A GROUP of health centre staff learned about the similarities in behaviour of humans and apes during a team-building workshop at Chester Zoo.
Doctors, nurses and patient services staff from Hope Farm Medical Centre in Ellesmere Port will use the knowledge gained from their trip to the zoo's monkey house on a day-to-day basis.
Chatting by the coffee machine, trying to impress the boss, patting each other's shoulders and handing out compliments, they found the need for our own workplace and countless more are all pre-historic behaviours that we see both in humans and monkeys.
Staff during their visit to monkey house. Picture: Chester Zoo
After realising some of these peculiar similarities, the team visited the Monkey house, the chimpanzees, and finally the orangutans in the Realm of the Red Ape to observe some of these behaviours first-hand.
At the end of the workshop, they understood much more of these monkeys and apes and even got to choose which primate’s behaviour stood closest to their own.
Monkey on display at Chester Zoo. Picture: Chester Zoo
Tim Goldsbrough, practice manager of Hope Farm Medical Centre, said: "Viewing groups of monkeys as a group and then applying that to our team gave people the opportunity to make impartial judgements in a non-confrontational way.
"One of the most useful aspects to take away from the course was how monkeys communicate and interact as a group.
"Applying these principles to the practice team will enable us become a highly effective team which in term will benefit our patients.
"This is an important consideration for us to start to work on."
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