As we have discussed I love cute cuddly animal pictures as much as the next guy.  However, I try not to fall into the trap of posting them.  Today I’m going to come pretty close. Yesterday, I came across this picture by Sutanta Aditya of AP/Getty Images of a veterinary staff member of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program center examining and treating an orangutan on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, on April 16.

This big guy had been shot with an air-gun, and pellets were still lodged in his body when he was rescued by local forestry officials from a nearby plantation. The center has cared for over 280 rescued orangutans and has returned more than 200 animals to the wild.

What is so appealing about this image is its incongruity.  One expects a person to be lying on the examination table, not an orangutan.  And the expression on his face is, after all, so very human.  You start to wonder whether this is a scene from “Return to the Planet of the Apes.”  Is this really an orangutan or is it merely a person in an orangutan costume?  It is a great example of how dynamics can be created in a photograph by adding the unexpected or incongruous.  It is a classic example of the genre of incongruity developed by photographers like William Wegman. I suppose that there is a whole greeting card industry based on images of animals dressed as people.

The other question that this image of the orangutan raises is, why he is so calm.  Is it anesthesia?  Is it trust?  Why doesn’t he strike out and kill the woman examining him.  We are left, perhaps, with the famous quote from the movie classic “King Kong,” and certainly this photograph reminds us of that movie.

“And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.“