BokitoKijker - Glasses for viewing gorillas and the like. by Alzibiff

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

This is a fun thing which I saw mentioned on a TV programme here in the UK called 'QI'. (Hosted by Stephen Fry). This was a repeat of an episode broadcast a few years ago which mentioned a rather alarming incident at the zoo in Rotterdam. You can use your favourite search engine to find precise details using terms such as 'Rotterdam zoo gorilla attack' but the story concerned a gorilla called Bokito who got rather fed up and annoyed at a lady who had been gazing at him for quite some time - perhaps trying to make a human-primate connection of some sort. The gorilla lept over the moat which was supposed to protect the public and attacked the unfortunate lady who survived but suffered multiple injuries.
It turned out that animals like gorillas don't like being stared at which led to an insurance company handing out the BokitoKijker - translates from Dutch as 'Bokito viewer' - as part of their advertising campaign to enable the wearer to look straight ahead but appear to be looking away to his/her left :-)
This thing is a 3D printed Bokito viewer, a little more hard wearing than the cardboard cut outs handed out in Rotterdam.
I have used the arms and hinge design from leoedlin's Customizable Word Glasses to produce this thing as well as a printed copy of the 'averted eyes' graphic, currently downloadable free of charge from the dutch site shown in the instructions.