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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you wasn't a stuff to blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,

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Speaker 1: what's your impression of comedic impressionists? You know, the rich

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Speaker 1: Littles of the world who who apply their their comedic

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Speaker 1: trade by impersonating other celebrities. Do you want me to

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Speaker 1: do an impression of rich Little doing other comedians? Because

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Speaker 1: I don't know, because it's kind of like I imagine,

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Speaker 1: there is no rich Little like at the behind all

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Speaker 1: these these masks. There must be this void, and so

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Speaker 1: if you try to impersonate the void, it's the whole

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Speaker 1: universe implodes on itself. It's my impression of him. Well,

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Speaker 1: I love impressionists, particularly good ones, because I think it's

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Speaker 1: you know, one level is high hilarious, right, because you're

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Speaker 1: recognizing someone in a different context. But also the powers

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Speaker 1: of mimicry are just amazing to me, and some of

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Speaker 1: that rang true for me when we were talking about

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Speaker 1: um Vaudevillians and people working their dummies and the ventriloquists.

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Speaker 1: I mean that to me is a real skill. It

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Speaker 1: may not get you a lot of dates, but hey,

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Speaker 1: it's it's good stuff with me. I think it was

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Speaker 1: the movie The Trip with Steve Coogan in it, where

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Speaker 1: you have the two characters that have this very long

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Speaker 1: and uh and entertaining bit where they're they're they're having

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Speaker 1: these this duel of Michael Caine impersonations that is one,

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Speaker 1: hands down, one of the best film moments out there.

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Speaker 1: It is. It's it's pretty great because there they each

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Speaker 1: they're taking different Michael Kaine's from different periods of history,

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Speaker 1: different points, different films, and Michael Kaine's lifespan. They are

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Speaker 1: then they also have their own individual takes and preferences

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Speaker 1: when it comes to the Michael Caine impersonation and uh.

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Speaker 1: In a way, all of that nuance and all of

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Speaker 1: that variety in the impersonation of a specific thing ties

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Speaker 1: in nicely into what we're about to talk about in

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Speaker 1: this episode, because we're gonna focus on these comedic impressionists

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Speaker 1: in the wild and why animals might go into this territory,

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Speaker 1: why would they do it, how they do it, And

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Speaker 1: we're gonna cover some extreme mimics that you might not

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Speaker 1: have ever thought of as having this ability. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna start with birds, which you know, you're probably aware

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Speaker 1: that birds use a little bit of mimicry in their

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Speaker 1: birds song. But then later on we're gonna get into

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Speaker 1: some other animals that may surprise you. They surprise me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and mockingbird's car alarms. That's gonna be probably zero surprise

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Speaker 1: to everybody, right, Yeah, the mocking bird is uh, it's

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Speaker 1: pretty great, really, and we're talking about a very ultimately

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Speaker 1: creative bird. The vast majority of songbirds out there they

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Speaker 1: learn and memorize their songs from a mentor you know,

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Speaker 1: they're the father bird or another singing male. But the

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Speaker 1: mocking bird takes their sounds from the environment around them.

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Speaker 1: So there they may take a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: bird song. Here they're listening to this bird and that

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Speaker 1: bird they're incorporating into their own unique song. Or indeed,

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Speaker 1: they're hearing the sound of frogs or a barking dog.

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Speaker 1: And uh, if there happens to be a a human

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Speaker 1: settlement nearby, well then that just opens the door to

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Speaker 1: a whole new world of artificial sounds to add to

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Speaker 1: their uh unique statement. I think mocking birds are actually

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Speaker 1: pretty formidable in terms of something to be feared, at

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Speaker 1: least for me, because not only will they mad dog

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Speaker 1: you you know, and try to swoop in, but they

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Speaker 1: can sit there and and mimic a car, alarm, or

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Speaker 1: cellphone or a dog. They're a little insane to me. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: We're reading this article from biotist Daniel Edelstein in an

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Speaker 1: article for Bay Nature, and he said, from one spring

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Speaker 1: to the next, an individual male mocking bird repeats a

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Speaker 1: minimum of thirty five to sixty three of his previously

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Speaker 1: heard song types, while at the same time adding more

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Speaker 1: songs to his delivery. As a result, his vocal repertoire

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Speaker 1: eventually grows to as many as two hundred at old age,

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Speaker 1: which is up to a year. She says, So one

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Speaker 1: reason for this would be reproductive fitness. Yeah, it comes

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Speaker 1: down what the what is the female mocking bird want?

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Speaker 1: She wants a male that has a really awesome song,

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Speaker 1: a really nice you know of a long song, a

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Speaker 1: complex song. And therefore it behooves the male mocking bird

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Speaker 1: to create such a song using any color, any pal

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Speaker 1: available to him. It's basically the bower bird scenario where

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Speaker 1: the bower bird creates this wonderful love nest out of

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Speaker 1: objects that it found finds. The mocking bird creates this

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Speaker 1: wonderful love song out of sounds that it encounters in

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Speaker 1: its environment, and it's scavenges from its environment right there,

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Speaker 1: Like if you if you meet with me, I've got

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Speaker 1: like two hundred songs of a juke box. That one

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Speaker 1: over there only fifty, right, So it becomes a more

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Speaker 1: appealing proposition for the female bird if that other bird

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Speaker 1: has the ability to pick up tunes to add to

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Speaker 1: its arsenal of vocal awe. So that's one reason. Now,

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Speaker 1: another reason that animals and nature might use it is deception,

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Speaker 1: of course, yes, and of course one of the classic

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Speaker 1: examples of this we we see we discussed this one before,

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Speaker 1: and this is not really a bird thing, but you

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Speaker 1: see a wild cat species in the Amazon. They want

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Speaker 1: to eat a delicious tamarin, those little bit of monkey creatures.

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Speaker 1: Yeah tamarin. Yeah, they're so cute but so delicious. I understand, Uh,

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Speaker 1: you want you want to eat some of those? What

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Speaker 1: do you do? You start mimicking their sounds? Cats are

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Speaker 1: of course great mimics. They manipulate us humans. Uh, the

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Speaker 1: their they're they're mimicking of of of of a baby

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Speaker 1: crying basically with their with their mewing and uh, and

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Speaker 1: they're not above pretending to be a tamarin and it

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Speaker 1: means they get to eat a nice tamarin on the

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Speaker 1: other end of that song. Yeah. So when the cat

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Speaker 1: in mimics and monkeys call, the tamarins are then compelled

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Speaker 1: to come down from the trees and investigate what is this?

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Speaker 1: Call this my baby, um, and then boom that the

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Speaker 1: cat pounces. Bottom line. In order to do this. In

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Speaker 1: order who manipulate animals around you with sound, you have

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Speaker 1: to have a certain amount of vocal flexibility. Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: know that humans obviously have it. Bats, dolphins, we've seen this. Uh. Songbirds, though,

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Speaker 1: are the masters of this vocal flexibility, that is listening

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Speaker 1: to and learning vocal cues from your surroundings. And the

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Speaker 1: reason that songbirds are so good at this is that

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Speaker 1: they have something called the syrings and this is the

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Speaker 1: sound producing organ and it's sort of the equivalent to

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Speaker 1: the human soundbox, though instead of being just right above

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Speaker 1: the tricky as ours is, it is actually located at

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Speaker 1: the junction of the two bronchi or air tubes leading

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Speaker 1: to the lungs. Yeah, the surnx features membranes that vibrate

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Speaker 1: and generate sound waves when air from the lungs passes

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Speaker 1: over them. And you have muscles to control the details

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Speaker 1: of the song production in the bird. And so the

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Speaker 1: more elaborate than the muscles than the more elaborate the song. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's amazing because think about it's sort of like

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Speaker 1: having an accordion tucked in right above yours able to

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Speaker 1: produce these these really nuanced sounds. Yeah, it's easy to

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Speaker 1: This is one of those things that it is easy

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Speaker 1: to take for granted as a human because we have

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Speaker 1: uh this uh, this vocal flexibility. We can create so

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Speaker 1: many sounds. We can not only sound like each other,

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Speaker 1: we can sound like we can sound like like various

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Speaker 1: other creatures in nature or man made devices. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we have all these books. What sound does the truck make? Room, room?

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Speaker 1: What sound does the cat make? Me? Now we're doing it.

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Speaker 1: It's it's amazing. We can do just about anything. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Bobby mcpahirn, I was thinking about this, He's got to

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Speaker 1: have some of the highest vocal flexibility of any human around. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if he was willing to, he could just he could

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Speaker 1: eat tamarins all day. Just call him in He would

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Speaker 1: be completely fine out in the wild would all right, Hey,

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Speaker 1: another another thing here that could be adaptive. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna get into some of the more extreme mimics

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Speaker 1: that we find in nature. Alright, we're back. You had

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Speaker 1: mentioned BBC's Life of Birds, which features a songbird called

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Speaker 1: the superb liar bird earlier bird. Yeah, we get a

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Speaker 1: great scene of that and Borrow stalking through the chi

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Speaker 1: um and uh and in stalking the liar bird, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he is. He's actually in a dense forest in Australia,

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Speaker 1: and um, it's wonderful because he's able to narrate what

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Speaker 1: is going on with this lear bird, which is really

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Speaker 1: rolling out the big guns in terms of its vocal flexibility.

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Speaker 1: And you see this amazing mimicry going on of not

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Speaker 1: just the sounds it hears around us around it in nature,

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Speaker 1: but some of the human made sounds that it overhears. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: such as a camera shutter. Yeah, camera shutter that I

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Speaker 1: mean perfectly imitates the camera shutter obviously heard probably the

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Speaker 1: crew doing that a chainsaw, because he could hear construction

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Speaker 1: going on in the surrounding area, as is the human

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Speaker 1: habitats moved in on its own in a car alarm. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and twenty different species of birds. So I mean this

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Speaker 1: one is like the Fonzi of birds. Yeah. The librard

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Speaker 1: is either of two species of ground dwelling Australian bird.

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Speaker 1: And it's interesting that, in addition to having this immense

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Speaker 1: repertoire of sounds at this disposal, the male librard also

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Speaker 1: has a huge, beautiful fanning tail. So they're really the

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Speaker 1: full package. I think so too. That's why I say

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Speaker 1: fans of birds here. Um. Now, that would be somewhat expected,

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Speaker 1: But what I probably would not expect is an Asian

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Speaker 1: elephant able to mimic a human. Yes, this one really

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Speaker 1: surprised me. This is UH has to do with a

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Speaker 1: twenty two year old Asian elephant that lives in the Soul,

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Speaker 1: Korea zoo, and supposedly the elephant has learned to reproduce

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Speaker 1: five Korean words uh on hello, uh anga, sit down, no,

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Speaker 1: you will lie down, and good by placing uh. And

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Speaker 1: it does this by placing its trunk inside its mouth

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Speaker 1: to modulate sound, kind of like uh when you see

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Speaker 1: a trumpet player put their hand in in the in

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Speaker 1: the front of it, or when you see a French

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Speaker 1: horn player, where of course your your hand is always

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Speaker 1: uh in the bell of the horn. Yeah. And an

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Speaker 1: international team that's been studying the elephants says that this

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Speaker 1: is a holy novel method of vocal production and that

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Speaker 1: the trainers first noticed that the elephant was imitating them

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Speaker 1: in two thousand and four. And you know it's funny

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Speaker 1: is for years they probably said this elephant is imitating me,

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Speaker 1: I swear to you, and people probably it's spending a

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Speaker 1: little too much time around the elephant. But I love

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Speaker 1: this idea that this is this Not only is it

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Speaker 1: is it reproducing this sound and mimicking humans, but it's

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Speaker 1: doing so in this totally new way. For instance, I

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Speaker 1: don't think I've ever seen anything like this in a

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Speaker 1: like a science fiction but it sounds perfect. You know

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Speaker 1: that you'd have an alien species that communicates by sticking

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Speaker 1: a trunk into its mouth and and then mimicking you know,

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Speaker 1: human vocalizations well. And one of the things that they

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Speaker 1: think is important here are a key factor is that

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Speaker 1: it was separated from other elements at age five, very

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Speaker 1: early on, and then it was just surrounded by humans,

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Speaker 1: so so it inevitably reaches out. Yeah, I mean that

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Speaker 1: becomes essentially it's clan. And one of the other striking

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Speaker 1: things about this is that it wasn't being trained to

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Speaker 1: do it. This was holy came out of it, just

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Speaker 1: completely unprompted. Yeah. Now, key though, is that that whole

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Speaker 1: idea that it was was around humans, not around other elephants.

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Speaker 1: And we see kind of a similar theme in some

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Speaker 1: of these other animals who were going to discuss. The

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Speaker 1: next of which is a bluga whale, which I was

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Speaker 1: surprised they had anything to say at all and that

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Speaker 1: it wasn't really dirty, because I always find them to

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Speaker 1: be a particularly randy creature when I encounter them at

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Speaker 1: the aquarium. Those are the ones they're always showing off

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Speaker 1: their chunk, right yeah, um, which is they're wonderful and

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Speaker 1: I love to see them at our aquarium here in

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Speaker 1: Atlanta because they really do glide past the US and

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Speaker 1: they seemed to as though they were making contact with

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Speaker 1: your eye contact. Um. But yes, sometimes they can expose

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Speaker 1: themselves a bit. So let's go back to this is

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Speaker 1: when research is that the National Marine Mammal Foundation in

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Speaker 1: something that resembled out. And and what was interesting here

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Speaker 1: is that not only is it saying something that resembles out,

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Speaker 1: but it's it's speaking quote unquote uh and a lower

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Speaker 1: octave than it's actually than the octave it uses when

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Speaker 1: it's actually using its vocalizations. Yes. Eventually, Sam Ridgeway of

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Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy Marine Mammal Program at San Diego

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Speaker 1: recorded Knock and studied those vocalizations and came to that

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Speaker 1: conclusion that it was modulating its voice. And what you

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Speaker 1: would think is that it was doing that so that

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Speaker 1: it could be understood while it was mimicking. And what's

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Speaker 1: interesting about that too is that it would say that

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Speaker 1: when someone was in the tank with him out, get

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Speaker 1: out of here. Um. But Knock made the sounds by

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Speaker 1: inflating air sex to a high are pressure than he

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Speaker 1: did when he would make his normal whale vocalizations. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know that. The interesting thing here too is that

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Speaker 1: not later went on and died, but Knock actually stopped

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Speaker 1: doing this vocalization stunt, stopped saying out in the late

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and the researchers theorizes is because he reached

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Speaker 1: sexual maturity. So there's this You get this sense that

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Speaker 1: there's this this point for an animal in captivity where

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Speaker 1: it's if it's not if it's not surrounded by other

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Speaker 1: members of his own species, or if the in close

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Speaker 1: approximity to humans, there is this period of time in

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Speaker 1: which they reach out and try to communicate with the

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Speaker 1: nearest organisms. Yeah, and again this is a case where

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Speaker 1: it was spontaneous, so it is noteworthy for that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they weren't trying to teach the beluga to speak and

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Speaker 1: do tricks. It just emerged and then as quickly as

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Speaker 1: it emerged, it went away. Now, one of the more

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Speaker 1: astounding examples to me, I think, just because of the clips,

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Speaker 1: you guys have got to check this out is a

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Speaker 1: harbor steal. Uh. It was actually an orphaned harbor seal

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Speaker 1: pup in the Cundy Harbor in Maine, and George and

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Speaker 1: Alice Swallow I picked it up in nine and took

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Speaker 1: it home with them and tried to raise it. They

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Speaker 1: named it Hoover, but when Hoover got too big, the

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Speaker 1: Swallows gave Hoover to the New England Aquarium of Boston.

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Speaker 1: So George Swallow told the aquarium employees at the time, Hey,

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Speaker 1: the seal can talk, and of course they said, I'm

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Speaker 1: sure again, you're spending too much time with this animal.

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Speaker 1: But when Hoover reached sexual maturity, he actually began to

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Speaker 1: speak more clearly, okay, with interesting trend compared to the buluga. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And here's the part that's just so crazy. When you

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Speaker 1: hear the clip with a Boston accent. I popped the

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Speaker 1: cot hovid yad, so I don't think I can do

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Speaker 1: about an accent? Can you do about an accent? And

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Speaker 1: run through these different words and phrases that Hoover could.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm gonna sound like a Southie,

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Speaker 1: but the seal would say, I there, how yeah, get

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Speaker 1: out of here, get down, get down, Get down the

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Speaker 1: seventies right, yeah, get down, get down. Yeah. So there

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Speaker 1: are actual clips that the New England Aquarium has, so

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Speaker 1: you guys can check that out. But it is amazing

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Speaker 1: because it's so odd. You can't help it anthropomorphize animals

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Speaker 1: who are mimicking mimicking humans in the first place, But

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Speaker 1: then to hear the Boston accent, it's just another level

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Speaker 1: of amazing nous Indeed, now for this, uh, this next entry,

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Speaker 1: our last entry here, I want you to think back

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Speaker 1: to those those Michael Caine impersonations we were talking about,

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Speaker 1: because we're about to talk about goats. And what's what's

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Speaker 1: interesting with goats is that they only produce a couple

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Speaker 1: of different calls. They're not a lot of there's no

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Speaker 1: goat song, you know, They're the only saying a few

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Speaker 1: different things. So the idea that they're they're bleed eating

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Speaker 1: them out with any kind of variety, with any kind

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Speaker 1: of vocal flexibility is pretty mind blowing. Who would expect

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Speaker 1: this of goats? And there here to be clear too,

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Speaker 1: because I'm sure everybody has seen the yelling goat clips

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Speaker 1: out there. The goats that sound like humans, They are

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Speaker 1: not mimicking humans in a sense. They just happen to sound,

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Speaker 1: you know, arguably like humans, but they do have accents

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Speaker 1: among their own groups. And I thought this was pretty fascinating. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: reading about this, uh the NPR Scott Simon interview with

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Speaker 1: Professor Allan McAllen got of Queen Mary University of London,

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Speaker 1: co author to study showing that goats voices change as

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Speaker 1: they move from different environments. The idea here is that

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Speaker 1: it's uh. It has to group identity. It has to

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Speaker 1: do with the the goats you you grew up with

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Speaker 1: and uh and and took on the vocal accents off. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because they're really highly social species. And so if they

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Speaker 1: get separated during the day, which is sometimes do they

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Speaker 1: want to be able to find each other here each other,

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Speaker 1: So it would make sense that they would take on accents,

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Speaker 1: and that those accents could change too, if they change

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Speaker 1: over their environment and they change their surrounding goats that

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Speaker 1: they're dealing with. And it also kind of gives us

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Speaker 1: a hint about the beginnings of our own vocal flexibility

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Speaker 1: in humans exactly. Yeah, I mean, you know, we're not

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Speaker 1: saying that in in you know, X number of years

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Speaker 1: or x thousands of years in the future, the goats

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Speaker 1: will have language, but all language begins with some degree

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Speaker 1: of vocal flexibility. Making this sound and making this one.

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Speaker 1: This sound means this, this sound means that, and and uh.

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Speaker 1: And we've also looked at the way language develops in humans.

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Speaker 1: I mean, a child's babble is you know, the baby talk.

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Speaker 1: It's it's nonsense, but it's mimicry. It's a mimicry is

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Speaker 1: the early stages of acquiring language. So do you want

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Speaker 1: to have a Michael Kane off? Ah, let's I don't

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Speaker 1: know that my Michael Caine is very good. Actually, I

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Speaker 1: don't even look at each other. She little ear yo

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Speaker 1: maybe mourns a little bit later. Oh god, that's awful. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think mom, Michael Kane is maybe an earlier Michael Kane,

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Speaker 1: and it's really not very good. I used to be

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Speaker 1: able to do a pretty good Sean Connery, but I

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Speaker 1: had to have a chunk of apple in my mouth,

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Speaker 1: and it was a later day Sean Connery, perhaps after

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Speaker 1: he had dentures. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm gonna have

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Speaker 1: to work on my Michael Caine. Yeah, yeah, our our there, no,

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Speaker 1: my our mine is not good? All right. So there

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Speaker 1: you have it. A little inside of the world of

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Speaker 1: animals mimicking other animals, animals mimicking chainsaws, and oh and

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Speaker 1: in video games. That was one of the things about

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Speaker 1: the Liar Bird that I found that there are cases

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Speaker 1: where Liar Birds is imitating the gunshots in a video

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Speaker 1: game that it can hear um. And then you also

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Speaker 1: have animals that are mimicking us, and uh, and maybe

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Speaker 1: even the early stages of the goat language and then

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Speaker 1: humans mimicking other humans. Yes, so you want to learn

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Speaker 1: more about this and other topics you need to have

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Speaker 1: on over the Stuff to Go your mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: That is our our headquarters. That's the mothership. That's where

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Speaker 1: you'll find all of our podcasts. That's where you'll find

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Speaker 1: news on what we're up to. You'll find our blog posts,

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Speaker 1: you'll find out our videos. You'll find links to our

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Speaker 1: social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, tumbler, Uh, We're on YouTube,

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Speaker 1: We're on Google Plus. And you can always send us

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Speaker 1: the good old question email as well. How do they

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Speaker 1: do that? Do it? Ah? They can send it to

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Speaker 1: blow the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com