Photo courtesy of the National Zoo

Via the BBC, there’s something afoot in the orangutan exhibit at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Apes at the midwestern facility have been proud iPad owners since May, using the tablets to doodle and watch videos—just like everyone else who has one. (The nature documentaries of Sir David Attenborough are apparently a favorite.)

Now, researchers in Milwaukee are preparing their next Apple-powered experiment: Switching on the devices’ Wi-Fi receivers so their orangutans can engage in video conferences with apes at other zoos. No, really:

“Orangutans love looking at each other,” said [conservationist Richard] Zimmerman, adding that one of the apes, 31-year-old MJ, is a fan of David Attenborough programs.

“The orangutans loved seeing videos of themselves—so there is a little vanity going on—and they like seeing videos of the orangutans who are in the other end of the enclosure.

“So if we incorporate cameras, they can watch each other.”

Other centers, zoos and sanctuaries are said to want to get involved “immediately” and are just waiting for more devices to become available.

Personally, we feel that if the Milwaukee primates are going to communicate with their brethren at any other zoo, it should be with the orangutans at the National Zoo. C’mon, Congress, it’s totally worth a slight addition to the Smithsonian’s fiscal 2012 appropriations so we can outfit our national apes with iPads and Skype accounts.

Besides, the National Zoo has being exploring the creatures’ syntactic and cognitive abilities using computers since 1994, when it launched the Orangutan Language Project. If there was ever a moment for the federal government to chip in for some new consumer technology, this is surely it.

Apes and technology. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?