Source: YouTube/America’s Funniest Home Videos
For one baboon, it was just another ordinary day in his enclosure at the zoo. The little guy is sitting quietly by the glass where spectators will take myriad photos and small children will press their grimy hands against the window. This monkey knows the routine. It’s obviously used to zoo life by now.
However, the baboon’s seemingly average day is turned upside down when a man in a red shirt and white cap approaches the primate to perform a card trick.
The man holds out a small piece of paper and at first the baboon is just like, “Yeah OK, whatever.”
But then, with a flick of a wrist, the paper is gone! Suddenly, the baboon’s eyes widen and it darts forward, mouth agape, staring at the magician. It even slams his little hand on the ground as if to say, “What? No, you did not just do that!”
The man makes the card reappear and the baboon is just as stunned again. It even looks like it tries to take the paper.
But is the baboon really onto the “magic” of the trick?
A primatologist told the Huffington Post that it definitely reacts to the trick itself and could be displaying a “low-level sign of heightened arousal or agitation,” but that it’s definitely not super aggressive toward the man.
Perhaps baboons are just as wowed by magic the same way humans are.