Great Escape

on the outside. Food didn't see walls as a shelter. He saw them as a hindrance, something to be overcome. Fortunately, Food was resourceful. He had been locked up since the early nineteen sixties, back before security cameras and censors adorned every corner and corridor. He learned the guard's schedules. He knew when they patrolled his cell and when no one was in the vicinity. The first time Foo escaped, he got as far as the tree line before he was

captured and thrown back in. The guard in charge, Jerry Stones, was furious. He threatened to fire anyone taking shortcuts and not doing their job, security was of the utmost importance. The second time Food got out, he was captured on a nearby roof. Then one day one of the other guards noticed something odd. He watched the prisoner from a distance, taking note of his behavior. Foo produced something from his mouth. It was a piece of metal he jimmied into the

lock on his door. The guard didn't know how he'd gotten it. More importantly, he had no idea how Foo was able to pick the lock by himself. But like I said, Foo was resourceful. The authorities were at a loss for how they could keep losing track of him. They thought they were doing everything right, and technically they were. There was just one thing they hadn't counted on. Animal intelligence. You see. Foo's full name was Fu Manchu, and in nineteen sixty eight he wasn't a prisoner per se, but

he was certainly behind bars in the Omaha Zoo. He was an orangutang and did not enjoy staying trapped in his enclosure. Foo liked climbing down the exterior of an air vent into a dry moat that led to a furnace. He would use his strength to pry the furnace door open just enough so he could slip the wire, which he kept tucked between his bottom lip and his gums, into the crack. He'd slided upwards to unhook the latch

and then roam around the zoo. The head zookeeper, Jerry Stones, couldn't believe the ape had figured out a way to break out on his own, But almost twenty years later in San Diego, another male orangutan managed to do the same thing. This one named Ken Allen had become very good at scaling the walls of his closure. Zookeepers there eventually brought in a team of professional rock climbers to find ways to keep Ken from climbing his way to freedom,

or worse, teaching the other apes to do the same. However, to animal researchers at the time, these escapades weren't as interesting as what was going on in other zoos around the country. The famous gorilla Coco in California could communicate with American sign language. She knew over one thousand different signs and was able to convey emotions as well as ask for things from the researchers. And then there was Colo,

a female guerrilla at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. Colo couldn't sign, but she had other ways of getting what she wanted. One day, zookeeper Charlene Gendri learned Coco had taken possession of something her colleagues couldn't identify, and she was keeping it hidden. Thinking it might be something dangerous, they tried to bargain with her. They offered her peanuts to try and coax it out of her hand, but she wouldn't let go. She wanted more, Charlene and added

a slice of pineapple to the deal. That's when Colo showed her what she had been hiding, a key chain. But rather than give her the whole thing, Colo saw an opportunity to increase her earnings. She broke the key chain into pieces and only gave a new piece away when Charlene presented a new piece of pineapple. The object in Colo's hand hadn't been anything dangerous after all, but the experience had taught Charlene something important about the apes.

They knew how to negotiate, Foo Man, Chew, Ken Allen, Coco, and Colo had all learned how to perform different tasks once considered only teachable to humans, the ability to pick locks outwit zookeepers communicate via sign language and barter for stolen goods apparently came naturally to the curious creatures, and however scientifically inaccurate it might be for me to swap animal names in this particular story, the old adage couldn't

be more relevant given the circumstances. After all, monkey see monkey Do. Easter Island, just off the coast of Chile, was settled by the Rapa Nui people sometime around d It's perhaps most famous for its Moi statues, the giant carved stone heads that populate the island. It's people have been through a lot over the last eight hundred years, deforestation, European imperialism, the slave trade, and the introduction of foreign diseases, and yet there are still things we don't know. Every

culture has its own myths and mysteries. The giant statues, of course, are the largest and best known examples on the island, but there are also wood carvings, houses made of stone, and writings. The writings are perhaps the most fascinating remnants of the ancient Rapa Nui. Petroglyphs or rock carvings have been cataloged all over the island as territory markers.

And headstones. Many ancient petroglyphs have been translated over the years, giving researchers a better understanding of Rapa Nui history, but there's one type of script that has perplexed them for years. It's called Rongo Rongo, and word of its existence was

first spread outside the island by a French missionary. His name was Eugene A. Rod and he'd been a mechanic and a minor by trade, but later in life he developed a passion for missionary work, which took him to China in the mid eighteen hundreds, than to Chile, Tahiti, and finally Eastern Island in eighteen sixty four. It was during his first tour when he encountered Rongo Rongo. He would enter the homes of the native people and see

wooden tablets on display featuring unfamiliar glyphs. No one, not even the locals, knew how to read them. He didn't see anything of note in them. To him, everything about the island was strange and knew though. It wasn't until five years later when a colleague of his accidentally unveiled Rongo Rongo to the rest of the world. This colleague had presented one of the wooden tablets as a gift

to a bishop who had been working alongside him. It's differences from the main language of the island were immediately apparent. First of all, nearly every instance of it had been carved in wood, not stone. It's been said that wood was so valuable on the island only expert scribes ever used it in their writing. And Secondly, the bishop could find no one on the island who could read the tablet to him. One person knew its contents by memory,

but not what any of the symbols meant. These glyphs, which were comprised of shapes representing different plants, people, and animals, were arranged in a technique called reverse boustrepadon. To read the carving, the reader would have to start in the bottom left corner and read toward the right, then rotate the tablet degrees and continue to the next line. However, despite the obvious pictorial style of the text, Rongo Rongo

has remained nearly undecipherable for over a century. Part of one tablet has been translated into some kind of lunar calendar, though it can't be read or understood, and there are over fifteen thousand known glyphs within this system, and no contextual texts or artifacts to compare them against. This makes Rongo Rongo arguably an unknowable language. Some historians have claimed it really isn't a language at all, but rather a proto language, a way to convey information to anyone who

already knows what the symbols really mean. However, with so few texts remaining and no one with any knowledge of what any of them say, it's possible that a definitive Rongo Rongo translation may never come. A picture may be worth a thousand words, as they say, but a glyph carved into a wooden tablet could very well be priceless. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.