Speaker 1: Welcome to Cruture, feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology. In Today on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: about beauty, style pizzazz. The natural world is full of fantastic,
Speaker 1: fashionable animals. But what causes this beauty? Why is a
Speaker 1: bird of Paradise so fantastic? Do the beautiful colors and
Speaker 1: crests found in birds and other animals have some secret
Speaker 1: purpose or do they just like looking hot? Joining me
Speaker 1: today to discuss this question is science writer for The
Speaker 1: New York Times, magazine, Scientific American and many other publications,
Speaker 1: Farris Jaber. Welcome, Hi, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to talk to you. I love your
Speaker 1: articles and your Twitter feed. Often it gives me inspiration
Speaker 1: for this very podcast, and I love that you bring
Speaker 1: attention to some of these The best word I can
Speaker 1: come up with is like whimsical. Just animals that are
Speaker 1: They seem like they're from a fairy tale, from some
Speaker 1: kind of fantasy setting, and they are amazing both to
Speaker 1: look at and in terms of their behaviors. And I
Speaker 1: just love relishing the these like details of beauty in
Speaker 1: the natural world. Yeah, I never get tired of looking
Speaker 1: at or talking about all the fantastic creatures out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the science
Speaker 1: the biology of beauty because it is it sounds like
Speaker 1: a very light topic, but it's actually extremely controversial and
Speaker 1: behind these deep schisms in evolutionary biology, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a topic that is far from being frivolous. But to
Speaker 1: give the listeners a sense of what we're talking about, first,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about one of the most incredible
Speaker 1: birds in terms of beauty and style and presentation, the
Speaker 1: bower bird, which has always amazed me. It's the most
Speaker 1: ostentatious animal I think in the natural world. There are
Speaker 1: twenty seven species of bower birds found in Australia New Guinea.
Speaker 1: They're famous for building their bowers. So, Ferris, can you
Speaker 1: describe what a bower is and what these bower birds do? So,
Speaker 1: in a literal sense, a bower is this arrangement, this
Speaker 1: assemblage of twigs and wood, and it can take various shapes. Usually,
Speaker 1: you know, it might be a corridor, kind of a
Speaker 1: hallway like structure. It could be sort of a hut
Speaker 1: or teepee, or it could be sort of a spire
Speaker 1: or pole. And then the bower birds will decorate these
Speaker 1: structures with all kinds of colorful and interesting objects like
Speaker 1: flowers and berries and snail shells, and if they're near
Speaker 1: a place where there's been a lot of people, they
Speaker 1: might even use plastic debris like bottle caps or cutlery. Um.
Speaker 1: But in a less literal sense and more functional sense,
Speaker 1: a bower is many things. It's a sculpture, it's a gallery,
Speaker 1: and it's a court. It's a space for courtship. So
Speaker 1: male bower birds are creating these structures so that female
Speaker 1: bower birds can come along and inspect them and judge them,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of evaluate how well the male bower
Speaker 1: bird has constructed this power, what kind of objects has
Speaker 1: he collected, how much attention has he paid to curating
Speaker 1: this collection. And that is part of their mating process.
Speaker 1: So the females, you know, they choose which males they
Speaker 1: want to mate with, partly based on the artistry displayed
Speaker 1: in these bowers. And that's very different from the typical
Speaker 1: bird's nest, right because there are birds who will show
Speaker 1: off their nests like males will build a nest and
Speaker 1: show it off to the female. But this is quite
Speaker 1: a bit different from the bower itself, right right, And
Speaker 1: so interestingly, the bower doesn't end functioning as a nest
Speaker 1: at all, So it's a it's entirely sort of aesthetic
Speaker 1: structure used in the mating process. The female comes along,
Speaker 1: she inspects it. If she decides to mate with the
Speaker 1: male based on that bower and based on his overall
Speaker 1: appearance and dance moves, then they will mate, and then
Speaker 1: she'll fly off and she'll build an entirely separate, cup
Speaker 1: shaped nest in which she will lay the eggs, and
Speaker 1: then she'll raise the offspring entirely on her own. So
Speaker 1: the male is not involved in the in the the
Speaker 1: the raising process of the children, just in this elaborate mating.
Speaker 1: So he builds this fancy dance platform, puts on a
Speaker 1: show mate, and then is out of there. Does he
Speaker 1: mate with only one female or multiple females? I believe
Speaker 1: he will mate with as many as we'll give him
Speaker 1: the chance to do so. And but females at the
Speaker 1: same time will also visit multiple bowers, so they're not
Speaker 1: just yeah, they're not mating with the first one. They
Speaker 1: come across gender equity in bower mer So, uh, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. So the bowers, they don't have a practical
Speaker 1: function in terms of mating. They're not used for security protection.
Speaker 1: It is purely to set a stage for this bird's display.
Speaker 1: And often it's like color coordinated, like they'll focus on
Speaker 1: getting only blue things or only red things, or like
Speaker 1: different colors and then grouping the colors together. To me,
Speaker 1: what is striking about these bowers is they look like
Speaker 1: an art project that a human would make. Absolutely they
Speaker 1: remind me a little bit of Wes Anderson style of like,
Speaker 1: you know, highly curated things in very discreet categories, but
Speaker 1: like beautifully arranged. They also remind me a bit of
Speaker 1: like um Cabinet of Wonders, you know, from the eighteenth
Speaker 1: century and such, and sort of placing things in these
Speaker 1: a little discreet um windows of you know, to view.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is that some scientists have propose that
Speaker 1: they're may be a functional purpose for the females, which
Speaker 1: is that these structures may allow them to more safely
Speaker 1: evaluate a male up close without as much risk of
Speaker 1: the male forcing himself on the female. So it becomes
Speaker 1: almost like a screen, you know, a physical barrier which
Speaker 1: you know, between her and him, so that she has
Speaker 1: more time to evaluate before copulation takes place. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's kind of like meeting at a coffee
Speaker 1: shop for your first date exactly. It also reminds me
Speaker 1: of these these scenes from like Jane Austen novels where
Speaker 1: you know, people are overhearing things across like a hedge maze,
Speaker 1: you know, and the characters like just across but they're
Speaker 1: just barely separated. That Yeah, I could definitely see what
Speaker 1: is the Mr Darcy as some kind of fancy, ostentatious bird. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is. It is very interesting. I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is a courtship. Like I do not watch Britain,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine it would be like a scene
Speaker 1: from Britain based on what I have seen of the show,
Speaker 1: just like this this very and it's it's a ritual
Speaker 1: like the male It's not just like, hey, here's all
Speaker 1: my stuff. He does an elaborate dance and she evaluates
Speaker 1: that and she either stays and mates with him or
Speaker 1: moves on to the next mail exactly. They like the
Speaker 1: bower Birds just you know, they they're sort of firing
Speaker 1: on all throttles when it comes to meeting, like they
Speaker 1: have the colorful plumage, they have the elaborate dance moves,
Speaker 1: they have crazy cool songs, and then they have these
Speaker 1: probably you know, one of the most compelling examples of
Speaker 1: what could be considered art in the animal kingdom. I
Speaker 1: can't it's hard to think of another animal that makes
Speaker 1: a structure that is this aesthetically elaborate. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know of animals who do make things that look artistic.
Speaker 1: Like there's the pufferfish, the certain species of pupper fish
Speaker 1: that does those designs in the sand, and you know
Speaker 1: he's working with what he has, which is just sand,
Speaker 1: and so it's very meditative. It looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: a a sand garden like this, you know, very meditative thing.
Speaker 1: But it is it's definitely not as Again, this looks
Speaker 1: like something you would find at a modern art museum.
Speaker 1: It's so incredibly elaborate. And so when you see this,
Speaker 1: it's it's so show it's I think there's something shocking
Speaker 1: about it because it defies this expectation that evolution produces
Speaker 1: just the brute, most efficient animals that it can. Now
Speaker 1: this is a misconception, of course, like evolution. There's nothing
Speaker 1: efficient necessarily about evolution. It's you know, this very long
Speaker 1: process and it it comes from a very simple rule
Speaker 1: like whether or not something survives and procreates, and that
Speaker 1: creates an incredible abundance of complexity. And I think that
Speaker 1: is what you see here when you see beauty in
Speaker 1: the natural world and these like elaborate structures, elaborate rituals,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, this is not this is an unexpectedly
Speaker 1: roundabout way for a male to get a female's attention
Speaker 1: for mating. And so there are kind of these two
Speaker 1: competing theories about why something like the bower bird could
Speaker 1: create something like this or you know, other instances of
Speaker 1: beauty like bright plumage, beautiful songs, anything that doesn't have
Speaker 1: a clear practical purpose. One is that it's an honest
Speaker 1: signal of the animal's fitness. So maybe with long plumage
Speaker 1: the bird has to be particularly healthy, a good immune
Speaker 1: system to fight off parasites. Or maybe building the bower
Speaker 1: is advertising this bird's ability to forage, like its eyesight. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's mental acuity. Um. But there's another theory that Darwin
Speaker 1: himself was kind of partial to right, right, So Darwin
Speaker 1: proposed that maybe, instead of some sort of on a
Speaker 1: signaling going on, maybe certain animals just like the way
Speaker 1: that certain colors or certain flourishes appear to them, and
Speaker 1: that females are making these mating choices based on essentially
Speaker 1: arbitrary aesthetic preferences. And I think he was kind of
Speaker 1: um an exception among his peers at the time for
Speaker 1: suggesting something like that, because it required a certain level
Speaker 1: of recognition and respect for the sentience and agency of animals,
Speaker 1: and at the time, I think it was still fairly
Speaker 1: popular to think of animals more like automatons. You know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of machines, are just making these robotic behaviors
Speaker 1: and actions and not actually deciding things, and they certainly
Speaker 1: don't have conscious aesthetic preferences, you know, the way that
Speaker 1: people might. But Darwin, you know, Darwin had a different
Speaker 1: way of looking at it, and he suggested that this
Speaker 1: was a possibility. Yeah, I mean, it's interest seen because
Speaker 1: it runs a foul of two antiquated notions. One is
Speaker 1: that animals don't really have agency, and also that females
Speaker 1: or women in human society don't have agencies. So like,
Speaker 1: if you're saying that female a female animal somehow has
Speaker 1: some agency that would be the ultimate taboo back uh,
Speaker 1: during Darwin's time exactly, and I and one of his peers,
Speaker 1: I think was you know, became infamous over time for
Speaker 1: saying that it could not be that, you know, nature
Speaker 1: was controlled by vicious feminine caprice as we called it.
Speaker 1: But you know, the these the winds of women could
Speaker 1: not possibly dictate, you know, the evolution of species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I I read that in your article.
Speaker 1: And actually everyone should read this article if you like
Speaker 1: this episode. It's how beauty is making scientists rethink evolution.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful article and unlike a podcast, you can
Speaker 1: actually look at these images of birds. So that's a
Speaker 1: nice thing about the written medium. And yeah, I this uh,
Speaker 1: this guy st George move Art having this like being
Speaker 1: offended at this notion that a bird and a female
Speaker 1: bird could somehow shape evolution. It's so it's so interesting
Speaker 1: to me how these social hang ups, like are kind
Speaker 1: of cultural issues, can influence how we analyze animal behaviors.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's still a problem now? Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: That's something I think about a lot because I think,
Speaker 1: first of all, in sort of a fundamental biological level,
Speaker 1: all species are kind of trapped in their personal bubbles
Speaker 1: of perceptions, you know, which are really determined by partly
Speaker 1: determined by their biology. What kind of hardware do they
Speaker 1: have with which to perceive the world. And then, um,
Speaker 1: any animal that has culture that add so many extra
Speaker 1: layers of perceptual bias, and as you know, as humans
Speaker 1: as having particularly complex cultures that change so dramatically over time,
Speaker 1: that makes it even more complicated. And I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, even if we look at just Western thought
Speaker 1: and Western culture alone, we can see a very dramatic
Speaker 1: shift in the way that we think about other animals
Speaker 1: and non human species. I think for a long time now,
Speaker 1: we've been in this this difficult process of trying to
Speaker 1: kind of you know, shed some of these older ideas
Speaker 1: about animals as automatons and have greater recognition for animal
Speaker 1: agency animal sentience. But it's it's certainly not something that's
Speaker 1: been universally adopted, even within Western culture. It's definitely an
Speaker 1: ongoing process. But I think that that you do see
Speaker 1: kind of this art bending towards greater recognition, and in
Speaker 1: some ways you could even think of it as a
Speaker 1: return to the earliest ways of engaging with animals because
Speaker 1: I you know, I think that if you look at
Speaker 1: um a lot of the cave art, where early humans
Speaker 1: were clearly obsessed with other species, even in this sort
Speaker 1: of worshiping, ritualistic way. When you think about a lot
Speaker 1: of indigenous cultures and mythologies, there used to be a
Speaker 1: much greater respect for other species and thinking of them
Speaker 1: as people as you know, as rathren that you know,
Speaker 1: they were just different kinds of people that we shared
Speaker 1: the planet with. It's an interesting thing because I've encountered
Speaker 1: these two kind of attitudes, which is one is that
Speaker 1: we over anthropomorphize animals. So when you know, in evolutionary biology, uh,
Speaker 1: when you study it, you're sometimes like told like, okay,
Speaker 1: you can't anthropomorphize you you can't think of this in
Speaker 1: terms of human terms, like if you're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the ant wants to protect its colony, Well, does
Speaker 1: it really want that? Is it just driven by an instinct? Uh?
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, I think there is
Speaker 1: also this mistake of under anthropomorphizing in a way. Of course,
Speaker 1: animals are not going to have human behaviors because they're
Speaker 1: not humans. They won't have a human mind frame. But
Speaker 1: just because an animal is not like a furry human, uh,
Speaker 1: it is also you know, the the the all the
Speaker 1: things that make up our consciousness is present in many,
Speaker 1: many animals, and so this idea that they couldn't do
Speaker 1: something like say appreciate beauty is also a mistake. So
Speaker 1: like we it's it's this like tug of words like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we have to think about these animals scientifically. We can't
Speaker 1: attribute our own human emotions to an animal. And people
Speaker 1: often when I have guests on my show, they're always
Speaker 1: apologizing because they're saying like, oh, I'm probably saying it
Speaker 1: like this animal has these feelings and they probably don't.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you know, maybe they don't have the
Speaker 1: same feelings you would have as a human. But I
Speaker 1: think it is a mistake also to overcorrect and think
Speaker 1: like they don't have they can't just do something because
Speaker 1: it's fun, or they can't do something because it it's
Speaker 1: pretty and it's it's interesting. Uh. And so like you know,
Speaker 1: when you see an animal playing, people think like, well,
Speaker 1: it's got to be because they're practicing for some purpose.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, they could just be having fun. And
Speaker 1: I think that's such an interesting idea of what's going
Speaker 1: on with these birds, Like maybe these birds, uh just
Speaker 1: find bright, flashy feathers, cool dances, bowers with lots of
Speaker 1: like blue and red items altogether just really pretty and cool.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that it is interesting that like,
Speaker 1: as humans are like that's pretty and that's really cool,
Speaker 1: and the female birds are also, you know, perhaps thinking
Speaker 1: in their own bird way, the same thing. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: completely agree. I think that especially in mainstream scientific communities,
Speaker 1: there is this almost reflexive tendency to avoid and challenge
Speaker 1: and resist anything that seems like it's being too anthropomorphic,
Speaker 1: you know, projecting too much of human mindsets onto other creatures.
Speaker 1: And it's certainly understandable why that would be the case,
Speaker 1: because it can go too far, and that can become
Speaker 1: its own kind of bias, and we just start to
Speaker 1: see what we want to see, not what's really there.
Speaker 1: But there's equally this danger of going too far in
Speaker 1: the other direction, and then we start to undervalue what
Speaker 1: other species are capable of and objectify them. Really in
Speaker 1: some ways, we start to remove their agency, and it
Speaker 1: just you know, when you when you really think about
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology, doesn't make sense that there would be only
Speaker 1: one species that would be capable of, you know, appreciating
Speaker 1: beauty in that sense. There has to be some sort
Speaker 1: of longer history of this, you know, ability forming over time,
Speaker 1: so it can't just be restricted to a single species. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a bit, it's a bit self isolating and self absorbed.
Speaker 1: Isn't it for us to think, Oh, we're the only
Speaker 1: ones who can think things are just cool or pretty
Speaker 1: or have fun? Uh? It's I think more comforting to
Speaker 1: feel like other animals, you know, have those same emotions
Speaker 1: or similar emotions at least absolutely. Yeah, to think about,
Speaker 1: do you know, how did they develop in different species?
Speaker 1: And where are sort of the where could it be
Speaker 1: convergent evolution? You know, where could it be and you know,
Speaker 1: something entirely independent and what those differences might be Like.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting to think about that just being something
Speaker 1: that may be inevitable once you reach a certain level
Speaker 1: of intelligence. Like I love looking at the behavior of
Speaker 1: octopuses because they're about as far evolutionarily as you can
Speaker 1: get from us, Like we diverged when we were what
Speaker 1: like little flatworms of some kind, and they independently evolved.
Speaker 1: The complex brain, complex eyes, basically you know, all of
Speaker 1: these things they evolved that are you know, recognizable to us,
Speaker 1: right as like in behaviors that are recognizable to us
Speaker 1: from like a flatworm. And they also demonstrate things like curiosity,
Speaker 1: which you know, we can't know that they're curious, but
Speaker 1: they sure act in that way. And so I think
Speaker 1: there's something I find sort of inspiring over the idea
Speaker 1: that like, you know, maybe like birds and humans share,
Speaker 1: you know, an appreciation for beauty because we're you know,
Speaker 1: both terrestrial animals and we kind of we've share more
Speaker 1: in common at least than humans and octopuses. But maybe
Speaker 1: there's also something to the idea that we could you know,
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. This this ability to start to
Speaker 1: appreciate the environment that you're in just kind of happens
Speaker 1: as soon as you reach a certain level of awareness
Speaker 1: and intelligence. Yeah, I'm really fascinated by that idea as well,
Speaker 1: And so it's interesting to think of For example, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of minor staying is that a lot of
Speaker 1: primates do not necessarily have great color vision, but the
Speaker 1: lineage of primates we descended from sort of regain some
Speaker 1: better color vision over time, and there are lots of
Speaker 1: hypotheses for why that might be the case. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe it helped us pick out ripe fruits amongst a
Speaker 1: tangle of green. Maybe it helped us socially because we
Speaker 1: could see when somebody was read in the face because
Speaker 1: they were angry, or blushing because they were embarrassed and such,
Speaker 1: and so we could think that, you know, birds and
Speaker 1: humans might have this sort of attention to color and
Speaker 1: detail for some of the same pragmatic evolutionary reasons. You know,
Speaker 1: they providing these discrete advantages. But then you know, if
Speaker 1: a human, a bird, an octopus, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: achieves a certain sort of baseline level of intelligence, of cognition,
Speaker 1: of self awareness, you start to have all these extra
Speaker 1: abilities and phenomena emerging. You know, from that overall condition
Speaker 1: that you know, it wasn't anticipated, you know, it's certainly
Speaker 1: it's just the sort of unexpected by products, and asthetic
Speaker 1: appreciation could be at least partly an example of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that sometimes something can start from a purpose
Speaker 1: that is more strictly speaking, quote unquote practical, and then
Speaker 1: evolve into something that is more it's still practical, but
Speaker 1: it is more complex, and so we see it as
Speaker 1: sort of this higher um state of being. So with
Speaker 1: birds and with beauty, Uh, I guess that is kind
Speaker 1: of the question. So like if they are attracted to beauty,
Speaker 1: what determines beauty in the first place? So, you know,
Speaker 1: they it seems like it has to start somewhere all
Speaker 1: the maybe some people would are you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to start anywhere. It could be spontaneous, but
Speaker 1: it seems like there there may have been at some point,
Speaker 1: like a practical purpose to being attracted to bright colors
Speaker 1: or plumage, Like, is there is there even an answer
Speaker 1: to how this bird appreciation for beauty started? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like you said, some scientists I think would argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, certain esthetic preferences are truly arbitrary and do
Speaker 1: not have clear origins or explan nations. There's another group
Speaker 1: of scientists that are really interested in sort of uncovering
Speaker 1: the origins of these types of preferences, and in some
Speaker 1: cases they've been able to trace them to quirks of
Speaker 1: an animal's anatomy or to something to do with their
Speaker 1: evolutionary history. Um. For example, there's a group of guppies
Speaker 1: in Trinidad I believe that are really attracted to right
Speaker 1: orange patches on their mates, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: they are also really attracted to these bright orange tree
Speaker 1: fruits that fall into the water that they feed on.
Speaker 1: So some some reasons are proposed that maybe this you know,
Speaker 1: initial practical, pragmatic, evolutionary advantageous attraction to orange for sustenance
Speaker 1: was then co opted into the mating process and became
Speaker 1: this more aesthetic preference, and that type of co opting
Speaker 1: of kind of bleeding of you know, the pragmatic into
Speaker 1: the aesthetic could be happening um in all kinds of
Speaker 1: species and throughout evolutionary history. This is a complete shot
Speaker 1: in the dark and probably not true, but I do
Speaker 1: wonder and I have wondered those sometimes that when we
Speaker 1: see a cute animal and we joke like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat you up, like if there is something
Speaker 1: And again this is complete guesswork, but like it's at
Speaker 1: some point it was based in an appetite, but then
Speaker 1: it also triggered our cuteness thing of like maybe it
Speaker 1: has a human baby kind of face, like those proportions,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to eat them, but then we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you look too much like a baby. I don't actually
Speaker 1: want it, you're too cute. But then they are like
Speaker 1: that cuteness and then like I'm gonna eat you. It's
Speaker 1: like they kind of get mixed up and it's you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's it's something that I think is
Speaker 1: kind of funny because like when I'm with my dog
Speaker 1: and she's really cute, I'm like, I'm gonna eat you,
Speaker 1: and it's like maybe my great great great great great
Speaker 1: great great great grandma was like thinking that about actually
Speaker 1: eating a dog, but then was like, actually, you're too cute,
Speaker 1: I can't eat you. That's really interesting. That makes me
Speaker 1: think of one of the one of the hypop the
Speaker 1: seas for the origin kissing is that you know, in
Speaker 1: some cultures there is this really intimate and and another
Speaker 1: species too, there's an intimate mouth to mouth feeding process
Speaker 1: where the parent will chew up food and then regurgitate
Speaker 1: it to the infant um. And so this sort of
Speaker 1: you know, extremely intimate mouth to mouth contact eventually gets
Speaker 1: co opted again becomes something else, um, you know, moves
Speaker 1: from the parental to the sexual to the reproductive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's interesting how I think a lot of times
Speaker 1: and evolution we see something starts out one way and
Speaker 1: then you know, through this combination of natural selection and
Speaker 1: chance and then sometimes sort of conscious perception becomes something
Speaker 1: else entirely. And that's actually, you know, something that may
Speaker 1: have happened with feathers and plumage. So you know, there's
Speaker 1: this thinking that initially dinosaurs evolved you know, sort of
Speaker 1: early feathers maybe for warmth, for temperature regulation, but they
Speaker 1: became this incredible canvas for aesthetic experimentation because now you
Speaker 1: have this really interesting surface area and this material that
Speaker 1: can do all kinds of interesting things with pigment and
Speaker 1: with form, and so that initially pragmatic adaptation became something
Speaker 1: more aesthetic over time. Yeah, that's so interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do love that we've kind of revitalized
Speaker 1: our image of dinosaurs to have all of these you know,
Speaker 1: the colors that we see in more modern paleo art
Speaker 1: showing dinosaurs. Is maybe they actually were instead of like
Speaker 1: the kind of skin wrapped like Jurassic Park, although I
Speaker 1: love Jurassic Park. You know, the kind of more you know,
Speaker 1: olive and brown tone dinosaurs, and it's I would love
Speaker 1: like because then when you think about it, like maybe
Speaker 1: they had some kind of like mating rituals, like funny dances,
Speaker 1: like imagining some kind of dinosaur doing uh goofy little
Speaker 1: dance that like the bower bird does pretty incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like a moonwalking t red. You know, I can
Speaker 1: see it. I can definitely see it. So what is
Speaker 1: runaway selection? Like? How can you have a trait that
Speaker 1: goes from being practical to being pure decorative frippery. Like
Speaker 1: you start out with wings and then they kind of
Speaker 1: like turn into something like you you'll have, maybe more accurately,
Speaker 1: you'll have like a tail feather and that's very useful
Speaker 1: for flight. In a bird of Paradise becomes really long,
Speaker 1: it actually becomes kind of a burden for the birden
Speaker 1: it doesn't really help flight, it actually hinders them. But
Speaker 1: the ladies love it. So having these long tail feathers
Speaker 1: really helps them in sexual selection. So how does it
Speaker 1: go from being like, how can you have an impractical
Speaker 1: trait in evolution? Yeah? So I think we could imagine
Speaker 1: a population of birds that, let's say they have long
Speaker 1: maroon tails others and the feathers are useful for both
Speaker 1: flight and they're also this maroon color because it's helpful
Speaker 1: for camouflage in their particular habitat, and then, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: females really strongly prefer males that have the longest and
Speaker 1: the sort of brightest maroon tail feathers. So though and
Speaker 1: if the preference is strong enough, those males will be
Speaker 1: much more reproductively successful than any of their counterparts, regardless
Speaker 1: of their other traits and abilities. And then their children
Speaker 1: will have, you know, also extremely long and extremely bright
Speaker 1: maroon tail feathers, and then generation by generation, the you know,
Speaker 1: the the males with the longest and the brightest feathers
Speaker 1: will get chosen over and over again until they reach
Speaker 1: ridiculous proportions, and they may even come up against some
Speaker 1: physical physiological limit where the feathers are now so long
Speaker 1: that they're actually hindering their ability to fly or to
Speaker 1: survive in general, and it you know, kind of reaches
Speaker 1: you know that that's sort of counterbalancing, but it can
Speaker 1: still get to this really extreme point. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what we see in birds of pair of dice and
Speaker 1: embower birds in many other creatures. I mean, it's astounding
Speaker 1: because it is the birds themselves, their preferences, shaping evolution
Speaker 1: more powerfully than say environmental dangers. Yeah, and I find
Speaker 1: that incredibly interesting to think about, is that this internal preference,
Speaker 1: you know, this aspect of the bird's consciousness has become
Speaker 1: this incredibly powerful agent in their own evolution um, which
Speaker 1: is just so there's like this internal landscape in addition
Speaker 1: to the external environment that is you know, shaping literally
Speaker 1: shaping their anatomy and their behavior is an incredibly powerful way.
Speaker 1: What is an example of runaway sexual selection that you
Speaker 1: love that we have not mentioned yet? So one of
Speaker 1: the examples in the article and that a lot of
Speaker 1: people find really interesting is the club winged mannequin, which
Speaker 1: is this fascinating little tropical bird which I believe is
Speaker 1: the only bird that produces sounds through a process called
Speaker 1: stridu lation, which is similar to how some insects do it.
Speaker 1: Like you can think of like, um, you know, certain
Speaker 1: crickets or grasshoppers rubbing their rubbing their sort of their
Speaker 1: wings are that browning parts together really really fast and
Speaker 1: really really quickly to produce this intense running And so
Speaker 1: the club winged mannequin, for whatever reason, the females love
Speaker 1: this this stridulated thrumming sound, and so the males evolved
Speaker 1: over time to produce it completely contorting the bones and
Speaker 1: their wings to the point that it actually hinders their
Speaker 1: ability to fly. And even the females have inherited some
Speaker 1: of this sort of warped bone anatomy and the genetics
Speaker 1: underlying it, and even their flight is a bit hindered
Speaker 1: by it, which is very you know, that really goes
Speaker 1: against some of the sort of classical ideas of evolution
Speaker 1: by natural selection always making animals, you know, better adapted
Speaker 1: to their environments. Well, this adaptation makes them more reproductively
Speaker 1: attractive the males anyways, but it's not really conferring any
Speaker 1: advantage whatso over to the females to have that kind
Speaker 1: of worked skeletal system. So it's a really extreme example
Speaker 1: of runaway selection. I'm gonna play really quickly the sound
Speaker 1: of a club wing mannequin because it is it is
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible. I mean it's incredible. It's hard to even
Speaker 1: tell that this is not like a call it's making
Speaker 1: through vocalization. It is the stridulation of its wings, and
Speaker 1: you can when you're watching it, it's vibrating so quickly
Speaker 1: you can barely tell that's what's going on. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are certain animal sounds that are just so surreal or otherworldly,
Speaker 1: Like I always think of wet all seals, Like I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that was coming from an animal. The first
Speaker 1: time I heard these sort of space age you know,
Speaker 1: murmurs coming from these seals. Yeah, I was like, what
Speaker 1: and this is similar, Like it sounds so to me.
Speaker 1: It sounds so electronic, like almost artificial. It's like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's come from a living organism, a synthesizer. You could
Speaker 1: probably make a synthesizer out of club wing mannequins, although
Speaker 1: that would not be ethical, but it would sound great.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's actually at the end of the show,
Speaker 1: I always play a game called I Guess He's squawking,
Speaker 1: and I play a mystery animal sound that won't happen
Speaker 1: yet because we're not we're not near the end yet,
Speaker 1: but I'm excited to do that. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that actually reminds me of another animal you bring up
Speaker 1: in your article, which is, uh, these frogs that create
Speaker 1: this really interesting sound. Right. So you know a lot
Speaker 1: of different amphibians will make crookings and sounds during the
Speaker 1: mating process. Um, but there's a certain type of total
Speaker 1: itt that has had a really interesting evolutionary history um
Speaker 1: with doing this. And so if I remember correctly, there's
Speaker 1: kind of this danger because if the totalts are too
Speaker 1: loud in their mating calls, they actually will attract bats
Speaker 1: that eat them. Um. But the males need to sort
Speaker 1: of make these little croaks, which sound actually a lot
Speaker 1: like laser guns. They're they're very they're kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: similarly interesting to the clubbing mannequin's calls, to make these
Speaker 1: little wines in order to attract females. And it was
Speaker 1: very perplexing to researchers why females were attracted to this
Speaker 1: particular sound. Um, And over time there's been some research
Speaker 1: suggesting that it basically was a quirk of their evolutionary
Speaker 1: history in that males that happened to produce this particular
Speaker 1: frequency activated this sort of long abandoned auditory channel, so
Speaker 1: they were simply more noticeable to females compared to other
Speaker 1: males that weren't making the sounds in this correct frequency.
Speaker 1: And whereas originally the thinking might have been that the
Speaker 1: total it's making this particular sound were fitter in some way,
Speaker 1: they were larger, they were better mates for the females,
Speaker 1: now it's seams like that perhaps is not the case. Um,
Speaker 1: they just sort of chanced upon this cork revolution that
Speaker 1: allowed them to be more noticeable to the females and
Speaker 1: therefore more attractive, you know, to us. You know, none
Speaker 1: of these sounds like are particularly interesting or attractive, like
Speaker 1: as humans, like they're you know, they're just for yourself.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, some people, I should say, they're just sort
Speaker 1: of it's it's difficult to understand why this particular whiting
Speaker 1: you know, would be sexy or attractive, but to the
Speaker 1: you know, to the totalts, it is incredibly appealing. Um.
Speaker 1: And so that just you know, sort of speaks to
Speaker 1: how different, um, these sort of asthetic preferences can be
Speaker 1: from one species to another. And this could also be
Speaker 1: through visual channels, right, Like you could have a visual
Speaker 1: cute bright colors that just happened to be extremely noticeable.
Speaker 1: Like we we each all animals have their own perceptive
Speaker 1: field through hearing, vision, taste, smell, electro reception, all sorts
Speaker 1: of senses. And so if you're looking for a mate, uh,
Speaker 1: and you hit on one of the like one of
Speaker 1: the most important thing in mating and dating is be noticeable.
Speaker 1: So if you can make your perspective mate. Notice you
Speaker 1: that is a huge, huge step in terms of getting
Speaker 1: towards a successful mating. I mean, I think we just
Speaker 1: we just talked about this on the show a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. But there are the the mobular rays
Speaker 1: which will jump up out of the ocean and slam
Speaker 1: back down. It's like, why are they doing that? That
Speaker 1: seems like such a waste of energy, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to get attention so that they can try to find
Speaker 1: a mate. So it seems like that is that like
Speaker 1: those kind of that kind of avenue of like you
Speaker 1: just if you can hit on a specific perceptive, I
Speaker 1: guess um a person something that is specific species will
Speaker 1: perceive especially strongly, like a certain sound, a certain color,
Speaker 1: and that just is like so bright to them. That
Speaker 1: may be a selective pressure for having some kind of
Speaker 1: sexual selection that incorporates that extremely strong signal for that
Speaker 1: specific species. Absolutely. One of the scientists I talked about
Speaker 1: in the article, Molly Cummings, has done some really interesting
Speaker 1: work on fishes, and she's shown that, you know, different
Speaker 1: fish in different environments will have different esthetic preferences based
Speaker 1: on the way that light is moving through their environment.
Speaker 1: So you know, different types of aquatic habitats, different opacity
Speaker 1: of water, whether it's really clear, whether it's murky, that
Speaker 1: affects what type of wavelengths are best able to penetrate
Speaker 1: and move through that water. And so different species of
Speaker 1: fish will have different preferences for say, polarized light, you know,
Speaker 1: versus a different type of light, depending on how their
Speaker 1: environment constrains what they were able to best perceive. That's
Speaker 1: so interesting. I mean, we've already mentioned a few animals
Speaker 1: that are are not birds, like fish, the toatlets. Do
Speaker 1: you think that these other animals could also potentially have
Speaker 1: like a concept of beauty, um, even if it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily beautiful plumage, Like, even if it's the sound, the
Speaker 1: weird squeaking sound of a totally like to them, do
Speaker 1: you think it is something that could be beautiful? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, the further we kind of
Speaker 1: go back in evolutionary history, you know, like getting back
Speaker 1: to the ocean, back to you know, the mother of
Speaker 1: all life, back to the fish before they came on land, Like,
Speaker 1: it gets harder and harder to sort of put ourselves
Speaker 1: in their mindset and sort of understand, you know, how
Speaker 1: they perceived the world, but I think you know they're there.
Speaker 1: There's the famous Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness. Like, there seems
Speaker 1: to be pretty widespread acceptance among scientists that all vertebrates
Speaker 1: and some invertebrates like octopuses and honey bees and such,
Speaker 1: have consciousness. You know, they are conscious. They have this
Speaker 1: basic level of being able to understand and engage with
Speaker 1: the world and perhaps even be aware of themselves. So
Speaker 1: I would think that it is certainly possible amongst any
Speaker 1: type of vertebrate we're discussing, including fish. And then maybe
Speaker 1: where it gets trickier would be something like the peacock
Speaker 1: spider um, you know, which is which is an invertebrate
Speaker 1: like the octopus, and it is very small, you know,
Speaker 1: so like like a honeybee has a very little brain
Speaker 1: just in terms of you know, size, but has an
Speaker 1: incredibly interesting and complex mating ritual and these beautiful, glittering
Speaker 1: irajustine abdomens that almost look like faberge eggs with incredibly
Speaker 1: intricate patterns, you know, really intense blues and reds and oranges,
Speaker 1: and they flip up their abdomens and they wave their
Speaker 1: legs around and do this really cool little mating dance
Speaker 1: um as part of their courtship. So that has a
Speaker 1: lot of parallels to what birds um, you know, do um,
Speaker 1: even though these spiders are invertebrates. And yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to think about what's going through the spider's mind.
Speaker 1: You know, what's going through their their mind is they're
Speaker 1: sort of evaluating their mates, um colors and dance moves.
Speaker 1: And I mean, it's just an extraordinary level of beauty
Speaker 1: from our perspective, folving in a creature that is that
Speaker 1: many people are terrified of or even revile, you know,
Speaker 1: but these are just incredibly beautiful animals. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: jumping spiders so much there. I mean, to me, every
Speaker 1: jumping spider is so cute. It's those two big eyes
Speaker 1: that they have and they're uh. I think that they're
Speaker 1: really the only spider, or one of the only spiders
Speaker 1: that has such a visual perception. I think they're the
Speaker 1: only type of spider that can like actually move their
Speaker 1: retinas around. And there was a recent study looking into
Speaker 1: actually I think I discussed this last week, but a
Speaker 1: recent study that looks into that the possibility that jumping
Speaker 1: spiders might have r E M sleep like rapid eye
Speaker 1: movement sleep, and so of course we don't know that
Speaker 1: they're dreaming and having visual dreams, but we do know
Speaker 1: that animals that do have rapid eye movement sleep like humans,
Speaker 1: probably do have visual dreams. So it's a possibility maybe
Speaker 1: these spiders are dreaming about seeing uh an amazing display
Speaker 1: from another eligible spider. But it's it's hard to it's
Speaker 1: so hard to imagine something so small and simple having
Speaker 1: a really rich, deep consciousness. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: they do, but it is fascinating that they have that
Speaker 1: there is evidence that there's more to them than them
Speaker 1: just being basically like having the awareness of you know,
Speaker 1: a robot or you know, like a tiny automaton. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do spiders dream and technicolor a spiders anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, something that I've always found really interesting
Speaker 1: about this is from jumping spiders to birds, is that
Speaker 1: an animals perception of beauty often over lapse with our own.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it doesn't, like with the toadlets, little pup you
Speaker 1: sound owns, but a lot of times it does. Oh.
Speaker 1: Other examples of when it doesn't are like hooded seals
Speaker 1: when they inflate their nostril that creates this bright red
Speaker 1: balloon maybe not so attractive to us, um, but very
Speaker 1: alluring to female hooded seals. But yeah, I mean peacock
Speaker 1: jumping spider birds. Uh, the bower birds that create things
Speaker 1: that look like works of art that a human would make.
Speaker 1: With birds, they are aesthetic preferences seem to align with
Speaker 1: our own, which is you know, really interesting, like how
Speaker 1: can we share this sense of beauty with a bird
Speaker 1: that were so otherwise different from there? They are living dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: they are very unlike us. Do you think there's any
Speaker 1: reason that there's this overlap? Is it pure coincidence or
Speaker 1: is it maybe because of some shared evolutionary history. I
Speaker 1: do think there has to be at least some shared
Speaker 1: evolutionary history blaming that just because we are both vertebrates,
Speaker 1: so you know, going back to our vertebrate ancestors, we
Speaker 1: must have inherited some sort of basic sensory perceptions, you know,
Speaker 1: and of course those would have continued to evolve over
Speaker 1: time and are very different lineages, um, but there's probably
Speaker 1: still some very fundamental you know, abilities there that we
Speaker 1: do have in common. And and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: clearly with bower birds and certain other kinds of words.
Speaker 1: We do share this attention to this interest in bright color,
Speaker 1: you know, in fruit, in flowers and and actually flowers
Speaker 1: is one of the most interesting ways that I have
Speaker 1: found a sort of you know, think through these questions
Speaker 1: of beauty and the potential purpose of beauty, um and
Speaker 1: and the origin of beauty, because if you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's really bizarre that we as humans are so obsessed
Speaker 1: with flowers because they really have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: us in terms of their evolutionary history. You know, flowers
Speaker 1: co evolved with insects and birds and other illinators to
Speaker 1: attract those pollinators. That is sort of why they look
Speaker 1: the way they do and why they smell the way
Speaker 1: they do. Um, and insects and birds are privy to
Speaker 1: this entire dimension of floral beauty that's totally hidden to
Speaker 1: us because they can see in the ultra violet part
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, and they can see um patterns on
Speaker 1: flowers that we cannot with with our own just you know,
Speaker 1: human biological eyes. So what is it about flowers that
Speaker 1: you know, we don't just like flowers like we become
Speaker 1: completely obsessed with them, Like tulip mania. You know, many
Speaker 1: centuries ago in the Netherlands, women tulips reached absurd prices,
Speaker 1: or the continuing passion for orchids that kind of began
Speaker 1: with the invention of like early glasshouses and bringing tropical
Speaker 1: specimens abroad and things like that. Um And so you know,
Speaker 1: I think you could think of um pragmatic reasons that
Speaker 1: would be true for a lot of species, like understanding
Speaker 1: that flowers turn into fruits, turn into food, so there's
Speaker 1: this potential for sustenance. But then could flowers also just
Speaker 1: be impinging upon what we were talking about earlier, to
Speaker 1: kind of these emergent phenomena that come out of a
Speaker 1: certain level of cognition and intelligence. So they're just you know,
Speaker 1: they're hitting upon our sort of ability to appreciate color
Speaker 1: and form and smell and the harmony of all of
Speaker 1: those things in a natural creation, you know, in an
Speaker 1: organic form um. And so you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: just fascinating to sort of use flowers as a way
Speaker 1: to sort of explore all of those interests. And I
Speaker 1: love the fact that bower birds choose flowers as well.
Speaker 1: That's one of the ornaments they choose for their bowers
Speaker 1: is flowers. So clearly we're not the only ones who
Speaker 1: have that appreciation. So if you want to flatter a
Speaker 1: bower bird, you could get them like a bouquet, exactly
Speaker 1: good information for everyone who wants to flirt with a
Speaker 1: bower bird. I mean, that's that is incredible. I I
Speaker 1: think it is. I think it's too often that we
Speaker 1: think about things like beauty and art as something frivolous, unimportant,
Speaker 1: just like window dressing, you know, something that is not
Speaker 1: really it's not it's not a serious topic. It's not
Speaker 1: serious science or something, and it is such a huge mistake,
Speaker 1: I think because that is when you think, when we
Speaker 1: think about our consciousness, it's not such a mystery why
Speaker 1: we find food appealing, right, like we need to eat.
Speaker 1: It's pretty obvious why we would enjoy food, or why
Speaker 1: we would enjoy having food around holidays and stuff. But
Speaker 1: like something like appreciating beauty not just in each other
Speaker 1: but in the natural world, like seeing flowers, like some
Speaker 1: of the most famous painters were absolutely obsessed with natural scene,
Speaker 1: natural beauty, flowers, uh, painting animals. Uh. It is I
Speaker 1: think really interesting that we have that in our consciousness
Speaker 1: and if we get behind, if we solve this mystery
Speaker 1: of like why we enjoy beauty, why other animals enjoy beauty.
Speaker 1: I think that would unlock a lot of really interesting
Speaker 1: things about the brain, about our psychology, that would be
Speaker 1: really informative. But I think in order for us to
Speaker 1: do that, we really have to appreciate this as something
Speaker 1: that is super important, deeply, deeply important. That's a great point,
Speaker 1: and I think that you know your point about you know,
Speaker 1: thinking of beauty is frivolous. It even gets embedded in
Speaker 1: scientific concepts and scientific ways of thinking because you know,
Speaker 1: the technical term for all of this incredible plumage that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about is sexual ornaments, right, And so
Speaker 1: the word ornaments, like it immediately is kind of um
Speaker 1: downplaying the importance because we think of something as oh,
Speaker 1: that's just decorative, right, It's it's not really that important.
Speaker 1: It's just an ornament. Whereas as you're saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this question of where beauty comes from and what it
Speaker 1: is doing gets at some of the biggest questions, biggest
Speaker 1: outstanding questions and evolutionary biology and some of the longstanding
Speaker 1: tensions you know, in the history of science. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So if we could all just kind of like get
Speaker 1: over ourselves and admit it's really interesting that stuff is
Speaker 1: pretty and flowers are awesome exactly. Yeah, I've never never
Speaker 1: understood flowery as a you know, as a disort insult
Speaker 1: like you know, I think that if I could write
Speaker 1: a sentence as beautiful as a flower, I'd be very
Speaker 1: proud of that sentence. I know, I know, I I
Speaker 1: also love flowers. If I, as a podcaster, could somehow
Speaker 1: put flowers in all y'all's ears, I would do it,
Speaker 1: uh if the technology existed, which it doesn't unfortunately. But
Speaker 1: before we go, as I mentioned earlier, we have a
Speaker 1: game at the end of the show, which is gives
Speaker 1: his squawk in the Mystery Animal sound game. Now I
Speaker 1: do say squawking, but this is not restricted to the birds.
Speaker 1: It is any animal in the world. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: the listener, and even you the if you would like, uh,
Speaker 1: you can try to guess who is squawking. So this
Speaker 1: is last week's sound that this was the hint. It
Speaker 1: is the largest of its order, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it'll refuse a good cuddle. All right, Well, can you
Speaker 1: guess who squawking? And no pressure because if I honestly,
Speaker 1: if I had to play this game, I would probably
Speaker 1: lose most of the time, so your your prestige is
Speaker 1: not on the line here. That is a really interesting one.
Speaker 1: So at first my mind was going, like aquatic, like
Speaker 1: some sort of cetacean, you know. But then I was
Speaker 1: like listening to the background sound and it didn't quite
Speaker 1: seem to match. And then then I was thinking, maybe
Speaker 1: that is a bird of some sort. So you're saying
Speaker 1: it's the largest of its order, Um gosh, I'm wondering.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if it's like one of those really big birds,
Speaker 1: like an ostrogen email or casserie. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: know I've heard that sounded very similar sound before me
Speaker 1: having a really hard time pinpointing what it is. You're
Speaker 1: closer with aquatic, although only only halfway there, only halfway
Speaker 1: there was an aquatic mammal, then an aquatic is semi
Speaker 1: aquatic mammal or no, actually semi yes, sorry, semi aquatic mammal. Okay,
Speaker 1: something something like a semi aquatic mammal, something like um,
Speaker 1: like a walrus or a seal, something of that nature
Speaker 1: or close but not not quite. Yeah, I'm stumped, officially stumped.
Speaker 1: This is actually a cappy bara yes, the largest rodent
Speaker 1: in the world. Congratulations to the three fastest guessers who
Speaker 1: gives correctly Grant W. Michael D. And jest See. I
Speaker 1: had guinea pigs as a kid, and they're not they're
Speaker 1: they're relatively they look like huge guinea pigs and they're
Speaker 1: relatively related. But guinea pigs will make this kind of
Speaker 1: like this little like squeaking sound as well when usually
Speaker 1: when they're eating and they're really happy. But it is
Speaker 1: bizarre to hear it coming out of this like giant you.
Speaker 1: It's hard to expect it because this animal is so huge.
Speaker 1: I before looking this up, I had no idea that
Speaker 1: cappy barras sounded essentially like a little guinea pig. My
Speaker 1: mind was not going there at all. That is really interesting, no,
Speaker 1: I know, and I mean I was shocked to hear
Speaker 1: because I would have thought, because cappy barrows are so huge,
Speaker 1: I would have thought that their voices would be deeper.
Speaker 1: But instead you're basically hearing what a guinea pig sounds like.
Speaker 1: So they are the largest rodent in the world. They
Speaker 1: are a semi aquatic herbivore who lives in South America,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a giant guinea pig. They can
Speaker 1: weigh around a hundred and already pounds or a little
Speaker 1: over sixty ms. So yeah, I think people are pretty
Speaker 1: familiar with the laid back vibes of the cappy bara.
Speaker 1: There very chill. But it's interesting because these like this
Speaker 1: chill vibe that they have. It's not because they're so
Speaker 1: big they lack natural predators. They do actually have predators,
Speaker 1: but it is because they actually enjoyed the company of
Speaker 1: their peers. They typically live in groups of around twenty.
Speaker 1: They can even live in huge groups of up to
Speaker 1: a hundred individuals. And the squeaking sound that this cappy
Speaker 1: bara is making is probably just like a little happy
Speaker 1: sound because he's expecting to be fed soon. Wow. I
Speaker 1: love that, just like it's the same sound my pet
Speaker 1: guinea pigs would make when I'm like getting out the
Speaker 1: alfalfa for them and they see me do on it
Speaker 1: uh and make that little squeaking noise. I love that.
Speaker 1: This is I was actually just looking into the sort
Speaker 1: of controversy over what types of cat can roar versus
Speaker 1: pur and you know, classically it was divided amongst the
Speaker 1: big cats and and smaller cats and supposedly only the
Speaker 1: big cats could roar and only the smaller ones could purr,
Speaker 1: but there's some really interesting exceptions, like, um, I think
Speaker 1: nobody has ever heard a snow leopard roar before, even
Speaker 1: though it should technically be capable of it. And there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of you know, sort of debate about
Speaker 1: what technically qualifies as a roar or a purr, and
Speaker 1: so you can kind of, yeah, it gets it gets
Speaker 1: pretty complex over that. But sometimes you hear, like a
Speaker 1: very large, anatomically large cat, like a cheetah or something,
Speaker 1: make a very domestic cat like sound, and it's it's
Speaker 1: very there's some dissonance there, like you weren't expecting that
Speaker 1: sound to come out of that animal. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: like do really high pitched chirping sounds that sounds like
Speaker 1: a little baby chick, but it's coming out of this
Speaker 1: huge cheetah. And when I first heard that from coming
Speaker 1: from a cheetah, I was shocked. I thought it was
Speaker 1: like a hoax. Yeah, so onto this week's mystery animal sound.
Speaker 1: The hint it is actually good for these guys to
Speaker 1: have an inflated sense of pride, And if you've been
Speaker 1: paying close attention to the episode, and you read Ferris
Speaker 1: Jaber's article how beauty is making scientists or rethink evolution,
Speaker 1: you are sure to know the answer. So, Ferris, you
Speaker 1: cannot answer this because I know you know the answer
Speaker 1: to it. But I I think I've left enough clues
Speaker 1: that some of you out there will get it. So Ferris,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. Tell people
Speaker 1: where they can read your articles and your writings. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. This was absolutely wonderful. Um most of
Speaker 1: my magazine writing has been for the New York Times
Speaker 1: magazine lately. UM My website is just Ferris Jaber dot.
Speaker 1: My most recent article was in National Geographic and it's
Speaker 1: all out the tiny microscopic organisms that live in forlorest
Speaker 1: soil and are really important for forest ecosystems as a whole.
Speaker 1: So if I have an episode sometime in the future
Speaker 1: that is about forest ecosystems, you can probably guess that
Speaker 1: I read one of Ferris's articles and was inspired. Uh so, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Definitely check out how beauty is
Speaker 1: making sciencests freethink evolution. It's a great article. It's a
Speaker 1: great companion to this episode. And thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you
Speaker 1: leave our writing or view, I read all the writings.
Speaker 1: I read them all. I print them all out, put
Speaker 1: them in a big binder, and put it under my pillow.
Speaker 1: I don't actually do that, but mentally I do. I
Speaker 1: cherish them all. Uh and thanks so much to the
Speaker 1: Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Alumina. Creature
Speaker 1: features a production of I Heart Radio. For more shows
Speaker 1: like the one you just heard, visit VR, Hurt Radio, app,
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday. M