at the sides, like Irish dancers, except what you’re watching is an extremely stoked gorilla.
