Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally aired March seventeen, and
Speaker 1: it's the second of our two part series about invertebrate emotions.
Speaker 1: So we hope you enjoy and maybe fall in love
Speaker 1: with the slug Welcome to s About to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two of
Speaker 1: our exploration of invertebrate emotions. In the last episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about the paper Nautilus or the argonaut. We read
Speaker 1: that great Marion more poem. We talked about what emotions
Speaker 1: are the difficulties and studying them, and we talked about
Speaker 1: anecdotes about people really seeing personnel, pity, character, and emotion
Speaker 1: in octopuses, but then also scientific studies looking for certain
Speaker 1: types of measurable cognitive effects of emotions or emotion like
Speaker 1: states in invertebrates like bees. We talked about the judgment
Speaker 1: bias test and how bees might have biases that come
Speaker 1: about in optimistic or pessimistic ways based on how they're
Speaker 1: quote feeling. Yeah, A big part of the conversation last
Speaker 1: episode was I think, ultimately about stripping down emotion to
Speaker 1: something that doesn't depend upon the subjective human experience, and
Speaker 1: in doing so something that I don't want to make
Speaker 1: it sound like we're, oh, we're just we're cutting out
Speaker 1: all the important stuff. I think a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're cutting out is the poetic stuff, the the the
Speaker 1: the extra like self contemplation stuff, and getting down to
Speaker 1: the root of what is an emotional state, how does
Speaker 1: it affect um our behavior and our expectations, and then
Speaker 1: you know, how do we see that echoed in other organisms? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: we're cutting out yeah this by cutting out the subjective element,
Speaker 1: We're cutting out the part that would be impossible to
Speaker 1: study in other animals and just trying to say what
Speaker 1: our emotional states as manifested externally. Yeah, But of course
Speaker 1: the difficulty, as we discussed, is by taking out the
Speaker 1: subjective aspect of it, we're taking out the part that
Speaker 1: is closest to us and the thing that you instantly
Speaker 1: think about when we even say the word emotion of course,
Speaker 1: sweet emotion. Oh no, that song fills me with bad emotion,
Speaker 1: did you. Oh, I don't know if I ever gotten
Speaker 1: to do this rant before. Y'all know I hate Aerosmith.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I don't know. Well, I think you may
Speaker 1: have mentioned it once in passing. Yeah, even even the
Speaker 1: early stuff. I don't know. I mean, I can be
Speaker 1: that classic rock radio uncle, like you know when led
Speaker 1: Zeppelin comes on, I'm like, yeah, I feel it, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that something about Aerosmith just turns my
Speaker 1: head three sixty degrees. Well, I have to admitted really
Speaker 1: like a dream on. That's that's if I hear that
Speaker 1: one on classic rock radio, I'll tune in and listen. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you like it. Hey, folks, this is Joe
Speaker 1: from the Few. You're swooping in to alter the past.
Speaker 1: Sorry about the audio, but I realized on listening back
Speaker 1: to this episode that in our excitement about the topic,
Speaker 1: we forgot to reintroduce the paper that we were talking
Speaker 1: about in the first episode, and then we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about throughout this one as well. So that paper
Speaker 1: was by Clint J. Perry and Luigi Bachi at Donna
Speaker 1: and it's called studying emotion and invertebrates. What has been done,
Speaker 1: what can be measured, and what they can provide. It
Speaker 1: was published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in Okay,
Speaker 1: now back to our original conversation. Okay, But so the
Speaker 1: last time we talked about one of the main three
Speaker 1: branches of external ways of studying emotions and animals. We
Speaker 1: talked about you know that they're they're perhaps cognitive effects
Speaker 1: of emotions, that emotions affect how you perceive the world
Speaker 1: and how you think. That there are behavioral tests of emotions,
Speaker 1: that emotions affect how you act, and that there are
Speaker 1: physiological tests of emotions that emotions affect involuntary physical reaction
Speaker 1: in the body. And we last time we looked at cognition.
Speaker 1: This time we're gonna look at the other two. So
Speaker 1: the first would be behavioral tests behavioral signs of emotional states.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think we should
Speaker 1: first acknowledge is that I'd say, this is the primary
Speaker 1: way that we sense emotions in other people. What do
Speaker 1: people usually do with their bodies, especially their faces, when
Speaker 1: they're feeling various emotions. But as the authors point out
Speaker 1: quite helpfully, they say, quote invertebrates lack the facial musculature
Speaker 1: for any real type of comparisons to be made in
Speaker 1: this regard, so I think that the jury is in.
Speaker 1: You can't tell if a hornet is smiling. You can't
Speaker 1: tell if 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 no, Actually, you're right.
Speaker 1: I think i'd agree 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 communication. We will get
Speaker 1: into that a little bit in the last episode with
Speaker 1: the bees. So their communication since realm is not really
Speaker 1: our own. Um, they exist in a in a different
Speaker 1: realm in that regard, right, But the behavioral effects of
Speaker 1: underlying emotional states are not limited to facial expressions alone,
Speaker 1: just because that's maybe the main way we see emotions
Speaker 1: in other people. Uh, the author's right quote. A substantial
Speaker 1: amount of work in mammals has utilized other bodily expressions
Speaker 1: and motor behavior in response to stimuli to assess both
Speaker 1: valence meaning the pleasantness, and intensity meaning the level of
Speaker 1: arousal of emotions. And I really think the horse is
Speaker 1: a great example of this for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: First of all, the horse is an animal that is,
Speaker 1: that lives in close proximity to humans, that is adored
Speaker 1: by humans. That is, that is often you know, championed
Speaker 1: as being this next to the dog and you know
Speaker 1: the cat, I guess it is. It is a friend
Speaker 1: of humanity. And uh. And my wife being super into
Speaker 1: horses and pretty knowledgeable about them, she's just told me
Speaker 1: about some of this before, but I was I also
Speaker 1: looked up a source on this for this episode How
Speaker 1: to Read Your Horses Body Language by Jennifer Williams, PhD
Speaker 1: for ACQUSS Magazine, and Williams points out that if a
Speaker 1: novice were 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 Cormac 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 mean,
Speaker 1: I 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,
Speaker 1: motivations and and quote emotional states or you know, there's
Speaker 1: something that is analogous to these emotional states. Uh that
Speaker 1: if somebody who had never met a dog before or
Speaker 1: hadn't spent much time around dogs saw you interacting with
Speaker 1: your dog, they might well think the same thing. You
Speaker 1: must be psychic. Yeah, but no, A lot of it
Speaker 1: is about picking up on all of this language, or
Speaker 1: indeed just knowing what to look for. So in the
Speaker 1: case of the horse, for instance, Um, your position is
Speaker 1: very important. Is one of the apparently the first things
Speaker 1: you tend to learn about about understanding a horse's emotional state,
Speaker 1: so that the ears may face forward, meaning they're interested.
Speaker 1: They may be pinned back, meaning they're angry and they're
Speaker 1: prone to bite or act you know, aggressively slash defensively. Uh.
Speaker 1: They 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, it'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 gets 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 really
Speaker 1: take all of that and read into the emotional state
Speaker 1: of the horse. But if you just look at you know,
Speaker 1: what you might be tempted to call the face of
Speaker 1: the horse, you're not necessarily going to pick up on
Speaker 1: on all those cues you have. And I think part
Speaker 1: of this two gets we have to think about the
Speaker 1: 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 we do fixate on it to
Speaker 1: a 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, the idea of
Speaker 1: a face. Yes, so what would be some of these
Speaker 1: external behaviors that we could measure in invertebrates. One of
Speaker 1: the most obvious behavioral signs of underlying emotional states and
Speaker 1: animals is retreat behaviors. So but you know, like in
Speaker 1: fear or anxiety, animals will retreat, retracting or covering vulnerable
Speaker 1: body parts, adopting defensive posture, and running away. These are
Speaker 1: some of the clearest ones to look for in all
Speaker 1: of animal behavior. And so the first example cited by
Speaker 1: the authors here looks at exactly that. And it's actually
Speaker 1: a study we've already mentioned on this show before. It
Speaker 1: came up in our episodes titled Devour of Memories. Remember
Speaker 1: that about about the plenaria and the and the research
Speaker 1: about whether you could gain somebody's memories by eating their body.
Speaker 1: Uh So in this episode that we mentioned to study
Speaker 1: about a type of large sea slug called the California
Speaker 1: sea hair or Aplasia californica. Uh And in that other
Speaker 1: episode study came up because it demonstrated associate of learning
Speaker 1: and classical conditioning in an invertebrate sea slug. So you
Speaker 1: offer a sea hair some delicious shrimp extract. But in
Speaker 1: the test group, well, the sea hair is munching on
Speaker 1: the shrimp extract, it gets an electric shock to the
Speaker 1: head that this painful stimulus results in not a frown,
Speaker 1: of course, but measurable behaviors in the slug. It withdraws
Speaker 1: its head, it withdraws its siphon, It inks, and it
Speaker 1: moves away from the shrimp at extract. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: if you train it on these associations. When simply when
Speaker 1: the animals from the test group are simply presented with
Speaker 1: shrimp extract, they will pull back the siphon and move away.
Speaker 1: By the way, see hair and the electric shrimp extract
Speaker 1: would be a great name for a band. Just put
Speaker 1: that out there. I think that was a Bob Weir
Speaker 1: side project. Wasn't ok um. But whether or not, it
Speaker 1: makes sense to use the same word we use for
Speaker 1: emotions and other mammals. Quote the observed behavioral responses to
Speaker 1: conditions stimuli resemble the actions of conditioned fear in mammals. Subjectively,
Speaker 1: it might not make sense to talk about fear in
Speaker 1: a sea slug. We don't know, but it certainly behaviorally
Speaker 1: looks like fear. It looks like the same thing we
Speaker 1: recognize this fear in mammals or in other humans. Because
Speaker 1: of course, nothing about the shrimp extract itself causes pain.
Speaker 1: It couldn't be a simple stimulus response. It has to
Speaker 1: be this association with pain, the memory of you know,
Speaker 1: the fear caused by the memory. And a lot of
Speaker 1: invertebrate studies into emotions look for signs of fear because
Speaker 1: fear is easier to study. Presumable fear inducing stimuli are
Speaker 1: relatively easy to create, and behavioral responses are relatively easy
Speaker 1: to detect. There's another example that the author's site here,
Speaker 1: which is fear research into Drosophila also known commonly as
Speaker 1: fruit flies or as vinegar flies small fruit flies. UH.
Speaker 1: This is an extremely common organism for lab research. You'll
Speaker 1: find tons of studies UH modeling other things in complex
Speaker 1: organisms as they appear in Drosophila. So in twif Gibson
Speaker 1: at all studied fear and Drosophila caused by the stimulus
Speaker 1: of an overhead shadow, they used a rotating opaque paddle.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a ping pong paddle.
Speaker 1: I kind of hope it was. It was some kind
Speaker 1: of paddle that would be made to rotate in a
Speaker 1: circle in in in a steady progression, repeat passages over
Speaker 1: a container of these these flies that would be as say,
Speaker 1: eating a food source or something. And the authors found
Speaker 1: that multiple repetitive exposures to this overhead shadow caused the
Speaker 1: flies to fly around more, to hop more, to freeze more,
Speaker 1: and to fly away from a food source. And there
Speaker 1: was evidence in this study that the passing shadow led
Speaker 1: to a generalized internal state. The more times the shadow
Speaker 1: passed over, the more avoidance responses happened. So it looks
Speaker 1: like within the flies it wasn't just stimulus response. The
Speaker 1: shadow passes, then you fly away. If you are repeatedly
Speaker 1: subjected to this stress inducing stimulus, the flies appear to
Speaker 1: enter a state where they're just they're just in a
Speaker 1: semi permanent way agitated. They're flying around there there of
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 afterwards, 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 immediate 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 startle as you, gets
Speaker 1: you on edge, and maybe it's not even something that
Speaker 1: would 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. Fear, 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. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of lurking in the the the information sphere
Speaker 1: around you, as opposed to being right there in front
Speaker 1: of you. Uh. And and of course they bringing back
Speaker 1: to the human experience, we have no shortage of Fear
Speaker 1: is just sort of rotating around us in the information sphere.
Speaker 1: And this state of anxiety actually brings us to the crawdads.
Speaker 1: I know, we promised we'd we'd get there eventually, a
Speaker 1: k A crayfish a k A. Mudbugs. Did you grow
Speaker 1: up calling them mudbugs? No, this is what I've just
Speaker 1: heard them called. Did you catch them in the creek? No?
Speaker 1: I know I was never around them growing up, but
Speaker 1: I have family that lives in southern Mississippi, and you
Speaker 1: know they're they're all about them, uh down there. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've been to and then this will this will be
Speaker 1: like an image to come back to. As we discussed
Speaker 1: their possible emotional states. I went to a Marty Groppard,
Speaker 1: not the main Marty grap right, but I like, you know,
Speaker 1: one leading up to it in southern Mississippi, and there
Speaker 1: were like games where live crawfish were thrown by children,
Speaker 1: like they road crawfish back and forth at each other
Speaker 1: and then occasionally fall onto the concrete and all. And
Speaker 1: um yeah, at the time I thought it was weird
Speaker 1: and kind of barbaric. So man, maybe I'll feel even
Speaker 1: more so as we discussed their their their inter emotional
Speaker 1: states here, so it gets turned inward as well. Though.
Speaker 1: Do you ever play the game I assume you didn't
Speaker 1: or see people play the game where you just let
Speaker 1: a crawdad pinch, you know, just like let it pinch
Speaker 1: your nose or your finger or something. Did you do
Speaker 1: this growing up? Uh? No, but I had friends who did.
Speaker 1: Where was this in Tennessee? They were to carl crawdads
Speaker 1: just in the creeks. Well, I guess there were probably
Speaker 1: a different species, I'm not quite sure than the one
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about, but yeah, there were some
Speaker 1: kind of crayfish shaped organism living in the creeks freshwater creeks. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: My main experience with them is just occasionally eating them
Speaker 1: as an adult. Um, but that's about it. Never got
Speaker 1: to play with them as a child. But for anyone
Speaker 1: out there who does doesn't, it still doesn't know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. It's essentially a small crustacean like a
Speaker 1: fresh a small fresh water only lobster, right, yeah, tiny lobster.
Speaker 1: The specific uh species that's going to come up in
Speaker 1: the in the research we're getting to is Procamboris clarkey.
Speaker 1: And yes, these are the crawlfish of the famed Louisiana
Speaker 1: crawfish boil. So I don't know if they were if
Speaker 1: they were boiled up with some zatarans and eating after
Speaker 1: the test there. I should also add that sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: see crayfish in aquarium settings and they can be quite
Speaker 1: beautiful as well. So you know, I don't think human
Speaker 1: and humans humanity. Relationship with the crayfish is mostly uh,
Speaker 1: mostly something that revolves around eating them, but sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: see them as pets. Now, to come back to the
Speaker 1: idea of anxiety, we were talking about the difference between
Speaker 1: fear and anxiety. You know, we're saying fear often results
Speaker 1: in escape behaviors. Anxiety is often thought to result in
Speaker 1: conservative or defense behavior, for example, to limit openness and
Speaker 1: to limit exploratory behavior. Animals in an anxious state are
Speaker 1: more likely to seek out closed familiar and protect it
Speaker 1: in environments, whereas animals in a non anxious state are
Speaker 1: more likely to explore unfamiliar and open environments. And one
Speaker 1: type of experiment that has been used to study anxiety
Speaker 1: in animals like rats and mice and now in crayfish
Speaker 1: is the elevated plus maze. So, Robert, had you ever
Speaker 1: seen one of these before? I don't think I'd encountered
Speaker 1: one of these before, and I don't remember encountering one
Speaker 1: in a study. I've certainly never been in one. 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 and 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 pick
Speaker 1: you up. That sort of thing. Right. It will only
Speaker 1: venture out into the open spaces in order to explore
Speaker 1: and seek rewards. It might go out there if there's
Speaker 1: food in the middle of the floor, um, But if
Speaker 1: it sees something scary, what does it do? It runs
Speaker 1: to 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 test sting
Speaker 1: of anti anxiety medications. Now here's where the crowd ads
Speaker 1: come in. So the elevated plus mayze has been widely
Speaker 1: used in anxiety research like we're saying, and almost all
Speaker 1: these studies have been on vertebrates, but since there have
Speaker 1: been at least two studies using the plus maze test
Speaker 1: on crayfish. Again, this is procam Boris Clarkey, and the
Speaker 1: updated design used an elevated plus mayze submerged in water
Speaker 1: with the enclosed arms shaded so that they were dark
Speaker 1: because in their protected environments, the crayfish like dark places.
Speaker 1: That's a natural defensive preference they have. So there were
Speaker 1: a couple of studies. One was Fawcett at all in
Speaker 1: fourteen and one was Bacquey casanave at all in seen
Speaker 1: and They both found that if you subjected the crayfish
Speaker 1: to frightful stimuli ahead of time, they would spend more
Speaker 1: time in the shielded, dark, enclosed areas of the elevated
Speaker 1: plus may so the examples were mildly painful shocks and
Speaker 1: harassment by a larger crawfish. So like, if you take
Speaker 1: a smaller crayfish and then subject it to a bigger
Speaker 1: one doing dominance displays, the one, the little one, the
Speaker 1: one that is being harassed, will tend to spend more
Speaker 1: time in the enclosed area in less time exploring the
Speaker 1: open platforms. And the authors right quote. These behavioral results
Speaker 1: fulfill criteria normally designated for anxiety and mammals, including being innate,
Speaker 1: being unconditioned, occurring in the absence of a stressor, and
Speaker 1: expressed in a novel context. Al Right, so in this
Speaker 1: experiment we see the evidence that a crayfish, something we
Speaker 1: don't think of as having emotional states, really ultimately has
Speaker 1: something very similar that to the the fear that is
Speaker 1: experienced by a mouse or a rat, and therefore very
Speaker 1: similar to what we experience. Right, So it's not just
Speaker 1: stimulus response. I mean you could you might imagine that
Speaker 1: an animal without emotional states could say retreat in the
Speaker 1: immat term from something that's threatening it by going into
Speaker 1: an enclosed space. But even afterwards it seems to remain
Speaker 1: in this internal state where it prefers to stay in
Speaker 1: the closed protected spaces and does less exploring than a
Speaker 1: control crayfish if it has at some recent time been
Speaker 1: threatened or harassed. It sounds like a familiar story. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like I say, if we take away sort of
Speaker 1: the the holy human qualities of fear, uh and and
Speaker 1: look at it objectively, like this's what we're looking at here,
Speaker 1: We're looking at the fear of the crawfish. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and the when we
Speaker 1: come back we can discuss the joy of the fire. Ant. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So the authors of this study we've been
Speaker 1: looking at point out one shortcoming of the existing body
Speaker 1: of research on animal emotions, and it's that it is,
Speaker 1: as on the whole, overly focused on negative emotions. Quote.
Speaker 1: It is argued that the reasons that positive and motions
Speaker 1: have been neglected in research, or because they are few
Speaker 1: in number, reflected even in the imbalance of English language
Speaker 1: words for negative over positive emotions and are harder to differentiate.
Speaker 1: The asymmetry might also stem from our understanding that natural
Speaker 1: selection has shaped emotions more for survival than for prosperity.
Speaker 1: There are many more threats than treats in our environment. Also,
Speaker 1: they point out that if we're looking for tests mirroring
Speaker 1: work done on humans, most psychological and clinical work in
Speaker 1: the history of science has been focused on solving problems
Speaker 1: rather than on studying ways in which people are doing fine,
Speaker 1: all of which I think is probably true. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think all of those reasons are valid. But despite
Speaker 1: these limitations, it would be great to have more research
Speaker 1: attempting to understand positive emotions or the state's analogous to
Speaker 1: positive emotions in non human animals and invertebrates. Like, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of a bummer and kind of limiting when
Speaker 1: it's overwhelmingly research on fear and aversion. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting point about like even the the the English language
Speaker 1: bias for negativity as opposed to positivity. Uh, it makes
Speaker 1: me think of going to our our neighborhood reality the
Speaker 1: only video rental store in the city or state video Drume.
Speaker 1: Video Drum has a sizeable horror selection, and I love
Speaker 1: to lose myself in it. But what is the opposite
Speaker 1: of the horror section? There's not really one. I guess
Speaker 1: what the maybe the comedies but Robert Altman section. Maybe that.
Speaker 1: I mean even you know, any comedy, any drum, anything
Speaker 1: that's not like straight up like a little kids cinema.
Speaker 1: I mean, to whatever extent that exists, like anything that's
Speaker 1: not just teletopies is going to have risk and danger
Speaker 1: and these negative emotions that are there to at least
Speaker 1: propel the corresponding positive ones. Yeah, I think you're exactly right,
Speaker 1: And I think the point they're making is a good one.
Speaker 1: That it's not necessarily that there's more, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: negative emotion than positive emotion in human life, but that
Speaker 1: for some reason we're more we're happier to let positive
Speaker 1: emotions all kind of blend together and be the same thing.
Speaker 1: They're all just you know, there are a million different
Speaker 1: forms of happiness and joy, but we don't have as
Speaker 1: many 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 something 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, yeah,
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 st episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about the one cognitive tests, the judgment bias test,
Speaker 1: that at least appeared to show the cognitive effects of
Speaker 1: something like pleasure or happiness in the bumblebee. You remember,
Speaker 1: it was like, if you give the bumble bee a
Speaker 1: free treat, give it some free sugar, it will tend
Speaker 1: after that to at least appear to have an optimistic
Speaker 1: bias to interpret ambiguous information as as being something good
Speaker 1: or approachable. The next line of research involves the behavior
Speaker 1: and ants that some researchers think may be associated with
Speaker 1: an internal state analogous to happiness or joy. Uh so,
Speaker 1: what might the dreaded fire ant have in common with
Speaker 1: your favorite cute puppy wagging? Butt wagging? Do tell, Do tell? Alright?
Speaker 1: So the red imported fire ant or Solenopsis invicta, has
Speaker 1: displayed a very interesting behavior observed by a number of researchers,
Speaker 1: reported in a study in sixteen by Debbie Castle, christophord Liu,
Speaker 1: Hun Daniels, Shiftman, and S. Bradley Vincent called a Study
Speaker 1: on Abdominal Wagging in the fire ant Solenopsis Invicta with
Speaker 1: Speculation on its meaning in the Journal of Bioeconomics. So,
Speaker 1: the researchers were just watching lots of hours of video
Speaker 1: taken from inside a fire ant nest, and from these
Speaker 1: observations they started to notice a pattern of behavior where
Speaker 1: the ants inside the nest would basically stick their butt
Speaker 1: up in the air and wave it around. Quote they
Speaker 1: position and move their abdomen up and down at forty
Speaker 1: five degrees, and they called this behavior wagging. Now raising
Speaker 1: and wiggling the abdomen has uses in other contexts for
Speaker 1: fire ants. You may have seen fire ants doing this defensively.
Speaker 1: The abdomen or back segment of the body is also
Speaker 1: known 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. They'll flag.
Speaker 1: Usually involves raising the abdomen up higher something more like
Speaker 1: ninety degrees. Flagging is apparently used during foraging to disperse
Speaker 1: venom into the air, and it's believed to deter other
Speaker 1: insects like competitor ants from the foraging area. So you're
Speaker 1: out trying to gather food for the colony and then
Speaker 1: some other ants come in, you will stick your butt
Speaker 1: up in the air and spit some venom out into
Speaker 1: the air to try to drive the other ants off.
Speaker 1: There's also some evidence that some abdominal wagging or gas
Speaker 1: or flagging emits a sound as the gaster joint rubs
Speaker 1: across itself, and this would be a tiny, high pitched squeak.
Speaker 1: We're not sure what role this sound plays, but it's
Speaker 1: possible that has a It has a role in communications,
Speaker 1: such as calling for help when an ant is trapped
Speaker 1: or when it's in trouble. However, Castle at all believe
Speaker 1: that in their observations, the inside the nest wagging behavior
Speaker 1: was not defensive in any way. Within the nest, they
Speaker 1: found that the wagging emitted neither sound nor um, 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 has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the other types of wagging that these ants
Speaker 1: normally do, what's going on. Furthermore, they found that the
Speaker 1: inside nest wagging happened primarily when the ants were engaged
Speaker 1: 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 ant 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, so that the mouth parts
Speaker 1: would 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 cause 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 a It's some physical
Speaker 1: body language that is observable that would potentially demonstrate the
Speaker 1: emotional state of the creature, right, and it would helpful
Speaker 1: if you could pare 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 the 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 wild, 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 twenty sixteen experiment,
Speaker 1: Perry at All created a simulation of a crab spider
Speaker 1: attack by putting together a mechanism that would ambush and
Speaker 1: trap 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: at 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 bee 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 the 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, right, Right,
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 ideal cartoon cricket, I'm sure. Do
Speaker 1: you even remember how in the original Pinocchio, Pinocchio kills
Speaker 1: the cricket with a hammer? What? Yeah, the cartoon or
Speaker 1: no story? Not? No, no, not in the movie the
Speaker 1: movie changed it made it nicer in the original story.
Speaker 1: Jimmy cricket, Yeah, oh man, I don't remember if he's
Speaker 1: named Jiminy cricket. I think he's just a magic cricket
Speaker 1: and Pinocchio kills him with a hammer. I didn't even
Speaker 1: 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 ever seen that. You should see. It's like
Speaker 1: thirty minutes long, and it's it's a pretty good, streamlined
Speaker 1: adaptation of Chris was Carroll. I'm sure it's better than
Speaker 1: the other thirty minute version of a Christmas Carol I've seen,
Speaker 1: which is called the Christmas Carol and it's narrated by
Speaker 1: Vincent Price. It's very bad. Man. Well, later this year,
Speaker 1: when Christmas frows around again, I think we should do
Speaker 1: an episode on a Christmas Carol. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot to discussed there. Okay, well, maybe we should take
Speaker 1: a break and then when we come back we can
Speaker 1: talk about physiological tests than Alright, we're back. So we're
Speaker 1: entering the final phase here. We're going to be discussing
Speaker 1: physiological tests for emotion. Right, so we've talked about cognitive tests,
Speaker 1: we've talked about behavioral tests. Physiological tests for emotion uh
Speaker 1: in people, they look for correl It's between reported emotional
Speaker 1: states and automatic responses in the body. So, for example,
Speaker 1: somebody jumps out at you with a werewolf mask. You're
Speaker 1: not just gonna jump back. It's not just gonna maybe
Speaker 1: give you a pessimistic bias. But you will also have
Speaker 1: increased heart rate, release of stress hormones like nora ep
Speaker 1: and effer and and cortisol, dilation of the pupils in
Speaker 1: the eye. You might be a bit you know, by
Speaker 1: just stuff. I know a lot of this is because
Speaker 1: it's not just that you saw a werewolf. It's that
Speaker 1: your body is preparing you to fight a werewolf or
Speaker 1: run from a werewolf. Right, The fight or flight response
Speaker 1: kicks in and and it entails this cascade of automatic
Speaker 1: reactions in the body, things that you don't control behaviorally.
Speaker 1: They just happen without your say so. And these physiological
Speaker 1: responses can usually be measured objectively pretty easily, which is
Speaker 1: very handy. However, physiological responses alone can be They can
Speaker 1: be hard to use to identify individual emotions. For example,
Speaker 1: if you're measuring a heart rate, heart rate might increase
Speaker 1: in response to anxiety or to joy. The fact that
Speaker 1: the heart speeds up it's beating tells you there's some
Speaker 1: kind of arousal, but it doesn't necessarily tell you which one.
Speaker 1: The person's heart could just be full of song, right.
Speaker 1: So sometimes if you look at enough different physiological responses
Speaker 1: at the same time and compare them, you can start
Speaker 1: to zero in on specific emotions, but not always. And
Speaker 1: just like it's to translate research on human facial expressions
Speaker 1: to invertebrates, it's also hard to do so with human
Speaker 1: physiological responses to emotions. Uh. The authors write, quote, most
Speaker 1: of these types of measurements are quite difficult to apply
Speaker 1: to invertebrates given their often miniature size and hard carapaces, and,
Speaker 1: in the case of insects, an open circulatory system where
Speaker 1: heart rate is not increased. But there has been some
Speaker 1: interesting research. Nonetheless, they cite a bunch of it just
Speaker 1: to pick out a couple of examples. Keita at all.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven did research on fear conditioning, this
Speaker 1: time in pond snails, very expressive species. Uh. They condition
Speaker 1: the pond snails with an association between sugar water, which
Speaker 1: normally you give some give some sugar water to them
Speaker 1: and they will start feeding behaviors. But they negatively conditioned
Speaker 1: this with potassium chloride associations, and potassium chloride causes withdrawal
Speaker 1: of the body into the shell. Uh. Not only did
Speaker 1: fear conditioning work the snails began to react to the
Speaker 1: sugar by withdrawing, but physiological monitoring also found that conditioned
Speaker 1: exposure to the sugar caused the heart to skip a
Speaker 1: beat quote, suggesting physiological responses similar to fear in mammals.
Speaker 1: So you train them to associate potassium chloride, this noxious chemical,
Speaker 1: with the sugar, then later you just present them with sugar.
Speaker 1: Not only do they not go for the sugar, it
Speaker 1: makes their hearts skip a beat. Though. I do think
Speaker 1: it's interesting to know potassium chloride is literally a heart
Speaker 1: stopping poison. It's been used to cause cardiac arrest and
Speaker 1: lethal injections. Of course, there was no potassium chloride in
Speaker 1: the sugar once it was conditioned, but maybe that's just
Speaker 1: a coincidence. But the idea is that been presented with
Speaker 1: the with the sugar, then after being exposed to the
Speaker 1: potassium chloride, there is this this moment of physiological fear
Speaker 1: in response, right, the body reacts in a way similar
Speaker 1: to mammals reacting to the werewolf mask, but this time
Speaker 1: it's just sugar that the snail has come with training
Speaker 1: to associate with a bad chemical. Uh So, it seems
Speaker 1: that the majority of research on physiological correlates of invertebrate
Speaker 1: emotions has to do with the presence of what are
Speaker 1: called biogenic amines, which are thought to play a major,
Speaker 1: if not comprehensive role in the creation and control of
Speaker 1: emotions in the human brain, especially the hormones and neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine,
Speaker 1: and nora adrenaline. Now, as important as these three substances
Speaker 1: clearly are in our emotional lives, unfortunately it is not
Speaker 1: as simple as saying one is a happiness drug in
Speaker 1: the body and one is a fear drug, etcetera. They
Speaker 1: play complex interacting roles in everything from attention and arousal
Speaker 1: to reward, motivation and sleep, and the manipulation of emotions
Speaker 1: is generally not as simple as just saying like, well,
Speaker 1: you need more of one of these things, but manipulating
Speaker 1: the presence of one or more of these neurotransmitters can
Speaker 1: have some measurable effects on emotion. For example, invertebrate nervous
Speaker 1: systems also appear to make use of these biogenic amines
Speaker 1: or analogs to them. For example, in bees, the hormone
Speaker 1: octopomy and appears to play a role similar to that
Speaker 1: of nora adrenaline and humans. And so they cite one
Speaker 1: possible example of these physiological parallels quote Bates and and
Speaker 1: colleagues in two thousand eleven assessed how systemic biogenic amine
Speaker 1: levels changed in response to a presumed negative emotional event
Speaker 1: hemal lymph. And remember that's like insect blood. Hamal Lymph
Speaker 1: was collected from honey bees after simulating a predator attack
Speaker 1: shaking bees on a vortex for sixty seconds. And this
Speaker 1: is like the thing we talked about in the last episode,
Speaker 1: where you'd shake the colony to simulate an attacked by
Speaker 1: a honey badger. Picking up with the quote, analysis of
Speaker 1: the hemolymph using high performance liquid chromatography or HPLC showed
Speaker 1: that systemic levels of the biogenic amines dopamine, octopamine che
Speaker 1: chemically similar to noor adrenaline, and so tone in all
Speaker 1: decreased in response to bees being shaken vigorously. In humans,
Speaker 1: it seems that depletion of biogenic amine serotonin, noor adrenaline,
Speaker 1: and dopamine is responsible for features of depression in the
Speaker 1: monamine Hypothesis of depression and also inteen Faucet and colleagues
Speaker 1: reportedly used chemical manipulation of serotonin levels to alter anxiety
Speaker 1: associated behaviors of crayfish, like in the plus maze scenario.
Speaker 1: One last one period All in TwixT found that manipulation
Speaker 1: of dopamine levels seemed to affect the apparent positive emotional
Speaker 1: state of bumble bees. Remember the sugar causing the bumble
Speaker 1: bees to have an optimistic bias. Well here quote the
Speaker 1: optimistic behavior scene and the judgment bias test in response
Speaker 1: to pretest sugar reward was abolished when the bees were
Speaker 1: topically treated with the dopamine receptor antagonist flu finazine, and
Speaker 1: apparently the same treatment eliminated the positive effect of retest
Speaker 1: sugar during the simulated attack by a crab spider. So
Speaker 1: if you do something to this insect's dopamine levels. By
Speaker 1: by putting in this disruptor of dopamine, you somehow seem
Speaker 1: to interfere with the bees ability to have an optimistic
Speaker 1: bias in response to getting some sugar. Interesting. So, basically,
Speaker 1: the more we reveal about sort of the underlying chemistry
Speaker 1: of these emotional states um as as they are in
Speaker 1: humans and as they are in these various invertebrate species,
Speaker 1: it just reveals that, yeah, we have emotional states occurring
Speaker 1: in these organisms, at least the physiological corelates of them.
Speaker 1: Right Again, Yeah, we can't begin to get into the
Speaker 1: subjective aspect of it, which you know, made very I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a stretch at all to say that
Speaker 1: whatever a crawfish is experiencing is fear, is different than
Speaker 1: what a humans experienced in his fear. It can't it
Speaker 1: can't contemplate the fear at the same level that that
Speaker 1: a human can. But like the root of it, like
Speaker 1: the root chemical and physic, physiological, um manifestation of that
Speaker 1: emotion is essentially the same. Right. And I think now
Speaker 1: we've seen maybe not conclusive, but pretty good evidence in
Speaker 1: three different branches, not just the physiological which we were
Speaker 1: just talking about but earlier the cognitive and in the
Speaker 1: behavioral spheres. And I think we should emphasize again, you
Speaker 1: know what you're getting at. None of these tests are perfect.
Speaker 1: Even if all the results are robust, replicable, they hold
Speaker 1: up over time, they still don't necessarily tell us anything
Speaker 1: about 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 point,
Speaker 1: I bet one question a lot of people may have is, Okay, well,
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 find any papers
Speaker 1: arguing for emotional states there no, uh. And even in
Speaker 1: weirdly like we think octopuses are more complex, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of intelligence than these other than like insects
Speaker 1: and crayfish are. But I wasn't really finding much in
Speaker 1: the way of studying emotions and octopuses. It was mostly
Speaker 1: in these simpler organisms. So yeah, there's clearly still lots
Speaker 1: of ground to cover. Yeah, now, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's one of the I don't think anybody's actually arguing that, say,
Speaker 1: a slime mold has emotions either. But we have discussed
Speaker 1: in the show how a slime mold, uh, an organism
Speaker 1: without like a central nervous system, is still able to learn,
Speaker 1: it's still engaging in things that are are are like
Speaker 1: problem solving. So you know, the stuff like that adds
Speaker 1: uh some complexity to this question. But then another thing
Speaker 1: we came to mind, uh plants the topic itself. I
Speaker 1: think we'll have to wait wait for another episode, but
Speaker 1: plants can essentially here, see, smell, and respond to stimuli,
Speaker 1: and they are, according to a University of Missouri in
Speaker 1: Columbia plant science professor Jack C. Schultz, essentially quote just
Speaker 1: very slow animals um which uh, which I think it is.
Speaker 1: It is hilarious. But at the same time it you know,
Speaker 1: you you you look at say time time lapse footage
Speaker 1: of save vines in action and flowers and uh and
Speaker 1: so forth. They're just the movements of of of plants
Speaker 1: in general. And this does have that seem to have
Speaker 1: a ring of truth to it that this is this
Speaker 1: is an organism that is not as still as we
Speaker 1: uh as we may think. We touched the this briefly
Speaker 1: and the recent Tolkien episodes, you know, the the idea
Speaker 1: of the end, the moving tree, the tree that thinks
Speaker 1: and reasons, um may not be as far fetched as
Speaker 1: as some of us think. But as for emotions and plants, uh,
Speaker 1: there's actually some fascinating research there as well. But that
Speaker 1: is another story and shall be told another time time. Okay,
Speaker 1: So hopefully we give everybody some food for thought here
Speaker 1: about our own emotional states, what the human emotional state
Speaker 1: is and what it isn't and then to what degree
Speaker 1: we can perceive and attribute emotional states to other organisms,
Speaker 1: even though you know, the the lowly crawfish. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder if understanding the way that that anxiety might
Speaker 1: affect bees or crawfish or something like that could in wait,
Speaker 1: help give you a foothold in controlling your own emotions.
Speaker 1: I mean again, this is something we we sort of
Speaker 1: began the last episode talking about how the emotions are
Speaker 1: from our brains. They are within us, but often it
Speaker 1: can feel as if we are in them, you know,
Speaker 1: there see, on which we're aflow and we have no
Speaker 1: power over them, right, or their external forces like something
Speaker 1: from out of Greek mythology, or you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, a fundamentalist um you know, Christian worldview,
Speaker 1: angel on one shoulder, devil on the other, affecting our
Speaker 1: mental states. But no, it's it's all within and it
Speaker 1: is and it is you know, a part of the
Speaker 1: same navigation, a reality that is taking place in all
Speaker 1: these other organisms as well. And yeah, therefore if we
Speaker 1: demystify it a bit, if we sort of take a
Speaker 1: step back from it and in fact increase awareness of
Speaker 1: what it is, then yeah, that gives us, I think,
Speaker 1: a tremendous strength. You know, it keeps basically keeping uh,
Speaker 1: keeping our our our irksome brains from deceiving ourselves about
Speaker 1: what we are. You are that churning ocean, Yes, which
Speaker 1: perhaps is some ambiguous information that you may either see
Speaker 1: in a negative or a positive light, depending on your predisposition.
Speaker 1: All right, so obviously you all have emotions, and you
Speaker 1: all have various interactions with animals, be it a dog,
Speaker 1: a cattle, horse, or a crayfish or or or a bee.
Speaker 1: So we would love to hear from everyone out there
Speaker 1: on the topic that we've discussed in these two episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Hey, even if you
Speaker 1: have some thoughts about plants, go ahead and go ahead
Speaker 1: and let us know about those. Uh. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, where can you find this show? Well,
Speaker 1: you can find this show anywhere you find podcasts, wherever
Speaker 1: that happens to be. Just make sure you rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe. Those are the acts that help us out
Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact dot stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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