WEBVTT - From the Vault: You’ve Got Pee-Mail, Part 2 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.440 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:10.680 Robert Lamb. I've you been listening this week. You know 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.760 the deal. We're on vacation, we're re airing. You've got femail. 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:17.000 This is going to be part two of three and 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:20.600 it originally published five twenty five. Let's happen. 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:36.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:37.160 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.520 And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:44.919 in our series on urine based communication in animals. In 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.559 Part one, we introduced the idea that while humans have 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:52.839 an almost infinitely expanding arsenal of tools and skills and 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.040 tricks for sharing information with one another, one medium that 0:00:57.080 --> 0:00:59.680 we don't use, or at least don't use very much, 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:04.480 but which is used throughout the animal kingdom is urine. 0:01:04.560 --> 0:01:07.560 So in part one we also talked about a story 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.480 that the story that initially got me interested in covering 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:13.039 this on the show, which was a recent paper documenting 0:01:13.080 --> 0:01:18.640 a behavior in Amazon river dolphins called aerial urination, which 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:21.959 goes like this. One male dolphin floats upside down and 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:24.840 urinates in a stream up in the air over the water, 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:28.080 and then usually another male dolphin seeks out the stream, 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.160 swims over and puts its face right into the pea fountain. 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.120 It's not yet known why the dolphins do this, but 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.360 the researchers who wrote the paper propose that it is 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:42.200 a form of communication. It's information sharing between male dolphins 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.600 to sort of give a fact sheet about the originator 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.280 of the urine stream, kind of have a look at 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:51.880 my medical chart. Here you can sense my urine with 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:54.400 the whiskers on your snout and get a sense of me. 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:58.280 And of course we talked also about how urine can 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:02.240 convey lots of different kinds of information about physical health, 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:06.160 social dominance and things like that, and those pieces of 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:10.359 information are useful for male dolphins to share with one 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.240 another because it helps them make decisions about whether to 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.600 challenge each other for access to food resources or mates. 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.040 We also talked more generally about what urine is and 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:24.960 is not, and what kind of information it contains to 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.680 a fluent reader. We also went on some other interesting tangents, 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:33.040 for example, about why so many animals actually have voluntary 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:35.680 control over urination in the first place, why can they 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:38.840 actually decide when they want to release the urine. We 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:41.480 talked about how urination actually can be thought of as 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:44.640 a kind of social behavior in humans, and a bunch 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:46.840 of other things, and we're back today to talk more 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:48.600 about pe based communication. 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:51.360 Yeah. Yeah, Like, in general, there's just a lot of 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.760 information in urine, but as humans we cannot pick up 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.720 on most of it via our own senses. We can 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.000 turn to technology. May come back to some of that 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:03.280 later on, but basically in this episode, we're going to 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.399 be talking about the various ways that some animals can 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:11.520 read the urine of others and perhaps communicate through their 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:12.160 own urine. 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:17.079 Yes, now, I'm sure the subject of trading information through 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:19.840 urine has had all of the dog owners in the 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.240 audience like desperately raising their hands and saying ooh ooh, 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:27.240 I know one. And yes, we briefly touched on this 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.480 last time. But domestic dogs are a great example. They 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.520 are well known for being prolific scent markers and for 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:39.640 being very concerned with gathering information from the markings left 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.880 by other dogs. And while urine is actually not the 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:47.720 only method domestic dogs use in scent marking, it is 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:50.600 you can probably think of it as the primary one. 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.080 Now some dog lovers out there might be thinking, huh 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:58.360 that there are other methods beyond urine. Yes, there actually are. 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.800 I don't know if I would have said this before 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:04.320 I started research for this episode, but there are other 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.160 ways that dogs leave scent marks. One thing, of course, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:13.240 is the dreaded anal glands, which produce a pungent, foul 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:17.320 smelling fluid that gets expressed and deposited naturally in small 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:21.839 quantities when a dog defecates, but it can be expressed 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.680 and rubbed off in other situations as well, and these 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:29.760 secretions contain identifying information about the dog. Another interesting example 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:34.880 is that dogs have scent producing apocrine glands in their paws. 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:39.080 Apocrine glands are glands that produce a kind of oily sweat. 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:41.600 Humans have them in parts of their bodies too, like 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:45.720 you've got them in your armpits and stuff. But dogs 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:49.120 have apocrine glands in their paws and the regions in 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:51.960 between their digits, meaning that a dog can leave a 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.839 scent mark by scratching at the ground or sometimes even 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:57.479 just by walking on the footpaths leave a little scent 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:58.520 trail through time. 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.520 Many are the stinks of the dog, beautiful. 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:07.000 Stinks, but yes, scent marking by urine is the most 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.920 overt and visible, certainly of the dog's marking behaviors. You 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:15.200 see it most frequently in male dogs who have not 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:18.040 been neutered, but it is also done by female dogs 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:19.000 and neutered males. 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.640 Here's a potentially dumb dog question. Never had an indoor 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:28.479 dog and never had a dog as an adult, How 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.880 does one keep an indoor dog or an indoor outdoor 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:35.400 dog from marking territory within the household. 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:37.080 Well, that's a good question. 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:37.440 Rob. 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.760 It varies from dog to dogs. Some dogs it's just 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.000 going to be a struggle keeping them from doing it. 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.240 Some dogs that have been living inside for years will 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:48.920 still continue to mark the chair, you know, like here 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.680 I am, I'm marking the chair once again. But no, 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.120 most of the time, a dog will respond to training. 0:05:56.240 --> 0:06:00.279 You know, I'm not a dog behavior expert, know what 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.600 all the training the best training methods are these days. 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:06.839 But yeah, dogs will respond to training that to get 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:08.560 them to save it for outside. 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:09.800 Okay, gotcha. 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.480 But it often does mean that when you know, especially 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.360 with some dogs, you take them outside and maybe you 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:18.040 want to get the get their business done quickly. Maybe 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:20.279 you're on a timeline, you've got to do something else. 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:22.200 But it's kind of hard to get them to like 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.320 pee all the pee that they need to pee at once. Instead, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:27.839 they want to go all around the neighborhood and leave 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:30.880 little marks here and there and just dole it out 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:31.880 a little bit at a time. 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:34.440 Because coming back to what we've been talking about, the 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.120 dog is not just going out to relieve itself and 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.240 then come back. It has messages to leave messages to 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:41.919 and to interpret and so forth. 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.200 Yes, it's it's business time when it's time for the walk. Yeah, 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:48.720 time to time to check and send some emails. And 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:50.960 it is very worth noting, I think we said this 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.160 last time, but worth really stressing that we do not 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:58.360 know all of the different kinds of information that are 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:02.080 conveyed when a dog leaves a urine mark and another 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.920 dog smells it. But we do know some things. There 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:08.920 are reasons to suspect a lot of different kinds of 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.480 information might be shared, and I can go through some 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:16.600 examples here. One thing is a dog's unique identity. There 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:21.600 is evidence that dogs can identify other individual dogs by 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.840 urine smell useful for knowing who's around right, So the 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:27.840 same way that a human might be able to recognize 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.240 another person by seeing a picture of them, like, oh, 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:33.720 that's you know, that's Harry, I know Harry. A dog 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.560 can uniquely identify another individual dog by the smell of 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:40.840 their urine. Another thing, similar to what we talked about 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:45.480 in the dolphin example is health information. Urine probably reveals 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:48.760 a lot about how healthy the dog is, whether they 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:52.040 have diseases or parasites, what kind of shape or fitness 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:58.360 they're in, probably age. Urine certainly reveals sex and reproductive information. 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.040 It reveals the sex of the dog, but also hormonal 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.920 content can reveal how receptive the dog currently will be 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:10.560 to mating. Urine can reveal dominance within the dog's social 0:08:10.600 --> 0:08:14.560 group that could be revealed through marking behavior. And then 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.240 it gets in There are even like weirder, more interesting things. 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:25.040 One is that dogs may possibly even communicate momentary emotional 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:29.760 information through urine. This is less certain than some of 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:31.160 the other ones. Some of the other ones I was 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:35.280 just naming are pretty well known. This is less certain, 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:38.920 but it seems likely. Like for example, it has been 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:43.040 found that dogs can tell the difference between the smell 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:48.079 of a stressed out humans urine versus human urine at baseline, 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:51.040 they actually can smell your fear. They can smell your 0:08:51.080 --> 0:08:54.559 stress and anxiety at least in your pee. Now do 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:59.640 they actively seek this information about other dogs? And if so, 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:03.360 does this information change their behavior? Like how do they 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.400 react to getting that information? The answers to these questions 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.200 are not known for sure. But regarding that second question, 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.440 I did find an interesting study by par Cortes at 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.920 All published in the journal Scientific Reports in twenty twenty 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:22.120 four called the odor of an unfamiliar, stressed or relaxed 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:27.720 person affects Dog's responses to a cognitive bias test, and 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:33.880 this study found that dogs would preferentially avoid food bowls 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:39.600 in locations that had been previously associated with the smell 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:44.320 of urine from a stressed out human, suggesting that the 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.120 smell of stress, at least human stress, could play a 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:51.040 role in cognition and learning for dogs. 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:53.280 That is fascinating. 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:57.120 Again, we don't know if dogs use this information about 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:01.559 other dogs, though it seems quite plausible. You can imagine 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:03.400 maybe dogs I don't know, the like if there is 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:05.800 an area where there are a lot of scent markings 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.040 that have high stress. I don't know, that could signal 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:10.080 to the dog, They're like, uh, oh, there's something to 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:12.079 be concerned about here. I need to you know, be 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:13.720 more on guard or something. 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:17.280 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as we've discussed before, dogs very 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:22.520 social animals, and via domestication, we are their social group, 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.960 we are their pack, and therefore, you know, the importance 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.560 of this information, like to the wolf concerning other wolves, 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:34.320 is also potentially important concerning the human members of their 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:36.120 domesticated pack. Yeah. 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:38.120 I wonder if for a dog, like going down the 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:41.120 sidewalk smelling a bunch of urine marks from other dogs 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:43.719 that all have like stress in them, is like the 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:45.480 human equivalent of doom scrolling. 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.400 It could be yeah, going to a community meeting where 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.760 people get to volunteer their opinions, hair, their fears. 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:56.080 Yeah, exactly. But it really is interesting to imagine, Like 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.880 I don't know what kinds of complexity are there in 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:04.400 like if momentary kind of emotional states even can be 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:09.400 communicated across time in these chemical signatures. This is probably overinterpreting. 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:12.000 I don't know when analogies like this are warranted or not, 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.360 but I'm imagining a kind of p based literature almost, 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.760 you know, the same way that poetry contains emotions and 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:22.560 so forth, Like, what is the kind of richness of 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:25.360 the experience that a dog has when smelling all these 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:30.720 different health states and sexual information and threat information and 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.000 emotional information all at the same time. 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:35.880 Yeah, I mean, their sense of smell is just so 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:40.559 ratcheted up above anything that we can truly even relate to, 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:46.160 you know, outside of our human use of comparisons and 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:50.160 metaphors and so forth, that I mean, I don't know 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:52.120 that it's it's really out of bounds to say something 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:54.360 like that. It seems like that's the best we can 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:56.800 get at in trying to understand like how a dog 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:57.960 experiences the world. 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.320 I think we probably only have the barest kind of 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:05.560 idea of what really is happening in this information exchange. 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.680 Yeah. I keep coming back to that Terry Pratchett comment 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:13.280 about a werewolf character being essentially able to smell through 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:18.280 time to like know the interpersonal history of a space 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:20.640 going back like a month. And that's the kind of 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:24.520 thing that like, as humans highly visual that we are, like, 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:27.320 we don't really have something like that unless you're dealing 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.640 with some like very obvious physical signs of passage, such 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:33.560 as you know, muddy bootprints and so forth. Yeah, but 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:36.360 the smell left by something, I mean, at least to us, 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:40.120 that's far more subtle to the dogs, I guess, far 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.120 more overt, but in a way that it's really hard 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:46.360 for us to compare, you know, like, what is is 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:51.760 there anything like that in our own actual sensory environment 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:53.640 that compares to it? I guess the closest you could 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.400 come would be something that is electronic or literature based. 0:12:57.400 --> 0:12:59.960 Or actually I think maybe the more core equivalent would 0:12:59.960 --> 0:13:04.319 be language that, like with language, humans create for ourselves. 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.280 It's like our core technology. It's the thing we use 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.920 to create this like rich layer on top of reality 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:16.720 where we can recall past and project future and imagine counterfactuals, 0:13:16.720 --> 0:13:19.480 and it's all there in constructs that we build out 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:33.160 of words. Yeah, coming back to dogs in the female, 0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:39.200 we also know that dogs use urine based scent marking 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:44.080 in expressions of territoriality. Though this is something that I 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:46.800 think we have to be a little cautious about because 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:50.599 it seems to me this is something that easily gets oversimplified. 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:53.559 Like a common thing you'll hear people say, is that 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:57.600 when a dog does a p mark out there somewhere 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.120 they're like marking the boundary of the territory, like here's 0:14:01.160 --> 0:14:04.960 my property line, no crossing, no trespassing on my turf. 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.800 From what I can tell the current research actually paints, 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:13.800 it's a more complicated picture of how urine marking and 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.920 territoriality interact. However, it does seem that at least one 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:24.360 major aspect of urine marking is related to territoriality and dominance. 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.720 It is to both signal your own ability as a 0:14:27.760 --> 0:14:32.440 competitor and possible threat to other competing dogs in the area, 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:35.280 especially to other dogs of the same sex as you, 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.800 and then also to gain information about possible rivals and 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:44.080 to understand how much of a threat they represent. I 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:48.840 found one study from twenty twelve that looked into this especially. 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:52.800 It was looking at the territorial and dominance threat aspects 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.880 of urine scent marking, and this was in free ranging 0:14:55.960 --> 0:15:01.040 domestic dogs. The study was by Cafaso, Natali and Valseki 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.320 in the journal Ethology, and it was called Scent marking 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:08.080 behavior in a pack of free ranging domestic Dogs in 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.040 their abstract to the author's right quote, we found evidence 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:14.120 that markings are used by dogs to form a property 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:18.880 line and to threaten rivals. During agonistic conflicts, both males 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:22.800 and females utilized scent marking to assert dominance and probably 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:27.200 to relocate food or maintain possession over it. Raised leg 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:31.160 urination and ground scratching probably play a role in olfactory 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:35.400 and visual communication in both males and females. Urinations released 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:39.240 by females, especially through flexed leg posture, may also convey 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.760 information about their reproductive state. All right, so there are 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:44.920 a range of different things there, but one of the 0:15:44.920 --> 0:15:50.520 main things they mention is about territoriality. However, this does 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.680 not mean that a dog only places a urine mark 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.160 on ground that they expect will never be crossed by 0:15:57.160 --> 0:16:00.600 an unfamiliar dog. It's not so much a balance line 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.560 that cannot be violated. Instead, it's more kind of a 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:07.280 an announcing of your presence within an occupied space. 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:08.400 Uh. 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:11.760 And so like we're trying, we're trading information about one another. 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:15.600 And uh, you you know, with this information about me, 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:18.200 you might want to go somewhere else or you might not. 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:20.880 Yes, yeah, saying this is who I am, this is 0:16:20.920 --> 0:16:23.680 what I'm all about. And we touched that. We touched 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:26.840 on this in the last episode and it's gonna continue 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:29.320 to be important. We need to remind ourselves. One of 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:35.320 the important things about communication between especially competing males UH, 0:16:35.360 --> 0:16:39.600 but also competing females, is that the more information that 0:16:39.720 --> 0:16:45.240 is exchanged and that is visible, the less actual physical 0:16:45.320 --> 0:16:51.160 violence is needed to to to solve these various interactions. Yes, 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:54.840 and of course that benefits all of the organisms involved, 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:58.840 because every fight UH brings with it a cost, a 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:03.120 potential injury, and with every potential injury, you know, possibility 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.440 to be weakened, to become sick, and so forth. If 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.560 any of that can be avoided through communication, all the better. 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:16.840 Exactly, honest information benefits both parties. However, that's honest information. 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:22.040 It's different to ask the question could information represented through 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:27.080 urine possibly be dishonest? And that brings me to a 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:29.960 paper that I came across that I wanted to talk 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:34.080 about here can urine based communication involve lying? So there 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.919 was a study published in the year twenty eighteen in 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:43.200 the Journal of Zoology by McGuire, Olsen Bemis, and Oraantes 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.720 called urine marking in male domestic dogs Honest or Dishonest. 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.679 The lead author here, Betty maguire, is a behavioral ecologist 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:55.840 at Cornell University. So the study got me thinking about 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:59.879 an interesting question. Of course, when we're talking about human communication, 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.880 there are actually two completely different modes of information shearing, 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.320 which have different goals and rely on different skills. You've 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:13.760 got normal, truthful communication, and then you've got deceptive communication 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:18.080 aka lying. Both modes can be useful in life. Both 0:18:18.119 --> 0:18:21.480 can be useful for gaining advantage and forgetting what we want, 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:26.000 but they rely on different mechanisms and skill sets. For example, 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:32.640 to communicate truthfully, if you want to communicate the truth successfully, 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:35.280 you need to know what the truth is, so like 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:39.800 your various powers of perception and logical reasoning are implicated 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:44.280 in truthful communication, also like your ability to translate that 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:49.840 knowledge into the medium of communication you're using with minimal 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:54.639 loss of informational fidelity. On the other hand, to lie successfully, 0:18:55.119 --> 0:18:57.400 you need to have other skills, like a good ability 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:00.119 to simulate the minds of other people to know what 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:02.560 kinds of false beliefs would get them to act the 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:04.960 way you want and what kinds of lies would be 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.320 believable to them. And of course, lying also comes with 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.440 major risks If you get caught lying at the very 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:14.719 least people will stop believing you, they'll stop trusting and 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.840 cooperating with you, or worse, they may actively punish you. 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:24.600 Humans can switch easily between truthful and deceptive communication because 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.480 we communicate with language, which is able to represent an 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.840 infinite array of both factual and counterfactual statements. But you 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:35.720 might think, you know, urine is not like that, urine 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.680 is honest. We sort of put it this way last time. 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:42.600 Like with language, you can have near total control over 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:48.000 what you say. With urine, it seems usually you cannot 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:53.919 control what you say, only where, how, when, and whether 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.800 you're going to say something at all. If you say 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.800 something with urine, usually it's going to be honest or 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:00.960 least we would assume. 0:20:01.160 --> 0:20:03.439 Yeah, that's the human experience with it, right. If you 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:06.240 are worried about your urine saying something you don't want 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:11.080 to say, in certain specific circumstances, you may get someone 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:15.240 else's urine to stand in for your own, with perhaps 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.760 limited success. But but yeah, there's this idea that like 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:21.160 the urine is just a readout. It's just straight up information. 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:26.840 It's not something that can be manipulated outside of manipulating 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.919 like the system that produces said urine which again we 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:33.919 still only have like a limited ability to do that 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:34.600 to ourselves. 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:34.760 You know. 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:36.840 It's like we can change what we eat, what we consume, 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:39.120 but the urine is going to tell us who we are. 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:41.680 Right, you can maybe think of lying with human urine. 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:43.399 I don't even know if this is possible, but maybe 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:45.520 you could take some kind of pill that like changes 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.000 your urine profile to something else. 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:49.639 Or if you're like I don't want this drug to 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:51.119 show up in my urine, I'm going to get them. 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.639 I'm going to stop taking that drug. Yeah, boom, I 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:55.199 tricked them. Well you didn't really trick them. You just 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:57.359 change the truth will read out of your system in 0:20:57.400 --> 0:20:58.040 that scenario. 0:20:58.119 --> 0:20:59.920 Well this is good because actually I think there will 0:20:59.920 --> 0:21:02.240 be a question when I'm done talking about the study 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:05.679 about whether this should count as deception or lying or not. 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.600 But anyway, yes, So the researchers here in this paper 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:13.399 observed an interesting pattern that might be a counterexample to 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.960 the assumed honesty of urine, which is dogs potentially being 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:22.639 deceptive with their urine scent markings. So how would a 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:27.040 dog send a deceptive scam message over the seemingly honest 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:30.399 medium of pemil let's go to the paper. So the 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:33.639 authors begin by noting that a bunch of different mammals 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:37.720 leave scent marks, and lots of the mammals that do 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:41.879 tend to elevate them, meaning they place the mark not 0:21:42.000 --> 0:21:45.000 on the ground, but up higher, often on some kind 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:48.480 of vertical surface. Dog walkers are probably going to be 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:51.760 familiar with this. A dog, they will usually like to 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:55.600 pee on landmarks, the telephone pole, the fire hydrant, the 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.600 mailbox posts, the tree trunk, the flower, the clump of 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.680 tall grass, or some times, let's be real, the furniture. 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:06.159 Why is this? Why do they like to pee on 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:09.119 the raised thing and not just wherever? Why not just 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:11.800 on the ground. The authors say that this could be 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:16.480 because elevated marks are easier for other dogs to detect 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:20.240 via both site and smell. So they cite a bunch 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:23.359 of different research here. One thing is researched by Alberts 0:22:23.359 --> 0:22:27.080 from ninety two, about which they write, quote the ground 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:31.880 physically restricts diffusion, meaning the spreading out of the urine 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:36.120 physically restricts diffusion. So both size of mark and likelihood 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:39.919 of detection by olfaction are increased when the scent marks 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:43.919 are elevated. So when you pee on an elevated vertical 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:46.879 object on the fire hydrant instead of just on the ground, 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:50.639 it tends to increase the size of the splatter area 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.000 and thus how easy it is to both see and 0:22:54.480 --> 0:22:58.280 smell the mark in the future. The other interesting things 0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:03.360 worth noting the ground has more other smells already within it, 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:08.520 so peeing on an elevated object helps isolate the message 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:11.600 of your pemail in order to increase the signal to 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:14.240 noise ratio. Kind of like how if you're going to 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:16.960 write a message on something with a magic marker, you 0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:20.479 would look for a blank, relatively blank space to write on, 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:23.119 not something that already had tons of different markings and 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:27.879 color variations on it. Also, two more things. Elevated marks 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:30.440 are closer to the nose height of other dogs. That's 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:34.840 just courtesy, you know. But then finally, elevated marks are 0:23:35.119 --> 0:23:38.560 visually conspicuous and can be seen at great distance, So 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:41.919 you kind of have a biological you can imagine like 0:23:41.960 --> 0:23:46.240 a communication culture among dogs where they can be wandering 0:23:46.320 --> 0:23:50.000 around around in an area wondering if there are any 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:52.639 good pe mail messages to read, and they see a 0:23:52.680 --> 0:23:56.800