Yesterday, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper tweeted the picture you see on the right. yes, that is him wearing a bunny suit.

“In IA for story on ape communication. The apes asked me to dress as a rabbit. Weird, huh?” Cooper tweeted.

Suffice it to say, the picture went viral. Cooper’s somewhat vague explanation, about apes asking him to dress as a rabbit, didn’t really help the matter.

So why was Cooper dressed like a rabbit? We reached out to CNN to find out.

It turns out that Cooper is working on a series of reports about how animals think, which will air in November.

Yesterday, he was in  Des Moines, Iowa at the Great Ape Trust, where he met some Bonobos, intelligent apes which are closely related to Chimpanzees and humans.

Specifically, he met with Kanzi, an extremely intelligent Bonobo that communicates with humans by pointing to a complex set of symbols. While they are bright, Bonobos have more in common mentally with a small child than a fully grown adult.

Apparently Kanzi wanted to see Cooper dressed as a rabbit, and the anchor obliged.

And yes, Cooper was able to get to a studio to cover the aftermath of the Chilean mine rescue when his show started at 10 PM.