Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part three in our series on throwing
Speaker 1: behavior in animals, especially non human animals. But we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about throwing of the human variety some today. Now.
Speaker 1: In previous episodes, we discussed a paper documenting a kind
Speaker 1: of throwing or what appeared to be a kind of
Speaker 1: throwing in octopuses in Australia, which used their siphons to
Speaker 1: blast clouds of silt in their neighbor's faces when they
Speaker 1: get a little too close. We discussed the ability of
Speaker 1: elephants to throw with their trunks, and we talked about
Speaker 1: mongoose is doing brutal reverse granny shots to bypass the
Speaker 1: defenses of armored millipedes and as Mick Jagger would say,
Speaker 1: get the meat. Uh. Today, our discussion continues with a
Speaker 1: very important consideration. Well, when I told my wife that
Speaker 1: this was the topic we're going to be covering, uh,
Speaker 1: the question she asked was, well, what about air bud?
Speaker 1: Are you going to talk about air bud? Handle the
Speaker 1: air bud question a very important facet of this issue. Yes,
Speaker 1: Airbud is, of course a motion picture about a dog
Speaker 1: that plays competitive basketball based on the At this point,
Speaker 1: I think classic sports movie trope. There's nothing in the
Speaker 1: rule book that says a blank can't play whatever the
Speaker 1: sport happens to be, and you can put into that
Speaker 1: blank basically any animal, whatever animal seems doable from a
Speaker 1: movie making standpoint and acceptable to the human imagination. And
Speaker 1: I guess you could ultimately go beyond the realm of
Speaker 1: humans into other things as long as you could somehow
Speaker 1: cobble together a script around it. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've ever seen another one of these. I think
Speaker 1: I saw air Bud when I was a kid, But uh,
Speaker 1: I know it's a tradition right there. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a million movies like Aramy the Football Horse. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think one of the earliest, if not the earliest,
Speaker 1: examples of this. And I could be wrong, because this
Speaker 1: is not a subgenre that that I have personally explored
Speaker 1: a lot. But I do remember seeing parts of this
Speaker 1: one on TV the nineteen seventy six movie Guts, which
Speaker 1: also had Ed Asner and don not sent it to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of the you know, the caliber
Speaker 1: of talent that was that was involved in this, But
Speaker 1: it was about a terrible NFL team. I think there's
Speaker 1: something like the California Atomics or something, and they end
Speaker 1: up deciding to field a donkey as a kicker in
Speaker 1: the game, and uh, um, I guess it works out
Speaker 1: for them. Again, there's a there's nothing in the rule
Speaker 1: book that says a donkey can't play in NFL. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I imagine movies like this must just encourage and
Speaker 1: uh an overly stringent form of legalism when it comes
Speaker 1: to professional sports. Yeah, Like does it say games must
Speaker 1: take place on planet Earth and so forth? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they will the at this point really the future proof things.
Speaker 1: But if we're going just based on these films, it
Speaker 1: would seem that for a while they didn't have all
Speaker 1: the loopholes filled in on this and um, and people
Speaker 1: were just constantly rolling out new animals, Like it doesn't
Speaker 1: anything about about art varks. So art varks are in
Speaker 1: play in Professional Curly, yes, okay, But outside of Gusts
Speaker 1: and air Bud, you also have movies like two thousand's
Speaker 1: m v P Most Valuable Primate, in which a chimpanzee
Speaker 1: play soccer. There are also I think thirteen additional Air
Speaker 1: Bud sequels and spinoffs. Humans are also primates. All existing
Speaker 1: soccer players are primates. Well, tell the producers of m
Speaker 1: v P Most Valuable Primemate about that. Um, maybe they
Speaker 1: maybe they actually touched on in the scramplay, but I
Speaker 1: doubt it. But I'm sorry you were saying. How many
Speaker 1: air Bud movies are there? Thirteen by my count, that
Speaker 1: includes the Air Buddies uh like spinoff series and interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: two thousands sixes Air Buddies. That was Don Knott's final film.
Speaker 1: He voiced a bloodhound in it. Oh, now, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Does that that means animals talk in Air Buddies. I
Speaker 1: don't know if animals talked in air Bud. Perhaps you remember,
Speaker 1: I don't mean I'm inclined to think not. I think
Speaker 1: the dog in air Bud was silent. But yeah, well,
Speaker 1: by by the time they get into the Buddies movies,
Speaker 1: which by the way, descended into titles like Space Buddies
Speaker 1: and Santa Buddies. As far as I can tell, these
Speaker 1: are just an excuse to have a screen full of
Speaker 1: Golden Retriever Puppies for eighty minutes. I think it is
Speaker 1: absolutely crass mercenary filmmaking. It's just ultimate cute exploitation. Um.
Speaker 1: But this was also the series that in a episode
Speaker 1: long ago, we suggested should do a crossover with the
Speaker 1: Clive Barker verse and create hell Buddies. Now. There's also
Speaker 1: just real quick a few other mentions. There's Soccer Dog,
Speaker 1: the movie, There's two thousand fives the Karate Dog, And
Speaker 1: then there's the movie Ed in which a chimpanzee plays baseball. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then there's Matilda about a boxing kangaroo. That one, Uh,
Speaker 1: that one has interested me because I noticed it stars
Speaker 1: Elliott Gould and it was also one of the films
Speaker 1: you could pull up on the Criterion Collections UH streaming
Speaker 1: service at least several months back. Boxing Kangaroo? Is that
Speaker 1: a waltzing Matilda Joe? Um, I imagine so, and it's
Speaker 1: it's I looked a little bit into this related to
Speaker 1: this podcast episode, and I quickly realized, oh, well, the
Speaker 1: boxing kangaroo is a whole thing unto itself. UM. That
Speaker 1: does have some basis in kangaroo behavior, but often in
Speaker 1: like a misinterpretation of kangaroo defensive behavior, but it has
Speaker 1: kind of like a life of its own outside of
Speaker 1: this particular picture. Might be something to come back to
Speaker 1: in the future. Now, one more thing about the air
Speaker 1: Bud franchise. You know, before they get to air Buddies,
Speaker 1: I think you were saying that the Golden retriever end
Speaker 1: up doing a bunch of different sports, and they've all
Speaker 1: got puns in the titles. So the one where air
Speaker 1: Bud does baseball is called air Bud Seventh Inning Fetch.
Speaker 1: You gotta get some puns in there, all right. But
Speaker 1: but bringing it all back around to today's episode, Okay,
Speaker 1: some of these we can just instantly dismissed for now.
Speaker 1: We don't need to concern ourselves with boxing kangaroos or
Speaker 1: karate dogs because these do not involve throwing. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna focus on the sports that involve throwing a ball.
Speaker 1: Um Gus, that's impressive, but he's a kicker. Despite just
Speaker 1: participating in a game that has a lot of throwing
Speaker 1: in it doesn't seem to be throwing anything. So we
Speaker 1: really only have to worry about the concept of dogs
Speaker 1: playing scoring games with balls and chimpanzees playing scoring games
Speaker 1: with battles. Real quick, let's talk about dogs, um and
Speaker 1: and you may have additional expertise on this uh to
Speaker 1: throw in here experience uh from being a dog owner.
Speaker 1: But as far as dogs go, they can obviously be
Speaker 1: trained to do a lot of different things, often very
Speaker 1: impressive things, including chasing, after catching, and fetching balls and sticks,
Speaker 1: and as is evident in many videos online, they can
Speaker 1: also be trained to bounce basketballs into baskets off of
Speaker 1: their their noses, off of their snouts. That always, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like a basketball is a fairly massive object.
Speaker 1: I would think booping a basketball in mid flight with
Speaker 1: the snout would really kind of hurt. Yeah, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I looked around. And as far as dogs throwing,
Speaker 1: I'm not so certain about this. Drops. Yes, they can.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll see plenty of examples of dogs catching
Speaker 1: things dropping them. Um, But I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure you really have anything like throwing even kind of
Speaker 1: you know, a tossing aside of a stick or a ball, well,
Speaker 1: not targeted throwing. I mean, I think what's quite common
Speaker 1: for dogs is something more like what the mongoose did
Speaker 1: with the millipede. Dogs will especially dogs that have been
Speaker 1: trained in kind of unused torual environments with say a
Speaker 1: a puzzle type treat retrieval toy. You know, so you
Speaker 1: have like some kind of toy where the treat is
Speaker 1: hidden inside, and the dog has to manipulate the toy
Speaker 1: to get the treat out of the middle. In those cases,
Speaker 1: I've seen dogs throwing the toy in order to try
Speaker 1: to extract the treat, but it's very haphazard. They're not
Speaker 1: like hitting a target. They're more just kind of like
Speaker 1: throwing it wildly by tossing their head and it'll bounce
Speaker 1: off the wall or something, and maybe the treat will
Speaker 1: tumble out. Mm hmm. Now, I also found some some
Speaker 1: discussions and some papers about the possibility that a dog
Speaker 1: using a chewing stick is essentially a form of tool use,
Speaker 1: and this would also apply to any other animal that
Speaker 1: uses a stick in such a fashion. Uh So that's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea to consider. Mm hmm. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: make that argument, I guess by the same token, you
Speaker 1: could say like a bear scratching its butt against a
Speaker 1: tree would be a form of tool use. Chimps, however,
Speaker 1: chimps are a different case entirely so We're not saying
Speaker 1: that chimpanzees should be encouraged to play baseball or soccer
Speaker 1: or any other professional sport, or any sport for that matter,
Speaker 1: but they have certainly demonstrated their use of tools in
Speaker 1: both captivity and in the wild. And this includes the
Speaker 1: targeted use of throwing objects. Now, one of the objects
Speaker 1: or or substances I guess observed to be thrown a lot,
Speaker 1: and this is something that is of course well documented online.
Speaker 1: In fact, when we were researching other aspects of animals
Speaker 1: throwing things, some of the search engines I I was
Speaker 1: using were very excited to give me content of animals
Speaker 1: throwing feces, potentially particularly chimps throwing feces. I was not
Speaker 1: looking for this information at the time, by the Internet
Speaker 1: really wanted to serve it to me. Now, this kind
Speaker 1: of goes back into something we talked about earlier though,
Speaker 1: the question if you're doing something with something that came
Speaker 1: from your own body, is it truly tool use? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I guess when I was thinking
Speaker 1: about substances that come out of an animal's own body,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about like things like spider silk, or
Speaker 1: like the urdicating hairs that come off of a tarantiala's back.
Speaker 1: Where the ways in which these substances are used are
Speaker 1: not very generalized, They're not very free form. Instead, they
Speaker 1: seem to be pretty tightly controlled, instinctually determined behavioral patterns,
Speaker 1: whereas I don't know, you could say, maybe like a
Speaker 1: chimpanzee pooping and then throwing its poop at someone or
Speaker 1: something that that seems to be a little more free form. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess also, and this is not something that any
Speaker 1: of the papers I looked at got into, but I
Speaker 1: guess there there's a difference between poop directly delivered to
Speaker 1: the hand and then thrown, and like poop that is
Speaker 1: just like say, in a creature's habitat or in its
Speaker 1: general area that it then picks up. Uh maybe not
Speaker 1: even its own poop. Um, So I guess we'd have
Speaker 1: to consider that as well. Now, I do think we
Speaker 1: should be clear that feces are not the only objects
Speaker 1: that that apes like chimpanzees throw, but is a feces
Speaker 1: are often observed to be thrown, especially in captivity. I
Speaker 1: think yes, yeah, definitely. Uh, the sources I was looking at,
Speaker 1: they're definitely mentioning this because in captivity, especially historically, there
Speaker 1: are often less things for the animal to interact with.
Speaker 1: The poop is something that will happen eventually, will be
Speaker 1: in the enclosure, and therefore is available to pick up, manipulate,
Speaker 1: and throw if desired, whereas in the wild there are
Speaker 1: other competitors out there, the other things that could pick up,
Speaker 1: like sticks, like rocks that could be thrown, and we
Speaker 1: have seen them throw such objects both in captivity but
Speaker 1: also in the wild, and so it seems to be
Speaker 1: a situation where they're they're far more incidents of poop
Speaker 1: throwing in captivity versus the wild, though they have been
Speaker 1: observed to throw poop in the wild as well. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I would not disqualify something from counting as
Speaker 1: tool used just because it consists of an animal's own
Speaker 1: excreta or something that came out of their body. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could use poop, I suppose a tool for all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, this is kind of a tangent,
Speaker 1: but I was looking around and back in seventeen, a
Speaker 1: team from the University of Calgary hosted a competition to
Speaker 1: make use of astronaut waste, and the winning submission was
Speaker 1: titled Astroplastic from Colon to Colony, in which the d
Speaker 1: n A of an E. Coli bacteria was modified so
Speaker 1: that it removed acids from human feces and they did
Speaker 1: not use actual poop in the experiment, used like a
Speaker 1: mixture of things to simulate poop. But the idea was
Speaker 1: here that this, uh, this, this modified E. COOLi would
Speaker 1: produce a plastic that can then be used in a
Speaker 1: three D printer to produce simple tools like wrenches and
Speaker 1: screw drivers. So the aim here would be sort of twofold.
Speaker 1: So say you're going to Mars on an extended mission.
Speaker 1: This way you don't have to bring those tools with you,
Speaker 1: you don't have to pay for the cost of getting
Speaker 1: those tools into orbit and then two Mars and then
Speaker 1: likewise you have to worry less about getting rid of
Speaker 1: human waste on the journey. Uh. That that's quite brilliant. Yes,
Speaker 1: I one day hope to have all kinds of plastic
Speaker 1: tools and toys made out of poop. Now, um, this
Speaker 1: is this is sort of another aside, but this is
Speaker 1: goods Back to chimps specifically, Uh, you might even get
Speaker 1: into the question of why did chimps throw poop um specifically,
Speaker 1: even if they have a choice of their objects to throw.
Speaker 1: And I found this rather fascinating older paper. This from
Speaker 1: it is UM, a Russian paper titled UM a neglected
Speaker 1: form of quasi aggression in apes Possible relevance for the
Speaker 1: origins of humor. This is the current anthropology and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read a quote from it here. According
Speaker 1: to people working at the Pavlov Center, at least four
Speaker 1: adult chimpanzee mails and one adult female would also throw
Speaker 1: feces at people, expressing joy when the target was hit
Speaker 1: by making a playface, hooting, clapping, and stamping around. They
Speaker 1: did not, however, throw feces at persons of whom they
Speaker 1: were afraid. We have received the same information from people
Speaker 1: in charge of chimpanzees at the St. Petersburg and Moscow
Speaker 1: zoos at the Moscow Zoo. The same behavior was observed
Speaker 1: in orangutanks. So at least in these cases, the chimpanzees
Speaker 1: seem to get a real hoot out of hitting somebody
Speaker 1: with some poop. Yeah, And and again this is older research,
Speaker 1: and I detect at least a little bit of anthropomorphizing here,
Speaker 1: But the distinction about fear was very interesting. So maybe
Speaker 1: in this we do see the roots of something like humor.
Speaker 1: But elsewhere primatologists do seem to agree that throwing poop, stones, sticks,
Speaker 1: et cetera in primates is often a an act of
Speaker 1: communication which matches up with some of the things we've
Speaker 1: been discussing elsewhere in this series, and that we will
Speaker 1: get to in a little bit when we talked about
Speaker 1: human evolution. Yeah, and with chimps, it's not even uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's not even a case of like necessarily purely
Speaker 1: spontane is communication. Like it's easy to I think, to
Speaker 1: make that leap. You think of like an animal trying
Speaker 1: to say something, not having the ability to say it,
Speaker 1: or having difficulty relaying that message, and then sort of
Speaker 1: sort of spontaneously picking something up and throwing it, or
Speaker 1: perhaps it already has something in his hand and it
Speaker 1: throws it. And this would still be very fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if you think of like a zoo environment, for example,
Speaker 1: the chimp is attempting interspecies communication. Uh, even if that
Speaker 1: interspecies communication consists of throwing a rock or some poop
Speaker 1: at somebody, But it's not always spontaneous. Sometimes it is
Speaker 1: premeditated in the case of of stone throwing that's been observed.
Speaker 1: One of the the more famous examples of this was
Speaker 1: Santino the chimpanzee born in nine eight, who made headlines
Speaker 1: multiple times, and I think sometimes the news cycle would
Speaker 1: come back around to him because in addition to being
Speaker 1: a pretty talented artist, he also has some issues with people,
Speaker 1: like to collect stones ahead of time so that he
Speaker 1: could throw them at visitors to the Fruvik Zoo in Sweden.
Speaker 1: Now that's really interesting that the collecting of stones in
Speaker 1: advance aspect, because of course that indicates some kind of
Speaker 1: forethought or premeditation or planning, like seeing the stone as
Speaker 1: a tool for future use in a moment when it
Speaker 1: is not currently needed for that use. Yeah, and apparently
Speaker 1: wasn't an isolated incident. It said that he planned hundreds
Speaker 1: of stone throwing attacks on zoo visitors over the years.
Speaker 1: Um Sadly, he escaped from his enclosure in December two
Speaker 1: and was subsequently shot along with some other escape piece,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty controversial incident. Recently, there's a fair
Speaker 1: amount of coverage about that, but not I don't think
Speaker 1: everybody necessarily connected that this was the same chump that
Speaker 1: had made headlines in the past for the throwing of
Speaker 1: rocks and for art apparently and for our Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can find videos of him online doing some uh some painting,
Speaker 1: manipulating of pigments on the on on a on a
Speaker 1: canvas to create some interesting works. Well, sad in for Santino,
Speaker 1: but let an interesting life. Thank thank Now There's another
Speaker 1: interesting wrinkle in stone throwing with chumps that I was
Speaker 1: reading about, because in the wild, chimps will also engage
Speaker 1: in what is called accumulative stone throwing, as reported by
Speaker 1: cool at All in Nature Scientific Reports back in twos sixteen,
Speaker 1: Modern chimpanzees will will actually create stone accumulation sites that
Speaker 1: are reminiscent of human cairns, of of human um assemblages
Speaker 1: of stone, something that we often associate with like deliberate
Speaker 1: cultured acts of of human behavior, uh something. And this
Speaker 1: is both from from an archaeological standpoint, when archaeologists find
Speaker 1: examples of domes that have been gathered together in one area,
Speaker 1: and also I think we just individually encountered this as well,
Speaker 1: whether you see piles of stones that are put there
Speaker 1: for a purpose, like perhaps you're on a nature walk
Speaker 1: and these stones are are gathered together to help mark
Speaker 1: the path you're supposed to be on, or you often
Speaker 1: see this done out of for for pure amusement. Um
Speaker 1: At times you'll just find places where humans have been
Speaker 1: around multiple stones and there's like kind of this irresistible
Speaker 1: urge to arrange them or stack them up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so it's interesting, but I also am hesitant to make
Speaker 1: the speculative leap here. I mean, I know, I was
Speaker 1: reading about this paper, and I know what some people
Speaker 1: have said about the you know, the accumulation of stones,
Speaker 1: like throwing stones into the into a hollow tree or
Speaker 1: something until they really pile up. That suggests, well, maybe
Speaker 1: they're creating some kind of like ritual monument, like you know,
Speaker 1: like humans would create a care and for some kind
Speaker 1: of purpose to be observed and to mean something. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's really evidence present to jump to that
Speaker 1: kind of conclusion, because that seems like a different order
Speaker 1: of uh, that symbolic behavior that, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: is probably only the province of humans. But I guess
Speaker 1: we could always be surprised. It seems kind of a
Speaker 1: speculative leap to me, but it's still really interesting behavior. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the the chimpanzee is piling up the
Speaker 1: stones for some interesting reason, even if it's not to
Speaker 1: like create a symbolic marker for other chimpanzees to see. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this particular paper they're drawing on various surveys and accounts,
Speaker 1: and they found four populations in West Africa where chimps
Speaker 1: quote habitually bang and throw rocks against trees or toss
Speaker 1: them into tree cavities, resulting in conspicuous stone accumulations at
Speaker 1: these sites. Um. They point out that chimps, along with
Speaker 1: capuchin monkeys and long tailed macaques, are known to use
Speaker 1: stones as hammers to crack open encased foods. Uh. They
Speaker 1: point out that stone throwing and chimpanzees was first described
Speaker 1: by Jane Goodall documented aimed throwing of sticks and rocks
Speaker 1: by male chimpanzees during agonistic displays, and this behavior was
Speaker 1: later described by researchers for other non human primates as well,
Speaker 1: including Japanese macaques, wild baboons, and capuchin monkeys. Yeah. Female
Speaker 1: bearded capuchins have also been observed to throw rocks during
Speaker 1: courtship interactions. Um, which I guess this is would be
Speaker 1: like tenderly throwing pebbles against a window to get their
Speaker 1: lover's interest at night without awakening the parents downstairs, or
Speaker 1: maybe not I like it, but human metaphors aside, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: it is interesting that they would throw rocks at each
Speaker 1: other for apparent purposes other than threats or intimidation. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: coming back into like the communication aspect of it. Um.
Speaker 1: Now I mentioned the using using some sort of nutcracking
Speaker 1: um behavior with rocks that can sometimes lead to those
Speaker 1: rocks accumulating in certain places, which is a different type
Speaker 1: of accumulation versus what we're talking with the chimps here um. Also,
Speaker 1: the paper points out that Japanese macaques engage in stone handling,
Speaker 1: which isn't tool of use but solitary object play behavior,
Speaker 1: and it actually results in use wear patterns on the stones,
Speaker 1: and the stones will then end up accumulating at quote
Speaker 1: unquote PlayStations. So just sort of like handling manipulating a stone,
Speaker 1: not really doing anything in particular with it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is I get. You know, it's like the monolith
Speaker 1: hasn't really kicked in yet, but but they're but they're
Speaker 1: handling the stone. But chimpanzees are well beyond all of
Speaker 1: these like, the chimpanzees are second only to humans in
Speaker 1: the variants of their tool usage. They make use of
Speaker 1: simple sticks, stone hammer, stone cleavers, to linked to to
Speaker 1: cut foods. Uh. They've even been observed to hunt sleeping
Speaker 1: bush babies with wooden spears. So this is I think
Speaker 1: only been observed in female chimpanzees. But they'll take take
Speaker 1: a stick and sort of sort of sharpen it at
Speaker 1: their their teeth or chew on it, you know, to
Speaker 1: get a something like a point, and then use that
Speaker 1: stick to stab into the hollows of trees where there's
Speaker 1: a sleeping bush baby and spirit and pull it back
Speaker 1: out to eat. There's so many surprising little little cases
Speaker 1: of of tool uisu pro to a tool used to
Speaker 1: behavior in chimpanzees like this. Now, this this paper basically
Speaker 1: comes down to two hypotheses about why the chimps do this.
Speaker 1: The first, and I think the main hypothesis is that
Speaker 1: they accumulate stone throwing behavior as a modification of male
Speaker 1: chimpanzee display. This would make it mean that it would
Speaker 1: be kind of like a an addition to their hand
Speaker 1: and foot drumming, uh, which is you know, ritualized behavior
Speaker 1: found in all known chimpanzee populations and the use of
Speaker 1: the stones. Throwing the stones um into a pile, into
Speaker 1: the hollow of the tree, et cetera, would be a
Speaker 1: way of enhancing um this particular activity. That's and oh yes,
Speaker 1: so like hitting a pile of stones with a stone
Speaker 1: would probably make a louder sound than just throwing a
Speaker 1: stone off into the dirt. Yeah, I I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't. I would not feel comfortable going as far
Speaker 1: to say that they're making music, uh, though I think
Speaker 1: I saw some headlines that that we're going in that direction. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also say that the second area to consider this
Speaker 1: that they could also not be male drumming. But if
Speaker 1: it's not that it would mean that it quote may
Speaker 1: need to be considered in a more symbolic context. And
Speaker 1: and I think this is where things would get a
Speaker 1: little foggier, a little potentially more nebulous, because you're getting
Speaker 1: into this area where there is a connection between quote
Speaker 1: ritualized animal behavior and the repeated stereotype behavior is commonly
Speaker 1: observed during human rituals unquote, which granted that could cover
Speaker 1: a great deal of ground. This is what I was
Speaker 1: alluding to earlier that I mean, it seems like an
Speaker 1: interesting possibility, but I think I'd need more evidence that
Speaker 1: that's really the right way to think about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's basically what the authors
Speaker 1: here we're leaning towards. Like, It's like, if it's not
Speaker 1: just part of the hand and foot drumming of the
Speaker 1: male chimps, then it's something else, and that's something else
Speaker 1: will require more research and more observation. Yeah, but a
Speaker 1: really interesting behavior either way. Yeah. And one thing they
Speaker 1: point out is that it could have some great importance
Speaker 1: not only for our understanding of how chimps behave, but
Speaker 1: also archaeologically. When we find piles of stones and things that,
Speaker 1: again we can often easily associate with with human intention,
Speaker 1: it could be something else. It could be chimps in
Speaker 1: in a or or you know, some other human ancestor
Speaker 1: engaging in some sort of display that involves accumulating throwing rocks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well it forces us to be humble about interpreting archaeological
Speaker 1: evidence because I think we we we tend to always
Speaker 1: want to say, oh, if we find a non natural
Speaker 1: assemblage of stones or something like that, you assume it
Speaker 1: must have an almost kind of like industrial purpose. You know,
Speaker 1: it's used for wrecked survival benefit, maybe in the manufacture
Speaker 1: of tools or something like that, which which of course
Speaker 1: could be possible. Or the other side is people tend
Speaker 1: to jump to religion, you say, is ritual use. But
Speaker 1: then there are these cases that we observe in non
Speaker 1: human primates today where it's like, it's not even clear
Speaker 1: what this is for. Yeah, but I wanted to now
Speaker 1: address the topic of the evolution of throwing in humans
Speaker 1: because to the extent that animals throw, and we know
Speaker 1: from everything we've looked at in these episodes that many
Speaker 1: many non human animals do throw, they don't throw like
Speaker 1: we do. No animal out there comes anywhere close to
Speaker 1: the combined levels of force and target precision that humans
Speaker 1: are capable of. And to further explore this, I was
Speaker 1: looking at an interesting paper by Michael P. Lombardo and
Speaker 1: robert O. Deaner published in the Quarterly Review of Biology
Speaker 1: called Born to Throw The Ecological Causes that shaped the
Speaker 1: Evolution of Throwing in Humans. Now, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: address all the sub topics in this paper, but wanted
Speaker 1: to pull out some highlights that I found really interesting.
Speaker 1: So the authors begin by identifying two major turning points
Speaker 1: in the relationship between human anatomy and human behavior that
Speaker 1: sort of drove the evolution of the modern human body.
Speaker 1: And they identified the shift to bipedal locomotion, of course
Speaker 1: is is well known, but also the development of forceful
Speaker 1: overhand throwing, and they argued that the former has gotten
Speaker 1: a lot more attention than the ladder, but the ladder
Speaker 1: might be considered equally important, if not more so. There
Speaker 1: are other animals that throw in various scenarios, as we've documented,
Speaker 1: but humans are the only primates that can be observed
Speaker 1: to regularly throw targeted projectiles in order to kill or
Speaker 1: cause injury to another animal. And I think also it's
Speaker 1: worth noticing not only how much better we are throwing
Speaker 1: than other ammals, but how this is pretty much the
Speaker 1: only feat of physical strength. They're one of the only
Speaker 1: feats of physical strength where we surpass our closest primate relatives.
Speaker 1: So compared to other primates like chimpanzees and guerillas, humans
Speaker 1: are incredibly weak. The author's site some research. It's older
Speaker 1: research from ninety six, attempting to quantify the difference between
Speaker 1: the you know, like the arm strength of a chimpanzee
Speaker 1: versus an adult human. And this, this older study concludes that,
Speaker 1: controlling for body size, an adult male chimpanzee is on
Speaker 1: average roughly four times stronger than I fit adult human male.
Speaker 1: Now this is probably a very approximate, guest, but I
Speaker 1: think it is utterly uncontroversial to say that chimps are
Speaker 1: way way stronger than humans. At chimpanzee could probably just
Speaker 1: rip your head off. Oh yeah, And I've seen some
Speaker 1: images of of hand. I can't recall of it was
Speaker 1: a hairless gorilla or a hairless chimpanzee, but it allows
Speaker 1: you to really see the muscle definition, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was terrifying how how ripped this creature was. However,
Speaker 1: despite being several times stronger than human on average in
Speaker 1: a general since their muscles are just stronger, a chimpanzee
Speaker 1: is several times weaker than even an adolescent human when
Speaker 1: it comes to forceful overhand throwing. Uh. And I was
Speaker 1: looking to try to find uh this comparison quantified. I
Speaker 1: did find it in the work of a Harvard researcher
Speaker 1: named Neil Thomas Roach, who studies the evolution of high
Speaker 1: speed throwing. I'm going to come back to some research
Speaker 1: he was involved in. In a minute, but just quickly here,
Speaker 1: Roach cites figures that even an adult male chimpanzee who
Speaker 1: has specifically been trained to throw a ball, so this
Speaker 1: is not just a naive chimpanzee has never done this before.
Speaker 1: This is one who you know, has humans have trained
Speaker 1: them to throw as hard as they can. One who
Speaker 1: has been trained can only achieve top throwing speeds of
Speaker 1: about twenty miles per hour, whereas I'm humans, twelve to
Speaker 1: thirteen year old recreational baseball pictures can achieve pitches above
Speaker 1: sixty miles per hour, and professional adult baseball players can
Speaker 1: throw fastballs in the like nine to one mile per
Speaker 1: hour range. So isn't that bizarre. A chimpanzee might be
Speaker 1: simultaneously three or four times stronger than you in general,
Speaker 1: but you are probably right now at least three times
Speaker 1: stronger than the chimp when it comes to throwing. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a massive blow to any chimpanzee playing baseball. Movies
Speaker 1: out there are basketball movies like it doesn't make sense exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like Chimp Rookie of the Year, that movie that's
Speaker 1: based on false premise. Yeah, but I think this makes
Speaker 1: more sense the more you think about the act of
Speaker 1: throwing in granular details. So throwing comes so naturally and
Speaker 1: so easily to us as a species, it takes real,
Speaker 1: deliberate effort to understand an extremely difficult and complex behavior.
Speaker 1: Forceful targeted throwing is It requires split second mental calculations
Speaker 1: regarding force, angle, and timing, as well as coordination of
Speaker 1: lots of precise and rapid movements by many different parts
Speaker 1: of the body. So think about all this stuff. Think
Speaker 1: about everything your muscles and your brain have to do
Speaker 1: together to throw a rock and hit something, especially if
Speaker 1: the thing is moving. You have to track the target,
Speaker 1: anticipate future motion of the target, take into account the
Speaker 1: physical features of the projectile, for example, like its weight
Speaker 1: and its shape and so forth, which will affect how
Speaker 1: it travels. You have to understand the object you're throwing
Speaker 1: to throw it effectively. Um, you have to understand how
Speaker 1: exactly to drawback and extend the arm for the throw,
Speaker 1: how to grip the object in preparation for the throw,
Speaker 1: exactly how and when to release the projectile from the grip.
Speaker 1: And that's like a you know, tiny, tiny window, and
Speaker 1: you have to time all of those muscular movements and
Speaker 1: exactly the right sequence, which might all take place in
Speaker 1: less than a second. Of throwing behaviors are one of
Speaker 1: the fastest motions produced by the muscular skeletal system of
Speaker 1: the human body. Yeah, which which makes it all the
Speaker 1: more depressing when you throw a cat toy and the
Speaker 1: cat doesn't chase after it and doesn't take the press like,
Speaker 1: did you not see what I just did? But but
Speaker 1: in the case of throwing a cat toy, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to actually make the toy go anywhere specific.
Speaker 1: But if I'm say bowling, which I guess I don't
Speaker 1: know if you would call bowling throwing, I guess it's
Speaker 1: sort of like their ticket counts. But but when I'm
Speaker 1: doing that, that's one of those rare insces where I'll
Speaker 1: I'll occasionally stop and think and try and sort of
Speaker 1: focus on what all I'm doing to to carry out
Speaker 1: this physical act. And yet it's, like you said, there's
Speaker 1: so many things going on that we don't even really
Speaker 1: have conscious control of, or or not privy to, or
Speaker 1: and if we think too much about it, we're just
Speaker 1: going to drop it on her toe. Anyway. Uh, It's
Speaker 1: it's really quite amazing. That's another interesting aspect of throwing
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people can attest from
Speaker 1: their own experience. When you think too much about throwing,
Speaker 1: you tend to get worse at it. Isn't that strange?
Speaker 1: Like that you tend to throw more accurately when you
Speaker 1: kind of turn off your analytical brain and just let
Speaker 1: your intuitions take over than thank you, Thank you so anyway,
Speaker 1: the fact that we are so much better adapted for
Speaker 1: targeted overhand throwing than other primates, even are most closely
Speaker 1: related primates like chimpanzees, suggests specific selection pressure on our ancestors,
Speaker 1: favoring the development of skeletal, muscular as well as neurological
Speaker 1: adaptations that allow us to excel at throwing to the
Speaker 1: extent that we do. We seem quite clearly biologically shaped
Speaker 1: for throwing, and that requires changes in in multiple parts
Speaker 1: of the body, the muscles and the skeleton of like
Speaker 1: the arm and the shoulder and the torso, but also
Speaker 1: the brain and the nervous system. Now, lest you think,
Speaker 1: I don't know how useful in real world struggle could
Speaker 1: throwing b I think this is uncontroversial, but the authors
Speaker 1: do spend a fair amount of time just providing evidence that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, they do observations of pre modern practices in
Speaker 1: hunting and warfare to show the prevalence and utility of
Speaker 1: targeted overhand throwing. They're like, yes, it's incredibly useful. Uh.
Speaker 1: They say that human quote, hunters and warriors used human
Speaker 1: muscle power to propel bolas, boomerangs, darts and knives, sticks, stones,
Speaker 1: and spears thrown with or without the aid of auto lattels. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in the autolattle. By the way, we
Speaker 1: did an episode of Invention on that a long time
Speaker 1: ago that I think was was one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: I remember that being really interesting. Yeah. Anyway, many of
Speaker 1: the technologies that replaced these practices in hunting and warfare
Speaker 1: have simply replaced the muscular power with mechanical or chemical
Speaker 1: sources of energy to power the throw. And that can
Speaker 1: be everything from the tension of a bow string to
Speaker 1: the combustion of gunpowder in in a firearm. Um. So
Speaker 1: the question is how did our hominin ancestors make the
Speaker 1: leap from something like the occasional low specialization, low utility
Speaker 1: tossing behaviors we see in our closest primate relatives like
Speaker 1: chimpanzees to the kind of habitual, powerful, targeted overhand throwing
Speaker 1: that is characteristic of humans today. Now, like many questions
Speaker 1: in evolutionary anthropology, we don't know the answer to this
Speaker 1: one for sure. This is not one where somebody can
Speaker 1: tell you the answer. But there are a few hypotheses
Speaker 1: that are informed by some interesting evidence that we can
Speaker 1: take a look at. Now, before we can figure out
Speaker 1: how that advance from sort of occasional, low utility throwing
Speaker 1: to human style throwing might have occurred, it's worth discussing
Speaker 1: the major hypothesized uses of overhand throwing in an ancestral
Speaker 1: hominin environment. Hunting is a very obvious one, right, being
Speaker 1: able to throw a rock or a stick with force
Speaker 1: and hit a prey animal would be extremely useful. But
Speaker 1: the authors also call out interest specific and agonistic encounters,
Speaker 1: which means conflict with other members of the same species.
Speaker 1: And then finally, I thought this one was really fascinating,
Speaker 1: and uh, this one may help explain and and help
Speaker 1: you see how this this bridge could have been crossed behaviorally.
Speaker 1: The practice of power scavenging, which means not just regular scavenging,
Speaker 1: not just wandering around looking for a dead animal to
Speaker 1: to feast upon. Power scavenging means waiting for other predators
Speaker 1: to take down a prey animal and then chasing those
Speaker 1: predators away from the kill and taking it for yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a There was a fabulous BBC documentary several
Speaker 1: years back kindled Human Planet, that was narrated by John Hurt,
Speaker 1: and it had to do with various human practices of
Speaker 1: often hunting or source scavenging that that have been practiced
Speaker 1: to some degree into the modern age, and one of
Speaker 1: them involved stealing part of the kill from a lion,
Speaker 1: which would be an example of power scavenging something where
Speaker 1: you want to get in there like that the lion
Speaker 1: has done the I guess the hard part and has
Speaker 1: brought down prey, but now you're gonna do an also
Speaker 1: hard thing. You want to get in there, drive the
Speaker 1: predator away long enough to get yourself a little bit
Speaker 1: of the meat as well. Right. Um. So, for this hypothesis,
Speaker 1: the authors cite a work by Bingham and Susa from
Speaker 1: two thousand nine which makes the case that during the
Speaker 1: time of transition from Australia Epithes Senes to the emergence
Speaker 1: of the Homo genus to which we belong. Uh climate
Speaker 1: conditions in Africa may have given rise to these little
Speaker 1: like isolated savannah environments containing hominins. But these environments also
Speaker 1: quote lacked dangerous predators and power scavengers like lions and hyenas,
Speaker 1: but contained smaller and less dangerous predators such as leopards
Speaker 1: and cheetahs. So if that's correct, it's it's maybe easy
Speaker 1: to imagine how with leopards and cheetahs you could more
Speaker 1: more plausibly chase them away, or early hominance could have
Speaker 1: chased them away from a kill by throwing things at them,
Speaker 1: even without very specialized weapons, maybe just by like throwing
Speaker 1: rocks or or unmodified sticks. And this could be thought
Speaker 1: of as a kind of high risk, high reward strategy.
Speaker 1: Like with power scavenging. You can get a big meat
Speaker 1: pay day with relatively little energy investment since you don't
Speaker 1: have to like chase the prey animal down yourself, but
Speaker 1: it's dangerous. You do have to confront one or more
Speaker 1: predators for the kill, and this type of strategy might
Speaker 1: not be worth the risk if you have to fight
Speaker 1: a leopard with your hands or with handheld weapons. But
Speaker 1: if you can just throw rocks at it from a
Speaker 1: distance until it runs away, that could be a really
Speaker 1: a good deal. Yeah. And and again not necessarily drive
Speaker 1: it off completely, but just create an opening during which
Speaker 1: you can carry out some power scavenging and then get
Speaker 1: out of there. Yeah. Now, another question to look at
Speaker 1: is what is the earliest we have, like totally clear
Speaker 1: physical evidence to establish the use of thrown projectiles by
Speaker 1: humans um the author's right quote unambiguous archaeological evidence of
Speaker 1: the use of modified throwing weapons manufactured by members of
Speaker 1: the genus Homo are the stone spear points, manufactured approximately
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand years ago in Africa. Hunting spears with
Speaker 1: their center of gravity one third of the way from
Speaker 1: the tips, suggesting that they were thrown were found in
Speaker 1: Germany and date from three hundred thousand to four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. These two examples are evidence that manufactured
Speaker 1: weapons were thrown by members of the Homo genus at
Speaker 1: least three hundred thousand years ago. But while it's harder
Speaker 1: to be certain about what happened before that, the authors
Speaker 1: infer that human ancestors were probably throwing sticks and rocks
Speaker 1: going back a couple of million years, so there was
Speaker 1: probably use of throwing of less modified or unmodified objects
Speaker 1: from the environment before. We have evidence of these modified
Speaker 1: throwing weapons from like three D four hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And one idea I came across in trying to locate
Speaker 1: the origins of habitual forceful throwing is based on studies
Speaker 1: of anatomy, and this brings us back to that researcher
Speaker 1: I talked about a minute ago, the anthropologist Neil Thomas Roach,
Speaker 1: who along with some colleagues studied the bodies and behavior
Speaker 1: of practiced human throwers like baseball pitchers and uh, and
Speaker 1: let's see the citation here is Roach, Vincadason, Rainbow, and
Speaker 1: Lieberman from published in the journal Nature, and the paper
Speaker 1: title is Elastic Energy Storage in the Shoulder and the
Speaker 1: Evolution of high speed Throwing in Homo And basically, these
Speaker 1: authors contend that the anatomical difference that may humans so
Speaker 1: good at throwing is our ability to store elastic energy
Speaker 1: in our shoulders. So it's not just like the strength
Speaker 1: of the muscles, but the fact that the human body
Speaker 1: is designed to sort of cock back the arm before
Speaker 1: a forceful throw, and a human essentially creates a bio
Speaker 1: mechanical sling shot by stretching the tendons and the ligaments
Speaker 1: surrounding the scapula or the shoulder blade, and this tension
Speaker 1: could be thought of as analogous to the tension in
Speaker 1: a bowstring. It allows very rapid extension of the arm
Speaker 1: after the wind up. Now, how come we can do
Speaker 1: this and our nearest relatives like chimpanzees cannot. The researchers
Speaker 1: here argued that there are basically three important anatomical changes
Speaker 1: that are found altogether around two million years ago uh
Speaker 1: in the species Homo erectus. So these three changes are
Speaker 1: the expansion of the waste and this sort of lets
Speaker 1: the torso rotate above the hips, which generates more rotational force.
Speaker 1: So when you're like cocking your arm back to throw overhand,
Speaker 1: you typically you twist your torso, and that change in
Speaker 1: uh in Homo erectus allowed them to twist their torso
Speaker 1: like that. The second is a lower positioning of the
Speaker 1: shoulders on the torso, and this changes the orientation of
Speaker 1: the muscles around the shoulder, again helping us to store
Speaker 1: more energy in the wind up of an overhand throw. Again,
Speaker 1: this is found in Homo erectus, and then the twisting
Speaker 1: of the humorous bone, which is the upper arm bone,
Speaker 1: and that twisting is yet another way to stretch the
Speaker 1: bow string, storing up even more energy in the wind
Speaker 1: up uh. And you can see these differences. There's a
Speaker 1: diagram they include. You might be able to look up
Speaker 1: for yourself if you see a comparison of like a
Speaker 1: muscle diagram or the scapula of a chimpanzee and a human,
Speaker 1: and you can see some of these differences, particularly the
Speaker 1: lower position of the shoulder on the human body. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at the upper musculature of a chimpanzee and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I really would not want to be
Speaker 1: clubbed by this animal. And I imagine that animal can
Speaker 1: really like climb a tree really well. But there's there's
Speaker 1: some kind of different twisting of the shoulder and the
Speaker 1: pectoral muscle in the human body that apparently allows us
Speaker 1: to to perform this cocking back or wind up behavior
Speaker 1: before and overhand throws so much better than a chimp can.
Speaker 1: This also means, according to this illustration, the chimpanzee nipple
Speaker 1: is also just a little bit higher. It's true comparatively,
Speaker 1: um so roach and colleagues argue that these anatomical changes
Speaker 1: that favor throwing coincide with archaeological evidence showing increased hunting
Speaker 1: activity in these hominins, so like more processed animal bones,
Speaker 1: that occupied sites, stone tool work, and so forth. So
Speaker 1: that would make a link between the this these anatomical
Speaker 1: changes that favor the ability to throw, and what human
Speaker 1: ancestors were eating. The Homo erectus was apparently dining on
Speaker 1: more meat. Now, coming back to that paper by Lombardo
Speaker 1: and Dianer. From that they examine a number of other
Speaker 1: different things, like talking about the prevalence and effectiveness of
Speaker 1: overhand throwing in warfare and hunting, and they also look
Speaker 1: at things like sex differences in throwing behavior. For example,
Speaker 1: in chimpanzees, there's some evidence that male chimpanzees tend to
Speaker 1: throw more uh and relative levels of lethality and targeted
Speaker 1: throwing behaviors and so forth. But to come to the
Speaker 1: conclusion regarding that transition, like how did the leap happen
Speaker 1: from you know, sort of occasional, non specialized throwing like
Speaker 1: we see in chimpanzees today to the habitual, targeted, forceful
Speaker 1: overhand throwing that humans can do uh. The conclusion, they argue,
Speaker 1: is that this adaptation grew out of quote a way
Speaker 1: for throwers to manipulate the behavior of targeted individuals during
Speaker 1: interest specific agonistic interactions, and then later transitioned into you
Speaker 1: steering power, scavenging and hunting by hominans, perhaps in the
Speaker 1: Australi epithesenes. So why do they think it's started with
Speaker 1: manipulating the behavior of of other hominins within the same
Speaker 1: species and agonistic interactions. Well, I think we can get
Speaker 1: some clues by looking at our closest primate relatives. Again,
Speaker 1: this this in no way clinches the argument. We don't
Speaker 1: know for sure, but it's an interesting line of evidence.
Speaker 1: So they say, if you look at our relatives like chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: Binobo's guerrillas and so forth, these animals have all been
Speaker 1: observed throwing. But when and how do they throw? Well,
Speaker 1: do they throw to hunt? The answer there seems like
Speaker 1: either no or almost never. There are almost no claimed
Speaker 1: observations that any of these animals use projectiles for hunting,
Speaker 1: with basically one possible exception, and that's a report by
Speaker 1: Jane Goodall actually in nineteen eighty six, where to read
Speaker 1: from the paper here quote Goodall reported three observations of
Speaker 1: throwing by hunting chimpanzees. In two instances, stones thrown by
Speaker 1: an male may have been intended to cause the prey
Speaker 1: adult bush pigs to run rather than to harm them.
Speaker 1: In another instance, six male chimpanzees hunting baboons through stones
Speaker 1: at male baboons that were attacking the hunters. None of
Speaker 1: these accounts closely resembles the highly skilled aimed throwing used
Speaker 1: by human hunters, so even if these instances count, they
Speaker 1: appear to be somewhat ambiguous and relatively unique. There are
Speaker 1: basically no other reports of apes throwing to hunt uh,
Speaker 1: and instead, apes and monkeys seem to be used throwing
Speaker 1: as part of communication behavior during encounters with other members
Speaker 1: of the same species or sometimes with other animals such
Speaker 1: as humans. Most often, it's used for agonistic interactions, a
Speaker 1: kind of threat display that you might throw rocks or
Speaker 1: sticks at another member of the same ape species or
Speaker 1: another animal to sort of drive them away or intimidate them. So,
Speaker 1: if a chimpanzee is trying to display dominance or intimidate
Speaker 1: an other one, or trying to get an interloper away
Speaker 1: from the group, throwing rocks and sticks is a common
Speaker 1: behavior there, but it's also not just aggressive interactions those
Speaker 1: are the most common. There are also, in fewer cases
Speaker 1: more benign examples, like particularly in binobos and some monkeys
Speaker 1: were throwing can be a bid to initiate play or
Speaker 1: some other type of non threatening communication. Yeah, pebbles on
Speaker 1: the window again here. So for the most part, it
Speaker 1: seems chimps don't really hunt or power scavenge by throwing.
Speaker 1: They throw most often as a threatening display toward other
Speaker 1: chimps or to communicate in some way. But you can
Speaker 1: see how this behavior could bridge over into power scavenging
Speaker 1: if you're generally throwing to threaten, so you know it
Speaker 1: starts off with agonistic interactions, and then maybe sometimes you
Speaker 1: throw to threaten a predator that is there with with
Speaker 1: a kill, and instead you drive the predator away and
Speaker 1: you take the meat. This creates an association between throwing
Speaker 1: to threaten and to meet reward that could increase singly
Speaker 1: lead to throwing to hunt directly, especially if you were
Speaker 1: able to create modified projectiles such as spears. So it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder like if those specific chimpanzees observed by
Speaker 1: Jane Goodall, if they were in fact using rocks to
Speaker 1: hunt or aid in hunting in some way. You kind
Speaker 1: of have to wonder if maybe they're on the bleeding
Speaker 1: edge of chimp technology in some way, like the one.
Speaker 1: Those are the ones who, if left alone for a
Speaker 1: few hundred thousand years, might evolve to select anatomical traits
Speaker 1: that favor throwing and you know, modify objects from their
Speaker 1: environment to make their throwing more effective. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: fascinating this so you can see the links here between,
Speaker 1: like this sort of growing understanding to some degree that
Speaker 1: being able to throw an object at another creature is
Speaker 1: a way to alter its behavior or disrupt its behavior
Speaker 1: at a distance, and then that that potential extra step
Speaker 1: and realize that this also can harm the animal, and
Speaker 1: then there are ways to enhance the materials so as
Speaker 1: to increase harm. Uh. Yeah, that's fascinating. So what do
Speaker 1: I think about their hypothesis here? I wouldn't say I'm
Speaker 1: a hundred percent convinced, but it seems very plausible. They
Speaker 1: make a pretty good case alright, So hopefully this episode
Speaker 1: will help us, you know, Spook, you will help mess
Speaker 1: you up the next time you need to try and
Speaker 1: throw something with intention and direction, maybe your next softball game,
Speaker 1: maybe the next time you you go to beer somebody
Speaker 1: at an outdoor party. They'll just be that moment of
Speaker 1: doubt where you you run through the evolutionary history of
Speaker 1: getting to this point and then you miss your target,
Speaker 1: overthink it and then slice. All right, Well, we we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from anyone out there if you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts and feedback related to this episode or other
Speaker 1: episodes in this uh this series about humans throwing things,
Speaker 1: animals throwing things, um right in, We'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you, and of course we could we could potentially
Speaker 1: keep going with this topic. So we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: discuss after we wrap this episode and see if we're
Speaker 1: going to part four now or if we're gonna come
Speaker 1: back in the future. I don't know. We don't have
Speaker 1: to tune in Thursday to see what happens. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: a science podcast that publishes core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Monday's,
Speaker 1: we do listener mail. On Wednesday's, we do a short
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster Fact episode, and on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to discuss a weird movie
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to our audio producer
Speaker 1: J J. Pauseway. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff
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