Speaker 1: Welcome to stuct to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, 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 two of our exploration of invertebrate emotions.
Speaker 1: In the last episode, we talked about the paper Nautilus
Speaker 1: or the argonaut. We read that great Marion More poem.
Speaker 1: We talked about what emotions are, the difficulties and studying them,
Speaker 1: and we talked about anecdotes about people really seeing personality,
Speaker 1: character and emotion in octopuses, but then also scientific studies
Speaker 1: looking for certain types of measurable cognitive effects of emotions
Speaker 1: or emotion like states in invertebrates like bees. We talked
Speaker 1: about the judgment bias test and how bees might have
Speaker 1: biases that come about in optimistic or pessimistic ways based
Speaker 1: on how they're quote feeling. Yeah, A big part of
Speaker 1: the conversation last episode was I think, ultimately about stripping
Speaker 1: down emotion to something that doesn't depend upon the subjective
Speaker 1: human experience, and in doing so, something that I don't
Speaker 1: want to make it sound like we're, oh, we're just
Speaker 1: we're cutting out all the important stuff. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of what we're cutting out is the poetic stuff,
Speaker 1: the the the the extra like self contemplation stuff, and
Speaker 1: getting down to the root of what is an emotional state,
Speaker 1: How does it affect um our behavior and our expectations,
Speaker 1: And then you know, how do we see that echoed
Speaker 1: in other organisms? Right? Well, we're cutting out yeah this
Speaker 1: by cutting out the subjective element. We're cutting out the
Speaker 1: part that would be impossible to study in other animals
Speaker 1: and just trying to say what our emotional states as
Speaker 1: manifested externally. Yeah, But then of course the difficulty, as
Speaker 1: we discussed, is by taking out the subjective aspect of it,
Speaker 1: we're taking out the part that is closest to us
Speaker 1: and the thing that you instantly think about when we
Speaker 1: even say the word emotion of sweet emotion. Oh no,
Speaker 1: that song fills me with bad emotion, did you. Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I ever gotten to do this
Speaker 1: rant before. Y'all know I hate Aerosmith. Oh no, I know, well,
Speaker 1: I think you may have mentioned it once in passing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even even the early stuff. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can be that classic rock radio uncle, like you
Speaker 1: know when led Zeppelin comes on, I'm like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel it, but I don't know that. Something about Aerosmith
Speaker 1: just turns my head three sixty degrees. Well, I have
Speaker 1: to admit it. Really like in dream On that's that's
Speaker 1: if I hear that one on classic rock radio, I'll
Speaker 1: tune in and listen. Well, I'm glad you like it. Hey, folks,
Speaker 1: this is Joe from the Future swooping in to alter
Speaker 1: the past. Sorry about the audio, but I realized on
Speaker 1: listening back to this episode that in our excitement about
Speaker 1: the topic, we forgot to reintroduce the paper that we
Speaker 1: were talking about in the first episode, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about throughout this one as well. So
Speaker 1: that paper was by Clint J. Perry and Luigi Bachi,
Speaker 1: a Donna, and it's called Studying Emotion and Invertebrates What
Speaker 1: has been done, what can be measured, and what they
Speaker 1: can provide. It was published in the Journal of Experimental
Speaker 1: Biology in Okay, now back to our original conversation. Okay,
Speaker 1: but uh so, the last time we we talked about
Speaker 1: one of the main three branches of external ways of
Speaker 1: studying emotions and animals. We talked about you know that
Speaker 1: they're there are perhaps cognitive effects of emotions, that emotions
Speaker 1: affect how you perceive the world and how you think.
Speaker 1: That there are behavioral tests of emotions, that emotions affect
Speaker 1: how you act, and that there are physiological tests of
Speaker 1: emotions that emotions affect involuntary physical reactions in the body.
Speaker 1: And we last time we looked at cognition. This time
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at the other two. So the first
Speaker 1: would be behavioral tests behavioral signs of emotional states. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think we should first
Speaker 1: acknowledge is that I'd say this is the primary way
Speaker 1: that we sense emotions in other people. What do people
Speaker 1: usually do with their bodies, especially their faces, when they're
Speaker 1: feeling various emotions. But as the authors point out quite helpfully,
Speaker 1: they say, quote, invertebrates lack the facial musculature for any
Speaker 1: real type of comparisons to be made in this regard.
Speaker 1: So I think that the jury is in. You can't
Speaker 1: tell if a hornet is smiling. You can't tell if
Speaker 1: there is disgusted on the face of that crab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as if a crab had a face anyway. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: but my flogging that horse again, it's not really a
Speaker 1: horse I flog, but no, no, no, actually you're right.
Speaker 1: I think i'd degree the crab. I don't know crabs
Speaker 1: pushing it. I don't know if a crab has a face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it definitely has the front of a head.
Speaker 1: But that front of a head with the crab is
Speaker 1: not really it's not used for communication. Crabs depend on
Speaker 1: sound as well as you know. The claw waving and
Speaker 1: overall movement displays general body language, but predominantly sound is
Speaker 1: their their form of communication. The wasp, for their part, uh,
Speaker 1: they depend primarily on smell for a communication. We will
Speaker 1: get into that a little bit in the last episode
Speaker 1: with the beest. So their commune occasions since realm is
Speaker 1: not really our own, um, they exist in a in
Speaker 1: a different realm in that regard. Right, But the behavioral
Speaker 1: effects of underlying emotional states are not limited to facial
Speaker 1: expressions alone, just because that's maybe the main way we
Speaker 1: see emotions in other people. Uh. The author's right quote.
Speaker 1: A substantial amount of work in mammals has utilized other
Speaker 1: bodily expressions and motor behavior in response to stimuli to
Speaker 1: assess both valence meaning the pleasantness, and intensity, meaning the
Speaker 1: level of arousal of emotions, and I really think the
Speaker 1: horse is a great example of this for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. First of all, the horse is an animal
Speaker 1: that is, that lives in close proximity to humans, that
Speaker 1: is adored by humans. That is, that is often you
Speaker 1: know championed as being this next to the dog and
Speaker 1: you know the cat. I guess it is. It is
Speaker 1: a friend of humanity. And uh, and my wife being
Speaker 1: super into horses and pretty knowledgeable about them, she's just
Speaker 1: told me about some of this before, but I was
Speaker 1: I also looked up a source on this for this
Speaker 1: episode How to Read Your Horses Body Language by Jennifer Williams,
Speaker 1: PhD for Acquis Magazine, and Williams points out that if
Speaker 1: a novice or to view a skilled horse trainer in action,
Speaker 1: they might well guess that this individual is psychic or
Speaker 1: has some sort of mystical Cormick McCarthy in connection to
Speaker 1: the soul of the horse, you know, the deep, dark,
Speaker 1: mystical soil soul of the horse. But it's really all
Speaker 1: about knowing how to read these other signs, the overall
Speaker 1: body language of the horse, and then these other sort
Speaker 1: of non facial or semi facial cues. Well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean think if you're a dog person, if you've got
Speaker 1: a dog in your house, think about like, how finally
Speaker 1: a tune you are to your dogs feelings, levels of excitement, motivations,
Speaker 1: and and quote emotional states or you know, there's something
Speaker 1: that is analogous to these emotional states. Uh that if
Speaker 1: somebody who had never met a dog before or hadn't
Speaker 1: spent much time around dogs saw you interacting with your dog,
Speaker 1: they might well think the same thing. You must be psychic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, A lot of it is about picking up
Speaker 1: on all of this language, or indeed just knowing what
Speaker 1: to look for. So in in the case of the horse,
Speaker 1: for instance, um ear position is very important. This is
Speaker 1: one of the apparently the first things you tend to
Speaker 1: learn about about understanding a horse's emotional state. So that
Speaker 1: the ears may face forward, meaning they're interested. They may
Speaker 1: be pinned back, meaning they're angry and they're prone to
Speaker 1: bite or act you know, aggressively slashed defensively. Uh. They
Speaker 1: might be turned out to the side meaning they're relaxed.
Speaker 1: They might be turned back but not pinned, and this
Speaker 1: means they're listening to something behind them and it also
Speaker 1: means they might decide they need to turn around to
Speaker 1: go look at it, and horses, being large animals, that's
Speaker 1: something to be aware of. Uh. And then they also
Speaker 1: might be rapidly swiveling, meaning that they're anxious or at
Speaker 1: their you know, at a high level of alertness. But
Speaker 1: then on top of that there's also head carriage, head
Speaker 1: maybe lowered, elevated snaking. You have to consider four leg
Speaker 1: and hind leg movement and position, muzzle activity, which this
Speaker 1: some of this it's more in line with what you
Speaker 1: might expect from a face, you know, like what are
Speaker 1: the nostrils doing? Uh? You know, what what's the mouth doing?
Speaker 1: What are they doing with their teeth? That sort of thing.
Speaker 1: There is a certain level of like what are their
Speaker 1: eyes doing? Uh? You know, to someone that doesn't really
Speaker 1: know anything about horses, it's easy to sort of think
Speaker 1: of the eyes as being sort of like big empty
Speaker 1: glasses without a lot of emotion. But there is stuff
Speaker 1: you can read into it. There's the movement of the tail,
Speaker 1: and then there's just general whole body stuff like what
Speaker 1: is the overall bodily tension of the animal, how is it?
Speaker 1: How is it moving? And uh? And you can read
Speaker 1: take all of that and read into the emotional state
Speaker 1: of the horse. But if you just look at you
Speaker 1: know what you might be tempted to call the face
Speaker 1: of the horse, You're not necessarily going to pick up
Speaker 1: on on all those cues you have. And I think
Speaker 1: part of this two gets we have to think about
Speaker 1: the human situation. So clearly humans have body language. You know,
Speaker 1: there's more than just the facial communication array with human
Speaker 1: beings totally, but we do depend on the facial communication
Speaker 1: array a lot and do fixate on it to a
Speaker 1: very large degree. But basically, what I'm trying to say,
Speaker 1: using the horses in an example that there are there
Speaker 1: are there are various parts of an organism that you
Speaker 1: can look to to to figure out what their emotional
Speaker 1: state is, and it may or may not be something
Speaker 1: that matches up with the human idea idea of a face. Yes,
Speaker 1: so what would be some of these external behaviors that
Speaker 1: we could measure in invertebrates? One of the most obvious
Speaker 1: behavioral signs of underlying emotional states and animals is retreat behaviors.
Speaker 1: So but you know, like in fear or anxiety, animals
Speaker 1: will retreat, retracting or covering vulnerable body parts, adopting defensive posture,
Speaker 1: and running away. These are some of the clearest ones
Speaker 1: to look for in all of animal behavior. And so
Speaker 1: the first example cited by the authors here looks at
Speaker 1: exactly that. And it's actually a study we've already mentioned
Speaker 1: on this show before. It came up in our episodes
Speaker 1: titled Devour of Memory. Remember that about about the planaria
Speaker 1: and the and the research about whether you could gain
Speaker 1: somebody's memories by eating their body. Uh So in this
Speaker 1: episode that we mentioned to study about a type of
Speaker 1: large sea slug called the California sea hair or Aplasia californica.
Speaker 1: Uh And in that other episode the study came up
Speaker 1: because it demonstrated associate of learning and classical conditioning in
Speaker 1: an invertebrate sea slug. So, you offer a sea hair
Speaker 1: some delicious shrimp extract, but in the test group, well,
Speaker 1: the sea hair is munching on the shrimp extract, it
Speaker 1: gets an electric shock to the head that this painful
Speaker 1: stimulus results in not a frown, of course, but measurable
Speaker 1: behaviors in the slug. It withdraws its head, it withdraws
Speaker 1: its siphon, it inks, and it moves away from the
Speaker 1: shrimp at extract, and sure enough if you train it
Speaker 1: on these associations when simply when the animals from the
Speaker 1: test group are simply presented with shrimp extract, they will
Speaker 1: pull back the siphon and move away. By the way,
Speaker 1: see hair and the electric shrimp extract would be a
Speaker 1: great name for a band. Just to put that out there,
Speaker 1: I think that was a Bob Weir side project. Okay um.
Speaker 1: But whether or not it makes sense to use the
Speaker 1: same word we use for emotions and other mammals quote
Speaker 1: the observed behavioral responses to conditions stimuli resemble the actions
Speaker 1: of conditioned fear in mammals. Subjectively, it might not make
Speaker 1: sense to talk about fear in a sea slug. We
Speaker 1: don't know, but it certainly behaviorally looks like fear. It
Speaker 1: looks like the same thing we recognize this fear in
Speaker 1: mammals or in other humans. Because of course, nothing about
Speaker 1: the shrimp extract itself causes pain. It couldn't be a
Speaker 1: simple stimulus response. It has to be this association with pain,
Speaker 1: the memory of you know, the fear caused by the memory,
Speaker 1: and a lot of invertebrate studies into emotions look for
Speaker 1: signs of fear because fear is easier to study. Presumable
Speaker 1: fear inducing stimuli are relatively easy to create, and behavioral
Speaker 1: response says are relatively easy to detect. There's another example
Speaker 1: that the author's site here, which is fear research into
Speaker 1: Drosophila also known commonly as fruit flies or as vinegar
Speaker 1: flies small fruit flies. Uh. This is an extremely common
Speaker 1: organism for lab research. You'll find tons of studies modeling
Speaker 1: other things in complex organisms as they appear in Drosophila.
Speaker 1: So in T. Gibson at All studied fear and Drosophila
Speaker 1: caused by the stimulus of an overhead shadow. They used
Speaker 1: a rotating opaque paddle. I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: a ping pong paddle that I kind of hope it was.
Speaker 1: It was some kind of paddle that would be made
Speaker 1: to rotate in a circle in in in a steady progression,
Speaker 1: repeat passages over a container of these these flies that
Speaker 1: would be, say, eating a food source or something. And
Speaker 1: the authors found that multiple repetitive exposures to this overhead
Speaker 1: shadow caused the flies to fly around more, to hop more,
Speaker 1: to freeze more, and to fly away from a food source,
Speaker 1: and there was evidence in this study that the passing
Speaker 1: shadow led to a generalized internal state. The more times
Speaker 1: the shadow passed over, the more avoidance responses happened. So
Speaker 1: it looks like within the flies, it wasn't just stimulus response.
Speaker 1: The shadow passes, then you fly away. If you are
Speaker 1: repeatedly subjected to this stress inducing stimulus, the flies appear
Speaker 1: to enter a state where they're just They're just in
Speaker 1: a semi permanent way agitated. They're flying around, they're they're
Speaker 1: leaving the food source. It looks like they have the
Speaker 1: internal state of being afraid, and the avoidance responses remained
Speaker 1: remained more elevated even after the stimulus stopped. The shadow
Speaker 1: would stop passing over, and for some time afterward, the
Speaker 1: flies acted more agitated, more likely to fly away from
Speaker 1: the food source than flies with less exposure to the shadow.
Speaker 1: And this makes it seem as if the avoidance reactions
Speaker 1: were not just the direct and get response to the shadow,
Speaker 1: but also influenced by this internal state within the flies
Speaker 1: nervous systems, which is similar to how fear works and
Speaker 1: humans and other vertebrates. Something jumps out and scares you,
Speaker 1: you have an immediate response maybe you shriek, maybe you
Speaker 1: pee a little, you know, maybe maybe you jump, But
Speaker 1: then you also remain in a state you're on edge
Speaker 1: for several minutes afterwards, showing these anxiety behaviors even when
Speaker 1: the scary thing is gone or no longer represents a threat. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: this is a lot of how we live our lives actually, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's something that kind of like startles you, gets you
Speaker 1: on edge, and maybe it's not even something that would
Speaker 1: be a physical threat. Maybe it's just a conceptual threat.
Speaker 1: You know, you get an email or a tweet or
Speaker 1: anything that kind of puts you on edge, and then
Speaker 1: you just stay that way for a good long while. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all day generally. Yeah, what happens when you reach for
Speaker 1: your phone first thing in the morning, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that that's an important thing. It calls to to
Speaker 1: attention the difference between fear and anxiety. Year of course,
Speaker 1: is a response to the perception of an immediate threat,
Speaker 1: a clear and present danger, and it results mostly in
Speaker 1: escape behaviors by animals. You're trying to, you know, defend
Speaker 1: yourself and get away, Whereas anxiety is related to fear
Speaker 1: but slightly different. Fear is a response to the clear
Speaker 1: and present danger. Anxiety is a response to ambiguous, imagined,
Speaker 1: or potential threats. When there's a threat that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: right in front of you, but you imagine it might
Speaker 1: be waiting nearby, it might be around the corner. It's
Speaker 1: kind of lurking in the the the information sphere around you,
Speaker 1: as opposed to being right there in front of you. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course, the bringing back to the human experience,
Speaker 1: we have no shortage of fear is just sort of
Speaker 1: rotating around us in the information sphere, and this state
Speaker 1: of anxiety actually brings us to the crowd ads. I know,
Speaker 1: we promised we'd we'd get there eventually. A k A crayfish,
Speaker 1: a k A. Mudbugs. Did you call girl calling him bugs? No,
Speaker 1: this is what I've just heard them called. Did you
Speaker 1: catch them in the creek? No? I know I was
Speaker 1: never around them growing up, but I have family that
Speaker 1: lives in southern Mississippi, and you know they're they're all
Speaker 1: about them, uh down there. In fact, I've been to
Speaker 1: and this will this will be like an image to
Speaker 1: come back to. As we discussed their possible emotional states,
Speaker 1: I went to a Marty Gropp parade not the main
Speaker 1: Marty graparade, but I like, you know, one leading up
Speaker 1: to it in southern Mississippi, and there were like games
Speaker 1: where live crawfish were were thrown by children, Like they
Speaker 1: would throw crawfish back and forth at each other and
Speaker 1: then occasionally fall onto the concrete and all and um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the time I thought it was weird and kind
Speaker 1: of barbaric. So maybe I'll feel even more so as
Speaker 1: we discussed their their their inter emotional states here, so
Speaker 1: it gets turned inward as well. Though. Do you ever
Speaker 1: play the game, I assume you didn't or see people
Speaker 1: play the game where you just let a crawdad pinch,
Speaker 1: you know, just like let it pinch your nose or
Speaker 1: your finger or something. No, did you do this crowing up? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: but I had friends who did. Where was this in Tennessee?
Speaker 1: They were crawl crawdads just in the creeks. I guess
Speaker 1: there were probably a different species, I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: than the one we're about to talk about, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some kind of crayfish shaped organism living in
Speaker 1: the creeks, freshwater creeks. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. My main
Speaker 1: experience with them is just occasionally eating them as an
Speaker 1: adult um. But that's about it. Never got to like
Speaker 1: play with them as a child. But for anyone out
Speaker 1: there who does doesn't it still doesn't know what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. It's essentially a small crustacean like a fresh
Speaker 1: a small fresh water generally lobster, right, tiny lobster. The
Speaker 1: specific UH species that's going to come up in the
Speaker 1: in the research we're getting to is Procamboris clarkey. And yes,
Speaker 1: these are the crawl fish of the famed Louisiana crawfish boil.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if they were if they were
Speaker 1: boiled up with some zatarans and eating after the test.
Speaker 1: I should also add that sometimes you'll see crayfish in
Speaker 1: aquarium settings and it can be quite beautiful as well,
Speaker 1: So you know, I don't think human and humans humanities
Speaker 1: relationship with the crayfish is mostly uh, mostly something that
Speaker 1: revolves around eating them, but sometimes you'll see them as pets. Now,
Speaker 1: to come back to the idea of anxiety, we were
Speaker 1: talking about the difference between fear and anxiety. You know,
Speaker 1: we're saying fear often results in escape behaviors. Anxiety is
Speaker 1: often thought to result in conservative or defense behavior, for example,
Speaker 1: to limit openness and to limit exploratory behavior. Animals in
Speaker 1: an anxious state are more likely to seek out closed, familiar,
Speaker 1: and protected in environments, whereas animals in a non anxious
Speaker 1: state are more likely to explore unfamiliar and open environments.
Speaker 1: And one type of experiment that has been used to
Speaker 1: study anxiety and animals like rats and mice and now
Speaker 1: in crayfish, is the elevated plus maze. So, Robert, had
Speaker 1: you ever seen one of these before? I don't think
Speaker 1: I'd encountered one of these before, and I don't remember
Speaker 1: encountering one in a study. I've certainly never been in one. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: you imagine a simple platform in the shape of a
Speaker 1: plus sign. You've got two arms of the plus sign
Speaker 1: that are enclosed by walls, and then the other two
Speaker 1: arms are open. They're just straight platforms without walls. And
Speaker 1: this shows up in all kinds of studies. How an
Speaker 1: animal moves within an elevated plus maze or EPM can
Speaker 1: be manipulated by lots of variables that are thought to
Speaker 1: control anxiety. The more time the animal spins in the
Speaker 1: closed section enclosed by the walls, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: protected and hidden, usually the more anxious it is thought
Speaker 1: to be, and many animals, maybe most small animals, tend
Speaker 1: to prefer dark, enclosed places. These are the types of
Speaker 1: places that they are more likely to be protected from
Speaker 1: predators in their natural environments. Like the rat in your house,
Speaker 1: it likes to hide inside the walls and behind the
Speaker 1: fridge and stuff. It doesn't like to hang out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the floor, right, like a wide open
Speaker 1: spaces that's where a hawk can swoop down and q
Speaker 1: out that sort of thing. Right, It will only venture
Speaker 1: out into the open spaces in order to explore and
Speaker 1: seek rewards. It might go out there if there's food
Speaker 1: in the middle of the floor, um, But if it
Speaker 1: sees something scary, what does it do? It runs to
Speaker 1: an enclosed space. The more an animal like a rat,
Speaker 1: has an induced state of anxiety due to an ambiguous
Speaker 1: or possible threat, the more it will tend to confine
Speaker 1: itself to dark, enclosed spaces. And conversely, the less anxiety
Speaker 1: it has, the more it will feel free to explore
Speaker 1: open spaces. Uh and the e p M is widely
Speaker 1: used in studying animal anxiety and in the testing of
Speaker 1: anti anxiety medications. Now Here's where the crowd ads come in.
Speaker 1: So the elevated plus mayze has been widely used in
Speaker 1: anxiety research like we're saying, and almost all these studies
Speaker 1: have been on vertebrates, but since there have been at
Speaker 1: least two studies using the plus mayze test on crayfish. Again,
Speaker 1: this is procam Borus Clarkey, and the updated design used
Speaker 1: an elevated plus mayze submerged in water with the enclosed
Speaker 1: arms shaded so that they were dark because in their
Speaker 1: protected environments, the crayfish like dark places. That's a natural
Speaker 1: defensive preference they have. So there were a couple of studies.
Speaker 1: One was Fawcett at All in fourteen and one was
Speaker 1: back quay casinave at All in seventeen, and they both
Speaker 1: found that if you subjected the crayfish to frightful stimuli
Speaker 1: ahead of time, they would spend more time in the shielded, dark,
Speaker 1: enclosed areas of the elevated plus may So the examples
Speaker 1: were mildly painful shocks and harassment by a larger crawfish.
Speaker 1: So like if you take a smaller crayfish and then
Speaker 1: subject it to a bigger one doing dominance displays the
Speaker 1: one the little one, the one that is being harassed
Speaker 1: will tend to spend more time in the enclosed area
Speaker 1: and less time exploring the open platforms and the author's
Speaker 1: right quote. These behavioral results fulfill criteria normally designated for
Speaker 1: anxiety and mammals, including being innate, being unconditioned, occurring in
Speaker 1: the absence of a stressor, and expressed in a novel context. Alright,
Speaker 1: so in this experiment we see the evidence that a crayfish,
Speaker 1: something we don't think of as having emotional states, really
Speaker 1: ultimately has something very similar to the the fear that
Speaker 1: is experienced by a mouse or a rat, and therefore
Speaker 1: very similar to what we experience. Right, So it's not
Speaker 1: just stimulus response. I mean you could you might imagine
Speaker 1: that an animal without emotional states could say, retreat in
Speaker 1: the immediate term from something that's threatening it by going
Speaker 1: into an enclosed space, but even afterwards it seems to
Speaker 1: remain in this internal state where it prefers to stay
Speaker 1: in the close, protected spaces and does less exploring than
Speaker 1: a control crayfish if it has at some recent time
Speaker 1: been threatened or harassed. It sounds like a familiar story. Yeah, yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: like I say, if we take away sort of the
Speaker 1: the holy human qualities of fear. Uh, and look at
Speaker 1: it objectively, like that's what we're looking at here, we're
Speaker 1: looking at the fear of the crawfish. Well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a quick break and then when we come
Speaker 1: back we can discuss the joy of the fire ant.
Speaker 1: Thank thank alright, we're back. So the authors of this
Speaker 1: study we've been looking at point out one shortcoming of
Speaker 1: the existing body of research on animal emotions, and it's
Speaker 1: that it is, as on the whole, overly focused on
Speaker 1: negative emotions. Quote. It is argued that the reasons that
Speaker 1: positive emotions have been neglected in research are because they
Speaker 1: are few in number, reflected even in the imbalance of
Speaker 1: English language words for negative over positive emotions, and are
Speaker 1: harder to differentiate. The asymmetry might also stem from our
Speaker 1: understanding that natural selection has shaped emotions more for survival
Speaker 1: than for prosperity. There are many more threats than treats
Speaker 1: in our environment. Also, they point out that we're looking
Speaker 1: for tests mirroring work done on humans. Most psychological and
Speaker 1: clinical work in the history of science has been focused
Speaker 1: on solving problems rather than on studying ways in which
Speaker 1: people are doing fine all of which I think is
Speaker 1: probably true. I mean, I think all of those reasons
Speaker 1: are valid. But despite these limitations, it would be great
Speaker 1: to have more research attempting to understand positive emotions or
Speaker 1: the state's analogous to positive emotions in non human animals
Speaker 1: and invertebrates like it. It's just kind of a bummer
Speaker 1: and kind of limiting when it's overwhelmingly research on fear
Speaker 1: and aversion. Yeah, that that's an interesting point about like
Speaker 1: even the the the English language bias for negativity as
Speaker 1: opposed to positivity. Uh, it makes me think of going
Speaker 1: to our our neighborhood reality the only video rental store
Speaker 1: in the city or state video Drome. Video Drome has
Speaker 1: a sizeable horror selection, and I love to lose myself
Speaker 1: in it. But what is the opposite of the horror section?
Speaker 1: There's not really one, I guess what the maybe the
Speaker 1: comedies but Robert Altman section though maybe that. I mean,
Speaker 1: even you know, any comedy, any drum, anything that's not
Speaker 1: like straight up like little Kids cinema, I mean, to
Speaker 1: whatever extent that exists, Like anything that's not just teletopies
Speaker 1: is going to have risk and danger, and these negative
Speaker 1: emotions that are there to at least propel the corresponding
Speaker 1: positive ones. Yeah, I think you're exactly right, And I
Speaker 1: think the point they're making is a good one. That
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that there's more you know, uh, negative
Speaker 1: emotion than positive emotion and human life, but that for
Speaker 1: some reason we're more we're happier to let positive emotions
Speaker 1: all kind of blend together and be the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're all just you know, there are million different forms
Speaker 1: of happiness and joy, but we don't have as many
Speaker 1: differentiated words for those states, you know, whereas you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're very into getting down in the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: of different types of ways to feel bad. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess one of the it kind of comes back a
Speaker 1: little bit, probably to some we've discussed before, the idea
Speaker 1: that when you're happy, if you contemplate about your happiness,
Speaker 1: if you stop to consider your happiness, then it goes away.
Speaker 1: But if you don't need to think about it too much,
Speaker 1: you don't really have enough time to get to nuanced
Speaker 1: in the language, whereas a negative, a good negative emotion
Speaker 1: will just really sit there and you can get to
Speaker 1: know it. You can you can really uh, you know,
Speaker 1: formalize your relationship with it. Yeah. Now. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: there have been a few studies that have gone against
Speaker 1: this trend of focusing overwhelmingly on negative emotions in these
Speaker 1: animal studies. For example, in the last episode, we talked
Speaker 1: about the one cognitive tests, the judgment bias test, that
Speaker 1: at least appeared to show the cognitive effects of something
Speaker 1: like pleasure or happiness in the bumblebee. You remember, it
Speaker 1: was like, if you give the bumble bee a free treat,
Speaker 1: give it some free sugar, it will tend after that
Speaker 1: to at least appear to have an optimistic bias to
Speaker 1: interpret ambiguous information as as being something good or approachable.
Speaker 1: The next line of research involves the behavior and ants
Speaker 1: that some researchers think may be associated with an internal
Speaker 1: state analogous to happiness or joy. Uh So, what might
Speaker 1: the dreaded fire ant have in common with your favorite
Speaker 1: cute puppy wagging? Butt wagging? Do tell? Do tell? Alright? So,
Speaker 1: the red imported fire ant or Solenopsis invicta has displayed
Speaker 1: a very interesting behavior observed by a number of researchers.
Speaker 1: Reported in a study in Steen by Debbie Castle, christophord Liu, hun,
Speaker 1: Daniel Schiffmann, and S. Bradley Vinson called a study on
Speaker 1: abdominal wagging in the fire ant Solenopsis invicta with speculation
Speaker 1: on its meaning in the Journal of Bioeconomics. So, the
Speaker 1: researchers were just watching lots of hours of video taken
Speaker 1: from inside a fire ant nest, and from these observations
Speaker 1: they started to notice a pattern of behavior where the
Speaker 1: ants inside the nest would basically stick their butt up
Speaker 1: in the air and wave it around. Quote they position
Speaker 1: and move their abdomen up and down at forty five degrees,
Speaker 1: and they called this behavior wagging. Now, raising and wiggling
Speaker 1: the abdomen has uses in other contexts for fire ants.
Speaker 1: You may have seen fire ants doing this defensively. The
Speaker 1: abdomen or back segment of the body is also known
Speaker 1: as a gaster which is great like Charles Dickens name,
Speaker 1: you know, like like William Gaster uh. And outside the
Speaker 1: nest the behavior is known as gaster flagging. The flagging
Speaker 1: usually involves raising the abdomen up higher something more like
Speaker 1: nine d degrees. Flagging is apparently used during foraging to
Speaker 1: disperse venom into the air, and it's believed to deter
Speaker 1: other insects like competitor ants from the foraging area. So
Speaker 1: you're out trying to gather food for the colony, and
Speaker 1: then some other ants come in. You will stick your
Speaker 1: butt up in the air and spit some venom out
Speaker 1: into the air to try to drive the other ants off.
Speaker 1: There's also some evidence that some abdominal wagging or gaster
Speaker 1: flagging emits a sound as the gaster joint rubs across itself,
Speaker 1: and this would be a tiny, high pitched squeak. We're
Speaker 1: not sure what role this sound plays, but it's possible
Speaker 1: that as a it has a role in communications, such
Speaker 1: as calling for help when an ant is trapped or
Speaker 1: when it's in trouble. However, Castle at All believe that
Speaker 1: in their observations the inside the nest, wagging behavior was
Speaker 1: not defensive in any way. Within the nest, they found
Speaker 1: that the wagging emitted neither sound nor venom, no squeaks,
Speaker 1: no toxins, and the stinger was never extended during this period.
Speaker 1: So if they're just wagging around and it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the other types of wagging that these
Speaker 1: ants normally do, what's going on. Furthermore, they found that
Speaker 1: the inside nest, wagging happened primarily when the ants were
Speaker 1: engaged in two activities, eating sugar or tending to the brood,
Speaker 1: in other words, taking care of the young. Well, those
Speaker 1: are two pleasurable experiences just for humans, sure, And they
Speaker 1: did not find any evidence of nestmates reacting to the wagging,
Speaker 1: so they couldn't detect any role for communication in the wagging.
Speaker 1: So what's it for. Well, the author's hypothesized that quote
Speaker 1: this in nest behavior might be analogous to facial expressions
Speaker 1: and bodily postures of hedonic pleasure in humans and other
Speaker 1: mammals during pleasurable events. So that's a very interesting idea.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a fire aunt smiles by wagging its gaster in
Speaker 1: the air. Now we should definitely acknowledge, and the researchers
Speaker 1: do acknowledge that this is far from proven. That there
Speaker 1: are a few other possibilities to Maybe the wagging is
Speaker 1: some kind of mechanical reaction in the body to certain
Speaker 1: uses of the mouth parts. Soon the mouth parts would
Speaker 1: be engaged during eating or during tending to the brood.
Speaker 1: Maybe something's happening that just happens to make their butt
Speaker 1: wiggle in the air at the same time. So it
Speaker 1: would help if this could be paired with other types
Speaker 1: of tests. For example, would consuming sugar water or tending
Speaker 1: to the brood also caused the fire ants to have
Speaker 1: an optimistic bias in judgment bias tests. That would probably
Speaker 1: strengthen the case for this wagging as a bodily expression
Speaker 1: of something like pleasure or happiness. But I love the possibility.
Speaker 1: Maybe the ant smiles with its But but again, this
Speaker 1: would this would come down to as some physical body
Speaker 1: language that is observable that would potentially demonstrate the emotional
Speaker 1: state of the creature, right, and it would be helpful
Speaker 1: if you could pair it with other things that were
Speaker 1: presumed to be associated with that same state. Now, another
Speaker 1: one about positive emotions comes back to bumble bees, which
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the last episode. Remember earlier there was
Speaker 1: this research seeming to indicate that giving a bumblebee some
Speaker 1: free sugar would result in an optimistic bias in these
Speaker 1: cognitive tests. Another test on bumblebees looked at the effects
Speaker 1: of sugar water on behavior after a stressful event. So
Speaker 1: in the yild, bumblebees are subject to ambushes by certain
Speaker 1: sit and wait predators, such as the crab spider, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen a crab spider in action. I'm not well.
Speaker 1: So they will tend to wait on a flower, uh,
Speaker 1: and they'll just kind of blend in there among the
Speaker 1: petals that they've got these wide legs, uh for a
Speaker 1: big hug. And then when the bee lands on the
Speaker 1: flower to try to get some nectar, the crab spider
Speaker 1: will grab it with its legs and try to bite
Speaker 1: down and kill it. And a lot of times in
Speaker 1: natural encounters, the bee is briefly captured by the spider
Speaker 1: but then manages to escape. So in a experiment, Perry
Speaker 1: at All created a simulation of a crab spider attack
Speaker 1: by putting together a mechanism that would ambush and trap
Speaker 1: a bumblebee for three seconds before releasing it unharmed. Now, obviously,
Speaker 1: after a stressful brush with death like this, the bee
Speaker 1: will take some time before it again begins to forage
Speaker 1: and start landing on flowers and stuff. And what Perry
Speaker 1: had All found was that a treat of sugar water
Speaker 1: given before the attack would shorten the duration of this
Speaker 1: cool down period after the spider attack. So if a
Speaker 1: bee gets a sweet treat before a simulated spider attack,
Speaker 1: it takes the be less time to reinitiate landing on
Speaker 1: flowers and feeding after this stressful event. Now, again, there
Speaker 1: could be other interpretations of what's happening here. Maybe somehow
Speaker 1: the nutrition and the sugar makes the bee physically stronger
Speaker 1: and less vulnerable, etcetera, And maybe something like that. But
Speaker 1: one possibility is that the pleasurable stimuli of the sugar
Speaker 1: water puts the bee in something analogous to a better
Speaker 1: mood or emotional state, making it more resilient to stressful setbacks,
Speaker 1: which I think is something that we're probably all familiar
Speaker 1: with ourselves. Right. You know that your emotional state is
Speaker 1: uh dictate strongly how you will react to negative incoming events.
Speaker 1: The same thing that floors you one day, I'll just
Speaker 1: kind of bounce off you another right right, Or if
Speaker 1: you've had a particularly bad day, then bad news is
Speaker 1: going to you know, have a more negative effect on
Speaker 1: your well being right now. The authors identify vocalizations and
Speaker 1: sound as a possibly very fruitful behavioral avenue for future
Speaker 1: research and invertebrate emotions, noting that Charles Starwin himself speculated
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy two that quote insects might potentially communicate
Speaker 1: emotions such as anger, terror, jealousy, and love through their stridulation,
Speaker 1: you know, the great rubbing together sounds that insects make.
Speaker 1: So what does a jealous cricket sound like. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but it's easy to imagine all the various anthropomorphic interpretations.
Speaker 1: So regarding our our, our ideal cartoon cricket, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Do you even remember how in the original Pinocchio, Pinocchio
Speaker 1: kills the cricket with a hammer? What? Yeah, the cartoon
Speaker 1: or no story? Not? No, no, not in the movie.
Speaker 1: The movie changed it and made it nicer in the
Speaker 1: original story, Jimmy Cricket, Yeah, oh man, I don't remember
Speaker 1: if he's named Jiminy Cricket. I think he's just a
Speaker 1: magic cricket and Pinocchio kills him with a hammer. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that Pinocchio is in one of his bad phases. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think I like Pinocchio. I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot. I don't have a strong affinity for
Speaker 1: the Disney version either. The only thing that I have
Speaker 1: a strong affinity for is Jimmy crickets role in the
Speaker 1: Mickey Christmas Carol, in which he plays what the ghost
Speaker 1: of Christmas past I believe. I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've ever seen that. Oh, you should see. It's
Speaker 1: like thirty minutes long, and it's it's a pretty good
Speaker 1: streamlined adaptation of a Christmas Carol. Oh, I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: better than the other thirty minute version of a Christmas
Speaker 1: Carol I've seen, which is called the Christmas Carol and
Speaker 1: it's narrated by Vincent Price. It's very bad. Oh man, Well,
Speaker 1: later this year, when Christmas rolls around again, I think
Speaker 1: we should do an episode on a Christmas Carol. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of discuss there. Okay, well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a break and then when we come
Speaker 1: back we can talk about physiological tests. Alright, we're back,
Speaker 1: So are entering the final phase here. We're going to
Speaker 1: be discussing physiological tests for emotion. Right, So we've talked
Speaker 1: about cognitive tests, We've talked about behavioral tests. Physiological tests
Speaker 1: for emotion. Uh. In people, they look for correlates between
Speaker 1: reported emotional states and automatic responses in the body. So,
Speaker 1: for example, somebody jumps out at you with a werewolf mask,
Speaker 1: You're not just gonna jump back. It's not just gonna
Speaker 1: maybe give you a pessimistic bias, But you will also
Speaker 1: have increased heart rate, release of stress hormones like norap
Speaker 1: and effer and cortisol, dilation of the pupils in the eye.
Speaker 1: You might be a bit, you know, a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this is because it's not just
Speaker 1: that you saw a werewolf. It's that your body is
Speaker 1: preparing you to fight a werewolf or run from a werewolf. Right,
Speaker 1: the fight or flight response kicks in and and it
Speaker 1: entails this cascade of automatic reactions in the body, things
Speaker 1: that you don't control behaviorally. They just happen without your
Speaker 1: say so. And these physiological responses can usually be measured
Speaker 1: objectively pretty easily, which is very handy. How our physiological
Speaker 1: responses alone can be they can be hard to use
Speaker 1: to identify individual emotions. For example, if you're measuring a
Speaker 1: heart rate, heart rate might increase in response to anxiety
Speaker 1: or to joy. The fact that the heart speeds up
Speaker 1: it's beating tells you there's some kind of arousal, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily tell you which. One person's heart could
Speaker 1: just be full of song. Right. So, sometimes if you
Speaker 1: look at enough different physiological responses at the same time
Speaker 1: and compare them. You can start to zero in on
Speaker 1: specific emotions, but not always UH. And just like it's
Speaker 1: hard to translate research on human facial expressions to invertebrates,
Speaker 1: it's also hard to do so with human physiological responses
Speaker 1: to emotions. UH. The authors write, quote, most of these
Speaker 1: types of measurements are quite difficult to apply to invertebrates
Speaker 1: given their often miniature size and hard carapasts, and in
Speaker 1: the case of insects, an open circulatory system where heart
Speaker 1: rate is not increased. But there has been some interesting research. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: they cited a bunch of it just to pick out
Speaker 1: a couple of examples. Kita at All In two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven did research on fear conditioning, this time in pond snails,
Speaker 1: very expressive species. UH. They conditioned the pond snails with
Speaker 1: an association between sugar water, which normally you give some
Speaker 1: give some sugar water to them and they will start
Speaker 1: feeding behaviors. But they negatively conditioned this with potassium chloride
Speaker 1: associations and potassium chloride causes withdrawal of the body into
Speaker 1: the shell. UH. Not only did fear conditioning work, the
Speaker 1: snails began to react to the sugar by withdrawing, but
Speaker 1: physiological monitoring also found that conditioned exposure to the sugar
Speaker 1: caused the heart to skip a beat quote, suggesting physiological
Speaker 1: responses similar to fear in mammals. So you train them
Speaker 1: to associate potassium chloride, this noxious chemical, with the sugar,
Speaker 1: then later you just present them with sugar. Not only
Speaker 1: do they not go for the sugar, it makes their
Speaker 1: hearts skip up eat though I do think it's interesting
Speaker 1: to note potassium chloride is literally a heart stopping poison.
Speaker 1: It's been used to cause cardiac arrest and lethal injections.
Speaker 1: Of course, there was no potassium chloride in the sugar
Speaker 1: once it was conditioned, but maybe that's just a coincidence.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that been presented with the with
Speaker 1: the sugar, then after being exposed to the potassium chloride,
Speaker 1: there is this this moment of physiological fear in response. Right,
Speaker 1: the body reacts in a way similar to mammals reacting
Speaker 1: to the werewolf mask, but this time it's just sugar
Speaker 1: that the snail has come with training to associate with
Speaker 1: a bad chemical. So it seems that the majority of
Speaker 1: research on physiological correlates of invertebrate emotions has to do
Speaker 1: with the presence of what are called biogenic amines, which
Speaker 1: are thought to play a major, if not comprehensive role
Speaker 1: in the creation and control of emotions in the human brain,
Speaker 1: especially the hormones and neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, and nora adrenaline.
Speaker 1: Now as important as these three substances clearly are in
Speaker 1: our emotional lives, unfortunately it is not as simple as
Speaker 1: saying one is a happiness drug in the body and
Speaker 1: one is a fear drug, etcetera. They play complex interacting
Speaker 1: roles in everything from attention and arousal to reward, motivation,
Speaker 1: and sleep, and the manipulation of emotions is generally not
Speaker 1: as simple as just saying like, well, you need more
Speaker 1: of one of these things, but manipulating the presence of
Speaker 1: one or more of these neurotransmitters can have some measurable
Speaker 1: effects on emotions. For example, invertebrate nervous systems also appear
Speaker 1: to make use of these biogenic amines or analogs to them.
Speaker 1: For example, in bees, the hormone octopomy and appears to
Speaker 1: play a role similar to that of nora adrenaline and humans,
Speaker 1: and so they cite one possible example of these physiological parallels.
Speaker 1: Quote Bates and and colleagues in two thousand eleven assessed
Speaker 1: how systemic biogenic amine levels changed in response to a
Speaker 1: presumed negative emotional event hemal lymph. And remember that's like
Speaker 1: insect blood. Hama lymph was collected from honey bees after
Speaker 1: simulating a predator attack shaking bees on a vortex for
Speaker 1: sixty seconds. And this is like the thing we talked
Speaker 1: about in the last episode, where you'd shake the colony
Speaker 1: to simulate an attacked by a honey badger. Picking up
Speaker 1: with the quote. Analysis of the hemolymph using high performance
Speaker 1: liquid chromatography or HPLC showed that systemic levels of the
Speaker 1: biogenic amines dopamine, octopamine, chemical chemically similar to noor, adrenaline,
Speaker 1: and serotonin all decreased in response to bees being shaken vigorously.
Speaker 1: In humans, it seems that depletion of biogenic amine serotonin, noor, adrenaline,
Speaker 1: and dopamine is responsible for features of depression in the
Speaker 1: monoamine hypothesis of depression, and also in fourteen, Faucet and
Speaker 1: colleagues reportedly used chemical manipulation of serotonin levels to alter
Speaker 1: anxiety associated behaviors of crayfish, like in the plus maze scenario.
Speaker 1: One last one period, all In found that manipulation of
Speaker 1: dopamine levels seemed to affect the apparent positive emotional state
Speaker 1: of bumble bees. Remember the sugar causing the bumble bees
Speaker 1: to have an optimistic bias. Well, here quote the optimistic
Speaker 1: behavior scene and the judgment bias test in response to
Speaker 1: pretest sugar reward was abolished when the bees were topically
Speaker 1: treated with the dopamine receptor antagonist flu finazine. And apparently
Speaker 1: the same treatment eliminated the positive effect of pretest sugar
Speaker 1: during the simulated attack by a crab spider. So if
Speaker 1: you do something to this insect's dopamine levels by by
Speaker 1: putting in this disruptor of dopamine, you somehow seemed to
Speaker 1: interfere with the bees ability to have an optimistic bias
Speaker 1: in response to getting some sugar. Interesting. So, basically, the
Speaker 1: more we reveal about sort of the underlying chemistry of
Speaker 1: these emotional states, uh as that they are in humans
Speaker 1: and as they are in these various invertebrate species, it
Speaker 1: just reveals that, yeah, we have emotional states occurring in
Speaker 1: these organisms at least the physiological correlates of them. Right again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't begin to get into the subjective aspect of it,
Speaker 1: which you know made you know very I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a stretch at all to say that whatever a
Speaker 1: crawfish is experiencing is fear, is different than what a
Speaker 1: human is experienced in his fear. It can't it can't
Speaker 1: contemplate the fear at the same level that that a
Speaker 1: human can. But like the root of it, like the
Speaker 1: root chemical and physical, physiological, um manifestation of that emotion
Speaker 1: is essentially the same. Right. And I think now we've
Speaker 1: seen maybe not conclusive, but pretty good evidence in three
Speaker 1: different branches, not just the physiological which we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, but earlier the cognitive and in the behavioral spheres.
Speaker 1: And I think we should emphasize again you know what
Speaker 1: you're getting at. None of these tests are perfect. Even
Speaker 1: if all the results are robust, replicable, they hold up
Speaker 1: over time, they still don't necessarily tell us anything about
Speaker 1: what it's like to be a bumblebee or a crayfish.
Speaker 1: I think there's always going to be that gap that
Speaker 1: we are perhaps jumping with the rocket boots of anthropomorphic projection.
Speaker 1: But for now, experiments like these are the best evidence
Speaker 1: we have to try to figure out what kinds of emotions,
Speaker 1: if any, are present in insects, crustaceans, gastropods, and all
Speaker 1: manner of creatures without a spine, And those things we
Speaker 1: learned could be very helpful in helping us understand how
Speaker 1: emotions in mammals, including humans, developed over evolutionary time, because there,
Speaker 1: you know, we we look at modern invertebrates and see
Speaker 1: nervous systems. You know that their brain structure is very
Speaker 1: similar to what we think our ancestors may have had
Speaker 1: at certain times in history. We can learn what the
Speaker 1: chemical mechanisms of emotional motivation states are, how they came
Speaker 1: to be. Humans ain't crawd ads, but crawd ads can
Speaker 1: still teach us a lot. I think now at this
Speaker 1: point that one question a lot of people they have is, okay,
Speaker 1: what sorts of animals don't have emotions? Then? Like, is
Speaker 1: there is there any level that we can say, all right,
Speaker 1: here's the cut off point? Um? You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting question to consider. Um. And I was poking
Speaker 1: around and basically one thing I have to realize is
Speaker 1: that is, like we said earlier the quest for invertebrate
Speaker 1: emotions is is not as expansive as as other areas
Speaker 1: of emotional research, certainly in higher organisms. So there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of data we don't have. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know when you get down to like single
Speaker 1: cell organisms, I don't see. I didn't didn't find any
Speaker 1: papers arguing for emotional states there, no, uh and even
Speaker 1: in the weirdly like we think octopuses are more complex, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of intelligence than these other than
Speaker 1: like insects and crayfish are. But I wasn't really finding
Speaker 1: much in the way of studying emotions and octopuses. It
Speaker 1: was mostly in these simpler organisms. So yeah, there's clearly
Speaker 1: still lots of ground to cover. Uh. Now, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the I don't think anybody's
Speaker 1: actually arguing that, say, a slime mold has emotions either.
Speaker 1: But we have discussed in the show how a slime mold, uh,
Speaker 1: an organism without like a central nervous system is still
Speaker 1: able to learn, it's still engaging in things that are
Speaker 1: are are like problem solving. So you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: like that adds uh some complexity to this question. But
Speaker 1: then another thing that came to mind. Uh, plants the
Speaker 1: topic itself. I think we'll have to wait wait for
Speaker 1: another episode. But plants can essentially here, see, smell, and
Speaker 1: respond to stimuli, and they are, according to a University
Speaker 1: of Missouri in Columbia plant science professor Jack C. Schultz,
Speaker 1: essentially quote just very slow animals. Um which uh, which
Speaker 1: is it is? It is hilarious, But at the same
Speaker 1: time it you know, you you you look at say
Speaker 1: time time lapse footage of save vines in action and
Speaker 1: and flowers and uh and so forth. There just the
Speaker 1: movements of of of plants in general. And this does
Speaker 1: have that seem to have a ring of truth to
Speaker 1: it that this is this is an organism that is
Speaker 1: not as still as we uh as we may think.
Speaker 1: We touched the this briefly, and though the recent Tolkien episodes,
Speaker 1: you know, the the idea of the end, the moving tree,
Speaker 1: the tree that thinks and reasons um, may not be
Speaker 1: as far fetched as as some of us think. But
Speaker 1: as for emotions and plants, uh, there's actually some fascinating
Speaker 1: research there as well. But that is another story and
Speaker 1: shall be told another time. So hopefully we give everybody
Speaker 1: some food for thought here about our own emotional states,
Speaker 1: what the human emotional state is and what it isn't
Speaker 1: and then to what degree we can perceive and attribute
Speaker 1: emotional states to other organisms, even though you know the
Speaker 1: lowly crawfish. I mean, I wonder if understanding the way
Speaker 1: that that anxiety might affect be ease or crawfish or
Speaker 1: something like that, could in wait, help give you a
Speaker 1: foothold in controlling your own emotions. I mean again, this
Speaker 1: is something we we sort of began the last episode
Speaker 1: talking about how the emotions are from our brains. They
Speaker 1: are within us, but often it can feel as if
Speaker 1: we are in them. You know, there is see on
Speaker 1: which we're afloat and we have no power over them, right,
Speaker 1: or their external forces like something from out of Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: or you know, some sort of a you know, a
Speaker 1: fundamentalist um you know, Christian worldview, Angel on one shoulder,
Speaker 1: devil on the other, affecting our mental states. But no,
Speaker 1: it's it's all within and it is and it is
Speaker 1: you know, a part of the same navigation, a reality
Speaker 1: that is taking place in all these other organisms as well.
Speaker 1: And yeah, therefore, if we demystify it a bit, if
Speaker 1: we sort of take a step back from it and
Speaker 1: in fact increase awareness of what it is. Then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that gives us, I think, a tremendous strength. You know,
Speaker 1: it keeps basically keeping uh, keeping our our irksome brains
Speaker 1: from the evening ourselves about what we are. You are
Speaker 1: that churning ocean, Yes, which perhaps is some ambiguous information
Speaker 1: that you may either see in a negative or a
Speaker 1: positive light, depending on your predisposition. All right, so obviously
Speaker 1: you all have emotions, and you all have various interactions
Speaker 1: with animals, be at a dog, a cattle, horse, or
Speaker 1: a crayfish, or or or a b So we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there on the topic
Speaker 1: that we've discussed in these two episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind. Hey, even if you have some thoughts
Speaker 1: about plants, go ahead and go ahead and let us
Speaker 1: know about those. Uh. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: where can you find this show? Well, you can find
Speaker 1: this show anywhere you find podcasts wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: Just make sure you rate, review, and subscribe. Those are
Speaker 1: the acts that help us out huge things. As always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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