Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature the show where we crack open
Speaker 1: the brains of animals, humans and make a delicious omelet.
Speaker 1: We'll discover our shared quirks with all of nature's creatures.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about mental health. Humans aren't the only
Speaker 1: animals that suffer from mental distress. In fact, we may
Speaker 1: be able to take lessons from animal welfare to heal ourselves.
Speaker 1: Lest you think it's all in your head, we'll also
Speaker 1: discuss how mental health affects physical health, right down to
Speaker 1: the cellular level. I did a little digging because I
Speaker 1: was curious, why does the word cuckoo mean insanity? What
Speaker 1: does the title One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest have
Speaker 1: to do with insane silence? So cuckoo is on a
Speaker 1: monopeia of the call male cuckoo birds make, But why
Speaker 1: is it synonymous with being crazy? The idea that cuckoo
Speaker 1: birds are quote insane comes from the observation that they
Speaker 1: make that one repetitive, silly call of cuckoo, but also
Speaker 1: that the cuckoos lay their own eggs in the nests
Speaker 1: of other birds. So cuckoo became synonymous with foolish than
Speaker 1: with crazy. But cuckoos aren't crazy, as we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the podcast before, they're actually really clever brewed parasites, meaning
Speaker 1: they intentionally lay their eggs in the nests of unsuspecting
Speaker 1: host families so that their own chicks will be carefully
Speaker 1: fed and raised by a stranger, leaving the cuckoo free
Speaker 1: to mate and lay more eggs elsewhere. So the title
Speaker 1: one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is factually incorrect. Cuckoos
Speaker 1: don't have nests at all, So cuckoos being cuckoo has
Speaker 1: been debunked. But is there actual mental illness amongst animals?
Speaker 1: We can't sit them down on a couch and talk
Speaker 1: to them like we're in a New Yorker cartoon, So
Speaker 1: how do we understand what's going on inside their heads?
Speaker 1: And do animals experience human emotional ailments such as depression
Speaker 1: and midlife crisis? On today's episode will look at mental illness, captivity,
Speaker 1: and midlife crisis in animals and humans. You may have
Speaker 1: heard of o c D obsessive compulsive disorder. As we'll
Speaker 1: discuss it's a lot more complicated than how the popular
Speaker 1: media presents it is just being tidy or obsessively clean.
Speaker 1: People with o c D must complete certain rituals, whether
Speaker 1: it's handwashing, turning lights on and off, saying a mantra,
Speaker 1: or checking of doors are locked and it's not their fault.
Speaker 1: The brain literally starts skipping like a record. A recent
Speaker 1: University of Michigan study found that O c D brains
Speaker 1: get stuck in a quote loop of wrongness. Technically speaking,
Speaker 1: there's a malfunction in this singular opercular network that is
Speaker 1: a central part of the brain linked by nerve connections.
Speaker 1: This is, generally speaking, the quality control area of the brain.
Speaker 1: It checks for errors happening during a task and is
Speaker 1: responsible for adjusting or stopping a behavior. What happens in
Speaker 1: the brains of people with o c D is that
Speaker 1: this coldly control area over detects errors and has a
Speaker 1: less functional stop action neural network. So you're stuck in
Speaker 1: a loop. You're stuck in a loop. You're stuck in
Speaker 1: a sorry, You're stuck in a loop where you think
Speaker 1: you may have made an error and you can't stop
Speaker 1: trying to correct it. And as we'll see, humans aren't
Speaker 1: the only ones trapped in the O c D carousel.
Speaker 1: With me today is Hannah Michael's comedian writer, anthropology major
Speaker 1: and koala over welcome Hannah, Hey, what's up? Coal is
Speaker 1: are gross? And I like that, So why are the gross?
Speaker 1: All our supials are gross? All our supials are disgusting.
Speaker 1: They are an evolutionary pit stop. Then we should not
Speaker 1: have evidence of but we do because Australia, and they're real,
Speaker 1: real nasty, all of them. They have weird junk and
Speaker 1: they do weird stuff with it and it offends, it's
Speaker 1: offensive to everyone. And they let you they let you
Speaker 1: hold koalas in Australia because really, yeah, they're they don't
Speaker 1: have rules or laws in Australia. You can do what
Speaker 1: you can murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to the
Speaker 1: zoo where they let you hold it and they were like, no,
Speaker 1: you have to cradle its but you have to cradle
Speaker 1: its button. So there's like just a photo of me
Speaker 1: lest in a koala. And then I found out they
Speaker 1: all have chlamydia. It's a oh yeah, yeah, yeah they do.
Speaker 1: Actually there is um chlamydia outbreaks amongst koalas. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting this book I read about, it's called Zubiquity. She's
Speaker 1: talking about like how maybe we can learn about the
Speaker 1: spread of STDs and humans by studying koalas because they're
Speaker 1: just a bunch of disease riddled Yeah they're gross, like up, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're They also poop a lot in their sleep,
Speaker 1: Like they sleep a lot because the eucalyptus leave that
Speaker 1: doesn't provide much. Yeah, it's toxic, really fibrous, not a
Speaker 1: lot of nutrition, so it takes a lot of energy
Speaker 1: and time to actually digest. So they're like sleeping and
Speaker 1: pooping almost the whole day, so like up to twenty
Speaker 1: two hours a day. Yeah. Yeah, so we're exactly like
Speaker 1: you're living the dream. They kind of are. We also
Speaker 1: feed our young out of a kloacas ah chloacas. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're starting on this note. Chloaca is always
Speaker 1: a strong opener. So I want to talk about O
Speaker 1: c D, which is the acronym for obsessive compulsive disorder.
Speaker 1: It's kind of been a part of the public discourse
Speaker 1: in a way that's like not too accurate, not too good.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard people say off hand like I'm
Speaker 1: a neat freak, I'm so O c D. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: like like I like to organize my socks. I'm o
Speaker 1: c D. Um My best friend has O c D
Speaker 1: and his apartment is disgusting. It's just a poster of
Speaker 1: female trouble, single chair, no soap. Yeah, well so I
Speaker 1: have O c D. I actually had it as a
Speaker 1: kid mostly, and like I mean, if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: my college dorm, which thank god nobody has, but it
Speaker 1: was disgusting. They all are. It's true, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's like there's not an exception. You're not like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm O c D. And therefore there is an underwear
Speaker 1: hanging from the ceiling fan like there is there always is. Um. So,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of misconceptions about a c D.
Speaker 1: First is that it's either like a minor quirk. Some
Speaker 1: people think it's just like this sort of minor thing,
Speaker 1: and then other like there's also sort of the monk
Speaker 1: perception of it, where it's all consuming part of your personality,
Speaker 1: and it's like the truth is sort of like on
Speaker 1: a spectrum. So for some people it's not that big
Speaker 1: of a deal. For others it can be really like
Speaker 1: a huge nuisance because they can't really function that well.
Speaker 1: It's so it's so strong. It's also I think there's
Speaker 1: this misperception that people that have it are like delusional,
Speaker 1: Like I know that when I turn off the stove
Speaker 1: and then I check like five minutes later, I know
Speaker 1: it's not like magically turned back on by like stove gremlins.
Speaker 1: I'm just like it's it's almost like it's kind of
Speaker 1: rewriting your memory where it's like, well, I think I
Speaker 1: turned it off, but like did I? And you know,
Speaker 1: because like when you do a kind of repetitive action,
Speaker 1: I think most people have had that where you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: did I kind of lock the door and you sort
Speaker 1: of forget You're not sure. It's like that, except like
Speaker 1: it happens like ten times and you're like, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: pretty sure the fifth time around that got locked. So
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because it's caused by a dysfunction of
Speaker 1: neural networks, as we're going to discuss uh soon. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's it's not like this just like a little
Speaker 1: thing that you can kind of ignore because compulsion is
Speaker 1: really powerful. It's um, it's like a short circuiting of
Speaker 1: the brain where it's like a record skipping on a turntable,
Speaker 1: like you don't mean to play the first ten seconds
Speaker 1: of Babo O'Riley over and over, but like the hardware
Speaker 1: is malfunctioning, like there's dust on the record or the
Speaker 1: needles messed up. I don't really actually know because I've
Speaker 1: never owned a record player because I'm a terrible millennial
Speaker 1: that's killing the records industry. So I want to take
Speaker 1: you on an imagination journey to to think land. So
Speaker 1: it's my favorite kind of journey because I'm scared to
Speaker 1: drive it. I was like when I talked about like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of scared to find someone's like, oh, well
Speaker 1: driving is way more dangerous, and I'm just like cool,
Speaker 1: now I'm scared to drive. Yeah. Yeah. I love people
Speaker 1: who think that they can logic you out of anxiety. No,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't because like all of the potential
Speaker 1: solutions to the to the worry that you have, we've
Speaker 1: already thought of, and then you can make a new
Speaker 1: worry out of right. Right, we're problem wizards, right, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to be struck by lightning and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, lightning. Um. So, as we approach a
Speaker 1: future where gene therapy seems more plausible, there's kind of
Speaker 1: some like upsetting possibilities, So like you could have a
Speaker 1: doctor turn behaviors on or off depending on their desirability.
Speaker 1: Like so like for certain mental illness, that would be
Speaker 1: great because it's like there's a lot of suffering. Um.
Speaker 1: But then it gets it's like gets into this uncomfortable
Speaker 1: territory of like, well, do we want to get rid
Speaker 1: of everything that's not just like totally neurotypical? Does art
Speaker 1: die if we do that? Maybe? I don't know. Have
Speaker 1: you seen Gattica? So the premise of that is like
Speaker 1: your ability to do a job, your applicability to like
Speaker 1: be an astronaut or something, is they look at your
Speaker 1: genes and they're like, oh, you have the strong genes
Speaker 1: of an astronaut, or you have like so I haven't
Speaker 1: seen Getica, but I've seen a thousand parodies of Gaetica
Speaker 1: basically yeah yeah, um. And and in the movie, it's
Speaker 1: like the guy's like, oh, you know, I'm not genetically
Speaker 1: fit to be an astronaut, but I really want to
Speaker 1: do it. So he's got to like have fake skin
Speaker 1: cells that he collects from this other guy and like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like get a bunch of yearine. I guess
Speaker 1: for tests. It's been a long time since I remember
Speaker 1: what bodily fluids he uses to check the system. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know this concept of like we are
Speaker 1: hitting upon this thing where it's like, as we start
Speaker 1: to get to the point where we can turn things
Speaker 1: on and off, like how far can that go? To
Speaker 1: the point where it's like, oh, we're actually taking all
Speaker 1: of the diversity out of the human brain. And but
Speaker 1: then so typically we think about it like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll get rid of all of the sort of quirks
Speaker 1: or mental abnormalities. But what if you could actually give
Speaker 1: someone something, Say you could give someone O c D
Speaker 1: so that they'd be a really good copy editor, or
Speaker 1: like quality control, so it'd be like gatica and reverse.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I wish you could do that later in
Speaker 1: life too, because I feel like a lot of adults
Speaker 1: growing up with problems was very helpful informative, and now
Speaker 1: it's destroying their lives, just hypothetically a lot of adults.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of interesting because I can't decide whether
Speaker 1: it'd be worse if you would like give someone against
Speaker 1: their will O c D or take it away against
Speaker 1: their will. But unfortunately we do this to mice because
Speaker 1: we always do stuff to mice. Oh yeah, we do.
Speaker 1: So scientists knocked out gene and mice which caused them
Speaker 1: to engage in O c D behaviors. It's actually got
Speaker 1: a really catchy name. It's called sap app three um.
Speaker 1: It's a protein that helps brain cells communicate, so it's
Speaker 1: like really good for There's this part of the brain
Speaker 1: called the cortex stri item that it's like this bundle
Speaker 1: of brain cells that help regulate reward motivation, stimulus response,
Speaker 1: and motor function. So when you don't have that protein,
Speaker 1: it's like trying to run a car that isn't properly oiled.
Speaker 1: So given how O c D functions, it's this like
Speaker 1: inability to correctly process information and give a response. So
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of things that you can have where
Speaker 1: it's these like repetitive loop compulsions that are a result
Speaker 1: of that reward system malfunctioning. So like you have handwashing,
Speaker 1: checking intrusive thoughts. There's even like fear of authority, like
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh, I have to pray to God
Speaker 1: like ten times otherwise you know he'll smite me with lightning.
Speaker 1: So for mice, like what what do you think that
Speaker 1: would look like like they're not praying to mouse God
Speaker 1: or washing their hands. I don't know, I guess maybe
Speaker 1: checking their feet or even there's they know there's no
Speaker 1: food or Yeah, I feel like these mice have very
Speaker 1: limited habitats. I don't know, Sniffing their babies, eating their
Speaker 1: babies they do, like they do that anyway. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: just like to eat their babies. I think that's just
Speaker 1: a normal mouse thing, Like like they're watching their little
Speaker 1: mice TV and just have a bowl of babies that
Speaker 1: they eat, maybe like eating a tail that they know
Speaker 1: is their tail, but they keep biting it. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's actually pretty close to what they do. They groom
Speaker 1: their face um and like like they do this fur
Speaker 1: grooming over and over again. Um, so they like start
Speaker 1: to get these open sores. It's really it's actually really
Speaker 1: kind of creepy looking because they like, I know, it's
Speaker 1: really sad. They have like these big bald patches on
Speaker 1: their face and on their bodies where they keep grooming.
Speaker 1: So when these scientists altered that gene that regulates the
Speaker 1: function of the cortex stri item, they started developing all
Speaker 1: of these sores, all of these bald patches. Uh, they
Speaker 1: showed more anxiety and unfamiliar environments. And when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, actually had a hamster that had this big
Speaker 1: bald spot on its head. He looked like one of
Speaker 1: his friends siskan monks, like you know how they like shaved.
Speaker 1: Why did they? I don't know why they did that. Okay,
Speaker 1: my guests solidarity with one bald monk like at that
Speaker 1: isn't fucking years ago. He's like the head monk and
Speaker 1: they're all like, oh, well, we've got to be like
Speaker 1: Jerry or he's gonna feel sad. Yeah, yeah, no, that
Speaker 1: has to be it because that is not a handsome
Speaker 1: hairstyle and sorry, it's not a good look. So I
Speaker 1: had no idea that my hamster maybe had a CD
Speaker 1: or something. And dermatillomania is a kid that's basically what
Speaker 1: that is. Oh really yeah, yeah, that that is very
Speaker 1: closely linked actually, So like when you have that that
Speaker 1: reward system where it's like you do an action that
Speaker 1: fulfills some kind of needs, So like scratching something, because
Speaker 1: we all like do some amount of skin picking. It's
Speaker 1: it's a dermotil mania is skin picking, like where it's
Speaker 1: like you scratch. Yeah, I still bite the hell out
Speaker 1: of my fingers when I'm nervous and gross, which a
Speaker 1: lot of people do. People did that, I just as
Speaker 1: a kid. It was at the point where it was yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's because like that is sort of like
Speaker 1: what the mice are doing. They're like scratching sort of uncontrollably,
Speaker 1: like I'm itchy. They can't they can't stop because that
Speaker 1: reward system is going like no, no, you need to
Speaker 1: keep like like turning yourself into a Franciscan monk. So
Speaker 1: I have mixed feelings on gene therapy. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: like bestowing mice with o c DS bad or giving
Speaker 1: it to people, But you know, it's like at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's like if you get rid of every
Speaker 1: deviation from the norm, you won't get like you know,
Speaker 1: Pabo pacasas and like um van go or sorry van
Speaker 1: GoF um, who's like, you know, he had depression and
Speaker 1: obviously him suffering isn't worth all of the beautiful art.
Speaker 1: Well maybe I know. I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 1: from a humanist perspective, it's not. But then again, like
Speaker 1: you would, it seems like there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: artistic nous to like having a non near typical brain. Uh,
Speaker 1: but like, primarily, can we just stop giving my society?
Speaker 1: I feel like if TV shows are right, they're going
Speaker 1: to become like these super intelligent detectives and then like
Speaker 1: the next thing, you know, they're gonna put all humans
Speaker 1: in jail for their crimes against mice, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: be all like quirky and be like, I don't have
Speaker 1: time for interpersonal relationships. I'm the mouse detective. Even though
Speaker 1: I wouldn't necessarily want to get rid of my o
Speaker 1: c D, for many people it is a huge burden
Speaker 1: or even debilitating. So what are the options. There's cognitive
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy and medication, of course, but for people with
Speaker 1: intractable o c D there are more drastic methods. Transcranial
Speaker 1: magnetic stimulation is a method of targeting areas of the
Speaker 1: brain suspected to be associated with o CP and stimulating
Speaker 1: the neurons with repetitive magnetic puluss Another alternative treatment that
Speaker 1: is very slowly being researched is ketamine, you know, special
Speaker 1: K vitamin K K ways blind squid ketamine. It's been
Speaker 1: shown to have a pretty striking effect in a case
Speaker 1: study a person with severe debilitating O c D that
Speaker 1: was resistant to other treatments was given ketamine. Almost immediately,
Speaker 1: his O c D symptoms vanished, and this lasted for
Speaker 1: two weeks after a controlled dose of the drug. Researchers
Speaker 1: aren't even exactly sure why it works, so obviously they've
Speaker 1: started giving ketamine a mice to try and get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of it. These my studies suggest that a
Speaker 1: chemical byproduct of breaking down kettamine in the body might
Speaker 1: be responsible. Is called Oh boy, here we go, hydro
Speaker 1: oxyen or ketamine. Nicely nailed it, and alone it has
Speaker 1: none of the addictive properties that edamine has. A Bunch
Speaker 1: of people with O c D right now are like, oh, yes, great,
Speaker 1: give me the drug that won't get me high. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, scientists, Hey, get out of that khole. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back after a few quick messages. When someone
Speaker 1: tells the story of an alien abduction, we may think
Speaker 1: they're just cuckoo, but researchers at Harvard aren't so sure.
Speaker 1: There's a study that compared the physiological reactions of people
Speaker 1: calling alien abductions to those who are calling real traumatic
Speaker 1: events such as car accidents or combat experiences. What they
Speaker 1: found was surprising people claiming to have been abducted by
Speaker 1: aliens are the same sorts of physiological reactions when we're
Speaker 1: calling their abductions as those who are called real life traumas.
Speaker 1: So are aliens real or are these real memories implanted
Speaker 1: not by aliens but by our our own brains. As
Speaker 1: we've discussed on a previous episode of the podcast, sleep
Speaker 1: paralysis can make you believe you are being abducted by
Speaker 1: aliens because you see sleep paralysis interrupts the normal sleep cycle,
Speaker 1: causing hallucinations while half awake. So these waking nightmares actually
Speaker 1: implant themselves as real memories that haunt the abductees for years. Later,
Speaker 1: turns out, deep inside, we were the aliens all along.
Speaker 1: So why are we so scared of alien abductions? I
Speaker 1: understand why we're scared of aliens. Their gross and they
Speaker 1: have tinnacles and brains on the outside and whatever, But
Speaker 1: shouldn't we been more afraid of them just straight up
Speaker 1: murdering us. The idea of getting beamed up into a
Speaker 1: flying saucer, living amongst creatures that you can't communicate with
Speaker 1: or understand is kind of uniquely scary, And I have
Speaker 1: a theory for why we're so preoccupied with it. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, we're going to have to take
Speaker 1: a trip to the mat genation station and board the
Speaker 1: brain train to do so. Imagine you're going about your
Speaker 1: daily life when you feel a pain in your butt.
Speaker 1: You turn around and try to see who your assailant is,
Speaker 1: but your vision starts to swim and you fall unconscious.
Speaker 1: You wake up in what looks like a comfortable living room.
Speaker 1: You have a headache. Okay, that's where my being able
Speaker 1: to relate to this has stopped. So you try to
Speaker 1: lie down on the couch. It's really stiff and uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and you kind of try to adjust from the pillows,
Speaker 1: but it's like attached to the rest of the couch
Speaker 1: and it's like plastic. You've got to open the door
Speaker 1: to escape, but it's locked, and you try to open
Speaker 1: a window to get some fresh air. And you noticed
Speaker 1: that the scene outside is very sunny and still and calm,
Speaker 1: and the clouds aren't moving, and like there's a bird
Speaker 1: just like midair midflight, just totally stationary. So you run
Speaker 1: over to the phone to try to call nine one one,
Speaker 1: but the receiver won't budge. It's just like a big
Speaker 1: lump of plastic and like all the numbers just spell
Speaker 1: out like phone. The TV is has a picture painted
Speaker 1: on into your horror. It's the fixed image of Jay Leno.
Speaker 1: And so in a panick, you go to the bedroom,
Speaker 1: which is surrounded in ceiling to floor windows, and outside
Speaker 1: you see the faint, shifting shapes of unknown creatures eagerly
Speaker 1: watching your every move. So I think there's a reason
Speaker 1: that human zoos are a trope in science fiction. The
Speaker 1: idea of being condemned to the rest of your life
Speaker 1: to live in a small exhibit alone and trapped amongst
Speaker 1: like alien creatures that can never relate to you or
Speaker 1: know your needs for like food and sleep, is really terrifying.
Speaker 1: Like they don't know your social needs. They have like
Speaker 1: maybe like a person shaped like pillow. That's like, I
Speaker 1: am Steve Spawns. You see the television last night. But
Speaker 1: it's just you know, their aliens. They don't know what
Speaker 1: you need. But here's the mind fuck. We've been the
Speaker 1: aliens the whole time. What, Yeah, because we remember zoos
Speaker 1: and how we put animals in them and to the
Speaker 1: animals worthy aliens uck. Yeah, yeah, it's have you ever
Speaker 1: been to the san Diego Zoo. Uh when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. Yeah, it's it's huge. Um, that's not the
Speaker 1: one where the elephants keep dying. Maybe I'm not sure. Actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, like elephants are there, and I would assume
Speaker 1: that they die at some point. I haven't heard of
Speaker 1: their being like immortal elephants like we we we'd probably know,
Speaker 1: we'd probably know. I mean, I don't think that there's
Speaker 1: been a rash of elephants dying there, but maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know. An elephant died at Sydney's Taranga Zoo died
Speaker 1: from herpes. What Okay, Australian animals are just plagued with STDs. There,
Speaker 1: there's Australian animals like must be just having unprotected well,
Speaker 1: I guess all animals have unprotected sex. Huh, I'm smart.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But Nobo's sword fight with their dicks,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's but I don't know what you
Speaker 1: can get from that after tech the attack and he
Speaker 1: also dick. That's yeah, I mean, like I read this thing.
Speaker 1: It's is the elephant at Sydney's Taranga Zoo had a
Speaker 1: sudden and acute battle with herpes, which is not how
Speaker 1: I thought herpies worked. I think it's how it works
Speaker 1: in babies, so it's possibly and elephants. I guess some
Speaker 1: the adult human immune system can handle herpes, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it says it was a young agean elephant, um,
Speaker 1: so maybe was too young. Oh man, this was It
Speaker 1: started out really funny about like sex or elephant STDs.
Speaker 1: Now it's like elephant babies dying. You know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for starting you guys on this elephant death search. No,
Speaker 1: that's okay that we need to know. But but at
Speaker 1: this point I am a certain I have made up
Speaker 1: that there is one zoo around the southern California area
Speaker 1: with a bunch of elephant deaths. It's far too late.
Speaker 1: They're gonna sue you that there's already like a herd
Speaker 1: of lawyers writing like giraffes and rhino is just like
Speaker 1: stampeding towards going like Hannah. So I actually really like
Speaker 1: the San Diego through They do make a lot of
Speaker 1: efforts to do animal Enrichmond, and they, like you said,
Speaker 1: they're really big, so they are able to make pretty
Speaker 1: good environments for their animals. But I mean even at
Speaker 1: zoos like that out where it's like they really care
Speaker 1: about conservation, they really care about their animals, there can
Speaker 1: still be issues of the animals mental welfare. Even if
Speaker 1: like their health is perfectly fine, they have enough exercise,
Speaker 1: they can still have these issues. So, like going back
Speaker 1: to the human zoo example, you know, even if you're
Speaker 1: like taken care of and you're given healthy meals every
Speaker 1: day and your captors seem to love you, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get really bored of your fake house. Uh, You're gonna like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just like seeing to yourself, bounce walls,
Speaker 1: pretend to read all the fake books, like pacing around,
Speaker 1: which is what animals do in zoos, exactly what they
Speaker 1: do in zoos, and sometimes the researchers have to go
Speaker 1: mining in a big pile of stinky polar bear poop
Speaker 1: to check on their mental state. So in zoos like
Speaker 1: these repetitive behaviors it wouldn't be called O c D.
Speaker 1: They call them stereotypees, which is defined as like a repetitive,
Speaker 1: unvarying and apparently functionless behavior pattern. So polar bears in
Speaker 1: captivity will engage in repetitive pacing behaviors. They can also
Speaker 1: do like facial ticks over and over which I feel
Speaker 1: like if I was looking at a polar bear who's
Speaker 1: like pacing and like eye twitching, like that would be
Speaker 1: really scary because they're already huge and my entire face
Speaker 1: could like fit in their jaw easily, and if they're
Speaker 1: just pacing and like twitching, going like, oh geez, day
Speaker 1: number one thousand, uh man. But some brave researchers wanted
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of this, literally because it's
Speaker 1: bear poop, so they looked at levels of fecal glutico
Speaker 1: cortoid metabolites. Okay, so basically it means there's stressed use
Speaker 1: in or poop. So they found that the polar bears
Speaker 1: who spent more time pacing also showed higher levels of
Speaker 1: stressed juice in their poop. So the researchers concluded that
Speaker 1: quote variables associated with reduced pacing at zoos were enrichment
Speaker 1: numbers of bears in the group and bears having a
Speaker 1: view out of their exhibit, with a strong suggestion that
Speaker 1: the existence of positive reinforcement training program may also be important.
Speaker 1: So like basically having a view outside social interactions like
Speaker 1: everything you don't have at a cubicle job, right, So
Speaker 1: aside from these lifestyle changes, Like, what can you do
Speaker 1: for the polar bears that have the stereotypies? You know,
Speaker 1: it's too bad. We can't just give them some prozac,
Speaker 1: or can we? We can? It's like a facetious question
Speaker 1: because the science we're looking into medications that they could
Speaker 1: give polar bears, and so tranquilizers are not really great
Speaker 1: for calming them down because it just makes them sleepy,
Speaker 1: but no less dressed out. They're just like, I'm tired
Speaker 1: and on board. This is the worst. And so like
Speaker 1: when they tried prozac, it actually showed some promise. So like,
Speaker 1: there's this case study of female polar bear where she
Speaker 1: had pacing behaviors, facial ticks, huffing and coughing, all of
Speaker 1: the these stereotypes that the polar bears can exhibit. It
Speaker 1: was because she had been separated from her parents, and
Speaker 1: then the zookeepers, because most zoop keepers aren't monsters like,
Speaker 1: they wanted to help her. They reunited her with her
Speaker 1: parents to try to calm the behavior, and it stopped
Speaker 1: for a while, and then it re emerged a couple
Speaker 1: of months later, which it's kind of like the diathesis
Speaker 1: stress model and psychology where it's like you have physiological
Speaker 1: predisposition towards like O c D or in the polar
Speaker 1: bears case, the stereotypes, and then you have UM the trigger,
Speaker 1: which would be being separated. So even once they corrected
Speaker 1: the separation anxiety, she still developed the disorder because it
Speaker 1: already kind of triggered that that progression. So she suffered
Speaker 1: from that for twenty two years, and then researchers started
Speaker 1: treating her with prozac and eighty four days after starting medication,
Speaker 1: the pacing behaviors stopped, which, yeah, it's it's crazy because
Speaker 1: it's like even in the field of clinical psychology, that
Speaker 1: would be an incredible that's a really good UM outcome.
Speaker 1: So it was very surprising that this would be like
Speaker 1: the outcome for polar bears that we don't know nearly
Speaker 1: as much about in terms of their brain physiology. UM.
Speaker 1: And remember those poor mice who were given O c
Speaker 1: D and looked like scarface. They are also treated with
Speaker 1: prozac and they stopped showing symptoms. So that's good. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the scientists gave them those CD in the first place.
Speaker 1: I feel like they don't deserve any like out of boys,
Speaker 1: But you know, But then the question is like, oh,
Speaker 1: was there o c D cured? It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to say because like the behavior stopped, but we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know, like if their emotional state went back to normal.
Speaker 1: What's neat about the poop thing is that that's a
Speaker 1: sort of more objective measure of like stress levels, because
Speaker 1: it's like, we'll see how stressed out your poop is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you have terrified if my toilet told me
Speaker 1: I was your toilets like, yeah, you've been looking intense lately,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, toilet, get your job, take my pop.
Speaker 1: Just want just shut up and take my poop, willya?
Speaker 1: So we're left with moral questions from this this poop study,
Speaker 1: like our zoo is bad for large animals mental health,
Speaker 1: and does that justify keeping them there even for conservation?
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like if you're willing to dig
Speaker 1: into a big steaming pile of polar bear poop, like
Speaker 1: you're probably doing things right. I think. So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: if Yeah, it's it's a hero's work. It's an unsung
Speaker 1: hero's work of just like just scooping that up, And
Speaker 1: I mean I would hope they would have some like
Speaker 1: safety things, but like what if you're just in there
Speaker 1: with the bear like sorting through their poop, and then
Speaker 1: the bears like go on, like what are you doing? Bro?
Speaker 1: It's like, it's fine, it's private. You don't need to
Speaker 1: know about it. Bear. I remember when I first got
Speaker 1: my dog, and I started like, you know, you take
Speaker 1: them on the walk and you clean up their poop.
Speaker 1: Like the first time she saw me do that, she
Speaker 1: gave me such a look, where are you putting that?
Speaker 1: Why are you collecting it? Like she's is like, I
Speaker 1: mean she wanted to eat it, is the thing, like
Speaker 1: she would eat her own poop when she was I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, what a snob your dog is? Usually
Speaker 1: they just eat that. Oh no, they eat it. But
Speaker 1: but she was like she looked offended, like like you're
Speaker 1: taking my poops and just throwing them away. That's a
Speaker 1: perfectly good turn. I've been having a lot of really
Speaker 1: weird thoughts because some that ship happened to me, And
Speaker 1: now I think weird is the best literally my therapist
Speaker 1: diagnosis looking for someone new hi um. And it goes
Speaker 1: back to this so much because I just I start
Speaker 1: thinking about like scary sex scenarios and I started thinking, literally,
Speaker 1: if aliens come to Earth, what do I do? The
Speaker 1: first thing I do show them the pandas, ask isn't
Speaker 1: it weird that we forced these pandas to fuck? And
Speaker 1: if they say no, that's not weird, you run, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a really good litmus test, like because you know,
Speaker 1: if we do that to pandas and aliens see that,
Speaker 1: they might get ideas. Yeah, I'm sorry, that is weird
Speaker 1: because like we are so obsessive about panda's sex lives.
Speaker 1: It's like it's really grossive us. Yeah, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're not having enough sex pandas. It's like, could you
Speaker 1: just like not do that? Like could you leave them alone?
Speaker 1: Is it any of your business how sex the pandas
Speaker 1: are having, Like maybe they don't feel like it, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they have a headache every night. It's just none
Speaker 1: of your business. So I was interested in confinement since
Speaker 1: it affects polar bears and presumably a lot of other
Speaker 1: animals mental health so much whether it affects the mental
Speaker 1: health of people, and intuitively, it just makes that being
Speaker 1: in prison is going to affect your mental health. That's right.
Speaker 1: But there's actually a study published in the American Journal
Speaker 1: of Public Health that looked at the rates of self
Speaker 1: harm amongst incarcerated people, and they found that it was
Speaker 1: significantly linked to solitary confinement. And the numbers were pretty
Speaker 1: like pretty crazy because it's like, so only seven percent
Speaker 1: of the prison population were held in solitary and over
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the these incidents of like self harm
Speaker 1: or behaviors sort of like the polar bears would go
Speaker 1: through or or the mice where it's like kind of right,
Speaker 1: we're all linked to people who had been in solitary,
Speaker 1: which is it's really upsetting to me that like also
Speaker 1: just like that we seem to care more about like
Speaker 1: zoo animals than like people in solitary confinement, which is
Speaker 1: a really uncomfortable thing. But it's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like if we're willing to like sift through polar
Speaker 1: bear poop, like we're gold miners, like like old forty
Speaker 1: niners panning for gold, Like maybe we could put a
Speaker 1: little more effort into looking into like prison reform, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I mean, considering that they can talk to us
Speaker 1: instead of to us probably, yeah, I mean, they're human
Speaker 1: people who can use their words, and they don't. We
Speaker 1: don't need to communicate to them through poop, like like
Speaker 1: polar bears can we That's true, It's like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean these people are bored. Yeah, for some reason
Speaker 1: that made me think of like a poop Luigi board,
Speaker 1: just using one of those see through things. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: now it's going towards like the rat poop. So that's
Speaker 1: not how I pictured Quiji board. Yours is better. Did
Speaker 1: you just picture like AUGI board made out of poop?
Speaker 1: It's just like a Weiji board. But like I just
Speaker 1: pictured the pointy wand is poop like like you just have.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't really change the function of the Wegi like
Speaker 1: you're so you're all seven of your girlfriends that you're
Speaker 1: sleepovers are like touching them one poop and likes seeing
Speaker 1: where the poop goes. This is a haunted a haunted turd. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see that. I mean, you know, Hasbro look
Speaker 1: into that. I feel like we need a story of
Speaker 1: gory revenge to make up for all the sad polar
Speaker 1: bear science. Binkie was a polar bear who lived at
Speaker 1: the Alaska Zoo and Anchorage. Pinkie maybe the name you've
Speaker 1: given undersized balding chihuahua, but he was over one thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of concentrated muscular spite. When a tourist scaled two
Speaker 1: safety fences in order to get the perfect photo of Binkie,
Speaker 1: he grabbed her leg, snapped through her bone, and kept
Speaker 1: her shoe as a souvenir for three days. There are
Speaker 1: photos of Binkie holding his shoe trophy. Humans, when learning
Speaker 1: about a bad decision another human has made, will often
Speaker 1: attempt to replicate that bad decision. So teens decided to
Speaker 1: go pool hopping in Binkie's private pond. Binkie did not
Speaker 1: appreciate this and mauled one kid, who was lucky to
Speaker 1: end up alive. The zoo was kind of cagy about
Speaker 1: whether Binkie was the one who attacked the kid, but
Speaker 1: he reportedly had blood around his muzzle and what I
Speaker 1: can only assume was a smug ass bear grin following
Speaker 1: the incident. He also a bit off a zookeeper's finger.
Speaker 1: Despite all this, the zoos still loved him. They said,
Speaker 1: Binkie is quote independent and quote likes to play games
Speaker 1: and is a very smart bear. No doubt, be Key
Speaker 1: achieved celebrity dumb for his maulings. Binky merchandise was produced
Speaker 1: with photos of him holding the tourist shoe and saying, quote,
Speaker 1: send another tourist. This one got away. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: This is a real shirt. People sent in letters supporting
Speaker 1: Binkie's decision to chew on intruders, and unfortunately Binkie passed away.
Speaker 1: In people left him flowers, but I don't really understand
Speaker 1: why they didn't leave a wreath of shoes instead. So
Speaker 1: hopefully Binkie is frolicking in heaven, ripping angels to shreds. Hey,
Speaker 1: spit that show out. We're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back after these messages. So is
Speaker 1: it just confinement that can cause mental anguish or is
Speaker 1: it loneliness as well? Could fomo fear of missing out
Speaker 1: one day be a medical diagnosis? Loneliness and isolation feel terrible.
Speaker 1: There's this pain in your stomach when you yearn for
Speaker 1: other people, that lump in your wrote when you feel rejected,
Speaker 1: the tight sensation in your chest when you're left on read.
Speaker 1: It's all in your head, right, Well, it's possible that
Speaker 1: your body can actually be damaged by social seclusion. So
Speaker 1: parents are very intelligent social animals. You can tell this
Speaker 1: because once I was at the fair and I asked
Speaker 1: this guy if I could pet his parrot, and he
Speaker 1: said yes, and then I pet it in it like
Speaker 1: nearly bit my finger off. They have very powerful beaks
Speaker 1: for like crushing nuts, and this one like just bit
Speaker 1: a big chunk out of my finger, like I was
Speaker 1: like pulling my hand away and painted. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like doing this like laughing noise. Parrots worse than thinky,
Speaker 1: like it's like get me a shoe. So other than
Speaker 1: that sociopathic bird, most parents require social stimulation to remain
Speaker 1: emotionally healthy. Um. So there's this really creepy study where
Speaker 1: these searchress looked at socially isolated African gray parrots, which
Speaker 1: they're one of the most intelligent social species of birds.
Speaker 1: Like parrots are really intelligent, and then of parrots, African
Speaker 1: grays are like super smart. They're like the Stephen Hawkings.
Speaker 1: It's hot because you know hawks well, Stephen Hawking is
Speaker 1: a physicist. His name also it is shared with Anyway,
Speaker 1: the loneliness deeply affected these parrots right down to their DNA.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna have to explain some stuff about DNA.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be really really exciting. Tell him, yours are
Speaker 1: the caps at the end of our chromosomes, so you know,
Speaker 1: like how yeah, like your your little like noodles that
Speaker 1: are DNA, and like on the end of him like
Speaker 1: you have like an X or Y or both or um,
Speaker 1: I'm got understand, I got my noodles, You've got you
Speaker 1: got your gene noodles. And then at the end of
Speaker 1: these is like a chunk of DNA that's kind of
Speaker 1: effectively junk, like it isn't actually used to build anything
Speaker 1: in your body, but it's essential because when the chromosome
Speaker 1: is being duplicated, there are these enzymes that do the duplication.
Speaker 1: They can't travel all the way down to the ends
Speaker 1: of the DNA because like think of sort of like
Speaker 1: a jacket zipper, like you can't zip it all the
Speaker 1: way down or like comes off and like flies into
Speaker 1: the void and then your jackets broken. So the telomere
Speaker 1: is kind of like you know that little thing at
Speaker 1: the end of your jacket that like stops the zipper.
Speaker 1: It's like that where it's like this buffer that protects
Speaker 1: all of the important parts of your chromosome. So the
Speaker 1: enzyme that's duplicating. It doesn't cut it off right up
Speaker 1: create hand part um. So uh, but every time it
Speaker 1: goes through the duplication process, it's shortened because it does
Speaker 1: cut off a little bit of that telomere. So that's
Speaker 1: why it's like associated with aging because like once you
Speaker 1: start cutting down that tell mere enough, then like you
Speaker 1: start to cut out the essentials like make more blood. Um.
Speaker 1: As you can tell, I'm very good at understanding genetics. Um. So,
Speaker 1: this study of these these isolated African gray parents showed
Speaker 1: that the telomeres are shortened by stress and loneliness. Um So,
Speaker 1: the test subjects that were kept alone instead of in
Speaker 1: pairs had shorter telomeres than the ones that had someone
Speaker 1: to be with. So don't get mad at the researchers
Speaker 1: because like they didn't like evily like be like we're
Speaker 1: gonna put this parrot alone. They just took um data
Speaker 1: from these aternarians that like, I guess when the vets
Speaker 1: were looking at African gray parents, are like, oh is
Speaker 1: it alone or in pairs? And then when they would
Speaker 1: do routine checkups, they had blood samples. And so this
Speaker 1: study took place in Austria and it's illegal in Austria
Speaker 1: to house African gray parents alone, which I totally agree
Speaker 1: with the sentiment of the law, but it's so crazy
Speaker 1: that there's such a specific law. They're like there's an
Speaker 1: a parent lobby there that's like looking after parents, feeling like, no,
Speaker 1: you have to buy two, you can't have one parent.
Speaker 1: But obviously it's very poorly enforced because they were able
Speaker 1: to do the study. So the researchers just took like
Speaker 1: the existing blood work from the Vets Office and found
Speaker 1: that loneliness can actually shorten the parent's lifespan. So I
Speaker 1: feel like we should start a parent tinder and do
Speaker 1: a good for the nature. So it's not just parrots though,
Speaker 1: because there's a study of people over the age of
Speaker 1: fifty in the UK and they found that a combination
Speaker 1: of feeling lonely and not having much contact with family
Speaker 1: or friends can actually predict that they would have a
Speaker 1: shorter lifespan. So maybe we should start a parrot tinder.
Speaker 1: But for humans, So, can you actually die of a
Speaker 1: broken heart? This is a hypothetical question because because I'm
Speaker 1: about to say yes, you can, um so broken heart
Speaker 1: syndrome is a real thing. It's this really rare event
Speaker 1: when like you have a sudden stress like learning a
Speaker 1: loved one has died, actually causes this cardiac muscle malfunction
Speaker 1: that can be fatal. Um. It also goes by another name.
Speaker 1: Here we go, I can do this tackets subo cardio myopathy. UM,
Speaker 1: damn you, thank you, thank you, thank you everybody. Um,
Speaker 1: here's where it gets really interesting. So Barbara and Nadderson Herowitz,
Speaker 1: who is a cardiologist here at U c l A.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I said here. We're not at
Speaker 1: U c l A right now, but it is, you
Speaker 1: know over there, Yeah, it's in LA. So she made
Speaker 1: the connection between broken heart syndrome and humans and something
Speaker 1: called capture myopathy and animals. Uh So when a small
Speaker 1: prey animal is captured, it can just like die of
Speaker 1: cardiac or s. So like these researchers who are trying
Speaker 1: to capture these birds wants to like put the little
Speaker 1: bands and then like a lot of them would just die,
Speaker 1: I know, And they're like, you know, they're not trying
Speaker 1: to kill them. They're just like trying to give them
Speaker 1: a little bracelets. But the birds just like gave up.
Speaker 1: I guess they're just like no, we're done. So Naderson
Speaker 1: Horowitz found that there's this clinical similarity between animal capture
Speaker 1: myopathy and human broken heart syndrome. She was saying that
Speaker 1: we could learn a lot about human medicine from animals
Speaker 1: and vice versa. But like, personally, I'm just waiting for
Speaker 1: them to be able to like implant a lion heart.
Speaker 1: Uh it means so like because like they're not scared
Speaker 1: of anything, so they'll never die of a heart attack, right, scientists? Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm going with lobster heart here. Oh really,
Speaker 1: why I think some species don't die unless they're like named.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting. Yeah, so they do actually have a
Speaker 1: really long lifespan. Yeah, no, you're totally correct. You take
Speaker 1: that lobster heart with confidence that that's a very good,
Speaker 1: good choice. But then, like, I mean, would you start
Speaker 1: like having the qualities of the animal, like just like
Speaker 1: pinching people all the time. I did that already. It's
Speaker 1: like you can like get a rubber band on your
Speaker 1: fingers and like, oh no, I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do already done, Oh this is an audio podcast. I
Speaker 1: do have a rubber beating. Remind me to do something
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is right, and she's she's
Speaker 1: left like her hands are functionally useless now because she's like,
Speaker 1: I can't figure out these rubber bands. No, it's I
Speaker 1: tried biting them and that's the end of the list.
Speaker 1: You've tried waving your hands around very slowly and nothing works.
Speaker 1: So in Denver was being plagued by a wig wearing menace.
Speaker 1: The quote midlife crisis banded has been responsible for three
Speaker 1: bank robberies. He's called the midlife crisis banded because he
Speaker 1: appears to be in his forties to fifties. His weapon
Speaker 1: of choice and open umbrella, which makes me suspect you
Speaker 1: might be the penguin or Mary Poppins's delinquent son. As
Speaker 1: far as I know, he's still at large, although maybe
Speaker 1: he's outgrown his midlife crisis banditry. Where the police right
Speaker 1: to label this man is going through a midlife crisis?
Speaker 1: Does such a thing even exist? Well, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: we might find the answers lie with a ringutans who
Speaker 1: seemed to experience a midlife crisis at their own. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting that Denver deputized in a orangutan to
Speaker 1: get inside the mind of a bandit dealing with a
Speaker 1: midlife crisis. But wait, no, no, I'm totally suggesting that
Speaker 1: get a grizzled, hard drinking orangutan detective to begrudgingly come
Speaker 1: out of retirement so he can catch a bandit can
Speaker 1: maybe make a few friends along the way. So, Hannah,
Speaker 1: would you believe that the concept of a midlife crisis
Speaker 1: is very contentious amongst psychologists, sociologists, and economists. Uh? Sure,
Speaker 1: I thought it was in sink because like I went
Speaker 1: to um, uh the seminar by uh this economist Andrew Oswald,
Speaker 1: and he was talking about like like all of the
Speaker 1: drama behind like his research into midlife crisis, and it
Speaker 1: was it was really fine to me. How it's like
Speaker 1: there's just a lot of like frustration and drama and
Speaker 1: anger into the research into midlife crisis. Like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess you know, that's a pretty lively topic for economists,
Speaker 1: so their attempts being made to quantify the phenomenon it
Speaker 1: kind of may seem silly, like they're gonna research are
Speaker 1: you kidding? They quantified the hotness of servers, like they'll
Speaker 1: do anything like the hotness of computer servers or no,
Speaker 1: like like human wait waiters and waitresses. Oh, like when
Speaker 1: they're hot, the economy is bad? What again, could be
Speaker 1: makeing this up? No? No, no, no, no, you're not.
Speaker 1: This sounds I'm this sounds correct. I feel like how
Speaker 1: they're doing this. I don't know. I want to know
Speaker 1: who proposed this and got funding? I mean, what fucking creep?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean like like I feel like
Speaker 1: it's like like the the motivation behind the studies, Like
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go to a bunch of restaurants and
Speaker 1: check out hot waitresses. Um, that's incredible, man, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: just like funded by the boob Inspectors Society or something,
Speaker 1: is it? I wonder which way the causality is going, Hannah,
Speaker 1: Like if it's that hot servers cause the economy to crash,
Speaker 1: or when the economy is crashing, only hot servers get hired.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say hot servers are gods. Okay, So like
Speaker 1: so like they can actually control knew it. I knew
Speaker 1: hot people were behind the economy always. So how do
Speaker 1: you quantify midlife crisis? Are you like, oh, the amount
Speaker 1: of like penis enhancement drugs that you take or like
Speaker 1: cool impractical cars? Um? So actual midlife crisis. Clinically speaking,
Speaker 1: you would measure it through like higher rates of anxiety depression,
Speaker 1: and but the main measure would be overall life satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Um funk, I'm gonna die at sixty. So Andrew all
Speaker 1: Oswald again, because I mean, it's of course an economist
Speaker 1: would do this, like when are people the most sad?
Speaker 1: Uh So he studied surveys of mental well being and
Speaker 1: across many different countries, and he found this consistent dip
Speaker 1: during midlife. And to be fair, this is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a contentious finding. It's an effect that's only
Speaker 1: found in moralists fluent countries, and there's been yet to
Speaker 1: be a study that like definitively isolates what variables are
Speaker 1: affecting the levels of mental wellness, and so it's kind
Speaker 1: of a it's a study in progress. So I'm interested
Speaker 1: if we can look to our animal cousins for answers.
Speaker 1: And so during this talk about humans being sad, he
Speaker 1: also brought up animals being sad and that really that
Speaker 1: was really a seems like a fun guy. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: he was very fun. I actually I talked to him
Speaker 1: after the thing and like he's like, so, so, what
Speaker 1: do you do. And I was like, oh, I'm a comedian,
Speaker 1: and he like gave me this blank look and then
Speaker 1: just turned away to talk to someone. To be fair,
Speaker 1: that is better than tell me a joke. But right, right, no,
Speaker 1: it's but I don't think he was being intentionally rude.
Speaker 1: I think it was just like he was not expecting
Speaker 1: bad answer because these were all like like economists, thing
Speaker 1: like like maybe he thought I was like making fun
Speaker 1: of him. It's like, no, no, no, no, it's it's I.
Speaker 1: I take it very seriously. So he was saying that
Speaker 1: the midlife crisis isn't just a human phenomenon. That there
Speaker 1: are studies of chimpanzees and ringatans that the animal caretakers
Speaker 1: report there being a dip in their perceived happiness around
Speaker 1: the chimp's middle age. So there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: really great personality measures that were used in the study
Speaker 1: that the caretakers would report they're all really interesting, but
Speaker 1: I'm just going to point out a few of my favorites. Um,
Speaker 1: there's stingy, lazy, depressed, defiant, predictable, jealous, sensitive, stable, manipulative,
Speaker 1: and clumsy. So it's like the worst version of the
Speaker 1: seven form just all terrible. And I also really liked
Speaker 1: the idea of like a caretaker being like this champ
Speaker 1: is stingy. It's like it's uh so, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit subjective as you can't imagine. Um. Oh. Another good
Speaker 1: one though, is that the caretakers were being asked if
Speaker 1: they felt like the animals are, we're reaching their goals,
Speaker 1: and that makes me wonder, like what would be like
Speaker 1: a chimpanzee or an orangutan's goal. I feel like instinctively,
Speaker 1: it seems like they live pretty day to day like scratch,
Speaker 1: but get nice insects and eat them. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a hierarchy. Yeah, I guess. Just get to the top
Speaker 1: of that and get a lot of food right for later,
Speaker 1: become the cool rang a tan that everyone looks up to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get get others to to pick the bugs off your
Speaker 1: button right right, like you do a skateboard flip, and
Speaker 1: then every next thing, you know, everyone's picking bugs out
Speaker 1: of your ass. Crack. Yeah. When I was in Costa Rica,
Speaker 1: you could actually tell the Capuchin's, You could tell what
Speaker 1: their social ranking was by hony stars. They had all
Speaker 1: their faces. Yeah. It started out cool, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then it got real dark. Real quickly, so like I
Speaker 1: would imagine that the ones that are less high up
Speaker 1: on the hark you have a lot of scars because
Speaker 1: they're like bullied. Ye. It's sort of like in like
Speaker 1: monkeys can be such dicks. The snow monkeys, you know,
Speaker 1: the really cute ones with the red faces and like
Speaker 1: the big poofy for codes in the Japanese hot springs,
Speaker 1: y uh, And they're adorable because they go into the
Speaker 1: hot springs and they just like chill out, but they're
Speaker 1: also really clicky and mean. They like yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Like they're just like Karen at your local spa, who's
Speaker 1: like giving you judge looks, so like if you're not
Speaker 1: a socially accepted um snow monkey, they're like no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't get to be in the hot springs, which
Speaker 1: really sucks because it's very cold there. And like there's
Speaker 1: I remember watching one of the probably in Attenborough one
Speaker 1: where it's like a video of like this like snow
Speaker 1: monkey and her child like shivering in the cold. Well
Speaker 1: all these like posh monkeys were like like laughing it
Speaker 1: up in the hot springs society, Man, are we in
Speaker 1: mirrors too? The monkeys are the monkeys mirrors of us,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, m hm, I'm sorry. I don't provide
Speaker 1: free pot with the podcast, Like you don't just get
Speaker 1: to get weed, so it's a little unfair for me
Speaker 1: to spring those questions on you. Now, that's okay. These
Speaker 1: questions are the weed. They are the weed, that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just getting a little high on some some questions about
Speaker 1: monkey society. Um, so why do we see this dip
Speaker 1: in the happiness of rayantans and chimpanzees, So sort of
Speaker 1: like with the human midlife crisis, there's not really a
Speaker 1: scientific answer yet. But I asked my friend who she's
Speaker 1: actually worked with orangutans, and I wanted to see, like
Speaker 1: what she thought about this study. And she thinks that, um,
Speaker 1: because it's focused on primates and captivity, it could be
Speaker 1: an effect that isn't found in the wild, So like
Speaker 1: there's something about the captivity that affects their happiness around midlife.
Speaker 1: So this is just like wild speculation, but it's my podcast, damnit,
Speaker 1: and I can speculate as much as I want. I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's like this sense of boredom or like
Speaker 1: a realization of like a routine, like because I feel
Speaker 1: like this may be the case for human midlife, Like
Speaker 1: you've settled down, you have a job that you kind
Speaker 1: of at this point where you're like, oh, maybe I
Speaker 1: can't really switch jobs and I can't switch families, and
Speaker 1: so you're just sort of like you get this sense
Speaker 1: of like, oh, like this is the routine, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to be doing this like X amount of years
Speaker 1: until I get really old. So you feel like this
Speaker 1: absence of choice, which I think can be a really
Speaker 1: like kind of a downer when you feel like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: I you know, I've been an accountant for ten years.
Speaker 1: This is just this is my life now. My resume
Speaker 1: is all freelance comedy. Yeah. I feel like for most
Speaker 1: people when they think about being stuck in in jobs,
Speaker 1: they don't think like freelance comedy, well, they should be dying.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like that Gary Larson cartoon where the P. T. Barnum,
Speaker 1: the kids of P. T. Barnum like escaped the circuits
Speaker 1: to go become accountants. Yeah. Yeah, it's this is an
Speaker 1: audio podcast, and that's a very visual gag, but I
Speaker 1: want want you to imagine it like these two little
Speaker 1: rascally kids exiting the circus tant it's Ry Larson. There
Speaker 1: probably cows. Oh yeah, there, I mean everyone's cows. That's
Speaker 1: Gary Larson's brand. So there's actually like and this sort
Speaker 1: of gets into I'm gonna try to end the podcast
Speaker 1: on a much happier note, which is how do you
Speaker 1: be happy? And how do orangutans be happy? So for humans,
Speaker 1: there's some interesting ideas about how to become happier, and
Speaker 1: one of them is the psychologist named Robert Holden who
Speaker 1: hosts laughing workshops, which is just like a circle of
Speaker 1: people laughing. So like it's literally like I've seen videos
Speaker 1: of it, like people like sitting on the floor in
Speaker 1: a circle or lying down. I've seen these you know
Speaker 1: you have in me hope and now I just want
Speaker 1: to hunt down this guy. So like he just says
Speaker 1: like now laugh and they all laugh like a bunch
Speaker 1: of terrifying you're telling me it there is a way
Speaker 1: to be happy, and then you're telling me the thing
Speaker 1: that we all used to measure our jobs is worthless.
Speaker 1: Well no, So what's interesting is the I mean, the
Speaker 1: clinic is a little more complicated than just like laugh
Speaker 1: my robot um. They're also like told to remind themselves
Speaker 1: of happy things in their lives and like this is
Speaker 1: not so this to be clear, this is not like
Speaker 1: for people with clinical depression. This is not like a
Speaker 1: substitute for something like that. It's just people who are
Speaker 1: maybe like dissatisfied in life but not depressed, and so
Speaker 1: like they do cognitive things like you don't have to earn,
Speaker 1: deserve or work for happiness. But researchers recorded brain activity
Speaker 1: and participants before and after to the clinic, and they
Speaker 1: found that after the participants actually did have activity in
Speaker 1: the left prefrontal lobe, which more closely resembled that of
Speaker 1: generally happy people. So people who wrote on a survey
Speaker 1: like yeah, I'm fine, which it's crazy to me that
Speaker 1: you can like like simulate it by pretending to laugh,
Speaker 1: which again is maybe a dangerous thing to say as
Speaker 1: a commedian, like we could automate the comedy. I mean,
Speaker 1: they tried it, um and again, I'm making all these
Speaker 1: things up. Why are you pausing to listen to me?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think they tried it in Edinburgh
Speaker 1: and they tried to make a computer tell jokes and
Speaker 1: it was just really racist and sexist. Oh no, see
Speaker 1: you say you're making this up, but you're not. I yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been multiple attempts at like these AI algorithms
Speaker 1: that always just turned in a Nazis. Like there was
Speaker 1: a there was a yeah, the Twitter gu Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was the Twitter bot the girl who what was her
Speaker 1: name this talk about that was trying to impersonate a
Speaker 1: teenage girl and then she just turned into full like
Speaker 1: like saying Nazi slogans and really racist stuff. Smarter child
Speaker 1: never became a Nazi. Smarter Child out stayed pure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of robots turn evil, but it's
Speaker 1: death to all humans, not like humans based on your race.
Speaker 1: But if like the idea of like forcing laughter at
Speaker 1: like in a group like your occultists doesn't appeal to you,
Speaker 1: there are other ideas on how to be happy. So
Speaker 1: Dan Gilbert is a Harvard psychologist who says we're really
Speaker 1: bad that predicting, like what's going to make us happy?
Speaker 1: We overestimate things that will make us happier, like elections,
Speaker 1: although hang on, I have a small problem with that
Speaker 1: because I think, like maybe for more minor elections where
Speaker 1: you're like I kind of want this guy in, Like
Speaker 1: maybe that's true, but I think ones where it's like
Speaker 1: it really is important. It does have I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that has an impact life. Yeah, I mean because
Speaker 1: like I feel like the study may have been done
Speaker 1: in those wonderful pastimes when uh, when elections seemed more normal. Um,
Speaker 1: but other things are like romances, promotions, moving to your
Speaker 1: destination of choice, or even like winning the lottery, which
Speaker 1: again small point. There's actually this interesting curve of like
Speaker 1: how money improves quality of life, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: it shoots up obviously because like money is important to
Speaker 1: be able to live and be comfortable. But then after
Speaker 1: you know your first cool million, it kind of plateaus
Speaker 1: because like, you know, there's not a lot of difference
Speaker 1: between your first mega yacht and your second mega Like
Speaker 1: I don't think a rich person is like you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't really feeling it, but like once I got
Speaker 1: like my third Lamborghini, I really just was satisfied. It's
Speaker 1: really happy. But a few things that I can actually predict,
Speaker 1: like how happy you're going to be is one, like, um,
Speaker 1: your last memory of an event will kind of color
Speaker 1: your whole emotional response to it. So like if you
Speaker 1: have a great vacation, but on the last day, like
Speaker 1: you pooped your pants, Like you're gonna think, Oh, that
Speaker 1: vacation sucked. I pooped my pants. That was the vacation
Speaker 1: to Hawaii where I pooped my pants, not the one
Speaker 1: where it's like because I've been reading my words. So like,
Speaker 1: even if you have like like of your vacation was fine,
Speaker 1: you snorkeled, you like you served, you know, all these
Speaker 1: fun things, but like that one percent was you pooping
Speaker 1: your pants, Like that's gonna taint your whole experience. And
Speaker 1: so some of the best predictors of overall human happiness is, uh,
Speaker 1: the amount of time spent with family and friends, which
Speaker 1: sounds really sappy, but it's also kind of corresponse to
Speaker 1: the studies we talked about earlier with like the African
Speaker 1: Gray parents and study of people in the UK, where
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it doesn't it doesn't even have
Speaker 1: to be like a spouse, like being married or even
Speaker 1: having kids don't necessarily predict your happiness, but just like
Speaker 1: generally spending time with friends, people you care about, like
Speaker 1: or maybe plants. There's this study that shows that so
Speaker 1: seniors living in a nursing home we're given a plant
Speaker 1: to water, and those that weren't given the plant had
Speaker 1: like much higher rates of mortality than those that just
Speaker 1: were given like this plant to take care of in water.
Speaker 1: And it's an interesting thing because like the the ideas
Speaker 1: that maybe like having that control over your environment actually
Speaker 1: sort of improves your quality of life, and like an
Speaker 1: improvement in your quality of life will make you live
Speaker 1: a little bit longer because you're like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: have more motivation to get up and walk around. And
Speaker 1: but I don't think you can just like give an
Speaker 1: orangutan a plant, because like they're typically surrounded by plants,
Speaker 1: even in zoos, So how do you make them happy?
Speaker 1: I mean it is actually pretty similar to human happiness,
Speaker 1: like you need like enrichment, socializing control over their environment.
Speaker 1: And I talked to my friend again who like worked
Speaker 1: with orientans, and she said, there's five categories of enrichment.
Speaker 1: There's social, cognitive, physical, and sensory, and then my favorite
Speaker 1: one food. Uh so, like food is different from sensory.
Speaker 1: It is, well yeah, so like physic Yeah, so like
Speaker 1: sensory would be like you know how like kittycats like
Speaker 1: to scratch things, so that would be like they're getting
Speaker 1: this sensory feedback from scratching your couch up and then
Speaker 1: like the physical is actually like the physical habitat that
Speaker 1: they live in, so like the space, so like having
Speaker 1: having a place to like go and eat in private,
Speaker 1: you can do things like give them puzzles with food rewards,
Speaker 1: as actually at the San Diego Zoo kind of recently
Speaker 1: and I saw the girl has had these little like
Speaker 1: envelopes filled with I guess pumpkin seeds or some kind
Speaker 1: of food reward, and they're just like it's really kind
Speaker 1: of funny because like this huge really just like bussing
Speaker 1: with this little tiny owned block really long periods of time.
Speaker 1: They were just like so interested and they were getting
Speaker 1: tiny tiny pieces of food out of it. Like it
Speaker 1: just doesn't seem like it would be that like motivating,
Speaker 1: but I guess it was interesting enough, and like there's
Speaker 1: like a little hole they had to like figure out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the most complicated puzzle, but we gave them jobs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you're a Maleman now, and it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: I am a Maleman. So also, this is really cute.
Speaker 1: She was saying that like really social animals need to
Speaker 1: have a good relationship with their caretakers, so like with dolphins,
Speaker 1: and sea lions if you're if you're training them. Before
Speaker 1: they get trained, they're shown photos of different trainers and
Speaker 1: then the dolphins like boop their noses to the photo
Speaker 1: of the person they want to work with, and then
Speaker 1: that's that's who they'll work with. Um. And then imagine
Speaker 1: being an ugly trainer, like you're the last one picked
Speaker 1: by the dolphin and I don't know what dolphin standards are,
Speaker 1: and then like that dolphin that gets stuck with you
Speaker 1: just kind of looks at you guys like, um, I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, maybe looking at these kind of
Speaker 1: like enrichment things that we do for animals might help people,
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe we should put our sandwiches inside
Speaker 1: of a puzzle or like uh, but you know, more realistically,
Speaker 1: like the kind of like socialization stuff where it's like
Speaker 1: with a lot of things, like you know, you just
Speaker 1: kind of eat food regularly, but like I feel like,
Speaker 1: and you're you're the anthropology person, but like food seems
Speaker 1: like a very social thing. So so it's like we're
Speaker 1: sort of more in the fast food era of like
Speaker 1: you shove a thing in your mouth while you're driving
Speaker 1: to your six jobs. But like I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I think maybe like part of like human enrichment
Speaker 1: would like actually being making food and then having it
Speaker 1: be like a social experience. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean we do that. We do that a lot. We
Speaker 1: have ceremonies around that, we have Oh wait, you were
Speaker 1: saying Thanksgiving. Okay, Oh it's I don't know if that
Speaker 1: would be pro social though. Thanksgiving more of a combat arena.
Speaker 1: I mean, but that's what most of our like meal
Speaker 1: gatherings are combat arenas. There are a lot of both,
Speaker 1: and that it's kind of enriching in no way, and
Speaker 1: actually it's infuriating. Yeah, it's fucking I swear to God
Speaker 1: if Grandpa says anything about Israel. But that causes me
Speaker 1: to research to state solution issues. And yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: form of enrichment, except like, like the puzzle is like
Speaker 1: how do I get out of this conversation with my
Speaker 1: uncle without like how do I get him to not
Speaker 1: use the word Palestinian. Yes, it's not just human contact
Speaker 1: that helps make us happier. Animals have been scientifically proven
Speaker 1: to improve moon and stress levels. A cute stress was
Speaker 1: reduced when study participants pet a soft, fuzzy rabbit versus
Speaker 1: when they pet a soft puzzy toy. Grooming and caring
Speaker 1: for horses can help with reducing the negative impacts of PTSD,
Speaker 1: and it's not just the fuzzy, cute animals that can
Speaker 1: help us. A study found that when elderly people were
Speaker 1: given pet crickets, they reported feeling less depressed than a
Speaker 1: cricketless control group. I guess the key to happiness is
Speaker 1: lots and lots of crickets. So how do you got
Speaker 1: anything to plug? I probably have shows, Okay, I will
Speaker 1: tweet it if I have a show, probably unless it's
Speaker 1: a bad show, in which case I won't do that.
Speaker 1: But please book me anyway. It's at Hannah Michael. So
Speaker 1: it's h A N A M I C h E
Speaker 1: L S. I know, I don't know, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a long story, awesome. And you don't have to apologize
Speaker 1: for your name named name. Gotta gotta use your lobster
Speaker 1: heart and just like put your name out there when
Speaker 1: I slam this claw on the table, you accept that name.
Speaker 1: So you can follow me on Twitter at Katie Golden
Speaker 1: or I mean, I would also suggest very strongly following
Speaker 1: at pro bird writes my bird Twitter, where I'm definitely
Speaker 1: a human doing a bird and not a bird controlling
Speaker 1: a human puppet. Um, And you can follow us at
Speaker 1: Creature feet Pod. That's not beat pot like, like, it's
Speaker 1: not about beat so it's like the shortened feature anyway,
Speaker 1: just just you can. You can probably find us on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: m on Facebook, and of course join us next Wednesday
Speaker 1: for a more creature feature m hm