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

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick and I'm Christian Seger, and our regular

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Speaker 1: host Robert Lamb is not with us today. He's off

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Speaker 1: chilling somewhere else. So Christian and I are flying solo.

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Speaker 1: This is going to be part two of a two

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Speaker 1: part episode on animal intelligence and cognition, specifically with regard

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Speaker 1: to a book that we read by the primatologist and

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Speaker 1: evolutionary cognitian. Would that be the terms? Yeah, I was

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how you would singularize that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: cosmetologist no. Uh, Franz Duval who wrote this book. Um,

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Speaker 1: are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? Right? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: So if you if you haven't, uh, we encourage you

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Speaker 1: to go listen to that other episode. Part one will

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Speaker 1: will lay the groundwork for this one that we're talking

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Speaker 1: about today, and within that episode mainly used of All's

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Speaker 1: work to talk about the history of how science has

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Speaker 1: looked at animal intelligence. Uh. And in this episode, we

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Speaker 1: find ourselves now in the present day, looking at a

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Speaker 1: field that dvol likes to call evolutionary cognition. Right, and

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Speaker 1: so this is sort of a synthesized field that has

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Speaker 1: come about more recently by combining the best parts of

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Speaker 1: previous ideas like that, you know, the comparative psychologists or

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Speaker 1: the behaviorists, these were the people who emphasized learning and

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Speaker 1: conditioned responses. And then the ethologists, the people who specialized

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Speaker 1: in studying animals in their natural habitats to see what

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Speaker 1: they're naturally inclined behaviors were. Yeah, and so to recap

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Speaker 1: very briefly from the last episode, Uh, he compares the

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Speaker 1: wall between studies of behaviorism and studies of ethology and

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Speaker 1: even now going into evolutionary cognition as similar to ideology,

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Speaker 1: and specifically he compares it to the ideology between science

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Speaker 1: and creationism. Wow. So that's saying that there's like a

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Speaker 1: pretty pretty hard stop in between them. It's not like

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Speaker 1: it's easy to argue from one position to the other. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: In fact, and I don't believe that he came up

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Speaker 1: with these categories, but this is within the book that

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Speaker 1: there are three types of players within this argument. Okay

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Speaker 1: about animal cognition. Yeah, and he refers to the first

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Speaker 1: as slayers, and slayers in this case are the people

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Speaker 1: who felt empowered by the human centric idea that we

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Speaker 1: are the center of the cosmos, and how could animals

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Speaker 1: possibly be intelligent? Who insist on human uniqueness? And I

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Speaker 1: want to talk more about this in a minute. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the other two are skeptics and the third group is proponents.

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Speaker 1: So the proponents obviously would be the people who are

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Speaker 1: in favor of the idea of animal cognition, saying, yeah,

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Speaker 1: animals are thinking, cognition is an idea that makes sense

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Speaker 1: with them. And the skeptics would be the ones who are, uh, skeptical.

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Speaker 1: They're reserving judgment. They're saying, I'm not sure yet, give

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Speaker 1: me more research. Yeah, how about you do a study

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Speaker 1: showing the X, Y, and Z that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: And Davol and I think most evolutionary cognitionists uh that

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Speaker 1: they would say the slayers are mostly gone nowadays, but

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Speaker 1: the skeptics and the proponents remain. And daval says he

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Speaker 1: really appreciates having the skeptics around because it makes for

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Speaker 1: better research. He himself is a proponent. He says, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think we can find clear evidence of animal cognition,

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Speaker 1: animal thinking, and strong animal intelligence. But it's good to

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Speaker 1: have skeptics forcing us to be honest and trying to

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Speaker 1: keep us on our toes. But evolutionary cognition is essentially

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Speaker 1: a blend of these two schools, right, Yeah, of behaviorism

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Speaker 1: in ethology or comparative psychology and ethology. And he sees

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Speaker 1: himself actually as being part of what he calls the

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Speaker 1: third generation of evolutionary cognition scientists. Yeah. So he says

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Speaker 1: that there were two generations before him. He's sort of,

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Speaker 1: you know, lucky that he he saw some one of

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Speaker 1: this this eological battle play out the wall, but that

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Speaker 1: it's mostly come down, uh, and that people are working

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Speaker 1: together now. So another one of the really interesting ideas

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Speaker 1: in this book is, uh, the way I would say

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Speaker 1: maybe it's one of the central claims of the book.

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Speaker 1: One of the central things that Devolve is driving at

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Speaker 1: is against claims of human uniqueness um and develop. For example,

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Speaker 1: one form of this, he uses this term, which is

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Speaker 1: gonna sound inflammatory to some people. He uses the term

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Speaker 1: neo creationism, which he says it's different than intelligent design,

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Speaker 1: which Devol just basically considers regular creationism under a scientific disguise.

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Speaker 1: But so if if you're not familiar, creationism is just

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Speaker 1: opposition to historical science to evolution, to geology and all

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Speaker 1: that stuff. It's the idea that the Earth was created,

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Speaker 1: you know, six thousand years ago or ten thousand years

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Speaker 1: ago or actually, I guess there are now also old

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Speaker 1: Earth creationists who think that the Earth is uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: billions of years old, but that he woman's were created

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Speaker 1: in some recent time frame. I always thought it was

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Speaker 1: only a hundred years old. I mean, were you there, No,

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Speaker 1: I was there a hundred years ago. It was I

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Speaker 1: was a different life, right, I was actually Charles Darwin.

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Speaker 1: Oh you were Yeah, weird. Charles Darwin was not here

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Speaker 1: one hundred years ago. But it's a little little known

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Speaker 1: fact that Charles Darwin actually faked his own death and

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Speaker 1: was me, I don't know where you're going with this,

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Speaker 1: but it's good. I don't know anither. Okay um? But yeah,

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Speaker 1: So what does he mean by neo creationism. Well, this

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Speaker 1: is within this mindset that he's attacking of human uniqueness.

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Speaker 1: So a neo creationist, according to Duval, would probably nominally

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Speaker 1: accept evolution as the biological mechanism for creating all life,

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Speaker 1: including humans, including human bodies, but implicitly sort of under

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Speaker 1: the table, it rejects evolution as the mechanism for creating

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Speaker 1: human minds. In other words, it's this implicit kind of

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Speaker 1: hidden belief. They wouldn't say this out loud, but they

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Speaker 1: act as if they believe that evolution stops at the

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Speaker 1: human head. You know, so they would say like, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, of course evolution has created all life on earth,

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Speaker 1: but you know, we will just never see that animals

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Speaker 1: have the kinds of mental capacities that humans do. They're

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Speaker 1: in a totally different, uh category. You know, here a

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Speaker 1: chimpanzee could never hope to come close to the mind

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Speaker 1: of a human. One example that gives in his book

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Speaker 1: is the primatologist Mark Howser, who apparently at some point

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Speaker 1: said there's probably more difference between the human and chimp

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Speaker 1: cognition than than between chimp and beetle cognition. Interesting, and

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Speaker 1: for d of all, that is a ridiculous statement. So

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Speaker 1: you know this is unrelated. But you know what this

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Speaker 1: makes me think of combining creationism with neo creationism. When

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Speaker 1: I was in Sunday school back in the day, I

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Speaker 1: once asked a question, will my pets go to heaven? Well,

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Speaker 1: they be in heaven with me. There's some different theological

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Speaker 1: viewpoints on this, and I was I was heavily reprimanded

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Speaker 1: that of course they would not. Why why would animals

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Speaker 1: go to heaven? They are not uh, and as intelligent,

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Speaker 1: they don't have souls like we do. So this is

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Speaker 1: the Descartes point of view. Really, animals are automo. I

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Speaker 1: didn't know it then. I was probably like, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: six years old or something, and I was traumatized by

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Speaker 1: the whole idea that like my the pets that I

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Speaker 1: loved were somehow less than me and this and therefore

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Speaker 1: did not deserve to live for eternity. Uh, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe that was the beginning of the end for me.

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Speaker 1: And when it came to just being active and organized religion. Well,

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Speaker 1: there are different theological viewpoints on this. This is I

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Speaker 1: think the the I don't know, the insoulment of animals

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Speaker 1: or whatever you would call it. There there there are

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Speaker 1: some things that maybe we should do an episode on that.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I would be kind of animal insulment theology. It's

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Speaker 1: sort of tangentially related. I'm putting us on a little

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Speaker 1: bit of a diversion, but but it's sort of the

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Speaker 1: same idea, right. Well, whether you're talking about the religious mindset,

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Speaker 1: or even the mindset of many philosophers and scientists who

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Speaker 1: are operating supposedly under secular principles. There is still this

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Speaker 1: strong tendency to say, no, no, no, humans are unique.

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Speaker 1: There's nothing like us. We are totally different, totally totally different,

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Speaker 1: and nothing else comes close. This is another one of

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Speaker 1: these ideas that I think Daval is coming with a

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Speaker 1: sword in both hands at and so he actually in

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Speaker 1: the book calls for a moratorium on human uniqueness claims,

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Speaker 1: at least for a few decades, given how miserably these claims,

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Speaker 1: he says, have performed in the past. So what does

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Speaker 1: he mean by that, Well, he discusses lots of examples

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Speaker 1: of intellectual traits that over the years have been proposed

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Speaker 1: as completely unique to humans. Examples be all kinds of things,

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Speaker 1: social organization, theory of mind. Theory of mind is the

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Speaker 1: idea that you can take the perspective mentally of another person.

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Speaker 1: So when I imagine what Christian could be thinking right now,

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Speaker 1: this theory of mind, and this heavily plays into what

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Speaker 1: Devol and others define as sort of the pillars of morality. Right,

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is one of those pillars. Will come

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Speaker 1: to that in ant Yeah. Yeah, they connect to the

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Speaker 1: idea of empathy, which is perspective taking, putting yourself in

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Speaker 1: somebody else's mindset or their position. But then another one.

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Speaker 1: Only humans can do mental time travel. Only they can

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Speaker 1: episodically recall the past or think about the future. Only

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Speaker 1: humans can recognize themselves in a mirror. Only humans can

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Speaker 1: display moral behavior and and treat others with fairness and mercy.

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Speaker 1: And in each case, observation of animal behavior followed by

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Speaker 1: controlled experiments has really started to undermine, and I would say,

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Speaker 1: in some cases completely demolish, the idea that these traits

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Speaker 1: are totally unique to humans and not found in any

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Speaker 1: other animals. Yeah. One of the examples he gives in

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Speaker 1: the book, which i I slightly referenced in our previous episode,

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Speaker 1: was the idea that animals couldn't poss a lea say

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Speaker 1: goodbye to one another. And yet he is observed in

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Speaker 1: experimental conditions the chimpanzees, in fact do go around and

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Speaker 1: say goodbye to one another in their own way from

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Speaker 1: within their social group before they know when they know

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Speaker 1: they're leaving the like compound that they're in. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: we can talk about a few more examples of of

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Speaker 1: these different types of animal intelligence. But I do want

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Speaker 1: to come back and say, I don't get the sense

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Speaker 1: in the book that he said he totally rejects the

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Speaker 1: possibility that humans are unique in any way. For example,

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Speaker 1: the one thing he does seem to suggest might be

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Speaker 1: unique about humans, so we don't really know for sure

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Speaker 1: yet might be unique is language. Language might be the

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Speaker 1: magic well of humanity. Like you know, many other animals

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Speaker 1: have peaks of specialization that are unique to them. Maybe

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Speaker 1: the one thing that might set us apart is our

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Speaker 1: flexible use of syntax. And you know, flexible syntax that

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Speaker 1: symbolic and communicates all different kinds of things that we

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Speaker 1: don't really see anything like this in other animals. There

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Speaker 1: are signals and call holes and basic communications, but nothing

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Speaker 1: that we've detected yet. That's like human language. That's a

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Speaker 1: whole another episode that could be something that we could

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Speaker 1: do as well. But yeah, the the definition of language

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Speaker 1: in human communication when you then apply it to various animals,

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Speaker 1: there are certain ground rules essentially that they have yet

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Speaker 1: to show us that they've achieved. But I think we

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Speaker 1: should learn from all of these other examples of things

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Speaker 1: we used to say, we're definitely unique to humans, and

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Speaker 1: then we found out maybe not so much. We should

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Speaker 1: be cautious about saying this about language, we might find

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Speaker 1: out differently. Yeah, I agree. And and the other thing

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Speaker 1: I would say here too, is that, you know, Devolve

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Speaker 1: would say, I think, I don't want to put words

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Speaker 1: in his mouth, but would probably say, yes, humans are unique,

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Speaker 1: but so are every other species. That's sort of the

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Speaker 1: point of his approach to the discipline. Right, It's almost like,

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Speaker 1: why would you say non human animals and saying uh

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Speaker 1: instead of saying non octopus animals? Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that like, each species brings its own unique umveld yeah,

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Speaker 1: umvelt the context to the situation, and therefore we have

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Speaker 1: something different to learn from all of them. That's what

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Speaker 1: he refers to as the magic. Well. Yeah, so there's

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Speaker 1: one quote I want to read from the book that

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Speaker 1: I think sort of encapsulates the thinking behind this big idea.

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Speaker 1: In the book of Going Against Human Uniqueness, claims the

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Speaker 1: idea that humans are you know, elite or a gap

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Speaker 1: above all other animals and uh. And the section goes

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Speaker 1: like this quote, if cognitions basic features derived from gradual

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Speaker 1: descent with modification so he's saying, if we evolved our brains,

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Speaker 1: the notions of leaps, bounds, and sparks are out of order.

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Speaker 1: Instead of a gap, we face a gently sloping beach

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Speaker 1: created by the steady pounding of millions of waves. Even

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Speaker 1: if human intellect is higher up on the beach, it

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Speaker 1: was shaped by the same forces battering the same or.

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Speaker 1: I found that passage both beautiful and I think I

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Speaker 1: very much agree with it. I mean, it may be

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Speaker 1: true that we're much higher up on the shore. I

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Speaker 1: guess it's up for debate how much higher along the

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Speaker 1: shore we're on, but it's not the case that we're

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Speaker 1: on a different land mass, right you know? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I agree. Okay, let's take a quick break, and when

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Speaker 1: we get back, we're gonna look at some examples of

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Speaker 1: these animals using intelligence and cognition. Okay, so we're back.

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Speaker 1: So what are some really good examples. We already talked

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Speaker 1: about the combination of mental time travel and chimpanzees having

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Speaker 1: the ability to say goodbye, But what what else? What

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Speaker 1: else have we seen? Well, I mean, so mental time

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Speaker 1: travel is something that you tend to assume is only

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Speaker 1: a human trait, right, Uh? It you think of animals

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Speaker 1: as existing in terms of what's in front of them,

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Speaker 1: what's going on right now? Are my needs right now?

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Speaker 1: And a dog can beg for a treat in anticipation

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Speaker 1: of a treat, So that is some future oriented behavior,

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Speaker 1: but it's begging because it's hungry. Now. Could a dog

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Speaker 1: plan for something it wanted to do tomorrow? That's the question.

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Speaker 1: Can can dogs think about the future in a distant

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Speaker 1: way and make plans that are not related to their

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Speaker 1: current needs? Not just dogs, obviously, any animals, And can

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Speaker 1: they remember episodes from their past that are not currently

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Speaker 1: relevant to what's going on to them. This is completely anecdotal,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know whether or not it backs up anything,

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Speaker 1: But here's what I think of when you say that

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Speaker 1: one of my dogs is a rescue and we had

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Speaker 1: a little bit of difficulty potty training her, getting her

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Speaker 1: to go outside because in her you know, whatever situation

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Speaker 1: she was in before we had her, she was clearly

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Speaker 1: going to the bathroom, either on concrete or indoors um.

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Speaker 1: And so, uh, it's interesting when I let her outside

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Speaker 1: side and I you know, she's she's gotten to the

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Speaker 1: point now or she knows going outside means going to

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Speaker 1: the bathroom, get my business done so that when I'm inside,

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Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about that. Right. But I

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Speaker 1: see her sometimes, especially at night, right before we go

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Speaker 1: to bed, she knows she's going to be in the

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Speaker 1: house for an extended period of time. I see what

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Speaker 1: I think. What I think is her making a choice

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Speaker 1: and saying, do I really need to go to the

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Speaker 1: bathroom that bad right now? Or do I want to

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Speaker 1: just stay inside and I'll deal with it tomorrow. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, is that I feel like I see Charlie

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Speaker 1: doing that same thing. Now. That may just be me

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Speaker 1: the dog owner projecting to um, but yeah, I see

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Speaker 1: like sometimes I feel like he's working out the pros

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Speaker 1: and cons of future behavior. Yeah, exactly right. She's like,

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Speaker 1: do I want to be inside and warm right now

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Speaker 1: and in my bed or do I want to go

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Speaker 1: outside and and you know, walk around in the dark

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Speaker 1: for five minutes and go to the bathroom? Do I

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Speaker 1: have to go that bad? Now? That's what it seems

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Speaker 1: like to me. Who knows what's actually going on inside

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Speaker 1: your head? Now, maybe you could actually come up with

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Speaker 1: some kind of test condition to try to tug it

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Speaker 1: these variables and see if you could isolate it. This

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Speaker 1: is possible. I don't know. This is what a lot

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Speaker 1: of these scientists do, you know, evolutionary uh, people working

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Speaker 1: in evolutionary cognition whatever the title for that is um.

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Speaker 1: They you know, they have to come up with experiments

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Speaker 1: to try to isolate these situations and see what can

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Speaker 1: what can we bring out, what can we tug on? Uh?

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Speaker 1: And so one interesting example they get cited in the book.

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Speaker 1: There tons of examples, and you know we can't cover

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Speaker 1: everything in the book, right, we also we want to

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Speaker 1: read the book. Yeah, And in fact, there's so many

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Speaker 1: examples in them there's no way that we could do

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Speaker 1: it justice without just reading the book out loud, do

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Speaker 1: you right? But here's one really interesting one dealing with

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Speaker 1: episodic memory and animals. So div all sites research by

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Speaker 1: people Nicky Clayton and Anthony Dickinson doing experiments with west

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Speaker 1: stern scrub jays. These are birds, Okay, now, Robert and

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Speaker 1: I actually in the past I've already done an episode

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Speaker 1: on bird intelligence, Corvid's in particular. Actually, many birds, but

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Speaker 1: especially birds like corvids and satasta forms have displayed some

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Speaker 1: very very interesting apparent higher order intelligence. Yeah, I thought

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Speaker 1: of you guys as I was reading the book, because

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Speaker 1: he talks about, uh, that example with I want to

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Speaker 1: say it was crows where they would put masks on

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Speaker 1: various people to see if the crows would recognize the

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Speaker 1: masks rather than the actual human face. Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if that was crows. There's definitely some kind

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Speaker 1: of Corvid uh so members of the Corvid family um

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Speaker 1: sort of family or group, members of the Corvid group

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Speaker 1: of animals, including like crows, ravens, magpies, jay's um. The

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Speaker 1: these animals are. They often display very strikingly intelligent behaviors,

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Speaker 1: stuff that we would not expect at all. And I

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Speaker 1: want to talk more about with regard to tool use

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Speaker 1: for example. But yeah, so scrub jays, there seems to

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Speaker 1: be evidence, based on this research that they are able

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Speaker 1: to remember what items they have put where and at

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Speaker 1: what time. So not just you can imagine instinctual behavior

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Speaker 1: just leading a jay to hide a piece of food

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Speaker 1: somewhere and then come back to it later, but can

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Speaker 1: they make decisions based on how long that piece of

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Speaker 1: food has been there and what type of piece of

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Speaker 1: food it was. This this study does seem to indicate

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Speaker 1: that might possibly be happening. So they got to hide

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Speaker 1: different food items, peanuts and waxworms. The jay's love waxworms.

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Speaker 1: The waxworms are much preferred to the peanuts. So four

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Speaker 1: hours after hiding this stuff, they went back to find

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Speaker 1: the food, and they look for the worms first. That

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Speaker 1: makes sense. They like their they like this food better.

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Speaker 1: Soworms probably go bad quicker than peanuts too. What do

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Speaker 1: you know? This is actually what the study plays on.

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Speaker 1: So four hours after hiding, they go back for the

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Speaker 1: worms first, But five days later, if they get to

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Speaker 1: go back and look for these pieces of food they hid,

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Speaker 1: they look for the nuts first, presumably in the understanding

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Speaker 1: that worms spoil over the course of several days. Now

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Speaker 1: there could be other stuff going on that because you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not total proof, but that's a very interesting result.

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Speaker 1: That's crazy the case. And uh and they determined them

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Speaker 1: not even like good enough at that. I go into

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Speaker 1: the fridge and my bread's got mold on it. Oh yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I have to make I bargained with myself whether or

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Speaker 1: not it's right. But I can't remember when we ordered

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Speaker 1: this Chinese food, right, yeah, exactly. But these corvids, man,

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Speaker 1: they've got a leg up on us. But so another

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Speaker 1: thing that the Devil reports is that apparently odor was

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Speaker 1: not a factor in this. They didn't just sniff it

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Speaker 1: out because the food had actually been removed. They're looking

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Speaker 1: where they remembered putting the nuts. Uh So, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: That's really interesting. And there are plenty of other studies

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Speaker 1: he talks about with different types of mental apparent mental

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Speaker 1: time travel going on in animals. One of the examples

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Speaker 1: that Devall talks about in his book is the idea

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Speaker 1: of a of a primate taking a bunch of straw

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Speaker 1: from its indoor enclosure to the outside at a time

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Speaker 1: when it didn't have to be outside. Was planning ahead

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Speaker 1: of time. The straw can keep it warm, it can

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Speaker 1: make a little straw nest outside, but it wasn't it

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Speaker 1: didn't need it at that moment. It's the equivalent of

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Speaker 1: like knowing that you would need to be in the bedroom,

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Speaker 1: you know, in the future tomorrow or something like that,

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Speaker 1: and taking a blanket in there and leaving it there

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Speaker 1: for when you come back. And if I remember correctly,

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Speaker 1: I think it should be noted that this primate had

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Speaker 1: a baby, didn't it, And that was part of it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so it was planning ahead of time, not just

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Speaker 1: for itself but for it's young. Yeah. So that's just

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Speaker 1: a couple of interesting examples of mental time travel. Their

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Speaker 1: tons more sided in the book. Um and that that

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Speaker 1: are evidence of both episod tootic memory and animals and

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Speaker 1: animals remembering what happened where and at what time in

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Speaker 1: the past, and animals planning for the future in some

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting or complex way. Another obvious one that

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Speaker 1: people used to say, you know what is man? Man

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Speaker 1: is the tool using animal animals? No, No, doctors as

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Speaker 1: did not have that much respect for man. Man is

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Speaker 1: a brute. What did he say? Dr? Dr? That's exactly

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Speaker 1: what's going through my head right. Um so yeah, so

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Speaker 1: another one would be tool used. So it used to

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Speaker 1: be assumed that, well, one thing that's really unique about

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Speaker 1: humans is that they make tools. This is just this

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Speaker 1: is exploded now. Well just this episode episode I pointed

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Speaker 1: out that we've got crabs that use anemonies as tools.

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Speaker 1: We have a whole episode about it. Yeah. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: it's crazy, Like this is one of those where I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's a bait a bole. It's not like

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Speaker 1: some people might argue with the mental time travel results

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Speaker 1: and say I don't know about these that you might

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Speaker 1: be interpreting him wrong. Okay, maybe, Uh not so with

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Speaker 1: tool use, I mean animals obviously used tools. Chimpanzees use

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Speaker 1: stones to crack nuts to get into nuts they couldn't

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Speaker 1: otherwise use. Uh. Sometimes they show very complex behaviors with

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Speaker 1: regard to how they gather these stones and nuts. Like

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Speaker 1: there's one anecdote in the book about a chimpanzee in

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Speaker 1: the wild. Believe it was either chimpanzee or binobo, but

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Speaker 1: I think it was a chimpanzee who was carrying a

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Speaker 1: large stone across a great distance and like routed, went

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Speaker 1: on a route to pick up some nuts on the

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Speaker 1: way while carrying the stone to the place where the

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Speaker 1: big flat stone was where you could pound the nuts

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Speaker 1: with the stone she was carrying. I mean that just

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Speaker 1: sounds like obvious uh tool used to me. Yeah, he

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Speaker 1: has a really good example of this, uh. In the book,

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Speaker 1: Gibbons were apparently originally thought of as being unintelligent because

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Speaker 1: they wouldn't use tools like sticks when they are placed

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Speaker 1: on the floor. Now, this is where the velt the

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Speaker 1: context of a gibbons life comes into play. Well, gibbons

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Speaker 1: hands are different from other primates that have really long

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Speaker 1: fingers because they swing from branches and other objects. It's

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Speaker 1: called bracky ation. They they're they're not they're not manipulators

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Speaker 1: to the same extent that like chimpanzees and humans are

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Speaker 1: there their swingers. Yeah, exactly. So what they found was sure,

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Speaker 1: if you put the sticks on the ground, they won't

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Speaker 1: pick them up because their hands aren't made to pick

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Speaker 1: things up off the ground. But if you suspend the sticks,

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Speaker 1: they will easily grab them and use them. So it's

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Speaker 1: just a matter of knowing about the species before you

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Speaker 1: start conducting these experiments. It's the m velt again. It's

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Speaker 1: the it's the idea that if you don't understand the animal,

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Speaker 1: you're very likely missing something crucial when you're testing it's intelligence. Likewise,

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Speaker 1: they did the same thing with elephants. They put sticks

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Speaker 1: on the ground when they wanted to see if elephants

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Speaker 1: would use these sticks. It turned out the elephants wouldn't

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Speaker 1: use sticks as tools because they pick things up with

427
00:24:08,600 --> 00:24:11,119
Speaker 1: their trunk and when they're picking up these sticks and

428
00:24:11,160 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 1: sticks are big enough that they're blocking their nasal passages,

429
00:24:14,440 --> 00:24:16,240
Speaker 1: So of course they wouldn't want to use that because

430
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:19,560
Speaker 1: their nasal passage is hugely important to them and surviving

431
00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: in the context that they live in. Uh. There's another

432
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,520
Speaker 1: really interesting thing about corvids again in tool use. I mean,

433
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:28,680
Speaker 1: Robert and I talked about this in our episode about

434
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: bird intelligence. But corvids have been seen not just to

435
00:24:32,480 --> 00:24:36,040
Speaker 1: use tools, so crows, you know, corvids, they will not

436
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:39,640
Speaker 1: just get a hook and use it, use the hook

437
00:24:39,720 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 1: to retrieve a piece of meat in a bucket out

438
00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:44,280
Speaker 1: of a tube, but they will do that, but they'll

439
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:47,520
Speaker 1: also make a hook. So they take a straight piece

440
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:50,159
Speaker 1: of wire and bend the end of it into a

441
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: hook shape. Which that that's a type of meta tool use.

442
00:24:54,359 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: That's a metacognition of understanding what type of tool you

443
00:24:57,640 --> 00:25:01,360
Speaker 1: need to use and then building the tool. Now I'm

444
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:06,800
Speaker 1: like imagining this horror movie of corvids using hooks to

445
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:10,399
Speaker 1: kill people. So like like maybe that's what what is it,

446
00:25:10,480 --> 00:25:13,200
Speaker 1: bird demic, Maybe that's bird demic career or something like that.

447
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:17,200
Speaker 1: But but like you remember that like the old like

448
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:20,399
Speaker 1: urban myth, I guess it is the hook that's like

449
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 1: often used as like a story to begin horror stories

450
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:27,359
Speaker 1: with the idea that like there's a prisoner on the loose,

451
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:29,400
Speaker 1: and you got a hook for a hand. And like

452
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,280
Speaker 1: the couples like making out in a car or something,

453
00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: they hear this on the radio and the mail goes

454
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: out looking to see about a noise. And then when

455
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,919
Speaker 1: the female exits the car, all she sees as a

456
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 1: hook hanging like scraping against the top of the car,

457
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:46,360
Speaker 1: hanging over the car. Right. I think you may more

458
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 1: of it the whole time, Frankenstein, that together from some

459
00:25:49,400 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: parts of different thing. But my version, my version is

460
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: going to be that it was actually birds the whole time.

461
00:25:56,480 --> 00:26:00,320
Speaker 1: There was a cord hook. Yeah. Well, I mean to me,

462
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 1: that is very interesting type of intelligence. I think that

463
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:06,280
Speaker 1: was Betty the crow who did that. Betty the crow

464
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: bend in the hooks. But uh, another interesting one is

465
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: the picture experiments. You remember about these where there would

466
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:15,760
Speaker 1: be like a picture of water and a piece of

467
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:19,119
Speaker 1: food floating in it. Oh. Yeah. Do animals understand that

468
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:22,320
Speaker 1: they can displace water by dropping stones into the water

469
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:25,879
Speaker 1: to float the food up to where they can reach it. Uh?

470
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:29,560
Speaker 1: And so there have been some experiments where crows did

471
00:26:29,680 --> 00:26:34,160
Speaker 1: show this they could displace water. But deval does add

472
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 1: a little caveat to that. He says, you know, they

473
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 1: had some kinds of pre training and like the tools

474
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: were right there available to them. He's even more proud

475
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:45,400
Speaker 1: of chimpanzees in water displacement tasks, where there's a thing

476
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: floating that they need to get in a narrow container

477
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 1: and they add water to the container to float it

478
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:53,080
Speaker 1: up to where they can reach it. Even mentions that

479
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: one female chimpanzee, when uh that he was working with,

480
00:26:56,600 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 1: when trying to do this this picture experiment, tried to

481
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:03,359
Speaker 1: pee into the tube. Well, you know, I guess that

482
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: whatever works works, uh. You know. The other thing about

483
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:10,880
Speaker 1: elephants is that people scientists at first thought that they

484
00:27:10,920 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: couldn't recognize themselves in mirrors. And you know why because

485
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: they were giving them a little teeny tiny human handheld

486
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 1: mirrors to try to recognize themselves in uh, and so

487
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:24,320
Speaker 1: the elephants could like basically all they would see, if

488
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 1: they could even see into it at all, was like

489
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,840
Speaker 1: their leg, right, like the entire side of their leg.

490
00:27:30,280 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: So scientists thought, well, clearly they can't recognize themselves. Then

491
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 1: then actually, one of I think it's one of Duval's students,

492
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:40,760
Speaker 1: came up with this idea. He put like, I think

493
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 1: they're eight foot by eight foot mirrors in a an

494
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 1: enclosure with an elephant. Bigger mirrors, Yeah, bigger mirrors for

495
00:27:47,840 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: bigger animals. Duh and bingo. The elephants like demonstrated the

496
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: ability to recognize themselves. This is yet another one of

497
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:57,120
Speaker 1: these things that cited in the book as an example

498
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,679
Speaker 1: of something people used to say, only humans can you know,

499
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 1: have self awareness? Uh, they can recognize themselves and mirrors.

500
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: Now there are more studies seeming to show and some

501
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: of the results, again you might question them. You might say,

502
00:28:08,359 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what's really going on here. That's fair

503
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 1: to question them. But there are plenty of results appearing

504
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:17,440
Speaker 1: to show animals recognize themselves in mirrors. Now that's limited

505
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:21,080
Speaker 1: to a smaller subset of animals, but like it's only

506
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: some of the great apes and maybe the magpie Eurasian

507
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: magpie um. But but they are very interesting. It's like

508
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:29,720
Speaker 1: where you will put a mark on a place on

509
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:33,120
Speaker 1: the animal where the animal can't see it themselves, and

510
00:28:33,160 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: then let them look at themselves in the mirror. Do

511
00:28:35,640 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 1: they do they try to investigate this mark or are

512
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: they just uninterested? Do they get that's them they're looking

513
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:44,800
Speaker 1: at in the mirror. And there's actually a much simpler

514
00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: version of this experiment. It's not even an experiment, it's

515
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: just something people observed about, for example, chimpanzees and elements

516
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: in the presence of mirrors. Is they look at their mouths.

517
00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 1: They like, open their mouth and look inside it in

518
00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: the mirror. I mean that that's almost like you don't

519
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: even have to do the experiment. You can tell that

520
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: they they know that the mirror is giving them visual

521
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,800
Speaker 1: access to something they could never see otherwise. And in fact,

522
00:29:10,120 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: I haven't read this study, but I believe Duval won

523
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:18,200
Speaker 1: an egg Nobel Prize for a study like this. Yeah,

524
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 1: he did involved chimpanzees looking at their own behinds with

525
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,760
Speaker 1: a mirror. Well, he did talk about chimpanzee is looking

526
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: at their own behinds in mirrors. But I think the

527
00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 1: study was actually about chimpanzees recognizing one another or some

528
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 1: type of I think it was chimpanzees, but it was

529
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: some type of primate could recognize one another from their butts. Yeah, okay,

530
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: So anyways, as many of you out there, no, we

531
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: cover the ig Nobels every year and there's a you know,

532
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:49,840
Speaker 1: usually a good dozen or so funny but illuminating studies

533
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: that are represented there, and this was one of them.

534
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: From is when I think he got the award. Yeah.

535
00:29:57,000 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: Other big things he talks about in the book that

536
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:02,320
Speaker 1: the maybe we won't even address now. But their idea

537
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 1: is about theory of mind. Can animals um? Can animals

538
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: take the perspective of another animal? And there's tons of

539
00:30:08,600 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: interesting research on that. The answer seems to me, I'm

540
00:30:11,400 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 1: fairly convinced many animals, Yes they can. They can take

541
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 1: the perspective of another They can imagine what somebody else

542
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:22,480
Speaker 1: is thinking, understand what they see. Uh, social organization. There's

543
00:30:22,520 --> 00:30:28,280
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff about primate hierarchies, things about moral behavior.

544
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:31,360
Speaker 1: This is a big one. Yeah. Actually, why don't we

545
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 1: take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk

546
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:44,120
Speaker 1: about examples of animal morality. Okay, we're back. So this

547
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: is actually a lot of the case studies that we

548
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: presented before. We're from other researchers. Devolve's main area is

549
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:56,000
Speaker 1: looking at animal morality, like animal empathy. Yeah, and so

550
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: his own work looks at this a lot with chimpanzees,

551
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: and for instance, his work looks at how they reconcile

552
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:06,120
Speaker 1: with one another after conflict. Apparently Bonobo's actually value their

553
00:31:06,120 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: relationships with one another and they see reconciliation as something

554
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: that they need to do to maintain those relationships. He defines,

555
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: and we we hinted at this at the beginning of episode.

556
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: Actually we should just mention he has a really good

557
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: insuccinct ted talk about this that you can check out

558
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: if it's yeah, it's wonderful. Um. But he he basically

559
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 1: looks at the essential pillars of morality as they stand

560
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: with us as human beings, right, and he defines it. Uh,

561
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 1: there's a drawing of literal like Greek Creek pillars. One

562
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: is reciprocity and fairness and the other is empathy and compassion. Right,

563
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: And so he's not saying that all of what morality

564
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:50,120
Speaker 1: is is defined by these two pillars, but I think

565
00:31:50,120 --> 00:31:53,040
Speaker 1: he's saying that these two pillars are essential. H it's

566
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:57,480
Speaker 1: building blocks. So fairness and compassion or reciprocity and empathy,

567
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 1: he used them sort of interchangeably. They're not all of

568
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: what morality is. There's more to morality, but they're the

569
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 1: necessary components of a morality. You can't have a morality

570
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:12,680
Speaker 1: without them. So an example that he uses is he

571
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: says that they showed chimps that even if one chimp

572
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:21,800
Speaker 1: wasn't hungry but another one was hungry, they would work

573
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: together to help each other get the food. Yeah, this

574
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: is a classic the rope pulling in tandem tests exactly. Yeah,

575
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:31,320
Speaker 1: And basically, like he shows a video of this that

576
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: like the one chimp that isn't that hungry, we'll kind

577
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,400
Speaker 1: of stop halfway through and the hungry chimp will pat

578
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: it on the back, kind of getting its attention. But

579
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 1: we should describe the test a little bit. So there's

580
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: two chimps behind bars prisoners. Yeah, uh, And there they

581
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 1: have access to ropes, and these ropes are attached to

582
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 1: a box that is too heavy for one chimp to

583
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,959
Speaker 1: pull by themselves, but two chimps together can move the box.

584
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 1: And the box has some food sitting on it, so

585
00:32:57,520 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: obviously they want to get it closer to the bars

586
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 1: so they can get the food. Now, if they work together,

587
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: they can they can get the box there. And if

588
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 1: they're both hungry, there's no problem here. They'll cooperate, they'll

589
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 1: get the thing there and they'll both take their food

590
00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: from the box. But as you were saying, what if

591
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 1: one of the chimps isn't hungry, what if it just

592
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 1: eight to its fill? Will it still help? The answer

593
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 1: is it doesn't necessarily naturally, but if the other chimp

594
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 1: sort of encourages it to help, it will pats it

595
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 1: on the back and basically says, hey, give me a

596
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: hand here, it'll help pull pull the box forward. And

597
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,720
Speaker 1: even in the example, the hungry chimp eats all of

598
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: the food, yeah, I think the I think the full

599
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: chimp took like one little piece. So in these examples,

600
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: Devol defines empathy as having two channels. There's the body channel,

601
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: and that's where we or animals maybe adopt the body

602
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: language of another person's emotions. And he says, this is

603
00:33:57,400 --> 00:33:59,400
Speaker 1: why we keep mammals in our homes, Right, this is

604
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: why we love cats and dogs as pets because they

605
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 1: have this kind of empathy. Right, if you're happy, your

606
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 1: doggle I don't know about you, but my dog gets

607
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:10,839
Speaker 1: you know what looks like a smile in his face

608
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 1: will start panting and jumping around something like that. Right.

609
00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:17,200
Speaker 1: Yawn contagion is a really good example of this, Like

610
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:21,640
Speaker 1: my yawn, Joe, my yawn or me even saying yawning

611
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 1: or like, we actually did a whole episode about yawning

612
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: and dogs on our other show, Brain Stuff. I think

613
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:31,799
Speaker 1: they do. I feel like Charlie catches my yawns. Yeah,

614
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:34,359
Speaker 1: I think it's totally possible dogs yawned for a lot

615
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 1: of reasons, so not just contagion, but yeah, um so

616
00:34:38,040 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 1: that's an example that we, you know, pick up on

617
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: visual cues from other human beings, but also animals pick

618
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 1: them up from us or other animals as well, and

619
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: that's part of their empathy. The second channel is the

620
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: cognitive channel, and this is where you can take the

621
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: perspective of somebody else, right, you imagine what it's like

622
00:34:57,880 --> 00:35:01,080
Speaker 1: to be them. So there's an another study that he

623
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: did on altruism with chimpanzees, and basically the question they're

624
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 1: getting at here was do these chimps care about the

625
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: welfare of other chimpanzees? Well they go out of their

626
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 1: way too, or even not all that far out of

627
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:15,640
Speaker 1: their way. Well they do something to make sure another

628
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: chimpanzee gets a piece of food if it has no

629
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 1: impact on them. Yeah. The way that they did this

630
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 1: was they they put tokens in the cage with the chimpanzees,

631
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: and I think like red red token is the selfish token,

632
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 1: and a green token is the pro social token. Right,

633
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: So if you give the caretaker a red token, you

634
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:34,839
Speaker 1: get a piece of food for yourself. If you give

635
00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:36,800
Speaker 1: him a green token, you get a piece of food,

636
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,359
Speaker 1: and another chimp gets a piece of food. Exactly either

637
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 1: way you get the food. But if you do the

638
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:45,240
Speaker 1: green token, everybody gets food. They found that the chimps

639
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 1: choose the pro social token more often unless there's a

640
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: situation between them that involves reciprocity. If there's like, if

641
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:56,799
Speaker 1: they they have some sort of situation, they've got to

642
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: be a fight earlier or something like that, then n

643
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 1: they'll they'll choose the selfish tokens. This is pretty interesting. Uh.

644
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: They also conducted a fairness study where they created inequity

645
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: between monkeys by giving some cucumbers and some grapes. Now,

646
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: what we need to define here is uh Daval actually

647
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:21,239
Speaker 1: says he just thinks of cucumbers as being mostly water. Obviously,

648
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: the monkeys like the grapes way more than the cucumbers,

649
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:28,040
Speaker 1: But they're perfectly fine getting a cucumber as a reward

650
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 1: as long as it's equal but if they're in cages

651
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:33,759
Speaker 1: next to one another, you get one monkey and you

652
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:36,800
Speaker 1: only give it cucumbers. And if you get start giving

653
00:36:36,800 --> 00:36:40,360
Speaker 1: grapes to the other monkey, the cucumber monkey gets upset.

654
00:36:40,480 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 1: They freak out. Yeah, and he he, you know, throw

655
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: the cucumber back at the handler. I guess right, demanding

656
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 1: a grape. Uh. And Duval says this is basically the

657
00:36:53,600 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: primate version of the Wall Street protests. I think this

658
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 1: talk was in two thousand twelve. Uh. And he describes

659
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:02,880
Speaker 1: going back to the conflict that we described in the

660
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: previous episode. This is a study that they received a

661
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: lot of flak four trying to put lie the idea

662
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:15,320
Speaker 1: of fairness to primates really angered a lot of scholars

663
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: in various disciplines, including economics. Yeah, well, well, I mean,

664
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:22,839
Speaker 1: I think the idea is that in economics there's this

665
00:37:22,880 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: idea of rationality. You know that people rationally maximize their

666
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 1: own benefit. Um, you know that they'll naturally go for

667
00:37:30,239 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: the option that makes the most sense and the most

668
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:34,760
Speaker 1: benefit to them. And it doesn't make sense to refuse

669
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: a small reward. Even if you just get a cucumber,

670
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: you should accept it. You shouldn't throw it. In the

671
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: face of the person who gave it to you, because

672
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 1: you didn't get the thing that somebody else got. But

673
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: that's just not what monkeys are. Like, i gotta say,

674
00:37:47,600 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: after reading his work and watching these videos and just

675
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:55,120
Speaker 1: being kind of immersed in this stuff, it's interesting how

676
00:37:55,239 --> 00:38:00,600
Speaker 1: much of primate behavior I'm noticing in myself and in

677
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:04,839
Speaker 1: other human beings around me, like as I'm just going

678
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 1: about my day to day. Now, Christian, here's the crucial question.

679
00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:10,960
Speaker 1: Are you more of a chimpanzee or more of a bobo.

680
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:17,080
Speaker 1: I'm probably more of a Benobo. And I'll tell you why,

681
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 1: because I think Binobo's play better into devolved idea of

682
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: what he calls evolved morality. Okay, and this is something

683
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna just say it. I'd like

684
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 1: to see a little bit more often from my fellow

685
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: human beings. Uh So, he says this is a combination

686
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:41,200
Speaker 1: of empathy and consolation, pro social tendencies, and reciprocity and fairness.

687
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,719
Speaker 1: And he says morality is obviously more than what he's

688
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: talking about here, but it would be impossible without these ingredients,

689
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:53,560
Speaker 1: these just very basic ingredients. Is what leads us to

690
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:57,080
Speaker 1: our quote unquote morality that we used to sort of

691
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:00,719
Speaker 1: lead our everyday social lives and disconnected from the main

692
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 1: book we've been talking about in these two episodes and

693
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: this Ted talk and the stuff we've addressed. He's written

694
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:10,359
Speaker 1: whole books on animal morality. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Alright, So

695
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:13,240
Speaker 1: that wraps up our discussion. But we got a chance

696
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 1: to talk to Dr duval um and so this is

697
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: our conversation with him. So Dr duval could you introduce yourself, Well,

698
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: let us know who you are and uh and a

699
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:35,239
Speaker 1: little bit about your background. I'm a biologist, but I

700
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: teach at Emory University in the psychology department. I also

701
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:41,920
Speaker 1: work at the Yuki's Primate Center, which is a very

702
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:45,560
Speaker 1: big primate centnel that we have here in Atlanta. And um,

703
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 1: my origin is I'm from the Netherlands, but I came

704
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: already more than thirty years ago. I'm a legal immigrant

705
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 1: one or thirty years ago to the US. And uh,

706
00:39:57,960 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 1: I live on work here. I saw that you actually

707
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 1: you just got your citizenship a couple of years ago. Yeah, congratulations,

708
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:08,319
Speaker 1: thank you. Uh So in the episode, Christian and I

709
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 1: already discussed a few examples of animal cognitive capacities that

710
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: you cite in the book. For example, we talked a

711
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: little bit about the cooperative rope pulling experiments, uh and

712
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:22,080
Speaker 1: for example about some apparent examples of mental time travel.

713
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: But I thought one good way to start off our

714
00:40:24,080 --> 00:40:27,799
Speaker 1: conversation might be to just ask you for your subjective

715
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:31,239
Speaker 1: impression of some of the most striking examples of a

716
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: paramid of apparent animal cognition that you've witnessed over the years.

717
00:40:35,680 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: What sticks out in your mind the most. Yeah, I

718
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:43,439
Speaker 1: think there's many discoveries recently. For example, the tool used

719
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: by crows is a very remarkable and it's not just

720
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:49,880
Speaker 1: that they used tool. The crows make tools so to

721
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:53,240
Speaker 1: transform things to make it more suitable as a tool.

722
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:56,520
Speaker 1: You have the studies of mirror self recognition, which I

723
00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 1: always find fascinating. You have the studies of thinking forward

724
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,720
Speaker 1: and thinking backwards. So they do experiments with apes, for example,

725
00:41:03,719 --> 00:41:06,120
Speaker 1: where you you give them a tool that they cannot

726
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:08,720
Speaker 1: use immediately. They can only use it the next morning

727
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:12,120
Speaker 1: to get food. And so then you wonder will they

728
00:41:12,160 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 1: hang onto the tool, Will they keep it with them

729
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 1: because they know that they're going to use it the

730
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:19,600
Speaker 1: next day, So they're kind of planning studies that are

731
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: being done, and and that kind of things is also

732
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:24,600
Speaker 1: being done in the field with field workers following apes

733
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:27,880
Speaker 1: around and see if they collect their tools long before

734
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,799
Speaker 1: they start using them, which they actually do. And and

735
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: so I think there's an enormous range of studies that

736
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: have to do with planning and self awareness and so

737
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 1: on and and and some of these studies they get

738
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: actually quite close to what you could call consciousness, even

739
00:41:43,239 --> 00:41:47,239
Speaker 1: though no one knows exactly what consciousness is. Um uh.

740
00:41:47,960 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that that the animals do

741
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,400
Speaker 1: that we cannot do without being conscious of it, and

742
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:55,879
Speaker 1: so we wonder if maybe the animals are conscious. Also

743
00:41:56,920 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: interesting is so is a follow up from that? Do

744
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 1: do you think that consciousness is likely to be closely

745
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 1: associated with the idea of mental time travel, That if

746
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:08,719
Speaker 1: you don't just exist in the here and now, but

747
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: you're able to think about the future and think about

748
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:13,560
Speaker 1: the past. Do you think that that's crucial to the

749
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 1: idea of consciousness. I think it's one way it can

750
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:22,400
Speaker 1: manifest itself. So, for example, they do studies here also

751
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: at Emory, we do studies on the meta cognition. Do

752
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: you know what you know. So you can set up

753
00:42:27,960 --> 00:42:31,400
Speaker 1: an experiment with monkeys, for example, where they can choose

754
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,719
Speaker 1: one option that they have learned the solution to and

755
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: another option where they are not sure if they know

756
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:40,680
Speaker 1: the solution, And so you can see do they know

757
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 1: what kind of knowledge they have a quiet it's called

758
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:47,279
Speaker 1: meta cognition, and we humans, we really cannot do that

759
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: without being conscious of the whole process and of our knowledge.

760
00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,839
Speaker 1: And so then people wonder is a monkey capable because

761
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,720
Speaker 1: the monkeys are capable of doing this, are they capable

762
00:42:57,719 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: of doing that without consciousness? Or they do it in

763
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 1: the exactly the same way as we And so that's

764
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: the sort of the issues that people address. And it's

765
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 1: not just in relation to time travel. I think it's

766
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:11,799
Speaker 1: in relation to all sorts of capacities. Interesting, So the

767
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:13,839
Speaker 1: idea you're talking about there would be that, like, if

768
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 1: you're able to judge your own confidence in how well

769
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:19,919
Speaker 1: you know something, that shows that you must be able

770
00:43:19,960 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: to think about your own thoughts. Yeah. So for example,

771
00:43:23,719 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 1: if I if I ask in my class here at Emory,

772
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 1: who knows who knows the answer to this? And and

773
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:34,040
Speaker 1: there's five hands going up, So there's going to be

774
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:37,040
Speaker 1: five people who have some confidence that they know the

775
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: answer to a question, which means that they have knowledge

776
00:43:40,120 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: of their own knowledge. And UM, Yeah, for us, that's

777
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:47,040
Speaker 1: very hard to do without being unconscious of the process,

778
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: and so we think that some animals have that capacity too. Interesting.

779
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:53,919
Speaker 1: So one more thing I wanted to ask you about

780
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:56,799
Speaker 1: was um. In the book, you discuss how we keep

781
00:43:56,840 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 1: finding interesting clues of intelligent cognition and malls that are

782
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:05,040
Speaker 1: more and more separate from us phylogenetically, they're separated from

783
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 1: us by more and more years of divergent evolution. And

784
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:10,759
Speaker 1: then you make a prediction. You say in the book

785
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:14,840
Speaker 1: quote every cognitive capacity that we discover is going to

786
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:19,440
Speaker 1: be older and more widespread than we initially thought. Can

787
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: you explain a little bit about what this prediction means

788
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 1: and what what justifies your thinking on this subject. Well,

789
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:29,400
Speaker 1: this is something that has happened all the time, and

790
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 1: so and so. For example of these tool use it's

791
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:35,720
Speaker 1: maybe the clearest example is that we initially started testing

792
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: tools with the apes, and the apes are very good

793
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 1: with the tools, and since we are we humans are

794
00:44:41,400 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 1: very good with tools. Also, we're very impressed, most impressed

795
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:47,560
Speaker 1: by capacities that relate to what we can do. And

796
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:50,279
Speaker 1: so the apes they not only make tools, they plan

797
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 1: tools and so on. But then very soon thereafter we've

798
00:44:56,080 --> 00:45:00,840
Speaker 1: got these studies on other species like the birds, so

799
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:03,760
Speaker 1: so so, first came the monkeys. The monkeys are different

800
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:06,080
Speaker 1: from from apes. As you may know, monkeys have tails

801
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:10,239
Speaker 1: and are smaller monkeys in then put in monkeys in

802
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:12,839
Speaker 1: the field. They were using stones to crack nuts, which

803
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,719
Speaker 1: no one had expected them to do, but they were

804
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 1: doing that and they have been tested in captivity also.

805
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 1: And then came the new Caledonian crows, who who modify

806
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:29,279
Speaker 1: branches to make them more suitable to extract grubs from travises.

807
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 1: And so they are not just use tools. These crows,

808
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:34,880
Speaker 1: they make tools. And they started testing the crows on

809
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things in the lab and and

810
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:40,279
Speaker 1: the crows have a lot of the same capacities as

811
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:43,400
Speaker 1: the apes do. Then we got to use in the

812
00:45:43,480 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 1: octopus as octopus movies. If you look them up, you

813
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,840
Speaker 1: see them using coconut shells to help hide in We

814
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:55,960
Speaker 1: got recently a finding of alligators using tools. So the

815
00:45:56,000 --> 00:46:00,040
Speaker 1: alligators they live near heron colonies, and the herons for

816
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:04,319
Speaker 1: their nests they need branches and they scoop up these

817
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: branches and sometimes a branch may be sitting on an

818
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 1: alligator and that's the moment that the alligator can maybe

819
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 1: grab the heron and eat it. And so but they

820
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:17,640
Speaker 1: found is that some alligators they were bringing branches from

821
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:22,320
Speaker 1: distances to the pond um, probably in order to lure

822
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 1: herons close to them. And so so now we have

823
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 1: tool used in so many different species. And so this

824
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:32,960
Speaker 1: has happened all the time. It has happened with mirror

825
00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: self recognition, has happened with these time travel studies that

826
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: we talked about. Um, it's almost anything you can think of.

827
00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: It's first usually discovered in the apes, and then we

828
00:46:43,600 --> 00:46:46,080
Speaker 1: moved to the dogs, and to the dolphins and to

829
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: the birds, and it turns out that the capacity is

830
00:46:49,320 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 1: probably present in many of them. So I have a

831
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 1: follow up on this from a recent study that we

832
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:58,359
Speaker 1: actually did an episode on. And I'm curious if you've

833
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: heard about this the hom Pom crab or the boxer

834
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: crab and how it uses cnemones as tools. Have you

835
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: heard about this this study? So type yeah exactly so,

836
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:18,319
Speaker 1: so real quick summary of it. They hold anemonies in

837
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,319
Speaker 1: each of their claws, and they're able to use the

838
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: anemones to scoop up food and bring the food to

839
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:28,040
Speaker 1: their mouths. But the most recent study, and this is

840
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:31,439
Speaker 1: where it gets really crazy, is that if they only

841
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:35,000
Speaker 1: have one anemony, they will rip it in half in

842
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:37,880
Speaker 1: just the right way to cause it to reproduce and

843
00:47:37,960 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 1: clone itself. So they have two of them. So we

844
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:45,400
Speaker 1: did a whole episode on this study, and I'm just curious.

845
00:47:45,560 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you don't have, you know, a strong

846
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:50,319
Speaker 1: opinion on it since you just heard about it, But

847
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: do you think it's possible that this is a case

848
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: of cognitive tool use or do you think maybe it's

849
00:47:55,000 --> 00:47:58,960
Speaker 1: just like an invertebrate instinct that these crabs are performing

850
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: with these anemonies. No, it's it sounds like two us.

851
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,080
Speaker 1: Of course, it's tools. We usually say that an animal

852
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: uses an inanimate object to do something, right, in this case,

853
00:48:09,560 --> 00:48:13,359
Speaker 1: they're using another animal to do something this but it

854
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:15,759
Speaker 1: is an extension of the body and that's in the

855
00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: sense of tool use. Yeah, h yeah, it's pretty fascinating.

856
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: I recommend you check it out. Um, So I have

857
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 1: a question just like pulling out and and let's look

858
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:29,280
Speaker 1: at the sort of broad discipline in academics of these studies.

859
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:32,319
Speaker 1: How do you think we're going to look back on

860
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:36,319
Speaker 1: studies of animal intelligence in a hundred and fifty years.

861
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 1: Are we going to regard today's methodologies with the same

862
00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:42,680
Speaker 1: sort of predominant view that we currently look at past

863
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,160
Speaker 1: research or do you think that we've come to a

864
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: point where current research is now going to be a

865
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: stepping stone towards a better understanding of animal intelligence? Yeah?

866
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:54,440
Speaker 1: I think a hundred fifty years from now we probably

867
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 1: know a lot more about the neuroscience behind all of this.

868
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 1: So at a moment, the neuroscientists, they have still very

869
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,359
Speaker 1: simplistic views of animals, and they test animals in very

870
00:49:06,400 --> 00:49:10,280
Speaker 1: simplistic ways like activity levels or do they do behavior

871
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:14,759
Speaker 1: A or behavior b um, And so the neuroscientists need

872
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 1: to learn more about animal intelligence and animal behavior and

873
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:22,799
Speaker 1: then they can maybe help us solve the issue of

874
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: what what what makes the crows used tools in the

875
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: same way as that the apes use tools? Is do

876
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:31,880
Speaker 1: they have similar areas in the brain that are similarly

877
00:49:31,880 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: specialized or do they have ways of solving this problem

878
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 1: in a totally different way than the apes do? And

879
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 1: so we don't know that actually, so we usually assume

880
00:49:41,440 --> 00:49:43,960
Speaker 1: that I have related species, Like let's say you use

881
00:49:44,000 --> 00:49:46,680
Speaker 1: the tool and I use the tool, and and the

882
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 1: chimpanzee uses the tool. We assume that we are using

883
00:49:49,719 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 1: the brain in the same way to do these to

884
00:49:51,760 --> 00:49:54,799
Speaker 1: solve these issues. But when it comes to birds or

885
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 1: other species, we don't know that. And so I think

886
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 1: the neuroscientists are going to help us clarify what is

887
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,960
Speaker 1: going on in the brain when when these problems are

888
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 1: being solved. And yes, we will then look at a

889
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:09,359
Speaker 1: hundred fifty years from now, we will look at what

890
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:14,240
Speaker 1: we did do now as interesting pioneering stuff, but without

891
00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: knowing the mechanisms behind it. Really so, so we are

892
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,240
Speaker 1: in a different phase now because in the last century

893
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,839
Speaker 1: we were not even allowed to talk about animal intelligence

894
00:50:23,880 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: and animal cognition. We can only talk about instincts or

895
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: simple learning processes. We were not allowed to use the

896
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:33,880
Speaker 1: word cognition for animals, and so that has all changed.

897
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 1: We now have a whole new generation of scientists who

898
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 1: are much less reluctant than who uses this kind of terminology. Yeah,

899
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 1: we might have some questions for you about the influence

900
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:47,360
Speaker 1: of ethology and behaviorism in a little bit, But I

901
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:49,800
Speaker 1: wanted to ask a question first. So you talk in

902
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:51,920
Speaker 1: the book, and I really like this point you made

903
00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:55,320
Speaker 1: about our tendency to want to look at an animal

904
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 1: behavior and then say what does that mean for us?

905
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:00,760
Speaker 1: What does that mean about what it's like to be human?

906
00:51:00,800 --> 00:51:03,480
Speaker 1: And I think you sort of discourage that view, but

907
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: I I am sorry, I do want to ask a

908
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 1: question about that anyway. So, UM, I wonder what you

909
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:14,960
Speaker 1: think about the legitimacy of drawing conclusions about human evolution

910
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:20,200
Speaker 1: by studying the behavior of existing other primates today. For example,

911
00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:22,479
Speaker 1: just one thing that I've read about is the work

912
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 1: of a couple of primatologists who study savannah chimpanzees in

913
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 1: Senegal and specifically how these chimpanzees behave in the presence

914
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:34,319
Speaker 1: of wildfire, like how how much they seem to understand

915
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: fire and to predict its movements. And in this particular case,

916
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,080
Speaker 1: I guess the question would be, can we use these

917
00:51:41,120 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: observations about Savannah chimpanzees to generate anything useful for theories

918
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 1: about how our ancestors might have behaved in the presence

919
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:51,799
Speaker 1: of fire before we were before we were able to

920
00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:55,120
Speaker 1: use fire as a tool or is this a misapplication

921
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:59,920
Speaker 1: of these observations about other primates. Well, it's an interesting

922
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 1: example that you give, because I remember a book by

923
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:07,759
Speaker 1: an anthropologist of maybe thirty years ago who claimed that

924
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:11,800
Speaker 1: fire and our control over fire is what made us human,

925
00:52:11,920 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 1: and that how where everything got started. And other animals

926
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 1: are afraid of fire or they get burned in the fire.

927
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:20,640
Speaker 1: But we brought it under control, and look at how

928
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: important that was. And then of course we had we

929
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,560
Speaker 1: had here in Atlanta, we had Consi the Bonobo, who

930
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:31,840
Speaker 1: would roast marshmallows in a fire and would poke the

931
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 1: fire and was not afraid of fire at all, which

932
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:38,760
Speaker 1: was the first indicator that actually a fear of fire

933
00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: is not necessarily inborn and can be overcome. And now

934
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: we have these observations of chimps using fire for their

935
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:48,560
Speaker 1: own advantages. They're not making a fire and they're not

936
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:51,719
Speaker 1: having a fireplace or something, but they wait for a

937
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:54,520
Speaker 1: spontaneous fire and they're not afraid of it, and they

938
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 1: use it for their own purposes and they know how

939
00:52:57,480 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 1: to step around it and so on. And think what

940
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:02,719
Speaker 1: it what? It is interesting to see that kind of

941
00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 1: things because it's debunks certain arguments. There's always these claims

942
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:09,720
Speaker 1: of human uniqueness that are always going around. Only humans

943
00:53:09,719 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: can do this, only humans can do that, and we

944
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:14,839
Speaker 1: primate always just we're always happy to show that these

945
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:18,239
Speaker 1: claims are wrong because we feel that we are primates

946
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 1: and we are not fundamentally different from other primates, and

947
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 1: and this confirms that kind of idea. So I have

948
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:28,960
Speaker 1: a question for you, uh that it's a it's slightly political,

949
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:33,160
Speaker 1: and after reading some some interviews with you previously, I've

950
00:53:33,640 --> 00:53:36,919
Speaker 1: gotten the impression that you have applied your previous work

951
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: to politics. So your research has mainly focused on empathy

952
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:45,440
Speaker 1: and animal cognition, and I'd love to hear your perspective

953
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: on how empathy, morality, and reciprocity are playing out on

954
00:53:50,120 --> 00:53:53,880
Speaker 1: a larger scale with human beings and our current climate

955
00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: in the United States. You've mentioned before that a lot

956
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:01,319
Speaker 1: of human politics mirror primate politics. I'm typically thinking of

957
00:54:01,320 --> 00:54:04,759
Speaker 1: what you call the cognitive channel of empathy and how

958
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:08,920
Speaker 1: are how are we currently at taking the perspective of

959
00:54:08,960 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: somebody else. Yeah, I think empathy remains a very important capacity,

960
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:16,520
Speaker 1: even though we we now have certain scientists who say

961
00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:19,000
Speaker 1: empathy is not what's going to solve the problems in

962
00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 1: the world, which is probably true. But um, for example,

963
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:26,480
Speaker 1: the abolishment of slavery in this country was was partly

964
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:31,040
Speaker 1: an act of empathy. A Lincoln literally said that he

965
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 1: was boughted by seeing slaves and chains and and so

966
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:37,880
Speaker 1: that's an empathic reaction. And I think empathy is always

967
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:40,000
Speaker 1: sort of in the background of all the debates, the

968
00:54:40,040 --> 00:54:43,840
Speaker 1: political debates, the debate about healthcare, for example, do we

969
00:54:43,960 --> 00:54:46,800
Speaker 1: care about the health of others, even people who cannot

970
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:50,280
Speaker 1: really pay for the healthcare that we need to provide, Um,

971
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:53,760
Speaker 1: that's a that's a question of empathy also, so and

972
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:56,600
Speaker 1: and and for example, the reaction now to the immigration

973
00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 1: crisis is also we empathize with people who want to

974
00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 1: come in and so on. So there's always empathy is

975
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:04,440
Speaker 1: always in the background of these debates. They're not going

976
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:08,480
Speaker 1: to provide the final solution necessarily on on how we

977
00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:12,160
Speaker 1: should handle these things. It's not necessarily the only thing

978
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:15,399
Speaker 1: that we need to consider, obviously, but it's always part

979
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:17,480
Speaker 1: of the debates, and I think there's plenty of empathy

980
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:21,200
Speaker 1: to go around. I've always felt that in two thousand

981
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:25,399
Speaker 1: and eight, when we had the financial crisis, that all

982
00:55:25,440 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: of a sudden, empathy became a more important topic. It

983
00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: was almost as if after two thousand and eight, we

984
00:55:30,680 --> 00:55:36,160
Speaker 1: realized that completely unfet up market mechanism is not gonna

985
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,359
Speaker 1: provide a solution to a society. Society is much more

986
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:43,760
Speaker 1: than uh than market mechanisms. And I think we started

987
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:47,080
Speaker 1: to realize that very clearly after two thousand eight, and

988
00:55:47,080 --> 00:55:49,799
Speaker 1: an empathy became a major issue in Obama made it

989
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 1: a major word that he would use on occasion. And

990
00:55:52,719 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: I think since that time the also science got involved,

991
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:58,719
Speaker 1: and there's now a lot of neuroscience on empathy, and

992
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 1: there's my kind of servaces of empathy and animals and

993
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:04,480
Speaker 1: so on, and I think also the scientists got interested

994
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:08,040
Speaker 1: in the topic. Yeah, I have a lot of sympathy

995
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 1: for that view, and I think I can definitely see

996
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:14,440
Speaker 1: how what you call perspective taking is kind of crucial

997
00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:17,960
Speaker 1: to being able to live as a moral being. You know,

998
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 1: you have to understand the suffering of others in order

999
00:56:20,400 --> 00:56:23,400
Speaker 1: to try to prevent it. But I think you alluded

1000
00:56:23,440 --> 00:56:26,359
Speaker 1: to this in your answer. I was interested to ask

1001
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 1: you about these scientists you you I think alluded to,

1002
00:56:30,080 --> 00:56:32,359
Speaker 1: who are coming out against empathy. The one I know about.

1003
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:36,200
Speaker 1: For example, is the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, who is

1004
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:38,920
Speaker 1: arguing that empathy is in fact not the best basis

1005
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:41,719
Speaker 1: for morality, that it can I think. He says it

1006
00:56:41,760 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 1: can impair rational thinking because it forces you to sort

1007
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,799
Speaker 1: of be emotional about single cases, where in fact there

1008
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,800
Speaker 1: are sort of large, abstract problems that actually hurt more people,

1009
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: but they're harder to empathize with because you can't picture

1010
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,799
Speaker 1: a single person being hurt by them in in such

1011
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:01,360
Speaker 1: an easy way. Um. I was just wondering what you

1012
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:06,680
Speaker 1: thought about that. Yeah, I think, um uh, it is

1013
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:09,560
Speaker 1: true that empathy is biased. So empathy is more for

1014
00:57:09,760 --> 00:57:12,240
Speaker 1: individuals that are close to you and your family members.

1015
00:57:12,719 --> 00:57:15,799
Speaker 1: But you know, we absolutely need that. If let's say

1016
00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:20,480
Speaker 1: I would I would empathize equally with everyone in the world.

1017
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:24,320
Speaker 1: First of all, I would have no life, would be

1018
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:27,480
Speaker 1: a very hard life to have. But also I might

1019
00:57:27,520 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: neglect my own children, so to speak, which no one

1020
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:32,960
Speaker 1: wants me to do. And so the fact that empathy

1021
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:35,240
Speaker 1: is biased, it's not a bad thing. That's what evolution

1022
00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 1: designed it for, is as a biased system. And what

1023
00:57:38,480 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 1: Paul Blum is sort of doing is the throwing out

1024
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:43,480
Speaker 1: the baby with the bathwater. I think we need absolutely

1025
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:47,680
Speaker 1: empathy and compassion and and our whole moral system is

1026
00:57:47,720 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 1: based on empathy, but it expands it. That's true. That's

1027
00:57:51,360 --> 00:57:53,480
Speaker 1: in that sense it is correct. You need to expand it.

1028
00:57:53,520 --> 00:57:57,200
Speaker 1: You cannot just stay with that very biased and very

1029
00:57:57,240 --> 00:58:01,000
Speaker 1: parochial mechanism that evolution designed for us. You need to

1030
00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 1: go beyond it. And I think we're trying to do

1031
00:58:03,480 --> 00:58:06,760
Speaker 1: that in our moral systems. Absolutely, maybe we need empathy

1032
00:58:06,800 --> 00:58:10,400
Speaker 1: plus sort of the Yeah, so for example, we empathize

1033
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:14,280
Speaker 1: with animals. And so for example, the agricultural industry, the

1034
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:18,440
Speaker 1: way they treat animals, I'm very unhappy about that. And um,

1035
00:58:19,320 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 1: that's also an empathy reaction where we say, well, what

1036
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: they're doing is wrong. Um, And that's based on on

1037
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 1: my empathy for animals. And so we we have this

1038
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: kind of expanded capacity which is not just for our

1039
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,280
Speaker 1: family members and friends, and we're capable of empathizing this

1040
00:58:34,480 --> 00:58:37,880
Speaker 1: individuals who are quite different from us or even different species.

1041
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:42,480
Speaker 1: So you mentioned about our treatment of animals. One thing

1042
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:45,880
Speaker 1: I wonder is if you think that uh study of

1043
00:58:45,920 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 1: animal cognition has moral implications, like do we have more

1044
00:58:50,240 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 1: moral responsibilities toward animals that show more evidence of cognition

1045
00:58:55,720 --> 00:58:58,440
Speaker 1: or does that not really change the picture of how

1046
00:58:58,480 --> 00:59:01,919
Speaker 1: we should treat animals. I think I think it has

1047
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: done that. If you look at how we now, for example,

1048
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:08,480
Speaker 1: how we look at the killer wheels in captivity, or

1049
00:59:08,560 --> 00:59:12,480
Speaker 1: dolphins in captivity, or elephants and circuses, how the circuses

1050
00:59:12,520 --> 00:59:15,960
Speaker 1: are closing as a result of this um and I

1051
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:18,800
Speaker 1: think this is all under the influence of the sort

1052
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:21,720
Speaker 1: of signs that we do on animal cognition. And in

1053
00:59:21,800 --> 00:59:25,280
Speaker 1: my own career, for example, I worked on simpanzees, and

1054
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:29,080
Speaker 1: chimpanzees are not being used in biomedical studies anymore, and

1055
00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:31,520
Speaker 1: I h has declared them off limits for that kind

1056
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: of research, which is partly based on the sort of

1057
00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: research that we do. And so yes, it does have

1058
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:40,160
Speaker 1: moral implications. It's going to affect even more, I think

1059
00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:44,600
Speaker 1: the way we treat animals um and in the end,

1060
00:59:45,120 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 1: the big elephant in the room is I think farm animals.

1061
00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:52,439
Speaker 1: Because the numbers of animals that are that are used

1062
00:59:52,480 --> 00:59:55,400
Speaker 1: for food are much bigger than all the other numbers

1063
00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: taken together. So the farm animals are going to be next.

1064
00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:01,440
Speaker 1: And I think, and that also happening people are getting

1065
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:03,760
Speaker 1: more worried about how we tweet them and what we

1066
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:08,160
Speaker 1: do with them along these lines. I'm curious. You know,

1067
01:00:08,600 --> 01:00:11,880
Speaker 1: your most recent book is all about the discipline of

1068
01:00:11,920 --> 01:00:16,080
Speaker 1: science and how it understands animal intelligence, and I'm curious

1069
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:19,120
Speaker 1: where you think that's currently at you. You describe the

1070
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:21,400
Speaker 1: two schools of thought in your book that have dominated

1071
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:26,560
Speaker 1: the last century and more, the influence of behaviorism and ethology.

1072
01:00:26,600 --> 01:00:30,640
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, have they totally given way to evolutionary

1073
01:00:30,680 --> 01:00:33,919
Speaker 1: cognition as you describe it, or is there are there

1074
01:00:33,960 --> 01:00:38,400
Speaker 1: some remnants left. No, they are integrated into it. So

1075
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 1: the behaviorists is basically skin arians, but a very dominant

1076
01:00:43,920 --> 01:00:47,160
Speaker 1: school here in the US, which basically says that everything

1077
01:00:47,200 --> 01:00:50,880
Speaker 1: animals do is learned by simple rewards and punishment and

1078
01:00:51,080 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 1: conditioning and a lot of animal behavior. Of course, is

1079
01:00:55,320 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 1: that they were not wrong on that a lot of

1080
01:00:57,680 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 1: animal behavior is learned, but it's so we use everything,

1081
01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:04,120
Speaker 1: and so they didn't allow us to speak of emotions

1082
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:07,160
Speaker 1: or of cognition. They didn't like anything that related to

1083
01:01:07,160 --> 01:01:10,200
Speaker 1: the inner life of animals. And then you have the eatologists.

1084
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 1: I'm trained as an eatologist. Ethologists were more interested in

1085
01:01:14,400 --> 01:01:18,000
Speaker 1: naturalistic behavior and so that was more like the instinct

1086
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:21,840
Speaker 1: side of animals. It was very strongly developed in Europe.

1087
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:24,200
Speaker 1: And what we have now in this new field of

1088
01:01:24,280 --> 01:01:28,280
Speaker 1: animal cognition or evolutionary cognition, but we have now in

1089
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,880
Speaker 1: that field is a sort of combination of these two.

1090
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:35,120
Speaker 1: So we use the experimental techniques of the behaviorists and

1091
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:38,400
Speaker 1: the skin arians, we use the observational techniques of the

1092
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:41,920
Speaker 1: etologists and the concepts from both of them, and we

1093
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:44,480
Speaker 1: combine that. But we combine that with a much more

1094
01:01:44,520 --> 01:01:47,920
Speaker 1: open spirit about what animals can do and and and

1095
01:01:47,960 --> 01:01:50,880
Speaker 1: how they mentally operate. And we're not so we're looked

1096
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,360
Speaker 1: at anymore to speak of the emotions of animals or

1097
01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:56,160
Speaker 1: the cognition of animals as we used to be. And

1098
01:01:56,200 --> 01:01:59,040
Speaker 1: so these these two schools have not disappeared, they have

1099
01:01:59,120 --> 01:02:02,040
Speaker 1: sort of been eaten up by the new fields and

1100
01:02:02,160 --> 01:02:06,320
Speaker 1: the integrated into it. So one subject that you talk

1101
01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:08,560
Speaker 1: about in the book that I found very interesting was

1102
01:02:08,640 --> 01:02:10,760
Speaker 1: this idea I think I think you phrased it as

1103
01:02:10,920 --> 01:02:14,880
Speaker 1: critical anthropomorphism, uh, And I was wondering if you could

1104
01:02:14,880 --> 01:02:18,360
Speaker 1: explain a little bit about this concept, why you prefer

1105
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:20,840
Speaker 1: it to maybe what you might call I don't know

1106
01:02:20,880 --> 01:02:25,080
Speaker 1: more gullible or credulous anthropomorphism, and then this opposite position

1107
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:32,360
Speaker 1: that you call nentropo denial. So anthropomorphism is usually what

1108
01:02:32,520 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 1: gets thrown at us if we say that animals are,

1109
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:38,360
Speaker 1: for example, jealous, or they want this, or they want that,

1110
01:02:38,480 --> 01:02:43,320
Speaker 1: and because intentions and emotions were taboo and so then

1111
01:02:43,360 --> 01:02:47,560
Speaker 1: people would say, well, you're very anthropomorphic about these animals. Uh.

1112
01:02:47,680 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 1: And I don't necessarily agree with that, especially not with

1113
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:54,920
Speaker 1: the great apes, because they are literally anthropomorphic in the

1114
01:02:54,960 --> 01:02:58,280
Speaker 1: sense that they are like humans. And and so to

1115
01:02:58,440 --> 01:03:01,640
Speaker 1: use the same terminology for when Chim's kiss and kiss

1116
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 1: and embrace each other have to a fight, to call

1117
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:08,040
Speaker 1: that a reconciliation as I as I have done, people

1118
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 1: would say, you have to call that a mouse the

1119
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:14,080
Speaker 1: mouse kiss post conflict kiss or something. So they didn't

1120
01:03:14,120 --> 01:03:17,520
Speaker 1: like the anthropomorphic terminology, even though my assumption is that

1121
01:03:17,600 --> 01:03:21,640
Speaker 1: if if Jim's do something similar to us under similar circumstances,

1122
01:03:21,680 --> 01:03:23,760
Speaker 1: you have to give it the same label. So I'm

1123
01:03:23,800 --> 01:03:27,240
Speaker 1: not so afraid of anthropomorphism. But it is true that

1124
01:03:27,440 --> 01:03:32,080
Speaker 1: some people who don't know animals very well they throw

1125
01:03:32,200 --> 01:03:35,200
Speaker 1: labels at them that that we who work with these

1126
01:03:35,200 --> 01:03:38,640
Speaker 1: animals are are a bit scared of. And so if,

1127
01:03:38,960 --> 01:03:42,320
Speaker 1: for example, you let's say you go to a show

1128
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:45,120
Speaker 1: with your dog and your dog wins the show, and

1129
01:03:45,320 --> 01:03:49,440
Speaker 1: you say, my dog is proud, I'm sort of skeptical

1130
01:03:49,480 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 1: about that. I'm not sure that the dog has a

1131
01:03:51,240 --> 01:03:54,560
Speaker 1: concept of the show and has a concept of what

1132
01:03:54,560 --> 01:03:57,040
Speaker 1: what we're looking for in the show and why he

1133
01:03:57,080 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: gets the ribbon. I'm not sure that the dog knows

1134
01:03:59,720 --> 01:04:02,200
Speaker 1: all these things. The dog may know that you're giving

1135
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: attention and you're giving goodies, Well, that's something that a

1136
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:10,240
Speaker 1: dog can understand. So we shouldn't exaggerate in our interpretations

1137
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,440
Speaker 1: of animal behavior, and people often do that. But we

1138
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:17,320
Speaker 1: should certainly be able to use certain concepts, especially things

1139
01:04:17,360 --> 01:04:21,800
Speaker 1: that we have quantified and observed frequently and maybe done

1140
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:27,120
Speaker 1: some experiments on, like reconciliation or cooperation or jealousy or

1141
01:04:27,120 --> 01:04:30,800
Speaker 1: whatever things that we can test. Maybe we certainly should

1142
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:34,200
Speaker 1: be able to use that kind of terminology. I'd like

1143
01:04:34,280 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: to hear your perspective on the differences between writing for

1144
01:04:38,640 --> 01:04:42,600
Speaker 1: an academic audience versus writing for a popular one. Especially

1145
01:04:42,640 --> 01:04:45,080
Speaker 1: love that you choose to do your own illustrations in

1146
01:04:45,160 --> 01:04:48,960
Speaker 1: your books. Uh and you seem to enjoy writing for

1147
01:04:49,000 --> 01:04:52,320
Speaker 1: both audiences. So I'm curious how you balance that, both

1148
01:04:52,400 --> 01:04:57,320
Speaker 1: professionally and creatively. Yeah, you do need to balance it.

1149
01:04:57,360 --> 01:05:00,640
Speaker 1: I knew. For example, I still know this Matt Morris,

1150
01:05:00,680 --> 01:05:05,400
Speaker 1: who was a very popular writer in biology and um

1151
01:05:05,480 --> 01:05:09,600
Speaker 1: he used to be a scientist. He has a PhD

1152
01:05:09,680 --> 01:05:12,000
Speaker 1: in all of this, and then he became a popular author,

1153
01:05:12,720 --> 01:05:16,600
Speaker 1: and very soon thereafter, like five years later, people didn't

1154
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:18,840
Speaker 1: take him seriously anymore. They would say, oh, he's just

1155
01:05:18,880 --> 01:05:22,160
Speaker 1: a popular wiser. We don't need to pay attention to him.

1156
01:05:22,200 --> 01:05:25,880
Speaker 1: He's a vulgarizer and so on. And so I've learned

1157
01:05:25,880 --> 01:05:29,520
Speaker 1: a lesson from that is that if you're gonna popularize,

1158
01:05:29,560 --> 01:05:32,080
Speaker 1: you still need to keep doing your signs, otherwise people

1159
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:34,600
Speaker 1: are not going to take you seriously anymore. And so

1160
01:05:34,640 --> 01:05:38,280
Speaker 1: I've always had a sort of two track career. I

1161
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:42,280
Speaker 1: did my signs, and I've written many scientific articles, and

1162
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:45,120
Speaker 1: I did my popular books, which I do usually in

1163
01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:47,760
Speaker 1: the evenings and in the weekends, which is quite separate

1164
01:05:47,800 --> 01:05:52,160
Speaker 1: from our work, although all our work is in there basically,

1165
01:05:52,640 --> 01:05:55,200
Speaker 1: so so I always done these things sort of separately,

1166
01:05:55,360 --> 01:05:58,360
Speaker 1: and I find writing books is a lot of fun

1167
01:05:59,080 --> 01:06:02,000
Speaker 1: because I'm more free to say what I want to

1168
01:06:02,040 --> 01:06:05,120
Speaker 1: say than in a scientific article, where you're very constrained

1169
01:06:05,480 --> 01:06:07,760
Speaker 1: and you stay as close as possible to the data

1170
01:06:07,800 --> 01:06:10,240
Speaker 1: that you have collected. And in the booking you can

1171
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:12,200
Speaker 1: you can dwell to lot of you can talk about

1172
01:06:12,200 --> 01:06:15,440
Speaker 1: other topics. You can talk about the politics in Washington

1173
01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:19,000
Speaker 1: if you want, or you can talk about morality or religion,

1174
01:06:19,480 --> 01:06:22,160
Speaker 1: and so you can. You can go far beyond the

1175
01:06:22,280 --> 01:06:25,160
Speaker 1: sort of data that you have collected at the risk

1176
01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:28,160
Speaker 1: of buttering you up too much. I really really enjoyed

1177
01:06:28,160 --> 01:06:30,200
Speaker 1: your writing style in this book. I think you have

1178
01:06:30,280 --> 01:06:33,080
Speaker 1: a great talent for popular writing, and so I hope

1179
01:06:33,120 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: you continue doing it. Yeah. I I write, of course,

1180
01:06:36,400 --> 01:06:38,560
Speaker 1: not in my native language, and I always think that

1181
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:42,520
Speaker 1: in a way it's it's a disadvantage because I'm sometimes

1182
01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:45,480
Speaker 1: really jealous if I read let's say, Robert Sapolski, who

1183
01:06:45,520 --> 01:06:48,320
Speaker 1: is a primatologist and American primatology, and I think, well,

1184
01:06:48,520 --> 01:06:51,800
Speaker 1: if I could write like this, I'm very impressed by.

1185
01:06:51,960 --> 01:06:54,800
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, by being not a native speaker,

1186
01:06:55,440 --> 01:06:59,280
Speaker 1: I simplify things, and so so I don't make very convoluted,

1187
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:02,200
Speaker 1: very complex sentences with a lot of alternative words and

1188
01:07:02,200 --> 01:07:05,160
Speaker 1: it's and synonyms and stuff like that, because my knowledge

1189
01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:07,560
Speaker 1: is more limited, and that makes it maybe for the

1190
01:07:07,600 --> 01:07:10,440
Speaker 1: read us easier because I have shorter sentences and and

1191
01:07:10,720 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: easier sentences. I just appreciate how clear everything is in

1192
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:17,560
Speaker 1: the book, how clear it is what you think, how

1193
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: clear the examples you describe are. So I think you're

1194
01:07:21,120 --> 01:07:25,560
Speaker 1: doing great work on that front. Okay, thanks, Um, I've

1195
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:29,280
Speaker 1: got another question, So if this maybe has a follow

1196
01:07:29,360 --> 01:07:33,320
Speaker 1: up that's more specific too. But if there's one specific

1197
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:38,120
Speaker 1: misconception about animal intelligence that you think is very common

1198
01:07:38,160 --> 01:07:40,840
Speaker 1: and that you could instantly snap your fingers incorrect in

1199
01:07:40,920 --> 01:07:43,480
Speaker 1: everybody's minds, what what would it be? What does everybody

1200
01:07:43,520 --> 01:07:47,760
Speaker 1: get wrong? Well, one common one is that people think

1201
01:07:47,760 --> 01:07:51,520
Speaker 1: that animals live in the present purely, and we have

1202
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:55,400
Speaker 1: now a lot of evidence that they think ahead, and

1203
01:07:55,440 --> 01:07:58,160
Speaker 1: not just the apes, but does rap studies on these

1204
01:07:58,240 --> 01:08:01,280
Speaker 1: kind of things. Also, that they can think ahead, and

1205
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:04,640
Speaker 1: that they can think back to specific events in the past.

1206
01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:09,680
Speaker 1: So that's one misconception I think that people have. Another

1207
01:08:09,720 --> 01:08:12,440
Speaker 1: one that they have is that everything in nature is

1208
01:08:12,600 --> 01:08:16,439
Speaker 1: cut throat and it's harsh, and they have this view

1209
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:20,519
Speaker 1: of nature as dog eat dog, which which is not

1210
01:08:20,640 --> 01:08:24,360
Speaker 1: completely untrue of course. I mean, I'm looking here, I'm

1211
01:08:24,400 --> 01:08:27,639
Speaker 1: sitting at Emory Campus and I see the hawks flying by,

1212
01:08:28,040 --> 01:08:30,320
Speaker 1: the red tailed hawks who are hunting for squirrels, and

1213
01:08:30,320 --> 01:08:32,880
Speaker 1: so yeah, that is dog eat dog is right there

1214
01:08:32,880 --> 01:08:36,320
Speaker 1: in front of me. Um. But there's also a lot

1215
01:08:36,360 --> 01:08:39,080
Speaker 1: of cooperation in the animal kingdom. There's lots of animals

1216
01:08:39,120 --> 01:08:43,000
Speaker 1: who survived by cooperating, and so they have empathy for

1217
01:08:43,040 --> 01:08:47,000
Speaker 1: each other's they help each other, They altruistic, sometimes they

1218
01:08:47,000 --> 01:08:49,639
Speaker 1: get things back for it. It's not you know, it's

1219
01:08:49,720 --> 01:08:53,439
Speaker 1: just as a human society, we are often kind to

1220
01:08:53,520 --> 01:08:55,919
Speaker 1: each other. But it's not as if that doesn't pay itself.

1221
01:08:56,360 --> 01:08:58,839
Speaker 1: So so that's how we are set up as a system,

1222
01:08:59,120 --> 01:09:02,360
Speaker 1: and that's how many animals are set up. Uh. As

1223
01:09:02,360 --> 01:09:05,160
Speaker 1: I follow up to this, your answer to the specific

1224
01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:07,120
Speaker 1: might be the same as your answer to the general.

1225
01:09:07,200 --> 01:09:10,120
Speaker 1: But what do you also think is the most common

1226
01:09:10,160 --> 01:09:13,680
Speaker 1: and pernicious misunderstanding people have about the great apes like

1227
01:09:13,800 --> 01:09:21,439
Speaker 1: chimpanzees and binobo's. Yeah, I think people often don't know

1228
01:09:21,520 --> 01:09:25,240
Speaker 1: how close we are to them, so they they you know,

1229
01:09:25,320 --> 01:09:28,040
Speaker 1: the first time apes came to the London Zoo, which

1230
01:09:28,080 --> 01:09:32,919
Speaker 1: was in in in the nineteenth century, people were shocked.

1231
01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:37,360
Speaker 1: They were totally shocked they saw these apes, and so

1232
01:09:37,439 --> 01:09:39,840
Speaker 1: they had this feeling, if this is an animal, what

1233
01:09:39,840 --> 01:09:42,680
Speaker 1: what am I? So by seeing the apes, they all

1234
01:09:42,720 --> 01:09:46,000
Speaker 1: of a sudden realized how close they were to them.

1235
01:09:46,040 --> 01:09:48,439
Speaker 1: And we have now, so this has war enough now

1236
01:09:48,520 --> 01:09:51,680
Speaker 1: and people are sort of maintaining their distance. And when

1237
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:53,919
Speaker 1: they go to see the gorillas at the zoo in Atlanta,

1238
01:09:54,000 --> 01:09:57,160
Speaker 1: they may laugh at the gorillas um as as if

1239
01:09:57,160 --> 01:09:59,880
Speaker 1: they're funny, but so so they sort of tried to

1240
01:10:00,080 --> 01:10:04,400
Speaker 1: laugh of that close connection that we immediately see. But

1241
01:10:04,479 --> 01:10:08,240
Speaker 1: people don't fully realize how close we are to the apes. So,

1242
01:10:08,280 --> 01:10:13,840
Speaker 1: for example, the distance between me and a chimpanzee in

1243
01:10:14,000 --> 01:10:17,559
Speaker 1: genetic terms, is very similar to the distance between an

1244
01:10:17,560 --> 01:10:21,519
Speaker 1: African and an Asian elephant. The African and Asian elephants

1245
01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:24,759
Speaker 1: are quite different. They both we call them both elephants,

1246
01:10:24,720 --> 01:10:27,519
Speaker 1: So why don't we call both me and the apes apes?

1247
01:10:28,400 --> 01:10:30,599
Speaker 1: But we don't do that, so so for we make

1248
01:10:30,600 --> 01:10:34,320
Speaker 1: a sort of exception for ourselves. But we are genetically

1249
01:10:34,400 --> 01:10:38,839
Speaker 1: extremely close to the apes were basically apes. It's it's funny,

1250
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:41,439
Speaker 1: I have to say, you know, researching your work for

1251
01:10:41,479 --> 01:10:44,240
Speaker 1: the last couple of days. The after effect that I

1252
01:10:44,280 --> 01:10:47,880
Speaker 1: took away was how much more I'm noticing primate behavior

1253
01:10:48,000 --> 01:10:53,360
Speaker 1: now in human beings. Uh? Yeah. You you comment in

1254
01:10:53,400 --> 01:10:57,120
Speaker 1: the book uh several times about the way that humans

1255
01:10:57,120 --> 01:11:00,519
Speaker 1: are so often scandalized by realizing how as they are

1256
01:11:01,240 --> 01:11:03,439
Speaker 1: to the other apes. Like, there's a story I think

1257
01:11:03,479 --> 01:11:06,960
Speaker 1: you tell about. It might be apocryphal, but the story

1258
01:11:07,000 --> 01:11:10,680
Speaker 1: about the apes in the London Zoo being very civilized

1259
01:11:10,720 --> 01:11:13,439
Speaker 1: when they consumed tea and this this made the crowds

1260
01:11:13,520 --> 01:11:17,639
Speaker 1: very uncomfortable. Yeah, because for for the Brits, of course,

1261
01:11:17,760 --> 01:11:22,040
Speaker 1: drinking tea is the the peak of civilization, right, And

1262
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 1: and so when the apes at the London Zoo got

1263
01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:27,479
Speaker 1: very good at drinking tea and holding the cups and

1264
01:11:27,520 --> 01:11:30,439
Speaker 1: all of that, people sort of felt threatened by it.

1265
01:11:30,960 --> 01:11:33,599
Speaker 1: And and that's why the London Zoo retrained the apes.

1266
01:11:34,320 --> 01:11:36,479
Speaker 1: They retrained them to make lots of errors and throw

1267
01:11:36,520 --> 01:11:38,559
Speaker 1: the cups around and bring them and stuff like that,

1268
01:11:38,760 --> 01:11:41,679
Speaker 1: because that's what people actually wanted to see. They want

1269
01:11:41,680 --> 01:11:45,080
Speaker 1: to they want to to keep keep their distance going. Well,

1270
01:11:45,120 --> 01:11:48,439
Speaker 1: this is my last question for you. Every year on

1271
01:11:48,479 --> 01:11:52,080
Speaker 1: the show, we we cover the ignoble prizes on the podcast.

1272
01:11:52,800 --> 01:11:56,360
Speaker 1: You are our first guest who has actually won the award,

1273
01:11:56,680 --> 01:12:01,720
Speaker 1: and I would love to know what the experience was like, Well,

1274
01:12:01,760 --> 01:12:03,800
Speaker 1: do you want to know why I got it for? Well,

1275
01:12:03,840 --> 01:12:05,920
Speaker 1: we know what you got it for. We and we

1276
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:07,840
Speaker 1: did mention it on the podcast, but you should you

1277
01:12:07,840 --> 01:12:10,400
Speaker 1: should go ahead and say that yourself. Yeah. Yeah. We

1278
01:12:10,400 --> 01:12:12,519
Speaker 1: we did a study. We We've done many studies on

1279
01:12:12,560 --> 01:12:15,519
Speaker 1: face recognition and chimpanzees. So you should you show them

1280
01:12:15,520 --> 01:12:17,640
Speaker 1: on a computer screen, you show them faces and can

1281
01:12:17,680 --> 01:12:20,240
Speaker 1: they recognize them and can they connect one face with

1282
01:12:20,280 --> 01:12:23,200
Speaker 1: another and someone? And in the process of that, we

1283
01:12:23,200 --> 01:12:27,040
Speaker 1: we also throw in some behinds of chimpanzees and we

1284
01:12:27,160 --> 01:12:29,639
Speaker 1: found that actually they're very good with behinds as well,

1285
01:12:29,680 --> 01:12:34,160
Speaker 1: and so then we um we had these screens with

1286
01:12:34,280 --> 01:12:37,320
Speaker 1: butts on them and faces on them, and we demonstrated

1287
01:12:37,360 --> 01:12:41,960
Speaker 1: that chimple seas recognize each other by the butt uh.

1288
01:12:42,120 --> 01:12:44,920
Speaker 1: And they can only do this this task with chimps

1289
01:12:44,960 --> 01:12:47,760
Speaker 1: that they know. If you do if you show them,

1290
01:12:48,160 --> 01:12:50,280
Speaker 1: if you show them faces and butts of chimps that

1291
01:12:50,280 --> 01:12:52,760
Speaker 1: they have never seen before, they cannot connected to. But

1292
01:12:52,920 --> 01:12:54,880
Speaker 1: with the ones that they know, they connect the face

1293
01:12:54,960 --> 01:12:58,280
Speaker 1: with the behind and and so we wrote a paper

1294
01:12:58,320 --> 01:13:01,840
Speaker 1: and the title of us Face and Behind, and I

1295
01:13:01,880 --> 01:13:04,519
Speaker 1: got an Ignoble Price and went to Harvard to get

1296
01:13:05,120 --> 01:13:09,520
Speaker 1: the award, which was really it's like a circus there.

1297
01:13:09,080 --> 01:13:14,519
Speaker 1: So we've seen video in the ceremony. Yeah, yeah, and

1298
01:13:14,520 --> 01:13:17,760
Speaker 1: and and it's actually actual Nobel Prize winners who hand

1299
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:22,599
Speaker 1: out the Ignoble price. And and that's also where I

1300
01:13:22,680 --> 01:13:27,320
Speaker 1: met I met some fellow our these and these were

1301
01:13:27,360 --> 01:13:29,960
Speaker 1: people who had gotten the price because they had demonstrated

1302
01:13:30,000 --> 01:13:32,519
Speaker 1: brain activity in a dead fish. I thought this was

1303
01:13:32,560 --> 01:13:34,639
Speaker 1: so great. They had they had put the dead fish

1304
01:13:34,680 --> 01:13:38,880
Speaker 1: in the brain scanner, and with the usual calculations that

1305
01:13:38,920 --> 01:13:41,360
Speaker 1: they made, the demonstrated there was brain activity, which of

1306
01:13:41,360 --> 01:13:45,519
Speaker 1: course is an impossibility. So they showed that that what

1307
01:13:45,720 --> 01:13:48,840
Speaker 1: we usually do when we calculate activity in the brain

1308
01:13:48,880 --> 01:13:51,000
Speaker 1: that was actually wrong. So it was a very important

1309
01:13:51,040 --> 01:13:53,479
Speaker 1: paper in a way. But they told me how much

1310
01:13:53,520 --> 01:13:55,720
Speaker 1: trouble they had publishing it because there was a lot

1311
01:13:55,720 --> 01:13:58,479
Speaker 1: of resistance to it. I think we've actually discussed that

1312
01:13:58,520 --> 01:14:00,479
Speaker 1: paper on the podcast before. I think was a dead

1313
01:14:00,560 --> 01:14:03,840
Speaker 1: salmon and the it sort of was a reductio ad

1314
01:14:03,880 --> 01:14:08,800
Speaker 1: absurdom of some of the f m R I techniques. Yeah, well,

1315
01:14:08,840 --> 01:14:11,439
Speaker 1: thank you so much for participating. And uh yeah, like

1316
01:14:11,520 --> 01:14:13,439
Speaker 1: we said, we we really loved your book and we

1317
01:14:13,600 --> 01:14:16,360
Speaker 1: recommend that all of you out there listening now go

1318
01:14:16,439 --> 01:14:18,400
Speaker 1: pick up a copy if you can, because I think

1319
01:14:18,479 --> 01:14:22,760
Speaker 1: it's it's great science writing and it's really fascinating. Okay,

1320
01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:33,559
Speaker 1: thank you. So that ends our two part series here

1321
01:14:33,680 --> 01:14:38,639
Speaker 1: on animal intelligence in the possibility of morality, empathy, maybe

1322
01:14:38,680 --> 01:14:41,880
Speaker 1: ethics and animals and are we smart enough to know

1323
01:14:41,920 --> 01:14:44,559
Speaker 1: how smart animals are? And like we said at the beginning,

1324
01:14:45,240 --> 01:14:51,720
Speaker 1: the answer seems to be yes, maybe. So let us

1325
01:14:51,720 --> 01:14:54,160
Speaker 1: know what you think. What kind of examples have you

1326
01:14:54,320 --> 01:15:00,600
Speaker 1: seen of animal morality or just evolved cognition within the

1327
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:03,000
Speaker 1: animals in your everyday life? Do you have examples that

1328
01:15:03,040 --> 01:15:06,080
Speaker 1: you could give us that maybe it could be experiments

1329
01:15:06,120 --> 01:15:08,520
Speaker 1: in the future. Or do you think animals are automata

1330
01:15:08,800 --> 01:15:12,560
Speaker 1: or do you think humans are automata? Oh, that's fascinating.

1331
01:15:12,640 --> 01:15:15,200
Speaker 1: We should we really need to delve into that. That's

1332
01:15:15,200 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 1: a good one. Am I a robot? I don't know,

1333
01:15:18,280 --> 01:15:20,800
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not conscious. Where can you tell us

1334
01:15:20,800 --> 01:15:25,320
Speaker 1: these things? Well, we're all over social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,

1335
01:15:25,360 --> 01:15:28,400
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Instagram is a great place to see pictures

1336
01:15:28,439 --> 01:15:31,719
Speaker 1: of us and determine whether or not where robots or not. Uh,

1337
01:15:31,479 --> 01:15:34,280
Speaker 1: they really wouldn't be able to tell. Maybe not. Yeah,

1338
01:15:34,320 --> 01:15:36,320
Speaker 1: it depends on if our flesh had been pulled away

1339
01:15:36,320 --> 01:15:40,360
Speaker 1: from our skin Tyrrell Corp. Yeah, there you go. Uh. Also,

1340
01:15:40,680 --> 01:15:43,280
Speaker 1: you could always visit stuff to Blow your Mind dot com,

1341
01:15:43,280 --> 01:15:45,240
Speaker 1: which is a great place to check up on all

1342
01:15:45,320 --> 01:15:48,439
Speaker 1: the latest blog posts, podcast episodes. Go check out our

1343
01:15:48,479 --> 01:15:52,200
Speaker 1: podcast archive to get all the old episodes videos. There's

1344
01:15:52,240 --> 01:15:54,560
Speaker 1: probably some other stuff on their weird Robert does a

1345
01:15:54,560 --> 01:15:59,040
Speaker 1: great post about space music, monsters, all that everything we

1346
01:15:59,200 --> 01:16:01,599
Speaker 1: do is. And of course, if you want to get

1347
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:04,599
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly to give us feedback about

1348
01:16:04,600 --> 01:16:07,320
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, or to request topics for

1349
01:16:07,360 --> 01:16:10,080
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hi, you can email

1350
01:16:10,160 --> 01:16:12,479
Speaker 1: us as always at blow the Mind at how stuff

1351
01:16:12,479 --> 01:16:24,880
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this in thousands of

1352
01:16:24,880 --> 01:16:33,320
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Remember