Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature, future production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the one thing that separates man from animal tools. Wait, no, primates,
Speaker 1: dolphins and birds and other animals use tools. Let's see,
Speaker 1: Oh I know, makeup? Wait, bearded vultures they roll around
Speaker 1: in red soil to give themselves blush. Okay, alright, economics,
Speaker 1: that's got to be a human only kind of thing,
Speaker 1: or is it? That's right? Today we're talking about whether
Speaker 1: animals could have money before you shake down your local squirrel.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about dollars or butt coin or ethereum
Speaker 1: or whatever, but whether animals could have a currency, make
Speaker 1: trades and understand when they're getting griffed it. Discover this
Speaker 1: more as we answer the age old question. You can
Speaker 1: have an invisible hand, but what about an invisible fall.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is professor of economics at Collegio Carlo Alberto, who,
Speaker 1: coincidental is also my husband, which is pure coincidence. No
Speaker 1: nepotism here, folks, welcome Dr Brett McCauley. Hey, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me so I think that sometimes people think of
Speaker 1: economics as simply money math and you know, just counting dollars,
Speaker 1: proticting the stocks, stocks and bonds, stocks and bonds. But
Speaker 1: a lot of it is about studying human behavior and psychology. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. I'd say just about all of economics is
Speaker 1: about studying human behavior. And so, of course we're most
Speaker 1: well known US economists and the popular imagination as people
Speaker 1: who do comment on and on prices and stocks and
Speaker 1: so forth. But but really, what what at least does
Speaker 1: academic research economists do is is study all all kinds
Speaker 1: of human behavior, and we study it from a particular perspective.
Speaker 1: We we like to use quantitative models and econometrics and statistics.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so economists asked questions that often relate
Speaker 1: to public policy or human behavior. So you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you study, maybe we study sometimes something about immigration, or
Speaker 1: about individual choices and behavioral biases. All many of these
Speaker 1: things fall under the sphere of study of economics. Of course,
Speaker 1: they are also studied by other fields very well. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're a social science ultimately, so we
Speaker 1: cover all manner of social phenomena. So when you look
Speaker 1: at a human being. You don't just see a fleshy
Speaker 1: sack of money and uh numbers walking around right right? Yeah, okay, great, good,
Speaker 1: good to know. So it is interesting. So economics is
Speaker 1: largely about human behavior, but it can also be about
Speaker 1: animal behavior. So behavioral economists did a study on tufted capuchins.
Speaker 1: So tufted capuchins are adorable South American monkeys. They live
Speaker 1: in trees in tropical rainforests. They have this long, prehensile tail,
Speaker 1: fluffy brown and black fur, with tufts of black fur
Speaker 1: on their head that looks like a crazy sort of
Speaker 1: Elvis hairstyle, completely side burns. They weigh from around five
Speaker 1: to ten pounds or two to five kim so they're
Speaker 1: they're little guys. They're they're pretty tiny. They're not They're
Speaker 1: not teeny tiny, but they're not huge. They are highly
Speaker 1: social and live in groups of around ten to fifteen individuals,
Speaker 1: and even though they are only a distant primate relative
Speaker 1: of ours, they are highly intelligent. They seem to use
Speaker 1: tools such as sticks to dig up food, cracking cash,
Speaker 1: you nuts with a hammer and anvil stone set up.
Speaker 1: They even select tools based on their heft and the
Speaker 1: task they have to do so. For instance, cash you
Speaker 1: nuts ripen over time, but when they're freshest they have
Speaker 1: a toxic substance in them that causes skin irritation. So
Speaker 1: Capuchin's use larger tools on the fresher cashews, despite them
Speaker 1: being easier to crack open, possibly to protect their little
Speaker 1: monkey paws from this toxic irritant. They're also known to
Speaker 1: understand sponges, using paper towels or dry biscuits to sop
Speaker 1: up juice and then suck the juice out of a
Speaker 1: sponge like a kind of weird popsicle. How do you
Speaker 1: think they originally learned the sponge technique? I mean, I
Speaker 1: I would guess just trial and air like that. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of natural curiosity of these highly socially intelligent animals,
Speaker 1: and they pick something up and then they you know,
Speaker 1: dun't get in something else. Then when they put it
Speaker 1: back in their mouths, they realize, hey, this now is
Speaker 1: a is a juicy biscuit, and then other Capucheans may
Speaker 1: copy that behavior. So they're really good at sort of
Speaker 1: just generating ideas themselves and trying things and being really curious,
Speaker 1: and they're also good at copying others in their social
Speaker 1: group and learning from them. Uh, they've even been known
Speaker 1: to manufacture tools like very primitive sharp stone flakes that
Speaker 1: they used to cut away barriers to food. They break
Speaker 1: off a stone flake from a rock which is now
Speaker 1: very sharp, and then they can kind of cut away
Speaker 1: at anything that's blocking their food. So it's the stone
Speaker 1: is kind of already sharper, they sharpen it, they sharpen it,
Speaker 1: so they will chip the stone to create like a
Speaker 1: flake and then use that flake to cut away at something. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty high level thinking. So the behavior
Speaker 1: of actually cutting the barrier, I would say it has
Speaker 1: only been documented in captive individuals and so it's unknown
Speaker 1: whether this is a wider spread phenomenon. And some researchers
Speaker 1: would contend that the creation of the stone flakes is inadvertent,
Speaker 1: so like they're using the stones and a mortar and
Speaker 1: pestel kind of technique and then breaking off the stone
Speaker 1: and creating the stone flakes as a byproduct or another theories,
Speaker 1: they like to crack open these stones so that they
Speaker 1: can lick at sort of the inside, like there may
Speaker 1: be some kind of nutritive or vitamin like lichens inside.
Speaker 1: But some contend like that they don't then use these
Speaker 1: stone flakes as tools. But because it's a behavior that's
Speaker 1: been seen in captive individuals, it seems like pretty likely
Speaker 1: that similar behaviors may be found in wild individuals. And
Speaker 1: the idea that it's not not a form of tool
Speaker 1: creation just because they happened upon by accident is kind
Speaker 1: of It's a little strange to me because like, how
Speaker 1: else do you learn how to make tools other than
Speaker 1: like doing stuff, smashing things together and then seeing what
Speaker 1: it can be used for. So I think it's still
Speaker 1: really intelligent. It falls a little bit short of like
Speaker 1: the human ability to like take one tool, use another
Speaker 1: tool to refine that, and then use another tool to
Speaker 1: refine that, and keep going until we get televisions and
Speaker 1: Twitter at least no monkey Twitter. I thank god, those
Speaker 1: lucky little little munchkins. So they are intelligent, But do
Speaker 1: they understand economics or at least do they act like
Speaker 1: humans do when they are exposed to economic shocks? So
Speaker 1: what is a shock? And economics? Is it when Alan
Speaker 1: Greenspan like charges up a car battery and then attaches
Speaker 1: it to you and you know, let's it rip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what he would do during Senate Banking Committee meetings
Speaker 1: to make sure no one question and them too hard.
Speaker 1: I don't understand any of that. So, so what is
Speaker 1: an economics shock. So a shock and economics is it's
Speaker 1: not so different from our our colloquial understanding of a shock.
Speaker 1: It's just something that is surprising that happens to economic agents.
Speaker 1: Surprising in the sense that they couldn't anticipate it. So
Speaker 1: an example of an economic shock would be something like
Speaker 1: the sudden rise in gas prices that has happened over
Speaker 1: the last few months, and most people didn't anticipate that,
Speaker 1: and therefore they have to react in real time to
Speaker 1: the change in prices and and sort of reallocate or
Speaker 1: change their their driving patterns or whatever. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is actually what researchers did to Capuchins. They raised their
Speaker 1: gas prices and they tried to drive their little Capuchin
Speaker 1: cars and they were really upset. Now, so there is
Speaker 1: a researcher Keith Chin and his co authors, there are
Speaker 1: a group behavioral economists, neuroscientists, and psychologists who can get along. Also,
Speaker 1: they can study the behavior of tufted Capuchins when given
Speaker 1: economic shocks and choices, and to do this, they had
Speaker 1: to give the monkeys a fiat currency. So, Professor Brett,
Speaker 1: what is a fiat currency? I'm glad you asked. A
Speaker 1: fiat currency is just some medium of exchange, so some item.
Speaker 1: It could be digital, it could be physical, which allows
Speaker 1: one to easily trade between people, but the actual medium
Speaker 1: of exchange, the currency has no intrinsic value. So it
Speaker 1: would be like if I suddenly issued creature books, which
Speaker 1: is just like a picture of my smiling face on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper given the thumbs up, and this
Speaker 1: is like, this is one creature book and you can
Speaker 1: exchange it for one podcast. Yeah, exactly. Well no, but
Speaker 1: then it would be backed by a podcast, so would
Speaker 1: have the podcast standard, right, very much more stable than
Speaker 1: the gold standard, any standard, the podcast standard. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if if I had a Katie or if I had
Speaker 1: a creature box, uh, and it's not backed by the
Speaker 1: podcast episode, but the creature book you can use to
Speaker 1: purchase any and all you know, podcast related goods, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the fundamental premise of the fiat currency is
Speaker 1: that it has value, because we all believe it has value,
Speaker 1: and we do all believe that creature books have a
Speaker 1: lot of value. Go to www dot creature books bu
Speaker 1: x dot, or don't go there. It's not an actual
Speaker 1: I don't have an actual website called that. So if
Speaker 1: you go there and it's all spam and viruses, it's
Speaker 1: not my fault. So uh. The Capucheans were trained to
Speaker 1: have a fiat currency, so they were trained that they
Speaker 1: could exchange tokens for a variety of food rewards, and
Speaker 1: the researchers allowed the monkeys to gamble with their tokens
Speaker 1: for food when the gambling was framed as gambling for
Speaker 1: a bonus, so sometimes they would receive more food than
Speaker 1: originally displayed. They were more likely to be willing to
Speaker 1: take the gamble. But when the gambling was framed as
Speaker 1: a loss, so food would be taken away from the display.
Speaker 1: Even if the final amount of food given to the
Speaker 1: capuchin was the same as the food given and the
Speaker 1: like bonus gambles, they were more avoiding of the lossy gambles. So, yes,
Speaker 1: the researchers did teach capuchin's to gamble. Yes, they have
Speaker 1: led these poor little monkeys down to a life of
Speaker 1: sin advice. Um, but here is the setups. So you
Speaker 1: have a capuchein faced with two dealers, just like you
Speaker 1: would at any kind of casino that you find in
Speaker 1: the middle of the rainforest. So one dealer is the
Speaker 1: bonus guy. He displays one apple slice, and when the
Speaker 1: Capuchein gives him his token, the dealer has a chance
Speaker 1: of giving the capuchin either just that one apple slice
Speaker 1: or hey, hooray, you win an extra apple slice. On
Speaker 1: the other side of the room is the lost dealer.
Speaker 1: He displays two apple slices. The monkey gives him a token,
Speaker 1: and he either gives him both the apple slices or
Speaker 1: takes one away. So in either case you have the
Speaker 1: same odds of winning two apple slices. It is just
Speaker 1: presented in different ways, either as adding a slice or
Speaker 1: taking one away. And the capucheans far preferred the bonus dealer.
Speaker 1: They liked winning the extra slice, perceiving this as a
Speaker 1: bonus rather than perceiving it as being taken away. And
Speaker 1: it shows that these capuchins are capable of somewhat human
Speaker 1: reactions to a gambling situation in terms of loss a
Speaker 1: version and reference dependence. So what is loss of version
Speaker 1: and reference dependence? So, so reference dependence just means that
Speaker 1: you you have some reference, which determines how you view
Speaker 1: certain tradeoffs or choices. So like, for example, you and
Speaker 1: I just moved from Los Angeles to Turn, and so
Speaker 1: our reference for certain qualities of food like Mexican food
Speaker 1: is dependent on what they made in Los Angeles. And
Speaker 1: then when we eat Mexican food in Turn, we just
Speaker 1: get absolutely furious and just tear the place apart. So
Speaker 1: you know that's that's reference dependence. And then loss of
Speaker 1: version is the notion that and these really come from psychology,
Speaker 1: I should I should point out, but loss of version
Speaker 1: is where you'd you might face equal odde of getting
Speaker 1: some payoff in this case one you know, one apple slice,
Speaker 1: but you really hate to lose something much more than
Speaker 1: you enjoy gaining an equivalent amount. So this happened. So
Speaker 1: let's let's go back to the stock market. The the
Speaker 1: the typical economics per view, which is where people really
Speaker 1: really suffer when they when they get some huge, you know,
Speaker 1: big loss to their their portfolio stocks. But when they
Speaker 1: make a lot of money in the stock market, they
Speaker 1: don't get nearly the same amount of satisfaction or enjoyment
Speaker 1: to sort of offset what happened with that huge loss.
Speaker 1: And that's what you see with these monkeys. It seems
Speaker 1: like money is just made for us to suffer because
Speaker 1: like we're it hurts so much more to lose money,
Speaker 1: and we're so much more likely to lose money in
Speaker 1: the stock market. But but I mean, but it's not
Speaker 1: just money, right, because actually this experiment shows that just
Speaker 1: like apples, like that's that has intrinsic value. It's enjoyable
Speaker 1: to eat apples. It's not even money, and there's still
Speaker 1: loss a version. I guess the root of all evil
Speaker 1: isn't money, it's apples. That yeah. That that was from
Speaker 1: the famous Pink Floyd song called Apples. Yeah, I remember
Speaker 1: that one Apples. It's it's a crime. Right now, we're
Speaker 1: going to get copyrights right from from Pink Floyd and
Speaker 1: their famous song Apples. So the capucheons not only displayed
Speaker 1: this like humanlike behavior in terms of this gambling situation,
Speaker 1: they also responded to changes in prices for different food rewards. So, okay,
Speaker 1: new experiment. The capuchins were presented with the same amounts
Speaker 1: of apple, jello, and grape. They showed no preference among
Speaker 1: these food rewards. They liked all of them relatively equally.
Speaker 1: And when given a budget of tokens, they would buy
Speaker 1: them in early equivalent amounts like apple, jello, and grape
Speaker 1: all good. They like to have a variety of these
Speaker 1: foods because they were all they were all tasty, and
Speaker 1: they enjoyed all of them about equivalently. But then the
Speaker 1: experiment ers cut the price of apples by giving them
Speaker 1: an extra apple slice per token. And maybe you could
Speaker 1: explain how did how do the even understand what the
Speaker 1: tokens traded for. It's a combination of showing them what
Speaker 1: happens when you put the token in the tray and
Speaker 1: then reinforcements. So they put the token in the little
Speaker 1: receiving tray, uh, and then they receive a reward. And
Speaker 1: you do that enough and they associate putting the token
Speaker 1: in with getting a reward. And then also, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have sort of different stalls, So this is
Speaker 1: the apple stall, this is the jello stall, this is
Speaker 1: the grape stall. They learned like, oh, if I put
Speaker 1: it in front of this little apple area, I get
Speaker 1: an apple. Or this is the jello stall, I get
Speaker 1: a jell. It's like I mean, essentially like what we
Speaker 1: do with vending machines. So the experiment ers cut the
Speaker 1: price of apples by giving them an extra apple slice
Speaker 1: per token, so it'd be like if you used a
Speaker 1: vending machine. And then suddenly now whenever you press the
Speaker 1: the button for funyans, you got two funyans for the
Speaker 1: price of one. And so, yes, it's the fantasy we
Speaker 1: all dream of. So then the researchers cut the capuchin's budgets,
Speaker 1: so now they don't have as many tokens and totals.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, I know, we kept giving you, you know,
Speaker 1: ten tokens, but now you're only getting five tokens. And
Speaker 1: so now that these Capucheans were forced to be on
Speaker 1: a budget, the Capucheans responded like a lot of humans do,
Speaker 1: by buying more of the cheaper item, the apple. They realize, okay,
Speaker 1: we're on a budget. We got to tighten our little
Speaker 1: capuchin belts, so now I'm going to buy apple, which
Speaker 1: are the budget item. And this is what we often
Speaker 1: do as humans when we have to go on a budget.
Speaker 1: If we don't have a lot of funds, we will
Speaker 1: buy cheaper things, especially when there are there's like a
Speaker 1: sudden sort of economic shock of having to significantly change
Speaker 1: your budget you go for cheaper items, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just what all of us are doing with this
Speaker 1: whole inflation about and uh increasing prices of gas and
Speaker 1: so forth. And now we're we're buying less less cheesecake
Speaker 1: factory more McDonald's. Right. I don't really like cheesecake, and
Speaker 1: I'm borderline about McDonald's. So you know, if I could.
Speaker 1: Katie is not a woman of the people. If I
Speaker 1: could just have some apple slices, he'll be as happy
Speaker 1: as one of these little capuchins. But yeah, I am curious,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find any of these. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if there are follow up studies or if anyone would
Speaker 1: be interested in doing a follow up study. Winkly to
Speaker 1: all you Copuchan researchers out there that show the compute
Speaker 1: Copuchin show an increase in preference for the more expensive
Speaker 1: food when the apples are no longer on sale, like,
Speaker 1: because I think that's sometimes with humans, at least for me,
Speaker 1: and I think with other people too. When something was
Speaker 1: previously expensive and then the price goes down to something
Speaker 1: that fits with the items that were generally in your budget,
Speaker 1: I sometimes would go for the more expensive item that's
Speaker 1: now at a discount because I have this perception that
Speaker 1: this thing is of higher quality because it's more expensive,
Speaker 1: even if that's not true. Right, It's almost like two
Speaker 1: interacting phenomenon. One is reference dependence, so you're you're reference
Speaker 1: point is a higher priced item. But then also this
Speaker 1: notion that price confers the quality of something, so it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a high quality good because it has a high
Speaker 1: you know as a high price. And then when the
Speaker 1: when price drops and it's at a discount, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this previously it's this high quality good is now so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that makes a lot of sense. And the
Speaker 1: reason I want to know if Capuchins do this as
Speaker 1: well is that I'm starting to become suspicious that we're
Speaker 1: all just like little Capuchins and that marketers are taking
Speaker 1: advantage of us, just like these researchers are manipulating and
Speaker 1: twisting these Capuchin's behaviors. So I am I am concerned.
Speaker 1: You know, us researchers would never do that to you.
Speaker 1: You you keep winking and like, I'm I want to
Speaker 1: remind you this as an audio podcast, and they can't
Speaker 1: actually see you repeatedly winking and nudging me. But I
Speaker 1: can see them. We're not supposed to tell them that
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break and we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. So, uh, professor McCully, you can confirm that
Speaker 1: we have a dog, right we do? Yeah. Do you
Speaker 1: think she understands money? I think she understands treats, which
Speaker 1: in her world. I guess there some equivalent version of money.
Speaker 1: She can be bribed with treats or I guess I
Speaker 1: guess I should put it like she actually extorts us.
Speaker 1: It's not really us bribing her, it's her extorting us.
Speaker 1: It's exchange. It's classic economic exchange. We give her a
Speaker 1: treat and she stops being a bad girl. So there
Speaker 1: is this thing in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations where
Speaker 1: he says, quote, nobody ever saw a dog make a
Speaker 1: fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with
Speaker 1: another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal, by its gestures
Speaker 1: and natural cries, signify to another that this is mine,
Speaker 1: that yours. I am willing to give this for that.
Speaker 1: So the study we just discussed proves that this is
Speaker 1: wrong about Capucca ends. But was Adam Smith also wrong
Speaker 1: about dogs? What do you think he did right that?
Speaker 1: Like a hundred years before Darwin was on the scene.
Speaker 1: So the guy was a little ignorant about animals. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm guessing you're about to tell me that that
Speaker 1: he was wrong about this other thing. That's right, Adam
Speaker 1: Smith was a dumb, stupid poopy head who was wrong
Speaker 1: about everything, all right, But you know, is that too
Speaker 1: too strong? You know, he had some some good ideas,
Speaker 1: some I'm not so up to the up to date ideas.
Speaker 1: Invisible hand more like invisible brain because he doesn't have
Speaker 1: one with wait was and Smith invisible hand man? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well he yeah, yeah, he's invisible hand man. And I
Speaker 1: guess it would be a good invisible paw joke. I mean,
Speaker 1: you kind of just made it, but then you stepped
Speaker 1: all over I know. Well, you know, I was trying
Speaker 1: to I was trying to think on my feet. It's
Speaker 1: like on your invisible feet, on my invisible feet, and
Speaker 1: that's the problem. My invisible brain didn't kick in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but um, what I do mean is that Adam Smith
Speaker 1: was a dumb dumb because he was so wrong about
Speaker 1: animals and dogs. We tend to think of dogs is
Speaker 1: giving us unconditional love and infection. Being guileless not being
Speaker 1: little penny pinchers, but they actually are. They can sense
Speaker 1: when things are unfair in an exchange. So researchers did
Speaker 1: an experiment where they included dogs who knew the shake trick,
Speaker 1: so dogs would do the trick whether they were rewarded
Speaker 1: or not, which seemed to indicate that they felt an
Speaker 1: intrinsic reward in completing the trick. So they were really
Speaker 1: well trained. And if they continued to be unrewarded while
Speaker 1: observing other dogs getting rewards, they went on strike and
Speaker 1: they refused to perform the trick anymore. There's kind of
Speaker 1: similar analysis empirical evidence from economics about inequality and how
Speaker 1: much people hate to observe the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So there's this common practice in by employers in the
Speaker 1: United States where they make people hide how much they
Speaker 1: earn from other employees because they're afraid that they would
Speaker 1: get jealous. And just like these dogs, employees would not
Speaker 1: That not that we want to compare employees to dogs,
Speaker 1: and I'm just saying the same phenomenon, uh, kind of
Speaker 1: happens where employers know that people hate to see someone
Speaker 1: who they feel like maybe works the same as hard
Speaker 1: as they do, and yet makes more money than they do.
Speaker 1: And so, uh, there's very good reason that they would
Speaker 1: be concerned about that. There is empirical evidence that people
Speaker 1: really resent if they if you're at the same firm
Speaker 1: and you have one employee, you have a couple employees,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly the employees learn about what how much
Speaker 1: everyone is paid. That people really resent when they are
Speaker 1: paid less than other people for seemingly identic coal output.
Speaker 1: And and so dogs seem to have the same kind
Speaker 1: of intrinsic sense of fairness based on what you're saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this means that dogs should form a union, right, Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to I keep trying to think about invisible paw,
Speaker 1: invisible dog body parts. You'll the invisible How can you
Speaker 1: shake with the invisible pawn pod? How can you shake
Speaker 1: with the invisible paw? Wait? Oh shake? Oh? I see right?
Speaker 1: Or are you shaking the invisible paw or is the
Speaker 1: invisible tail shaking the invisible dog? I'm literally gonna die,
Speaker 1: so uh the yeah, it is really interesting. So basically,
Speaker 1: these dogs, when they were unrewarded, they were fine with
Speaker 1: that because they just got to kick out of doing
Speaker 1: the trick. But when they saw other dogs getting rewarded,
Speaker 1: and they weren't bad as when they stopped doing the trick,
Speaker 1: that is when they started to get upset about things
Speaker 1: being unfair. And and so did they do is sit down, strike, nice,
Speaker 1: sit down and roll over strike. So does this mean
Speaker 1: that dogs are as intelligent as primates. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to make value judgments on intelligence when you're comparing animals,
Speaker 1: but suffice it to say that their intelligence remains different
Speaker 1: from primates. So there was another study on tufted capuchin's uh,
Speaker 1: the same species of monkey we talked about earlier, where
Speaker 1: they would exchange a token for a slice of cucumber.
Speaker 1: But capucheans like grapes more than cucumbers because obviously so
Speaker 1: when a capuchin who had previously been happy to trade
Speaker 1: the token for cucumber saw another monkey getting a beloved
Speaker 1: grape instead of a stupid cucumber for that same token,
Speaker 1: the monkey would get upset and go on strike and
Speaker 1: refuse to pay for his cucumbers. Right, And that's that's
Speaker 1: where he would throw the invisible feces. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: and I made such a huge mistake bringing up Adam Smith.
Speaker 1: This was that was a great bit I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: beat it today for the rest of this episode. So so,
Speaker 1: unlike these capucheons, the dogs aren't able to make the
Speaker 1: distinction between more coveted food, so they get jealous if
Speaker 1: they see a dog getting rewarded and they aren't being
Speaker 1: rewarded at all. But if a other dog gets a
Speaker 1: better ord, like a tastier tree to higher value treat,
Speaker 1: they don't get jealous. So okay, I'm I'm skeptical. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we fed, if we showed Cookie another dog getting
Speaker 1: beautifully cooked salmon, and then we offered for her treat
Speaker 1: just some dumb dog food like dry dog food, I
Speaker 1: feel like she would be smart enough to know what
Speaker 1: was going on. I mean, Cookie, my our our dog,
Speaker 1: might be an outlier in terms of pettiness though, because
Speaker 1: she seems to use almost a hundred percent of her
Speaker 1: brain power on pettiness and a sense of fairness to
Speaker 1: her to her exclusively, not fairness to us or to
Speaker 1: other dogs, So she she might be an outlier. But
Speaker 1: I do share some of your skepticism. I'm curious. I
Speaker 1: think the disparity between the treats may have been too small,
Speaker 1: so if they made a much larger disparity between the treats,
Speaker 1: and like say you gave one dog a bunch of
Speaker 1: really good smelly treats and a lot of praise, and
Speaker 1: then the other dog got bub kiss. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a good point. I am. I am curious to well, Actually,
Speaker 1: they love cat turns. That's like the caviare of dog treats.
Speaker 1: They covet cat turds and they will eat them if
Speaker 1: given the chance, because cat feces are higher in fat
Speaker 1: content and it just smells and tastes great to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, there can also be kind of different effects
Speaker 1: depending on the dog. That is, maybe on average dogs
Speaker 1: don't really react to this, but you have some fraction
Speaker 1: of dogs that are really upset by fairness, So Cookie
Speaker 1: would be in that like twenty percent of dogs that
Speaker 1: are upset by the clear unfairness and the treat the
Speaker 1: quality of the treat given, but maybe the rest of
Speaker 1: the dogs don't. Then you can estimate no effect in
Speaker 1: in the in the whole study. This is we're getting
Speaker 1: in statistics here. Please, folks, don't turn off your headsets.
Speaker 1: Were well stop, I will I will kick him off
Speaker 1: the podcast if he brings up any more statistics. Now
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, statistics are good. So while dogs do seem
Speaker 1: to understand fairness when it comes to themselves, they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily understand reciprocity. So there was an experiment where dogs
Speaker 1: were faced with a human who could either press a
Speaker 1: give food or don't give food button, and some of
Speaker 1: the human volunteers were quote unquote helpful, so they would
Speaker 1: press the give food button more and others were unhelpful
Speaker 1: and wouldn't press the give food button as much, and
Speaker 1: the dogs would wine at the unhelpful humans. But when
Speaker 1: it came time for reciprocity, so now dogs were armed
Speaker 1: with buttons that could give the humans food, they were
Speaker 1: just happy to let the humans starve. Yes, so they
Speaker 1: had been previously trained on these buttons to give themselves foods,
Speaker 1: so they knew that the buttons caused food to happen.
Speaker 1: And dogs didn't really seem to care at all about
Speaker 1: delivering the humans food, and they didn't seem to care
Speaker 1: whether the human was one of the generous volunteers or not.
Speaker 1: And when the dogs were allowed to interact with the humans,
Speaker 1: they were just as affectionate with the stingy humans as
Speaker 1: with the non stingy humans. I think it's interesting because
Speaker 1: to me, I don't think this necessarily means dogs wouldn't
Speaker 1: have a preference for humans is based on kindness. I
Speaker 1: think they just were unable to make the connection between
Speaker 1: the buttons and the food and the the idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're giving me more food intentionally, so I should press
Speaker 1: this button that delivers you a cheeseburger. It didn't, It
Speaker 1: didn't work. I mean, it makes sense to me just
Speaker 1: thinking like about the evolution of dogs, because it's never
Speaker 1: been that the dog has really helped feed the human,
Speaker 1: and then the dog would like read the body language
Speaker 1: right of the human of like, oh, the human really
Speaker 1: enjoys the food, whereas I'm sure the dog can read
Speaker 1: the body language like Cookie could read the body language
Speaker 1: of another dog that's really enjoying it's salmon. Well, Cookie
Speaker 1: has no salmon, for example. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: the direction of food distribution has always been going one
Speaker 1: way throughout the history of man and dog, from man
Speaker 1: to dog, and and therefore why why why would dogs
Speaker 1: ever be able to discern how the human? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that makes complete sense. I agree with that. I think
Speaker 1: it is really interesting because yes, dogs we domesticated dogs,
Speaker 1: but dogs in turn kind of domesticated us towards their
Speaker 1: ends of providing them handouts and food. And it's the
Speaker 1: invisible hand that feeds. Oh my god, I folks, this
Speaker 1: is going to continue long after we're done recording. I
Speaker 1: just want you to know what I suffer through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the psychology of the dog would be to please humans,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily to give food directly to humans or
Speaker 1: understand that flow of like food from dog to human.
Speaker 1: Although it's interesting because cats will try to teach you
Speaker 1: to hunt sometimes because they will teach their kittens, their
Speaker 1: offspring how to hunt, and so female cats will often
Speaker 1: bring you a half dead mouse and leave it there
Speaker 1: for you, because I think that this is, uh, it's
Speaker 1: a learning experience for you because you will be able
Speaker 1: to easily kill this half dead mouse, and of course
Speaker 1: they're going to be confused when you scream and run away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember my aunt's cat bringing up one of those
Speaker 1: half dead mice, and then my uncle took my flip
Speaker 1: flop and finished the job. And uh, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: never use that flip flop again. It was it was
Speaker 1: very upset. It's upset. Eleven year old yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: your your uncle probably really pleased your cat though, because
Speaker 1: your cats thinking like, oh, you know, he learned, he
Speaker 1: finished the job, and then when your uncle didn't proceed
Speaker 1: to eat the mouse, cat was probably very confused. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think Fletcher was pretty triumphant about the whole situation. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to understanding fairness, dogs are susceptible to friendly
Speaker 1: marketing techniques. When presented with two food bowls of equal
Speaker 1: amounts of food, they prefer to approach a food bowl
Speaker 1: when it is next to an image of their owner's face.
Speaker 1: So it's unknown exactly why they do this, whether they
Speaker 1: associate their owner's face with a trusted reward, But it's
Speaker 1: kind of neat to know that you're like your dog's
Speaker 1: personal food mascot. In a dog society, there'd probably be
Speaker 1: a bunch of billboards with like human faces next to
Speaker 1: dog food. We don't really do the Okay, this is
Speaker 1: what's weird. We don't use companion animals much to advertise
Speaker 1: food for us to eat, But we do use the
Speaker 1: animals that we eat themselves and make them look cute
Speaker 1: and have them advertise the food of themselves. I find
Speaker 1: out weird. What you mean like like a chicken advertising chicken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like cartoon chickens will advertise chicken, but a cartoon dog
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily advertise chicken. But we empathize more with the
Speaker 1: dogs than with the chicken. Well that's true, but then
Speaker 1: you also have the chick filo, a cow advertising chicken.
Speaker 1: So there's a bit of a reversal. Real Benedict Arnold
Speaker 1: of the animal world just selling out its animal peers, like,
Speaker 1: eat them, not me, it's the invisible hoof. No, we've
Speaker 1: talked about Capuchin's adorable little monkeys, and we've talked about dogs,
Speaker 1: and they're both really smart. There are other really smart
Speaker 1: animals out there, like primates and dolphins and elephants. But
Speaker 1: could something with a tiny brain like an insect make
Speaker 1: economic decisions? What do you think I mean? If by
Speaker 1: economic decisions you just mean you just mean maximizing some
Speaker 1: outcome based on constraints, which is at a very abstract level,
Speaker 1: what economists think of humans doing. Then yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: not maybe not exactly economics. Uh, you're saying that you
Speaker 1: don't think insects could do your job. I'm saying the
Speaker 1: invisible antennae are are not going to be as economically
Speaker 1: minded as as what we think of humans invisible hands.
Speaker 1: Well that's fair enough. I guess you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry too much about bugs coming for your job as
Speaker 1: an economist yet. But I think what's interesting is that
Speaker 1: insect behavior can be very similar to economic models. So
Speaker 1: if you want another reason to hate wasps, they're also landlords.
Speaker 1: So paper wasps will build these nests that are clusters
Speaker 1: of little chambers. They gather fibers from dead wood and
Speaker 1: plants and regurgitate them into a sort of paper mache
Speaker 1: like substance, and that's why they're called paper wasps. A
Speaker 1: dominant paper wasp usually controls an nest structure, and these
Speaker 1: dominant female wasps will rent out nests in return for childcare.
Speaker 1: So a dominant female paper wasp will allow subletting paper
Speaker 1: wasps into her complex of nests in return for them
Speaker 1: helping to care for her offspring. So she's kind of
Speaker 1: like a landlord, but instead of renting, you have to
Speaker 1: feed her babies. And if you don't do enough work
Speaker 1: for her off no, no you don't. You don't feed
Speaker 1: her babies. Although if you're feeding her like larva from
Speaker 1: you know, another species, I'm sure she wouldn't complain. But
Speaker 1: you have to feed, give food to the babies of
Speaker 1: this wasp. And if you do not do enough of this,
Speaker 1: if you do not do enough work for her offspring,
Speaker 1: she will evict you. So well, it's less I thought
Speaker 1: she would just kill you, So that's less severe than
Speaker 1: I thought. There there, I guess there's a self regulating
Speaker 1: market here. Yeah, I mean she she'll just force them
Speaker 1: out of the little cubicles. And not only do paper
Speaker 1: wasps have this rental setup, but researchers have found that
Speaker 1: they respond to rental market forces. So when there are
Speaker 1: more rentals available, so more competition among landlord wasps, these
Speaker 1: landlord wasps will accept lower pay. That is, they won't
Speaker 1: evict their tenants even if their tenants are not doing
Speaker 1: as much labor as perhaps they would want. But so,
Speaker 1: so how does that How does the market adjust? I guess? So, like,
Speaker 1: suppose you have let's say, quote unquote stable market equilibrium,
Speaker 1: and then you have an introduction of new new housing,
Speaker 1: essentially new wasp housing, and so the market price should
Speaker 1: go down. But like, how long does it take the
Speaker 1: wasps to sort of recognize that? Uh, it's harder to
Speaker 1: actually fill their their available housing. How long does it
Speaker 1: take the wasps to to sort of find the new housing?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying, Like, how does how
Speaker 1: does this play out? How does the changes over time happen?
Speaker 1: How do the wasps even realize it? I mean, it
Speaker 1: probably is a pretty rapid rate given sort of the
Speaker 1: wasp lifespan. And I would assume it probably has something
Speaker 1: to do with them, like the number of wasps that
Speaker 1: you have in your little wasp apartment complex. So if
Speaker 1: you're you have a bunch of wasps all kind of
Speaker 1: trying to get into your apartment complex, you probably have
Speaker 1: a sense that, hey, you know, the competition is good.
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not as if the the landlord wasps
Speaker 1: are scoping out other sort of wasp apartment complexes and
Speaker 1: making a decision based on that. It's probably are they
Speaker 1: trying to clip the wings of competing uh wasps form
Speaker 1: a you know, like the mafias. Your style just sort
Speaker 1: of break the knees of the competition, break the many.
Speaker 1: It takes a while because there's a few knees. It
Speaker 1: would be funnier if these were bees, because I could
Speaker 1: say bees knees, But these are unfortunately wasps. I think
Speaker 1: it's that they can sense whether there's a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, wasps trying to vie for position in this
Speaker 1: WASP apartment complex. But if there's not as many, they
Speaker 1: need all the help they can get, essentially, so they
Speaker 1: will be less finicky. And so what about if there's
Speaker 1: a new development, a new real estate development, how how
Speaker 1: does the landlord, a landlord of a new property development,
Speaker 1: let's say, how do they advertise to other wasps like, Hey,
Speaker 1: come on over to to the our new beautiful luxury apartments.
Speaker 1: We offer reasonable rates. That's a really good question. I
Speaker 1: don't know it could. I mean, if they did advertise
Speaker 1: at all, it'd probably be through pheromone signaling, so like
Speaker 1: they could maybe detect the pheromones of like a new
Speaker 1: dominant WASP in that area. But that is a really
Speaker 1: good question. I would assume it's either something like that
Speaker 1: or them, like as they're flying around visually spotting this
Speaker 1: new uh, this new nest and then checking it out
Speaker 1: if they're unhappy with the conditions in their other nest, right,
Speaker 1: the new landlords just write a banner that says, if
Speaker 1: you lived here, you'd be home already. One of those
Speaker 1: signs that they put up in new Land development with
Speaker 1: like a smiling family. But it's just like wasps cradling
Speaker 1: a larvae. It's like a great place for your larvae
Speaker 1: to grow up. Right, Yeah, we we have the best
Speaker 1: schools for what even would the analog even be? What
Speaker 1: would I'm sorry, are you asking me what the analog
Speaker 1: what a wasps school would be? For wasps? There is none.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, they're they're just they're just cradled to
Speaker 1: grave working. I guess there's no there's no school time.
Speaker 1: They don't need to build up the human capital, I
Speaker 1: should say, the wasp capital inside of each of them.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, they grow up so fast. So if
Speaker 1: you wonder why wasps would engage in this rental system
Speaker 1: in the first place, the tenant wasps get a benefit.
Speaker 1: They can sometimes inherit the rental complex and become the
Speaker 1: new dominant wasp, or at least they can lay a
Speaker 1: few eggs themselves, since building the nest is costly. The
Speaker 1: social system actually increases their chance at reproductive success. So
Speaker 1: it's rare to have kids in this in the WASP communities. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not so much that it is rare to have offspring.
Speaker 1: Is that it takes a lot of resources to build
Speaker 1: a an entire nest. So like the time you spend
Speaker 1: investing in building this whole nest structure is it takes
Speaker 1: away from your time and resources to reap news. So
Speaker 1: if you can use someone else's nest structure and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe sort of sneakily lay some of your own eggs
Speaker 1: or hope that someday you'll be big and strong enough
Speaker 1: to become the new dominant wasp, that maybe a safer
Speaker 1: bet than trying to build your own wasp apartment complex. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's all about the productivity. And as you have
Speaker 1: higher and higher income, you can afford to invest more
Speaker 1: in your in your children. It's just you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're we're talking about white Anglo Saxon Protestants now right
Speaker 1: right exactly. This whole time I we were just talking
Speaker 1: about wasps, you know, all right that now I'm on board,
Speaker 1: all right, But yeah, so it is it is interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like it is in theory, the idea
Speaker 1: behind landlords. The argument for them is that they take
Speaker 1: on the risk of ownership and development. In reality, you know,
Speaker 1: the the just disparity in terms of wealth between tenants
Speaker 1: and landlords means that they're not really taking on that
Speaker 1: much risk, and the tenants are not getting that much
Speaker 1: like long term benefit other than a place to stay.
Speaker 1: So it kind of breaks down. But in in theory,
Speaker 1: like in this kind of system with these wasps, the
Speaker 1: landlord is investing resources and taking on sort of a risk,
Speaker 1: and even though they may get more benefits from the
Speaker 1: situation once they get tenants, the tenants at least didn't
Speaker 1: have to risk building a whole new nest. Right And
Speaker 1: because this landlord landlord tenant relationship exists in nature, that
Speaker 1: means it's morally correct in human society's right. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is of course. The lesson always to
Speaker 1: take is that if animals do it, it's moral. So
Speaker 1: you should eat your babies, you know us actually know,
Speaker 1: like I should probably eat your head because spiders do that.
Speaker 1: Um no, that's that's okay. Changed your tune pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: so uh. Speaking of other insects, scorpion flies, that was
Speaker 1: a good segue. So scorpion flies also respond to market
Speaker 1: forces in competition. Scorpion Flies are a type of insect
Speaker 1: related to flies. They look like a fly with a
Speaker 1: scorpion stinger on the end, but this is actually just
Speaker 1: the genital bulb of the males and not an actual stingard.
Speaker 1: Don't you like that word genital bulb? Yeah, that's pretty
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good one. So they don't oh my god.
Speaker 1: So they don't really kill or bite living creatures and
Speaker 1: prefer to eat carrion or dead insects. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot nastier looking than they actually are. There are
Speaker 1: many different species of scorpion flies, and some of these
Speaker 1: species offer nuptial gifts to their mate. So nuptial gifts
Speaker 1: is a food item presented to a female to convince
Speaker 1: her to copulate. So male scorpion flies will offer a
Speaker 1: tasty French kiss to the female where they regurgitate some
Speaker 1: nutrients through their saliva as a nuptial gift, and this
Speaker 1: is how you would me remember. So larger nuptial gifts
Speaker 1: are often preferred as they both indicate male fitness and
Speaker 1: give the females a large meal. So when there is
Speaker 1: more competition in the saliva business, meaning there are more
Speaker 1: males around, females tend to be choosier and will hold
Speaker 1: out for larger nuptial gifts. But when there are fewer
Speaker 1: males around, they become less choosy and accept some kind
Speaker 1: of peddling droplet of nasty saliva. Right, I see. So,
Speaker 1: but are are males competing only along this one dimension
Speaker 1: basically of quantity of quality of saliva that they can produce? No? No,
Speaker 1: I mean there's all sorts of different dimensions of competition
Speaker 1: for these males, so you know, their ability to go
Speaker 1: around and find females. So yeah, no, there's there are
Speaker 1: many other elements to the competition, but this is a
Speaker 1: very major point of the competition. You know. I think
Speaker 1: economists kind of model marriage markets, as we call them,
Speaker 1: in a similar way for humans, where you know, there
Speaker 1: there's each mate is looking for kind of the best match,
Speaker 1: the person that will make them happiest over their entire lifetime,
Speaker 1: is how we would characterize it. But it's it's usually
Speaker 1: hard to tell. There's what we call asymmetric information. You
Speaker 1: don't know from the beginning of the relationship if it's
Speaker 1: going to be a lifelong, happy relationship or maybe it'll
Speaker 1: be kind of a a quick quick burn one which
Speaker 1: quickly turns not so happy. And so it's important it
Speaker 1: can be helpful for a partner to invest in a
Speaker 1: signal that they are in fact a good match for someone.
Speaker 1: But where this I asked about there being many dimensions
Speaker 1: because this is you know, we typically think of a
Speaker 1: human relationship to be multidimensional, not just not just be
Speaker 1: about my incredible good looks or or whatever. So for humans,
Speaker 1: there there's some person who's a good match for another person,
Speaker 1: but they'd be a bad match for someone else. So
Speaker 1: what you're saying is you viewed our relationship entirely in
Speaker 1: terms of marketability and economics, is what I'm learning right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I viewed our relationship as something which would maximize
Speaker 1: my lifetime discounted utility. Obviously. Ah, that's so romantic. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know, um, you did win me over
Speaker 1: with giving me a cup of neutral it of saliva,
Speaker 1: and that was sufficient for me to calculate your fitness.
Speaker 1: And so here we are a match made in heaven. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's been great. But so I have one more
Speaker 1: question on these guys. Can a male get some saliva
Speaker 1: from another male from his bro his his let's say, wingman.
Speaker 1: You I feel like you only ask that question because
Speaker 1: you had the wingman pun. But I'll allow it, so
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But there are cases of duplicity
Speaker 1: in terms of nuptial gifts with spiders where sometimes a
Speaker 1: male will wrap up a you know, basically they will
Speaker 1: have like an insect that's been wrapped up in spider
Speaker 1: silk and presented to the female. But some of these
Speaker 1: spiders will wrap up which seems to be a large gift,
Speaker 1: but it's just like a twig or a dead leaf
Speaker 1: or something. So they trick the female into sticking around
Speaker 1: for copulation and when they like unwrapped this gift, it's
Speaker 1: just full of garbage. So has this has this duplicity
Speaker 1: led to all these spider women checking out their gifts immediately?
Speaker 1: I mean they I think they unwrap them as fast
Speaker 1: as they can. It's one of those things that it's
Speaker 1: fast as they can't. What do you mean, is the
Speaker 1: copulation just uh yeah, No, the male will go out
Speaker 1: of as quickly as he can and get out of
Speaker 1: there as quickly as he can, because classic males. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so what is interesting about that is that kind of
Speaker 1: cheating and this is just a general thing for for
Speaker 1: like cheating in nature, duplicity is you can only have
Speaker 1: a certain level of that to be sustainable, because if
Speaker 1: you start to have that happen all the time, females
Speaker 1: are gonna become wise to that and stop accepting nuptial
Speaker 1: gifts that will no longer be an aspect. They'll probably
Speaker 1: just turn around and like eat the male as soon
Speaker 1: as they can. So it is a delicate balance. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's actually the subject of Nobel Prize winning economist George
Speaker 1: acker lost paper A Market for Lemons, which was about
Speaker 1: the used car market where you have used cars, some
Speaker 1: of them are so called lemons where they just don't work,
Speaker 1: and you can have a so called unraveling of the
Speaker 1: market where all the all the used cars on the
Speaker 1: market are just lemons, and so then no one wants
Speaker 1: to buy them, and then there's no demand, and then
Speaker 1: no more market exists. So you can't essentially can't have
Speaker 1: too high of a rate of lemons in the market.
Speaker 1: In order for there to be some demand for used cars,
Speaker 1: you have to have a good amount of reasonably working cars.
Speaker 1: And it's the same, you know, ultimately we can apply
Speaker 1: a lot of the same kind of logic for any
Speaker 1: kind of sort of theoretical model of behavior. We're talking
Speaker 1: about animal behavior, but human behavior, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: similarities and and uh, I think at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the podcast I mentioned like evolutionary game theory, which is
Speaker 1: very much uh, it's just drawing on the same type
Speaker 1: of math and tools that we use in economics to
Speaker 1: model animal behavior. Because there's there's quite a lot of overlap.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the whole point of this this whole pod
Speaker 1: test here? Yeah, no, I mean that that was you know,
Speaker 1: I think it is interesting because when we sort of
Speaker 1: talk about are you talk about economics and I talk
Speaker 1: about evolutionary biology, there is a lot of overlap and
Speaker 1: that that lemon theory is kind of present. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a lot of game theory in in evolutionary biology of
Speaker 1: you know, you can't you can't overwhelm the quote unquote
Speaker 1: market with false signals, otherwise animals will learn to ignore
Speaker 1: that signal. And this case, sometimes the results can be
Speaker 1: deadly of a female uh spider and species where they
Speaker 1: practice sexual cannibalism, deciding it's not worth waiting around long
Speaker 1: enough to like open this nuptial gift and instead they
Speaker 1: just like turn around and eat the mail. Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, just keep that in mind. So
Speaker 1: she she has her wedding cake and eats him too, exactly, yes,
Speaker 1: or he is the wedding cake. That'd be cute, right,
Speaker 1: spider wedding and then the mail is the wedding cake,
Speaker 1: right yeah. Yeah. It reminds me from that scene in
Speaker 1: Spider Man. There was a scene in Spider Man where
Speaker 1: they got married and then what you can see how
Speaker 1: in tune I am with popular culture the Spider Man.
Speaker 1: Now everybody's talking about Morbius. Now it's all about the Morbus.
Speaker 1: What the heck is that? What are what are kids
Speaker 1: into these days? More bus? I just told you. Anyways,
Speaker 1: before we go, we gotta we had a play a
Speaker 1: little game. Do you want to play a little game? Sure?
Speaker 1: I don't know what impression you're doing, but yeah, do
Speaker 1: you've you've fallen into my trap and now we're going
Speaker 1: to play a little game. Is that saw? No? I
Speaker 1: guess he didn't talk like that. Know what the heck
Speaker 1: are you doing? I don't know, man, I just remember
Speaker 1: in the Jigsaw, you know, like and he's like, play
Speaker 1: my danger puzzles. So yeah, and then the little puppet
Speaker 1: guy goes like, play my saw puzzles. You do a puzzle,
Speaker 1: but it's with saws. Maybe maybe in post you should
Speaker 1: you should modulate your voice to sound like the squid game.
Speaker 1: I thought I sounded exactly perfect. Though. Welcome to our
Speaker 1: squid games the Deadliest Praise man. Remember that it's good games. Anyways,
Speaker 1: we're gonna play Guess Who's squawking? It's the animal sound
Speaker 1: guessing game. Yeah, where you guess, Hey, who's squawking? I
Speaker 1: say squawking, but it can be any animal on the planet,
Speaker 1: and so here is that animal. Here's an unfortunate reality
Speaker 1: about recording a podcast, uh with someone like right over
Speaker 1: my shoulder, is that you get to see my computer screen,
Speaker 1: which is something I didn't really think about before we
Speaker 1: did this. Yeah, you also showed me this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't not that I would remember the name of the animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did show this to you, but it is so
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna let you guess because that would be cheating.
Speaker 1: But I would say, like, if you heard this and
Speaker 1: you weren't cheating right now, like you are, what what
Speaker 1: would you think it was? Yeah? I think I would
Speaker 1: guess some kind of bird, which now that i'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it and it sounds ridiculous. But I
Speaker 1: feel like if I didn't know, if i'd avail of ignorance,
Speaker 1: that would be my guess. I don't know what kind
Speaker 1: of bird because I don't know birds, but some bird,
Speaker 1: some bird. Well, you're wrong, you're dumb, dumb, Sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't mean it. Uh no, it is a melan tape here.
Speaker 1: Congratulations to Joey P who guessed correctly. This is a
Speaker 1: large pig like ungulate with a long proboscis like nose,
Speaker 1: with coloration like a panda, except it's got an all
Speaker 1: black head. This interesting color blocking actually interrupts its silhouette,
Speaker 1: making it more difficult for predators to identify it. They
Speaker 1: can grow up to eight ft long, which is two
Speaker 1: point five meters, and way up to over seven hundred
Speaker 1: pounds around three hundreds, and they have that long nose
Speaker 1: is a short prehensile trunk that they can use to
Speaker 1: grip vegetation. So I think they're adorable and fun and funky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're snout looks. I mean, I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: picture where the guy's turning up his snout and it
Speaker 1: looks really weird, like it's a split snout. I don't know, well,
Speaker 1: it's because the underside of it, like you actually have
Speaker 1: the roof of their mouth sort of on the underside,
Speaker 1: and then this like pink coloration of you know, basically
Speaker 1: what is like their upper lip. But then it's really elongated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like someone took the tape ears lip
Speaker 1: and just stretched it all the way out to the
Speaker 1: end of the snoot and it looks uncomfortable. They're fine.
Speaker 1: They love it. Onto this week's mystery animal sound. Um,
Speaker 1: and here's the hint. Though featured in the Silence of
Speaker 1: the Lambs, this fellow is not silent. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: play a sound close your eyes a lamb. Do you
Speaker 1: think I would do that? Seriously? Then it would be
Speaker 1: the noise of the lambs, not the silence of the lambs? Wow? Wow, wonderful.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna play this, but close your eyes? Are
Speaker 1: they closed? You're not cheating? Okay? Hang on, it's our dog.
Speaker 1: That definitely sounds like our dog. Okay, So you know,
Speaker 1: other than the dog barks in the background, who do
Speaker 1: you think was squawking there? Maybe maybe Dana Carvey. I
Speaker 1: feel like he is a wide range Carvey. What does
Speaker 1: he have to do with the Science of the Lambs,
Speaker 1: The Science of the Lambs, Silence of the Lambs. At
Speaker 1: first I was like, maybe this is some kind of rodent,
Speaker 1: but then it's like the it's too low pitched to
Speaker 1: be a rodent. So then I then I had no idea.
Speaker 1: All right, well, uh, if you have an economists, if
Speaker 1: you out there are not suffering from being an economist
Speaker 1: and you want to write into me with your guesses
Speaker 1: about what this say is, you can write to me
Speaker 1: a Creature Feature pod at gmail dot com. I'm also
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Creature feet Pod. That's t And usually
Speaker 1: I would tell people where they can find my guests,
Speaker 1: but uh, yes, I can't be found. You can't be found.
Speaker 1: I keep them locked up in here in my little
Speaker 1: pod loft and like lit them like I dangle Wealth
Speaker 1: of Nations out to lure him out and then feed
Speaker 1: him like the Dindns. Yeah, I can use some help. Listeners.
Speaker 1: Everything's fine, So thank you so much for listening. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying the show and you want to leave a
Speaker 1: rating review, I really appreciate that. That actually really helps
Speaker 1: the show a lot. And it also I read all
Speaker 1: of the reviews, every single one of them. I'm compiling
Speaker 1: them in a binder and carrying it around. And whenever
Speaker 1: I feel, you know, self conscious or anything like, I
Speaker 1: open up my binder of positive reviews and I go
Speaker 1: through them and I feel great, and people look at
Speaker 1: me and they stare, but I it doesn't bother me
Speaker 1: because I got my book of positive reviews and like
Speaker 1: their stairs, their judgment doesn't mean anything because they're invisible stairs.
Speaker 1: They're invisible stairs because Kirby Kirby Sonic Mario one D
Speaker 1: told me that I have a cool podcast and a
Speaker 1: nice voice. Was that like a forty year old gamer? Yeah?
Speaker 1: For these characters, come on with the times. Forty year
Speaker 1: old gamers love to listen to the podcast, So don't
Speaker 1: eat there, but smirch the smirched them. So yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening, and thanks to the Space
Speaker 1: Classics for their super awesome song. Exceluminate Creature features a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the
Speaker 1: one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or he Gets what You even listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite show? Don't I don't actually care. I mean
Speaker 1: I care about you, I just don't care where you
Speaker 1: listen to your shows because that's that's your business. It's
Speaker 1: not mine. See you next Wednesday.