👀? Ever had one of those wild “what if” thoughts while staring at the night sky?
Like:
“If I started with a 1-foot piece of string and kept doubling its length, how many times would I need to do that to stretch it all the way to the edge of the known universe?”
Well, the Orangutan Dad sometimes thinks about cosmic extremes so grab your tape measure, your curiosity, and your love for mind-blowing math—because we’re about to find out.
When most people think about language, they think about information transfer—sending facts from one brain to another through words, gestures, or signs. That’s how we’re taught to understand it: as a neutral, almost mechanical process of transmitting knowledge. But when I spent several years in the forests of Borneo teaching sign language to orangutans, I began to see communication differently. Not as the exchange of data, but as a subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—form of control.
And not me controlling them—often, it was the other way around.
