WEBVTT - Rat vs. Raccoon 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:23.756 Pushkin, How did you get into writing about raccoons. 0:00:24.076 --> 0:00:28.196 I got into writing about raccoons because they started breaking 0:00:28.276 --> 0:00:32.596 into my supposedly raccoon proof green ban named Toronto. 0:00:33.196 --> 0:00:36.276 I'm talking with intrepid investigative reporter for the Toronto Star, 0:00:36.596 --> 0:00:41.156 Amy Dempsey Raven. Typically she covers police wrongdoing, child welfare, 0:00:41.356 --> 0:00:45.396 controversial homicides, but in twenty sixteen, when Toronto declared a 0:00:45.476 --> 0:00:49.276 war on raccoons and unveiled a new raccoon resistant composting ben, 0:00:49.716 --> 0:00:53.396 she realized it's time to get serious. 0:00:53.996 --> 0:00:57.596 Mayor came out on this garbage truck and made all 0:00:57.636 --> 0:01:00.516 of these promises, and I wondered. I thought to myself, 0:01:00.556 --> 0:01:02.076 I'm going to keep an eye on things here. 0:01:03.156 --> 0:01:06.956 This raccoon resistant ben cost the city thirty one million 0:01:06.996 --> 0:01:10.356 Canadian dollars. But Toronto is own is the raccoon capital 0:01:10.396 --> 0:01:13.796 of the world. Theoretically it's a point of pride, but 0:01:13.916 --> 0:01:16.476 it's a little more complicated than that. If a race 0:01:16.516 --> 0:01:18.676 of Martians took over your city, would you call it 0:01:18.716 --> 0:01:21.796 the Martian capital of the world, only if you'd already 0:01:21.796 --> 0:01:23.276 admitted defeat. 0:01:23.756 --> 0:01:27.596 My first job after graduating was in Toronto, and I 0:01:27.596 --> 0:01:27.956 had a. 0:01:27.916 --> 0:01:30.756 Group house local man, Malcolm Gladwell. 0:01:31.076 --> 0:01:33.756 I did not grow up in raccoon country, so I 0:01:33.756 --> 0:01:36.636 had no idea something was making a racket so loud 0:01:37.156 --> 0:01:40.316 and all night. Like when I say all night, I 0:01:40.396 --> 0:01:44.476 mean without without stopping. From from the moment I went 0:01:44.516 --> 0:01:46.556 to bed to the morning. I woke up, I couldn't sleep, 0:01:46.716 --> 0:01:49.156 and I went my friends. A couple of my friends 0:01:49.196 --> 0:01:51.276 were from Toronto, and I was like, what is going on? Like, oh, 0:01:51.316 --> 0:01:53.636 it's raccoons. Like for them it was like, oh ye, 0:01:53.836 --> 0:01:55.956 it's just like that's the deal here. 0:01:57.356 --> 0:02:01.196 That was about forty years ago. Things have gotten much 0:02:01.596 --> 0:02:02.196 much worse. 0:02:03.276 --> 0:02:05.116 It doesn't get any more Toronto than this. 0:02:06.276 --> 0:02:08.716 A raccoon inside a supermarket. 0:02:08.076 --> 0:02:13.436 Here, raccoons in the garbage, Raccoons on the train, Oh god, 0:02:14.316 --> 0:02:15.796 raccoons on the back deck. 0:02:16.516 --> 0:02:19.556 Time to go down, buddy, time to go down. 0:02:19.676 --> 0:02:22.836 You can't stay on this deck anymore that your viction day. 0:02:24.236 --> 0:02:26.516 Raccoons have taken over the attics in a whole street 0:02:26.516 --> 0:02:29.316 of houses and refused to leave. They brought traffic to 0:02:29.396 --> 0:02:32.756 a screeching halt on Toronto's highways and just stood there. 0:02:33.236 --> 0:02:35.356 They figured out how to open doors to houses and 0:02:35.396 --> 0:02:39.516 refrigerators and stood on top of countertops, leftovers in their paws, 0:02:39.636 --> 0:02:42.716 staring at freaked out homeowners as if to say, if 0:02:42.716 --> 0:02:45.116 I wanted you here, I would have rung the bell. 0:02:46.356 --> 0:02:51.196 Hence the priceya raccoon resistant bins, which surely no raccoon 0:02:51.236 --> 0:02:52.196 would be able to open. 0:02:52.996 --> 0:02:56.716 Soon after the rollout, we began hearing reports that raccoons 0:02:56.796 --> 0:03:01.356 were outsmarting the bins, and the city said, now, that's 0:03:01.436 --> 0:03:05.636 not really happening. But then one night they broke into mine. 0:03:06.156 --> 0:03:09.276 Amy found herself wondering, how are raccoons smart enough to 0:03:09.316 --> 0:03:12.236 open that bin? This was the question a historian of 0:03:12.236 --> 0:03:15.036 science had found himself wondering one night when he looked 0:03:15.076 --> 0:03:17.956 at his back deck in Toronto and saw composts all 0:03:17.956 --> 0:03:20.716 over the place. He had an earlier version of the 0:03:20.716 --> 0:03:24.316 compost bin, but here too, the raccoons had picked the lock. 0:03:24.876 --> 0:03:28.476 Were they really just that smart? It turned out nobody 0:03:28.516 --> 0:03:32.956 really knew. Raccoons had hardly been studied, basically, not at 0:03:32.956 --> 0:03:36.156 all compared to other animals, like say, rats or monkeys. 0:03:36.796 --> 0:03:41.956 This historian wanted to know why the midnight raid on 0:03:42.036 --> 0:03:44.916 his compost bin would set in motion a sequence of 0:03:44.956 --> 0:03:47.876 events that, in my own estimation, have come to Topple 0:03:47.996 --> 0:03:51.636 an entire century of psychological theory and restored the raccoon 0:03:52.036 --> 0:03:55.916 to its proper place, the dead center of how we 0:03:56.036 --> 0:03:57.596 understand human beings. 0:04:00.476 --> 0:04:03.716 Him Malcolm Gladwell, you're listening to Revisionist History, my show 0:04:03.756 --> 0:04:08.356 about things overlooked, misunderstood and in praise of Toronto. You 0:04:08.396 --> 0:04:12.116 may be familiar with the phrase lab rat. Perhaps you 0:04:12.196 --> 0:04:14.316 are aware that many of the things we know about 0:04:14.356 --> 0:04:17.236 human beings and the way we behave are based upon 0:04:17.236 --> 0:04:19.956 the things we know about rats and the way they behave. 0:04:21.236 --> 0:04:24.476 But in this episode, my colleague Ben the daph Haffrey 0:04:24.596 --> 0:04:27.396 asks what if we picked the wrong animal. 0:04:33.196 --> 0:04:38.516 Many historians of science will write about the greats Einstein, Freud, Oppenheimer, 0:04:38.796 --> 0:04:41.956 the kind of research project not usually begun while scooping 0:04:42.036 --> 0:04:45.196 up trash in your bathrobe on your back deck in Toronto. 0:04:45.396 --> 0:04:48.276 But Michael Pettitt's always gotten into things sideways. 0:04:48.556 --> 0:04:51.956 I have almost never written about kind of the dominant 0:04:51.996 --> 0:04:56.156 people in the field. I personally find myself attracted to 0:04:57.716 --> 0:04:58.636 the misfits. 0:04:59.076 --> 0:05:02.796 Pettitt is a historian of psychology at York University in Toronto. 0:05:03.356 --> 0:05:05.516 I work one morning, and of course the compost is 0:05:05.556 --> 0:05:07.356 all over the deck, on scooping it up, because the 0:05:07.436 --> 0:05:11.036 raccoons could very easily get into the lock, and as 0:05:11.076 --> 0:05:15.316 in a start of psychology, I asked myself, Huh, I 0:05:15.356 --> 0:05:18.276 wonder if anyone ever used a puzzle box with raccoons. 0:05:18.276 --> 0:05:19.476 They seem really good at it. 0:05:19.916 --> 0:05:22.996 Petitt knew all about scientists putting rats in mazes and 0:05:23.036 --> 0:05:26.836 puzzly cages, the mainstream stuff. Who cares, But in all 0:05:26.876 --> 0:05:29.836 his studies he had never heard of a raccoon in 0:05:29.876 --> 0:05:32.636 a puzzle box. And yet here on his deck was 0:05:32.676 --> 0:05:36.396 evidence that they were basically able to outsmart any human system. 0:05:37.076 --> 0:05:40.756 These raccoons seemed very adept at doing locks, and so 0:05:40.836 --> 0:05:41.756 I was just curious. 0:05:42.076 --> 0:05:44.996 Michael was curious for good reason, not just because of 0:05:45.036 --> 0:05:48.716 the locks situation. We've basically never known quite what to 0:05:48.756 --> 0:05:49.676 make of raccoons. 0:05:50.436 --> 0:05:55.036 You know, they aren't finates, but they're also not rodents, 0:05:55.756 --> 0:05:58.236 So there's like there's something about them that they sort 0:05:58.276 --> 0:06:01.316 of take on this role as kind of intermediary species. 0:06:01.516 --> 0:06:05.796 There's this reputation of the raccoon for being this cunning, 0:06:06.316 --> 0:06:07.716 intelligent trickster. 0:06:08.636 --> 0:06:10.916 For a while, well, there wasn't even consensus on how 0:06:11.036 --> 0:06:15.236 exactly they evolved. The famous naturalist Carl Lenaeus called them 0:06:15.316 --> 0:06:18.476 Ursus louder or washer bear, because they like to rinse 0:06:18.516 --> 0:06:22.316 their food and water, and he thought they descended from bears. Now, 0:06:22.356 --> 0:06:25.196 for any true raccoon fans out there, I should note that, yes, 0:06:25.276 --> 0:06:28.516 they aren't actually washing their food. They basically see you 0:06:28.596 --> 0:06:30.876 with their paws, and their paws are more sensitive in 0:06:30.916 --> 0:06:33.556 the water. This, by the way, is the instinct behind 0:06:33.556 --> 0:06:36.516 that amazing Japanese TV show where they gave a raccoon 0:06:36.556 --> 0:06:40.196 cotton candy, which the raccoon dutifully washed until they vanished. 0:06:40.756 --> 0:06:44.116 But no, they're not washing and they're not bears. When 0:06:44.196 --> 0:06:46.596 Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World, he 0:06:46.676 --> 0:06:49.996 remarked upon its quote clown like dogs, to which the 0:06:49.996 --> 0:06:52.676 people of Italy said, Chris, what the hell are you 0:06:52.716 --> 0:06:57.636 talking about? Until centuries later another naturalist realized, Oh, he's 0:06:57.636 --> 0:07:00.396 talking about raccoons. They're their own thing. 0:07:03.436 --> 0:07:07.276 They in some ways seem to be above the rodents, 0:07:07.836 --> 0:07:10.156 and maybe even are carnivores. 0:07:10.756 --> 0:07:14.436 Pettitt went looking for a history of raccoons science, specifically 0:07:14.436 --> 0:07:19.396 about people investigating their intelligence, and found basically nothing. A 0:07:19.396 --> 0:07:23.516 handful of scientists in one slim volume, in particular from 0:07:23.636 --> 0:07:29.236 nineteen oh seven titled Concerning the Intelligence of Raccoons. It 0:07:29.316 --> 0:07:33.756 was written by a man named Lawrence Cole, Frontier raccoonist. 0:07:34.676 --> 0:07:38.996 So Lawrence Cole, in a lot of ways is a nobody. 0:07:39.556 --> 0:07:41.636 You know, He's not someone if you go to a 0:07:41.716 --> 0:07:43.876 history of psychology textbook and pull it off the shelf, 0:07:44.196 --> 0:07:47.716 he's not someone that's particularly remarkable. 0:07:48.276 --> 0:07:50.876 Lawrence Cole had done his graduate work at Harvard and 0:07:50.996 --> 0:07:54.196 was part of a psychological movement that studied animals to 0:07:54.276 --> 0:07:58.796 understand humans. In the nineteenth century, psychology had largely been 0:07:58.836 --> 0:08:01.676 based on what people said about how they felt, which 0:08:01.716 --> 0:08:04.796 was not super reliable. So why not instead observe how 0:08:04.836 --> 0:08:08.076 animals behave and just extrapolate up the chain from there. 0:08:09.196 --> 0:08:11.756 One absolutely says, it's not just our kind of our 0:08:11.796 --> 0:08:15.876 physical formous human beings that is continuous with natural selection, 0:08:16.276 --> 0:08:18.476 but also our psychological selves. 0:08:19.516 --> 0:08:23.076 But which animal was best for the psychologists to study? 0:08:23.196 --> 0:08:26.796 Any of them theoretically could work. Scientists were comparing species 0:08:26.836 --> 0:08:30.836 across tests to see how they'd fare. People had studied chickens, dogs. 0:08:31.156 --> 0:08:34.196 Coal's Advisor like the idea of studying monkeys, but monkeys 0:08:34.196 --> 0:08:37.076 are super expensive. It would be helpful, though if there 0:08:37.076 --> 0:08:40.316 were a kind of consensus, a linguis franca animal that 0:08:40.396 --> 0:08:41.916 people could generalize from. 0:08:42.276 --> 0:08:47.596 Through a series of circumstances, he acquires a small quality 0:08:47.636 --> 0:08:48.276 of raccoons. 0:08:49.756 --> 0:08:51.836 Cole still had to find an experiment of his own 0:08:51.876 --> 0:08:54.836 to get his PhD. These raccoons seemed promising. 0:08:55.356 --> 0:08:57.396 As far as Pool knew, no one had kind of 0:08:57.396 --> 0:09:02.396 put raccoons through these motions. So that's adoptrible dissertation. I 0:09:02.396 --> 0:09:05.716 can run these studies with these raccoons, right, whatever the 0:09:05.796 --> 0:09:09.516 data is, I can say I have added to our 0:09:09.596 --> 0:09:11.196 knowledge of compared to psychology. 0:09:11.676 --> 0:09:13.556 He probably had a hunch that this was going to 0:09:13.596 --> 0:09:14.156 be interesting. 0:09:14.636 --> 0:09:16.676 I don't know if raccoons were the most charismatic of 0:09:16.716 --> 0:09:20.676 our fauna, but raccoons they're kind of fun. 0:09:22.436 --> 0:09:24.516 I think they're the most charismatic of our fauna. 0:09:24.956 --> 0:09:28.676 Well, they're annoying, but they're like they're lovable scamps. Right. 0:09:29.516 --> 0:09:32.556 Cole began running tests on the raccoons. He put them 0:09:32.556 --> 0:09:35.276 in boxes with complicated locks every day for a whole 0:09:35.316 --> 0:09:40.396 academic year, and he found they were incredible any box. 0:09:40.436 --> 0:09:43.596 It seemed any puzzle the raccoon could solve it. And 0:09:43.636 --> 0:09:46.116 what's more, the animal wasn't just going through the motions. 0:09:46.676 --> 0:09:51.236 The raccoons seemed curious about what he was doing, and 0:09:51.276 --> 0:09:54.876 Cole thought there was evidence that raccoons could hold images 0:09:54.916 --> 0:09:58.436 in their mind. Nobody was making these kinds of claims 0:09:58.476 --> 0:10:02.316 about other animals, so Cole started publishing his research, writing 0:10:02.356 --> 0:10:06.556 the Leading Figures in Psychology, saying, Hey, these raccoons are 0:10:06.556 --> 0:10:11.556 really unusually intelligent, maybe intelligent as monkeys, which seems to 0:10:11.596 --> 0:10:13.916 me like it should make them a great model organism 0:10:13.956 --> 0:10:18.436 for people. Except there was a movement that was growing 0:10:18.476 --> 0:10:22.396 swiftly within Cole's field, right around them, which was explicitly 0:10:22.476 --> 0:10:26.156 uncomfortable with any talk of an animal having a mind, 0:10:26.556 --> 0:10:29.316 and it was fast becoming the only show in town. 0:10:30.316 --> 0:10:35.836 It was called behaviorism. All this history is documented in 0:10:35.876 --> 0:10:39.396 an amazing article by Michael Pettitt titled The Problem of 0:10:39.476 --> 0:10:43.116 Raccoon Intelligence in Behaviorist America, which is one of my 0:10:43.196 --> 0:10:47.236 favorite academic essays of all time, because the raccoon was 0:10:47.276 --> 0:10:50.956 indeed a problem. 0:10:49.716 --> 0:10:53.716 So it was no surprise to us that a lot 0:10:53.756 --> 0:10:57.596 of psychologists steered clear of coon's. 0:10:58.076 --> 0:11:00.356 Bob Bailey, he used to be the top guy at 0:11:00.356 --> 0:11:04.836 a legendary behaviorist organization called Animal Behavior Enterprises. The founders 0:11:04.836 --> 0:11:08.036 of that company wrote an infamous paper questioning the fundamentals 0:11:08.036 --> 0:11:11.476 of behaviorism, the idea that all animals were blank slates 0:11:11.476 --> 0:11:14.476 you could write whatever you wanted on. A key example, 0:11:15.196 --> 0:11:17.956 one raccoon they trained to put coins in the box. 0:11:18.556 --> 0:11:24.996 After a hundred or so responses, the raccoon would start. 0:11:25.276 --> 0:11:28.356 Instead of just picking up one coin and taking it 0:11:28.436 --> 0:11:30.956 to the box and putting it in the box, the 0:11:31.076 --> 0:11:35.996 raccoon would pick up two coins and then rub them together, 0:11:36.516 --> 0:11:42.076 and would start walking towards the box, and then it 0:11:42.116 --> 0:11:47.156 would stop and rub the coins together, and then it 0:11:47.196 --> 0:11:50.956 would go to the box and then start to put 0:11:50.996 --> 0:11:54.876 the coins in, and then stop and rub the coins together, 0:11:55.356 --> 0:11:57.876 and then start to put the coins back in the box, 0:11:57.956 --> 0:12:04.116 and stop and rub the coins together. Eventually it would 0:12:04.516 --> 0:12:08.196 put the coins in the box. Most of the. 0:12:08.196 --> 0:12:11.836 Time, potentially, and most of the time were bad news 0:12:11.836 --> 0:12:15.676 for people trying to turn psychology into a reputable hard science. 0:12:16.476 --> 0:12:20.276 That raccoon box situation came later on, but this exact 0:12:20.356 --> 0:12:23.316 dynamic put a bit of a target on Lawrence Cole, 0:12:23.636 --> 0:12:26.756 the frontier raccoonist. And if you know anything about the 0:12:26.796 --> 0:12:29.356 history of psychology, you'll know how the problem of the 0:12:29.436 --> 0:12:33.516 raccoon was solved raccoon erasure. The raccoon does not figure 0:12:33.556 --> 0:12:38.716 prominently at all, but you know which animal does, the rat. 0:12:39.476 --> 0:12:42.876 I'm curious about how you account for that historical process 0:12:42.916 --> 0:12:45.636 of raccoon erasure that begins around them. 0:12:46.076 --> 0:12:49.996 One of the problems with raccoons is they are a 0:12:50.156 --> 0:12:57.236 much larger and more cumbersome species than your bread labyrocks right. 0:12:57.876 --> 0:13:04.676 In terms of feeding, caging, maintenance, rats proved much more 0:13:05.356 --> 0:13:07.996 docile than a debt. Again, if you want to have 0:13:08.236 --> 0:13:12.876 decent numbers study right. They also reproduce quite readily. They 0:13:12.916 --> 0:13:15.156 have very short greeding cycles, and you can kind of 0:13:15.156 --> 0:13:16.876 build up the populations. 0:13:18.276 --> 0:13:21.876 But it wasn't just about convenience. It was also difficult 0:13:21.956 --> 0:13:26.636 to generalize from raccoon experiments. Rats, for example, behaved in predictable, 0:13:26.756 --> 0:13:31.956 repeatable ways, raccoons not so much. How is a scientist 0:13:32.036 --> 0:13:34.636 supposed to work with an animal who each spring gets 0:13:34.676 --> 0:13:37.836 wanderlust and attempts to break out of their cage. What 0:13:37.876 --> 0:13:41.036 do you do when your experimental raccoon colony does escape 0:13:41.276 --> 0:13:45.156 and moves into your labs of ventilation system. As behaviorism 0:13:45.196 --> 0:13:48.796 gains steam, scientists in the big cities attacked the nascent 0:13:48.836 --> 0:13:52.916 science of raccoons. Wasn't this all a bit silly? Meanwhile, 0:13:52.956 --> 0:13:56.236 other behaviorists complained that keeping raccoon colonies was really just 0:13:56.276 --> 0:13:58.796 a huge pain in the neck, and so we got 0:13:58.836 --> 0:14:02.676 the century of the rat into a lesser degree the pigeon. 0:14:03.276 --> 0:14:06.636 This behaviorism is a theory of control. They are animals 0:14:06.676 --> 0:14:07.716 that you could control. 0:14:08.556 --> 0:14:11.276 Behavior thought they were studying an animal that stood in 0:14:11.356 --> 0:14:15.636 for all human beings, but actually they wound up studying 0:14:15.836 --> 0:14:18.876 a lot of lab rats, and that led us to 0:14:18.956 --> 0:14:23.756 some pretty flawed conclusions about people. We'll be right back 0:14:31.076 --> 0:14:33.556 for a little while now. I've been interested in how 0:14:33.636 --> 0:14:36.436 the lab rat has shaped our understanding of human beings. 0:14:37.156 --> 0:14:40.316 Rats are all over the history of psychology, Rat studies 0:14:40.316 --> 0:14:44.196 of depression, rat studies of cooperation, rat studies of rationality. 0:14:44.676 --> 0:14:47.396 Think about the way we speak ratin a maze, the 0:14:47.476 --> 0:14:50.836 rat race, malrat, jim rat, smell a rat, or rat's nest. 0:14:51.276 --> 0:14:53.716 It's all rats all the way down. I figured if 0:14:53.756 --> 0:14:56.236 anyone could tell me about how exactly this all came 0:14:56.276 --> 0:14:58.836 to be, it would be one of the leading rat 0:14:58.876 --> 0:15:03.156 behavioral researchers in the country. Doctor Kelly Lambert at the 0:15:03.236 --> 0:15:05.276 University of Richmond. 0:15:05.316 --> 0:15:07.516 For most of psychology. It's just they were the only 0:15:07.556 --> 0:15:09.796 show in town. If you want to to do research 0:15:09.836 --> 0:15:11.956 with an animal model. When I was in graduate school 0:15:11.956 --> 0:15:14.516 at the University of Georgia, this is what we had. 0:15:14.956 --> 0:15:17.516 That was the only animal model you had. 0:15:18.596 --> 0:15:22.636 Lambert loves rats. She's written a book called The Labrat Chronicles. 0:15:22.836 --> 0:15:27.516 A neuroscientist reveals life lessons from the planet's most successful mammals. 0:15:28.116 --> 0:15:31.156 She's particularly famous for experiments where she taught rats to 0:15:31.236 --> 0:15:34.396 drive cars, which, if we're being honest, is really why 0:15:34.396 --> 0:15:35.236 I've gone to Richmond. 0:15:35.996 --> 0:15:39.116 So the idea was to train them. Get in the car, 0:15:39.156 --> 0:15:41.076 you get a fruitleate, sit here and get a fruitly 0:15:41.356 --> 0:15:43.716 But early on it was amazing that they seemed to 0:15:43.796 --> 0:15:46.516 learn the concept of driving. So once we shaped them 0:15:46.556 --> 0:15:48.676 and they learned to press the right lever to go right, 0:15:48.756 --> 0:15:51.116 they seem to automatically know to press the left one 0:15:51.156 --> 0:15:51.716 to go left. 0:15:52.516 --> 0:15:55.476 If you've seen Stuart Little in his red convertible, you're 0:15:55.556 --> 0:15:57.836 not even half prepared for the image of a lab 0:15:57.916 --> 0:16:00.516 rat hunched over the dashboard on what appears to be 0:16:00.556 --> 0:16:04.316 a monster truck, just careening towards a bunch of fruit loops. 0:16:08.196 --> 0:16:11.916 Lambert loves were with her rats, but lately she's also 0:16:11.956 --> 0:16:15.036 been questioning how the rat became the be all end 0:16:15.036 --> 0:16:17.436 all for understanding human beings. 0:16:18.356 --> 0:16:20.956 I don't think they made a decision about which model 0:16:21.036 --> 0:16:23.716 organism should we use. The rat was already on board 0:16:23.956 --> 0:16:27.596 for biomedical research, so it's practical to use the rat. 0:16:28.116 --> 0:16:31.196 Basically, it's the lab rat industry. There was a whole 0:16:31.276 --> 0:16:35.196 factory line system around producing lab rats via mass inbreeding, 0:16:35.596 --> 0:16:38.996 premised on the fantasy that the inbred rats were basically 0:16:39.036 --> 0:16:40.356 interchangeable with one another. 0:16:40.956 --> 0:16:45.076 They bred brothers and sisters for twenty generations. Their intention 0:16:45.436 --> 0:16:48.516 was the animals be as close to clones as possible, 0:16:49.036 --> 0:16:55.636 and then whatever your manipulation was, diet, stress, movement, or whatever, 0:16:55.916 --> 0:16:59.356 they felt confident that they saw a difference between the 0:16:59.396 --> 0:17:02.076 experimental group that got it and the control group that didn't, 0:17:02.556 --> 0:17:06.716 that that variable was the influential variable. 0:17:07.116 --> 0:17:09.676 This was all taking off around the time and Cole's 0:17:09.716 --> 0:17:12.996 work with raccoons was being cast aside. That kind of 0:17:13.076 --> 0:17:17.036 inbreeding helped create rats who were much more docile and 0:17:17.116 --> 0:17:20.796 easier to control than wild rats and certainly than raccoons, 0:17:21.316 --> 0:17:25.676 which meant it gave the behaviorists easier, more reliable data, 0:17:26.076 --> 0:17:29.916 and then it just took off. Soon. A prominent psychologist 0:17:29.956 --> 0:17:33.116 described the field as being infected by a plague of rats. 0:17:33.476 --> 0:17:36.596 Millions of dollars poured into rat studies. The leader of 0:17:36.636 --> 0:17:40.196 the Yale Institute of Human Relations announced that anything he 0:17:40.236 --> 0:17:44.796 observed about rats behaviors among other animals was quote identical 0:17:45.036 --> 0:17:48.316 with those operative in man, even in his highest behavioral 0:17:48.396 --> 0:17:51.916 achievements end quote. Let me play you a bit of 0:17:51.996 --> 0:17:54.916 film that Yale Institute produced. I think it goes a 0:17:54.956 --> 0:17:58.116 long way to showing exactly how confident these people were 0:17:58.236 --> 0:18:00.556 in what studying rats could tell us about people. 0:18:01.476 --> 0:18:04.436 Again, a mild electric shock and they administered through the 0:18:04.436 --> 0:18:06.556 grid on the floor of the apparatus. 0:18:06.956 --> 0:18:09.516 This film has always freaked me out. A rat in 0:18:09.556 --> 0:18:12.036 a cage with an electric current running through the bars. 0:18:12.556 --> 0:18:14.356 He's got to figure out how to turn it off. 0:18:14.996 --> 0:18:17.636 This time, it can only be turned off by ropetaking 0:18:17.636 --> 0:18:20.996 a wheel. The satiated animals starts responding as soon as 0:18:20.996 --> 0:18:22.076 a drive is supplied. 0:18:23.076 --> 0:18:25.916 The whole time that tone is sounding, the rat is 0:18:25.956 --> 0:18:28.876 just frantically scrambling around his cage trying to figure out 0:18:28.916 --> 0:18:31.316 how to make it stop. Then he starts pawing at 0:18:31.316 --> 0:18:32.956 a wheel and it turns off. 0:18:33.636 --> 0:18:37.076 The drive produced by electric shock is stronger than hunger. 0:18:37.916 --> 0:18:40.196 It turns out zapping a rat is a good way 0:18:40.196 --> 0:18:42.836 to get it to do anything, including violence. 0:18:43.316 --> 0:18:47.076 Responding to another animal by striking him can also be learned. 0:18:47.156 --> 0:18:49.316 All he needs is a little motivation. 0:18:51.996 --> 0:18:54.556 If you could teach a rat to do anything, why 0:18:54.596 --> 0:18:57.836 not a person. Suddenly the scary world of the twentieth 0:18:57.836 --> 0:19:01.276 century began to seem a lot more manageable. Mass movements, 0:19:01.396 --> 0:19:05.156 great depressions, whatever. Just find the right set of incentives 0:19:05.236 --> 0:19:08.076 or punishments, and all of human behavior it could be 0:19:08.076 --> 0:19:09.516 predicted and can controlled. 0:19:10.316 --> 0:19:14.436 We started comparing that behavior to humans at a slot 0:19:14.436 --> 0:19:19.916 machine or something. People I think started seeing humans as 0:19:19.996 --> 0:19:22.836 big rats or rats as little humans. Always say that 0:19:22.876 --> 0:19:28.076 we're not. We've got what six thousand mammalian species, and 0:19:28.116 --> 0:19:29.596 we're going to pick one or two. 0:19:30.076 --> 0:19:32.676 A few people question the dominance of the rat at first, 0:19:33.196 --> 0:19:37.796 Why bother when it was working so well. This kind 0:19:37.836 --> 0:19:40.556 of thing has always bothered me on a gut level. 0:19:40.716 --> 0:19:42.276 I look in the mirror every day and I do 0:19:42.396 --> 0:19:44.916 not see a rat staring back at me. At least 0:19:44.996 --> 0:19:48.436 nonsense patching the hole in my bathroom wall. We aren't rats. 0:19:48.836 --> 0:19:52.356 I'm not saying we can't learn anything about ourselves from animals, 0:19:52.756 --> 0:19:55.316 but I am saying that you should never underestimate how 0:19:55.316 --> 0:19:57.556 many of the things we think we know about human 0:19:57.596 --> 0:20:00.956 beings are actually things we know about inbred rats with 0:20:01.036 --> 0:20:04.596 brains the size of grapes kept in cages that sometimes 0:20:04.596 --> 0:20:05.316 electrocute you. 0:20:06.236 --> 0:20:08.116 And it's hard for me to think back about why 0:20:08.116 --> 0:20:10.836 didn't I question that, or did I ask if there 0:20:10.836 --> 0:20:13.676 are other models? And it's just become lightly that I've 0:20:13.716 --> 0:20:16.036 had so many of these. Kelly, what the heck were 0:20:16.076 --> 0:20:17.556 you thinking? All these years? 0:20:18.596 --> 0:20:21.076 We built a science of human nature and one of 0:20:21.116 --> 0:20:25.076 the strongest pillars was the labrat. And who is the labrat? 0:20:25.476 --> 0:20:28.996 He's crucially not the raccoon. The raccoon lets it all 0:20:29.036 --> 0:20:33.796 hang out. He's defiant, mischievous, crafty. If asked to participate 0:20:33.836 --> 0:20:37.436 in a scientific experiment, he will inquire about payment than 0:20:37.516 --> 0:20:41.236 callin sick. Not the rat. The rat is hard working 0:20:41.316 --> 0:20:45.596 by instinct, diligent. He gnaws away, he navigates complex warrants. 0:20:45.636 --> 0:20:49.036 He gets a perfect score on his SATs. He's rational. 0:20:49.756 --> 0:20:52.876 Build the maze and he'll fall in line. He is 0:20:52.876 --> 0:20:55.556 in short, a good animal for running the same test 0:20:55.716 --> 0:20:59.796 again and again and again without complaint, while delivering consistent, 0:21:00.076 --> 0:21:05.356 reliable data suggesting that we humans behave in consistent, reliable ways. 0:21:06.156 --> 0:21:08.996 For all this, the rat has been rewarded by becoming 0:21:09.156 --> 0:21:13.116 the only animals synonymous with the scientific laboratory. It's not 0:21:13.276 --> 0:21:18.116 lab pigeon, it's not lab monkey, it's lab rat. But 0:21:18.236 --> 0:21:20.996 I was beginning to wonder what if it should have 0:21:21.036 --> 0:21:31.436 been lab raccoon. We'll be right back. Some years ago, 0:21:31.676 --> 0:21:34.676 when Michael Pettitt was working on his ingenious article about 0:21:34.756 --> 0:21:37.636 raccoon or rasure, he took a colleague out to lunch, 0:21:37.876 --> 0:21:42.596 Suzanne MacDonald, behaviorist and expert in animal cognition. He told 0:21:42.596 --> 0:21:44.876 her what he'd been learning about Lawrence Cole and the 0:21:44.916 --> 0:21:49.196 early raccoon studies. She, a fellow Torontonian beset by the 0:21:49.196 --> 0:21:53.556 plague of raccoons, was like, oh my god, how did 0:21:53.556 --> 0:21:54.036 we miss this? 0:21:54.916 --> 0:21:57.236 I originally had thought, and I told Mike this because 0:21:57.236 --> 0:22:00.316 I thought it was a brilliant insight. Oh, they're they're 0:22:00.356 --> 0:22:01.756 the monkeys of North America. 0:22:01.796 --> 0:22:03.916 By monkeys of North America, you mean they fill a 0:22:04.076 --> 0:22:06.036 certain ecological niche yeah. 0:22:05.876 --> 0:22:08.996 Because we don't have monkeys, right, So it's just like, oh, well, 0:22:09.156 --> 0:22:11.516 you know, maybe they're just like that. They're not primates, 0:22:11.556 --> 0:22:15.356 but maybe they have evolved to cognitively to be like primates. 0:22:15.596 --> 0:22:19.516 Traveling to study monkeys was expensive. If raccoons were like monkeys, 0:22:19.556 --> 0:22:22.476 then living in Toronto was like living on safari. So 0:22:22.556 --> 0:22:26.436 McDonald caught the Lawrence colebug. She began to study raccoons 0:22:26.876 --> 0:22:28.796 and she's been doing it ever since. 0:22:29.076 --> 0:22:31.556 Because we don't know very much, just trying to fill 0:22:31.596 --> 0:22:34.996 gaps and trying to see what I find out about them, 0:22:35.236 --> 0:22:40.396 and they are annoying little critters. So it's been challenging 0:22:40.476 --> 0:22:43.116 and I wouldn't recommend it to most people. 0:22:44.356 --> 0:22:47.556 McDonald has become one of the world's leading experts in raccoons, 0:22:47.796 --> 0:22:50.956 and in particular the urban raccoons of Toronto, with whom 0:22:50.956 --> 0:22:54.396 I think she feels a strong kinship. For instance, I've 0:22:54.436 --> 0:22:57.276 seen people saying that there are one hundred thousand raccoons 0:22:57.276 --> 0:23:00.676 in Toronto. Where did they get that number? McDonald told 0:23:00.676 --> 0:23:03.716 me that she was the origin of that statistic, and 0:23:03.756 --> 0:23:05.796 she just made a number up, which is exactly what 0:23:05.836 --> 0:23:08.796 a raccoon would do. She gets it. So, after a 0:23:08.796 --> 0:23:12.276 century of waiting I prepared to receive the good news 0:23:12.316 --> 0:23:15.876 about the raccoon's true intelligence from the source. I leaned 0:23:15.916 --> 0:23:17.436 back in my desk chair. 0:23:17.876 --> 0:23:20.996 And I can tell you, having studied cognition and maybe raccoons, 0:23:21.116 --> 0:23:26.716 they are dumber and sticks. They are so dumb, just terrible. 0:23:27.316 --> 0:23:30.116 Every one of our little markers that we use for 0:23:30.196 --> 0:23:34.916 animals cognition or intelligence or you know, developmental milestones are 0:23:34.916 --> 0:23:37.076 going they just fail every single one. 0:23:37.636 --> 0:23:41.836 How intriguing. I thought maybe the raccoons super intelligence develops 0:23:41.876 --> 0:23:42.836