From under a hessian sack a calm, clever face looks through the bars with an air of rumpled bemusement. This shapeless shambles of long, thick hair and leathery skin seems to have accepted her place in the world, even while not quite understanding why she’s in it. Wearing her hessian headscarf, she sits in a Buddha pose, her long powerful arms folded in front of her, and watches the bizarre world of humanity pass her by.

The interior monologue of Mollie the orangutan is separated from us by a hundred years and the not inconsiderable language barrier between human and great ape. That’s hardly enough to stop us trying to read her mind though. Among the animal kingdom, orangutans have possibly the most expressive faces of all, and looking at this century-old photo of Mollie in her cage—the kind of bare, cramped affair that was standard for all zoos at the time—it’s nearly impossible not to speculate on what she was thinking. Was she saddened by her circumstances, or quite content, knowing no other way of life after coming to Melbourne when only a few months old? Did she think of herself as a prisoner, or was she simply entertained by the parade of humanity passing her each day? How close to human contemplation can an ape’s thoughts get, anyway?