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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally

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Speaker 1: published March twenty second, twenty twenty two, and it's called

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Speaker 1: The Beast War in Apron Part one. This was the

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Speaker 1: first entry in a series on non human animals doing

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Speaker 1: things analogous to cooking or otherwise kind of doing a

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Speaker 1: meal prep in some way. Yeah, do animals cook? Well,

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Speaker 1: the answer is probably not no, because we talked about

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Speaker 1: it for two hours, So join in on the fun.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going

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Speaker 1: to be starting on as that has to do with

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Speaker 1: animal feeding behaviors, but specifically what comes before the feeding itself.

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Speaker 1: I got into this topic by wondering about a simple question,

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Speaker 1: and it was are there any animals other than humans

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Speaker 1: that cook their food? Because if you look at the

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Speaker 1: relationship that humans have with food versus the at least

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Speaker 1: obvious relationships that we can see on the surface level

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Speaker 1: between most wild animals and their food, there were some

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Speaker 1: pretty stark differences. So you know, you watch like a

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Speaker 1: grazing herbivore mammal that's eating grass or eating leaves, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem like they're putting the vegetation through any kind

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Speaker 1: of external processing. It's just there in the environment. They

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Speaker 1: bite it, they chew it, and they swallow it. Though

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Speaker 1: once they swallow it. Of course, if you're talking about

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Speaker 1: like you know, ruminant mammals or something, plenty of interesting

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Speaker 1: things happen to the food after it has been processed,

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Speaker 1: say by the teeth in the mouth, there might be

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Speaker 1: multiple different interesting stages of digestion. But in that first stage,

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Speaker 1: before the food reaches the mouth, there's not really anything

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Speaker 1: complex going on that There's just some material in the

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Speaker 1: environment that has nutritional value. The animal comes within reach

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Speaker 1: of that food, they bite it, they chew it up,

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Speaker 1: they swallow it, they just eat it. And if you

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Speaker 1: compared that to all of the sometimes mind bogglingly complex

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Speaker 1: stages of manipulation, combination, and alteration of raw plant and

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Speaker 1: animal materials that go into making a standard human meal,

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Speaker 1: even meals that we would perceive as kind of simple like,

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Speaker 1: if you think about all of the preprocessing and alteration

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Speaker 1: that goes into the foods that make a cheeseburger, the

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Speaker 1: difference is overwhelming. Oh yeah, I mean even if you're

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can go even simpler than that. I

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Speaker 1: guess if even if you just you don't even take

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Speaker 1: into accounts they meat, because meat processing, especially something like

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Speaker 1: a hamburger, there's a lot of the lot of grotesque

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Speaker 1: details that go into that. But so just like thinking

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Speaker 1: about yeah, like the bread, you know, the vegetables, even

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Speaker 1: you know, being prepared, the various sauces, I mean, all

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Speaker 1: the things that go into it. It's it's it's quite

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Speaker 1: a lot. And yeah, coming back to what you said

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Speaker 1: earlier that we think about animals, we think about purely

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Speaker 1: internal food processing and human cuisine. Human cooking is the

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Speaker 1: externalization of various processes things that that we tend to

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Speaker 1: imagine generally only take place within the bodies of animals.

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Speaker 1: We found ways to do them externally to give our

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Speaker 1: internal digestion a break, as well as to make things

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Speaker 1: that are otherwise inedible edible exactly right. And of course,

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Speaker 1: the central idea, the thing that most people think about

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Speaker 1: when you say the word cooking is the narrow sense

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Speaker 1: of cooking, meaning causing chemical and structural changes to food

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Speaker 1: by the application of heat, specifically heating. This is one

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Speaker 1: of the most common ways of processing food before we

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Speaker 1: eat it. And this does exactly the things you're talking about.

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Speaker 1: It takes foods that would not otherwise be edible to

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Speaker 1: humans and makes them edible, or makes them safe to eat,

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Speaker 1: or increases the availability of nutrition from the same starting

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Speaker 1: quantities of food. So you take a mass of raw food,

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Speaker 1: you cook it, you can usually increase its nutritional efficiency,

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Speaker 1: you can get more nutrition out of it. And so

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Speaker 1: to come back to the question of are there animals

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Speaker 1: that cook, I would say, based on my research, if

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Speaker 1: you're talking about on their own in the wild, it

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Speaker 1: appears that the answer is no. In that narrow sense

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Speaker 1: of cooking, meaning cooking by applying heat, it seems that

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Speaker 1: humans are the only animals that do that in a

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Speaker 1: consistent way. That we can talk about a few interesting

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Speaker 1: wrinkles to that generalization in a minute. But when it

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Speaker 1: comes to the broader sense of cooking, which is you

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Speaker 1: would imagine anything that people would do in a restaurant

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Speaker 1: kitchen or in a home kitchen any way, that people

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Speaker 1: manipulate food, food or prepare meals other than by applying heat.

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Speaker 1: It turns out non human animals do all kinds of

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Speaker 1: fascinating things to their food before consuming it along these lines,

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Speaker 1: And so that's what I wanted to talk about in

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Speaker 1: this series. What do animals do that could be construed

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Speaker 1: as cooking in one way or another, even accepting that

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Speaker 1: no animals in the wild cook their food with heat,

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Speaker 1: while with the exception of the ratitu, a phenomenon by

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Speaker 1: which a rat, once exposed to culinary traditions in an

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Speaker 1: urban environment, will then begin to cook itself, to actually

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Speaker 1: copy the various recipes that are around it, improve upon

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Speaker 1: those recipes, and sometimes crawl on type of a man's

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Speaker 1: head and pull his hair to use said human as

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Speaker 1: a puppet to move around the kitchen and prepare you know,

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Speaker 1: fine works of French cuisine or yes, I can't recall it. Okay, yeah, yes,

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Speaker 1: the ratitui itself. Yes, but it begs the question is

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Speaker 1: this is this do we see this only with French

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Speaker 1: cuisine or does the ratitui phenomenon repeat itself in various

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Speaker 1: other cultures. Animals can only be trained to make sauces

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Speaker 1: that are heavy and dairy. So yeah, it is a

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Speaker 1: French thing, okay, But no, that's a good point because actually,

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Speaker 1: by raising ratitui, you point out that I think you

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Speaker 1: could quite clearly find plenty of examples of animals that

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Speaker 1: have been trained in some sense to cook. Now, they're

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Speaker 1: probably never going to be as versatile as a human cook,

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Speaker 1: but I'm sure you can find tons of examples of

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Speaker 1: an animal that somebody trained to go turn on the

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Speaker 1: microwave or something like that, you know, to boop at

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Speaker 1: the oven knob with their nose until it comes on

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Speaker 1: or something along those lines. And then of course there's

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Speaker 1: the whole area of animals that are willing to benefit

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Speaker 1: from cooking without having done it themselves. Like I once

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Speaker 1: saw a seagull grab a hot dog half of off

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Speaker 1: of a grill at the beach. You know, the seagull

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Speaker 1: was not itself barbecuing, but it was more than happy

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Speaker 1: to benefit from the barbecuing. Well, that is a great point,

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Speaker 1: and that actually feeds right into the next thing that

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Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about. So before in this series

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Speaker 1: we get into examples of animals doing some kind of

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Speaker 1: cooking in the broader sense, meaning you know, preparing foods

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Speaker 1: before they eat them in some way that doesn't involve

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Speaker 1: the directed application of heat. I do want to talk

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Speaker 1: about cooked food in the narrower sense, food that has

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Speaker 1: been heated, and one interesting place I thought to start

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Speaker 1: there would be with the question in general, would non

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Speaker 1: human animals actually prefer cooked food over the raw food

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Speaker 1: stuffs that they would encounter in their natural environment. And

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Speaker 1: it turns out there have been some studies that looked

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Speaker 1: into this, and in some cases there is a clear answer.

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Speaker 1: So I wanted to start by looking at a paper

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Speaker 1: published in the year two thousand and eight in the

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Speaker 1: Journal of Human Evolution by Victoria Wobber, Brian Hare, and

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Speaker 1: Richard Rangum called Great Apes Prefer Cooked Food. Now, part

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Speaker 1: of the background of this paper is based in the

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Speaker 1: exploration of an idea that's come up in passing on

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Speaker 1: the show a couple of times before. We've never actually

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Speaker 1: devoted a full episode or series to it. Maybe someday

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Speaker 1: we will, but it's what is known as the cooking hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: And to summarize it briefly, the cooking hypothesis is the

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Speaker 1: proposition that the advent of cooking was a major contributor

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Speaker 1: to the physiological evolution of the ancestors of Homo sapiens.

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Speaker 1: In other words, that a lot of things about the

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Speaker 1: bodies of modern human beings are the way they are

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Speaker 1: because our primate ancestors figured out how to control fire

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Speaker 1: and how to cook their food by applying heat to it.

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Speaker 1: Now you might wonder how could our bodies be changed

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Speaker 1: in an evolutionary sense by the invention of cooking. Well,

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Speaker 1: essentially it would happen by changing the pressures in our

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Speaker 1: nutritional regimes. So I think proponents of the cooking hypothesis

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Speaker 1: usually argue that because cooked food is more nutritionally efficient,

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Speaker 1: again meaning that if food is cooked, you take a

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Speaker 1: food item you eat it raw versus you eat it cooked.

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Speaker 1: In the cooked version, you can get more nutrition from

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Speaker 1: it with less chewing, less energy spent on digestion, and

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Speaker 1: so forth. So if suddenly eating and absorbing nutrition becomes

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Speaker 1: easier and more efficient, we have to spend less time chewing,

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Speaker 1: we have to spend less time gathering large quantities of food.

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Speaker 1: The types of food we can eat safely is expanded,

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Speaker 1: and we have to spend less energy developing large powerhouse

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Speaker 1: digestive tracts, and so forth. So perhaps other adaptive pressures

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Speaker 1: fill the void, including bigger brains and so forth. And

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Speaker 1: I think one proposed causal mechanism is that once cooking

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Speaker 1: is invented, we can get more nutrition from the same

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Speaker 1: amount of environmental material. Suddenly the carrying pacity of the

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Speaker 1: local environment than is larger. There can be more humans

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Speaker 1: per tribe, which requires bigger brains in order to maintain

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Speaker 1: relationships with that larger number of humans. The main figure

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Speaker 1: behind the cooking hypothesis is a British primatologist. I think

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Speaker 1: he either is now or it was at some recent point.

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Speaker 1: Was it Harvard named Richard Rangum, and he wrote a

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Speaker 1: book laying out this argument in two thousand and nine

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Speaker 1: called Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human. Rangum is

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Speaker 1: also one of the authors of this paper about whether

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Speaker 1: apes prefer cooked food. And I'm not going to go

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Speaker 1: into all of the pros and cons the arguments foreign

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Speaker 1: against the cooking hypothesis. I would just say that my

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Speaker 1: personal evaluation at a cursory reading of it is that

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Speaker 1: it looks like it's kind of in the middle zone.

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Speaker 1: It's one of those arguments that seems to have a

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Speaker 1: lot of interesting things going for it, but it also

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Speaker 1: doesn't line up all that well with the best existing

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Speaker 1: evidence about the timeline for the control of fire by

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Speaker 1: human ancestors. So I don't know. I'd say it's interesting

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Speaker 1: but far from conclusive. But regardless of what we think

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Speaker 1: about the evolutionary effects of cooking on our direct ancestors,

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Speaker 1: pointing out the theoretical background helps us see why the

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Speaker 1: researchers performed the experiments described in this paper. So the

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Speaker 1: authors of this paper begin raising a relevant question, which

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Speaker 1: is that if you were to walk up to one

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Speaker 1: of our ancestors roughly two million years ago, maybe to

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Speaker 1: a member of the species Homo erectus, and you offered

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Speaker 1: them cooked food, are we sure that they would like

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Speaker 1: it or that they would prefer it to the same

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Speaker 1: food in its uncooked state. You mean, like like a

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Speaker 1: hot pocket. If you brought a hot pocket to one

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Speaker 1: of our ancestors, what would they make of it? And well,

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Speaker 1: let me react, I feel quite certain that somebody who

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Speaker 1: showed up with a hot pocket would be regarded as

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Speaker 1: a worker of evil magic. But anyway, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think this is a worthwhile question to ask because we

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Speaker 1: know that there are lots of types of food that

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Speaker 1: we would probably rather eat cooked than raw. Maybe lots

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Speaker 1: of you know, in this very person to person, but

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Speaker 1: probably most people would rather eat grain, tough vegetables, most meats,

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Speaker 1: and so forth in their cooked state. But it's possible

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Speaker 1: that's just a cultural preference. So, you know, we like

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Speaker 1: cooked food maybe because we're used to it. Is there

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Speaker 1: any way to test this out? And the authors here say, well,

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Speaker 1: obviously not with archaic commonens, but an interesting analog would

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Speaker 1: be to offer both cooked and raw versions of the

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Speaker 1: same food to great apes, our closest living relatives, and

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Speaker 1: see what their preferences are. So that's what this study

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Speaker 1: looked into. So experiment number one, they were like, hey,

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Speaker 1: let's try some tubers. Let's get together some carrots, some

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Speaker 1: sweet potatoes, and some white potatoes and offer them to

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Speaker 1: chimpanzees in a choice task that exposes them to both

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Speaker 1: and then allows them to pick between the cooked and

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Speaker 1: raw forms. And they found in the case of carrots

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Speaker 1: and sweet potatoes, the chimpanzees definitely liked the cooked version better.

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Speaker 1: On the other hand, it was interesting the white potato

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Speaker 1: was more of a toss up. The authors noted that

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Speaker 1: many chimps seemed kind of hesitant to take the initial

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Speaker 1: samples of both cooked and raw white potatoes, and it

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Speaker 1: was basically there was no difference in their preference between

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Speaker 1: the two, which seems surprising to me because like, I

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Speaker 1: love raw carrots, the cooked carrots are good too, but

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Speaker 1: I cannot imagine wanting to eat a raw potato now.

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Speaker 1: But the authors said, well, maybe the chimpanzees are just

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Speaker 1: kind of iffy on potatoes in general. Okay, well that

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Speaker 1: would make sense now. A second experiment they did had

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Speaker 1: trouble really getting much of an answer. But what they

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Speaker 1: looked into was to the extent that apes prefer cooked

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Speaker 1: food over raw food. Why do they like it better?

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Speaker 1: Is it the taste? Is it something about the texture.

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Speaker 1: And so they experimented with a number of different grade

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Speaker 1: apes they use chimp, spinobos, gorillas, and orangutans, and they

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Speaker 1: offered them choices between carrots in the following format, so

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Speaker 1: you could have whole pieces of carrot raw or cooked,

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Speaker 1: grated carrot raw or cooked, and mashed carrot raw or cooked.

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Speaker 1: And they found that when carrots were whole, apes definitely

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Speaker 1: preferred the cooked pieces to the raw pieces. Again, they

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Speaker 1: like cooked better, But after that things got more complicated

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Speaker 1: apes generally did not seem to like the graded carrot

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Speaker 1: in any format, and they preferred cooked whole carrots to

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Speaker 1: raw graded or cooked. Graded. Preferences were less clear in

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Speaker 1: the mashed condition, though. They explained that some difference in

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Speaker 1: results between the animal test groups for this experiment could

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Speaker 1: have been influenced by neophobia, meaning fear of food in

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Speaker 1: unfamiliar forms. Of course, you know, it's common among humans also,

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Speaker 1: is that we typically we like foods that we're familiar with,

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Speaker 1: and we're a little sometimes we're a little hesitant about

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Speaker 1: foods that are unfamiliar. Yeah, like, for instance, the mashed carrot.

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Speaker 1: How did he get mashed? Like? Yeah, but you know,

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Speaker 1: if you were to encounter a mashed carrot in the wild,

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Speaker 1: you know, the possibilities are not all that appetizing. Yeah, Okay.

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Speaker 1: Experiments three of four and this one, the authors write,

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Speaker 1: quote this experiment provided great apes with choices between raw

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Speaker 1: and cooked meat and raw and cooked apple malice domestica.

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Speaker 1: We controlled for neophobia in this experiment because one of

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Speaker 1: these items was familiar in its raw form apple and

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Speaker 1: the other was familiar in its cooked form meat. Thus,

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Speaker 1: this juxtaposed preference is determined by taste, slash, texture, and

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Speaker 1: those which would be determined by familiarity with the test items.

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Speaker 1: And in this test, the apes definitely preferred cooked beef

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Speaker 1: over raw beef, but they did not show a significant

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Speaker 1: preference one way or the other about the apple. Again,

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Speaker 1: it's funny thinking about how much this does or does

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Speaker 1: not overlap with our own preferences. Though again, you know,

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Speaker 1: human preferences you always have to wonder about being a

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Speaker 1: product of cultural familiarity. But they say this shows that

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Speaker 1: neophobia is not the only factor affecting preferences, because the

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Speaker 1: apes were previously familiar only with raw apple, not cooked,

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Speaker 1: and in this experiment, while they did not prefer the

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Speaker 1: cook apple, they basically showed no difference in preference between

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Speaker 1: the two. Now, I mean, in all of this, we

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Speaker 1: have the saying about comparing apples and oranges, and here

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Speaker 1: we're comparing apples and meat. Uh So, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: it feels, I mean, not that there's really a way

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Speaker 1: to improve on this. I'm not I don't mean to

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Speaker 1: criticize the study, but it's like they're there are certain

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Speaker 1: limitations in place with some of these comparisons. I feel,

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Speaker 1: what do you mean that in that they're they're documenting

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Speaker 1: different preferences by types of food like well like, for

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Speaker 1: for instance, to say, well, we control for neophobia because

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Speaker 1: the raw form apple will still looks like an apple,

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Speaker 1: and the and the cooked meat still looks like the meat. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I find that kind of a confusing rationale.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I think you're misunderstanding what they were doing.

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Speaker 1: That they the neophobia thing was that they were familiar

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Speaker 1: with cooked meat and with raw apple, but not with

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Speaker 1: cooked apple or raw meat, and so they were trying

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Speaker 1: to see, um, does this make any like, does it

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Speaker 1: just conform to in both cases they prefer whatever they're

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Speaker 1: previously familiar with. Okay, in the case of meat they did.

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Speaker 1: In the case of apple not so much. But they

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Speaker 1: did another test. The fourth experiment was a test for novelty.

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Speaker 1: They said, quote, we tested chimpanzees that were not given

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Speaker 1: meat as a regular part of their diet and as

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Speaker 1: far as was known, had never eaten cooked meat. And

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Speaker 1: so they're offered raw and cooked beef. And again they

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Speaker 1: definitely preferred the cooked beef better than the raw. So

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Speaker 1: in the final discussion they say, yeah, on average, and

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Speaker 1: the foods they tested here, apes liked cooked food better

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Speaker 1: than raw food. With some exceptions. They definitely prefer cooked beef, carrots,

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Speaker 1: and sweet potatoes. They don't seem to have much of

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Speaker 1: a preference on average between the cooked and raw forms

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Speaker 1: of apple and white potato, And it seemed like in

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Speaker 1: general just didn't really love white potato. And so they

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Speaker 1: said neophobia might be a contributing factor to some of

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Speaker 1: these results, But in experiments that tried to control for it,

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Speaker 1: the ape still on average thought were pretty cool with

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Speaker 1: the cooked version of food. But finally, this experiment had

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Speaker 1: difficulty determining which characteristics of cooked foods the apes were

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Speaker 1: responding to, you know, was it taste, was a texture,

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Speaker 1: and so forth. And I do think that's an interesting question,

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Speaker 1: like if animals other than humans also prefer cooked food

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Speaker 1: in most cases, why is it like does it taste

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Speaker 1: better to them? Is it like because it's softer to chew?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe we can come back to that,

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Speaker 1: but anyway, the authors, you know, I mean, it's difficult

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Speaker 1: too because we have to stop and realize, like when

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Speaker 1: they're talking about the difference between a cooked and a

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Speaker 1: raw white potato, the cooked white potato in this experiment

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Speaker 1: is also not buttered and salted and you know, and

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Speaker 1: prepared in these other ways. Like we're just stripping it

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Speaker 1: down to the basics of what cooking does to this

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Speaker 1: particular substance. So yeah, like if I were to you know,

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Speaker 1: trying to set aside as much a you know, human

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Speaker 1: complexity as possible, if I were presented with just a

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Speaker 1: plain white potato and a raw potato, I mean, I'd

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Speaker 1: like to think I would still prefer the pick potato

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Speaker 1: to the raw potato, but without anything added to it,

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Speaker 1: it's still not a very attractive offer. Like the potato

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Speaker 1: is is something that is best um consumed when there

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Speaker 1: are other things done to it, other seasonings, other styles

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Speaker 1: of preparation, etc. The human mind cannot comprehend the depths

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Speaker 1: of blandness of a of an unseasoned potato. Yeah. The

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Speaker 1: carrot is really the one that that throws me the most,

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Speaker 1: you know, like because it part of me would guess

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Speaker 1: that there's nothing quite like the raw crispness of the carrot.

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Speaker 1: Like the carrot is crisp, we identify that with with freshness.

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Speaker 1: The carrot is sweet. Um, Like what is changed in

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Speaker 1: cooking the carrot that that would that would make it

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Speaker 1: more preferable, like, is it just it's just softer? Is

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Speaker 1: it therefore seem riper in that sense? And then how

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Speaker 1: does that affect the sweetness of it? Would the sweetness

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Speaker 1: be in any way enhanced by the cooking? I think

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Speaker 1: in general, I can't speak to carrots in particular. But

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Speaker 1: the authors actually address this, They say so they talk

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Speaker 1: about hypothesizing reasons that non human animals would prefer cooked

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Speaker 1: food over raw food. And so one of the avenues

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Speaker 1: they talk about is that cooking tends to cause chemical

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Speaker 1: changes that increase the availability of flavor compounds that animals

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Speaker 1: of all kinds seem to like. And so the two

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Speaker 1: main examples they offer are available sugars and available glutamates.

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Speaker 1: Now sugars, that's I'm pretty clear to understand, and we

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Speaker 1: can know that from experience. I don't know about carrots.

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Speaker 1: It probably conforms to this and carrots, but I think

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Speaker 1: about like onions, like eating a raw onion versus eating

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Speaker 1: a cooked onion. The cooked onion is so much sweeter

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Speaker 1: like the you know, the amount of sugar you can

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Speaker 1: taste in it is I don't know, it feels like

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Speaker 1: it's exponential above a raw onion. And yeah, and that's

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Speaker 1: that's a case too, where by cooking the onion your

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Speaker 1: kind of blunting it's um it's effects like the chemical

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Speaker 1: weaponry if the onion is diluted. Yeah, the sulfur compounds

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Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, so that's sugars. Apparently lots of foods

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Speaker 1: have more available sugars when you cook them, so they

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Speaker 1: taste sweeter. Tons of different animals can differentiate the levels

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Speaker 1: of sugar and a food they're eating, and obviously prefer

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Speaker 1: the thing that tastes like it's got more sugar in

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Speaker 1: it because it is probably going to be more nutritionally dense,

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Speaker 1: it has more calories per same amount of food. The

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Speaker 1: other thing is the available glutamates. Glutamates are you know,

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Speaker 1: does that ring a bell? Maybe it's in the phrase

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Speaker 1: monosodium glutamate, the msg flavor, the umami flavor. Glutamates are

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Speaker 1: are largely responsible for savory flavors that we associate with

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Speaker 1: meat and h and also things like tomatoes and hard

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Speaker 1: cheeses like parmesan and soy sauce. Those those glutamates or

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Speaker 1: that delicious savory umami feeling and that's not just for

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Speaker 1: humans either. It turns out tons of animals. I think

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Speaker 1: even some invertebrates can detect umami flavor through the presence

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Speaker 1: of free glutamates, which are increased by cooking. And while

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Speaker 1: I was reading about this, I did get really amused

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Speaker 1: by the idea of like invert I don't know which

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Speaker 1: invertebrates exactly, but like with lobsters really love soy sauce,

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Speaker 1: would like there be centipedes who are going nuts for

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Speaker 1: parmesan cheese anyway. Okay, So cooking often increases the availability

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Speaker 1: of sugars and glutamates, So that's a favor increasing flavors

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Speaker 1: that broadly lots of animals seem to like. And cooking

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Speaker 1: tends to change the texture of food, usually by making

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Speaker 1: it softer and easier to chew, and of course that

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Speaker 1: appeals to the natural laziness present in all kinds of animals,

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Speaker 1: not just us. So I think you could possibly argue

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Speaker 1: that in a way, cooking, by massively increasing the presence

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Speaker 1: of taste and texture qualities that our bodies and brains

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Speaker 1: are already naturally on the look for, cooking could be

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Speaker 1: viewed as a sort of ancient form of supernormal stimuli,

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Speaker 1: like evolution shaped animal appetites to seek out nutritionally dense

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Speaker 1: things like sugar and glutamates, which we detect by taste.

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Speaker 1: Cooking causes chemical reactions that make more of those molecules available.

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Speaker 1: Cooking softens food, appealing to our natural laziness. We don't

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Speaker 1: like to spend an hour chewing on some tough bit

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Speaker 1: of something to get it down. Tender food is better

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Speaker 1: than tough food. So it's kind of like it's it's

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Speaker 1: taking all these things we naturally seek out in foods

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Speaker 1: we would find in our environment, but making them way

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Speaker 1: more dependably present in all kinds of foods. But anyway,

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Speaker 1: the authors of this study I was talking about, they

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Speaker 1: say that their findings conformed other bits of pre existing

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Speaker 1: evidence that many other non human animals on average prefer

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Speaker 1: cooked food over raw food. For instance, they cite a

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Speaker 1: book by Brewer in nineteen seventy eight alleging observation that

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Speaker 1: chimpanzees in the wild would preferred eat seeds that have

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Speaker 1: been naturally cooked or at least heated by wildfires. This

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Speaker 1: was in a book by Brewer called The Chimpanzees of

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Speaker 1: Mount Assyriek and well I thought that was interesting. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: like that it's kind of primordial cooking right there. And

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Speaker 1: they cite findings of preferences in other mammals. For example,

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Speaker 1: Bradshaw at All in two thousand found that once cats

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Speaker 1: have been exposed to both raw and cooked meat, they

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Speaker 1: tend to prefer the cooked version. And they point to

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Speaker 1: Ramirez in nineteen ninety two, which found that rats preferred

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Speaker 1: cooked starch over raw starch. But I was looking at

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Speaker 1: another study that actually asked a complimentary question. So if

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Speaker 1: the first question is do grade apes such as chimpanzees

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Speaker 1: prefer cooked food over raw food, it seems in the

430
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:57,320
Speaker 1: majority of cases they do. The second question is do

431
00:24:57,400 --> 00:25:00,240
Speaker 1: they in fact possess the ability to understand and the

432
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,920
Speaker 1: cooking process? Would they, in theory at least be able

433
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,480
Speaker 1: to cook for themselves? And the study that looked into

434
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:13,200
Speaker 1: this was by Felix Varniken and Alexandra g Rosati, published

435
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 1: in Proceedings of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences, called

436
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:21,120
Speaker 1: Cognitive Capacities for Cooking in Chimpanzees. And this was twenty fifteen,

437
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: and so the author's right here quote the transition to

438
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 1: a cook to diet represents an important shift in human

439
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 1: ecology and evolution. Cooking requires a set of sophisticated cognitive abilities,

440
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 1: including causal reasoning, self control, and anticipatory planning. Do humans

441
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: uniquely possess the cognitive capacities needed to cook food? And?

442
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,440
Speaker 1: Oh man, when I was reading that line about about

443
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:50,639
Speaker 1: cooking requiring self control and anticipatory planning, I felt a

444
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: little bit cheapish because it immediately made me think about

445
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:55,560
Speaker 1: the problem of rob I don't know if you do

446
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:58,080
Speaker 1: this too, but you're like cooking something and you just

447
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 1: kind of keep snacking on it. Yeah, I mean you

448
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:05,920
Speaker 1: encounter that definitely with your more complicated recipes where um,

449
00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:09,760
Speaker 1: I don't know, say you've, like a shepherd's pie comes

450
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 1: to mind. I've recently made a vegetarian shepherd's pie for

451
00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 1: the weekend Saint Patty's Day, And uh, yeah, once you've

452
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 1: made like one part of it, like maybe you've made

453
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:24,800
Speaker 1: them the mashed potatoes, or you've made the you know,

454
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:28,120
Speaker 1: the the the meat and vegetable filling. Uh, you might

455
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:30,080
Speaker 1: be tempted, especially if you're a little bit hungry, you

456
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: might be tempted do taste and keep tasting those portions

457
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: before everything comes together is one. However, we tend if

458
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:40,240
Speaker 1: we're making shepherd's pie, we're usually not tempted to eat

459
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: the raw potatoes or right or something like that before

460
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 1: we begin cooking. But yeah, you know, like you've you've

461
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 1: gone past the point where you're testing it for seasoning

462
00:26:49,880 --> 00:26:52,920
Speaker 1: or whatever. Is just like okay, yeah, maybe have a

463
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,359
Speaker 1: little another bite of this, right, We're like, we're not

464
00:26:55,359 --> 00:26:57,720
Speaker 1: going to go hog out eating a much of just

465
00:26:57,840 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: raw flour right out of the bag. But of course

466
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: once the cookie dough is prepared, that is where the

467
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 1: temptation may set in. Well, it turns out some chimpanzees

468
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: have the same problem, but they do better at these

469
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: kinds of anticipation and delay of gratification tasks than you

470
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 1: might expect. So this study address these questions by performing

471
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: some experiments with our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. The authors

472
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:23,159
Speaker 1: conducted a total of nine studies on chimpanzees living in

473
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 1: a nature sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with

474
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,359
Speaker 1: the following results. They found. First of all, they replicated

475
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: the finding that chimpanzees in general prefer cooked foods over

476
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 1: the same foods in their raw form. Second finding is

477
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:40,439
Speaker 1: that chimpanzees in some way do understand that food is

478
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:44,160
Speaker 1: changed by the cooking process. They can tell the difference,

479
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,920
Speaker 1: and they understand something is happening when a raw food

480
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: is exchanged for a cooked food. Third, they will delay

481
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: gratification in order to upgrade a raw piece of food

482
00:27:55,280 --> 00:27:58,360
Speaker 1: to a cooked version of that same food. Fourth, they

483
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:00,960
Speaker 1: will give up possession of a raw piece of food

484
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:04,439
Speaker 1: already in hand in order to transform it into a

485
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: cooked food. And then fifth they will transport or store

486
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: raw food in anticipation of later opportunities to exchange it

487
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 1: for its cooked form. And an interesting note on the method.

488
00:28:16,080 --> 00:28:17,399
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, are they going to

489
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,320
Speaker 1: be giving apes like an oven or something. They did

490
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 1: not do that, actually, because of course they didn't want

491
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: to run the risk of the animals burning or otherwise

492
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: injuring themselves. Instead, they used a plastic box with a

493
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:33,200
Speaker 1: false bottom that would exchange a piece of raw food

494
00:28:33,200 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: for a piece of cooked food when shaken. Okay, I

495
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:40,480
Speaker 1: mean there are some limitations there, obviously, but that's essentially

496
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: what an oven does, I guess, right, Well, obviously this

497
00:28:43,040 --> 00:28:45,880
Speaker 1: is not the exact same thing as the cooking process.

498
00:28:45,920 --> 00:28:48,400
Speaker 1: But they're trying to figure out, well, the chimpanzees at

499
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 1: least figure out that there is a process they can

500
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 1: put raw food through and get cooked food out. And

501
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 1: will they delay gratification to go through that process? Yeah,

502
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:01,280
Speaker 1: and the answer is broadly. Yet the authors of the

503
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: study right quote together, our results indicate that several of

504
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: the fundamental psychological abilities necessary to engage in cooking may

505
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: have been shared with the last common ancestor of apes

506
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: and humans, predating the control of fire. And I was

507
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 1: reading a write up of this article in The Guardian

508
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: by Hannah Devlin that had some good supplemental details. One

509
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to read this paragraph definitely made me

510
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: say all buddy out loud. It was quote the chimps

511
00:29:28,120 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 1: continued to opt for the cooked option sixty percent of

512
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,280
Speaker 1: the time when they had to carry the food some

513
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 1: distance in order to place it in the quote oven,

514
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 1: although since they often carried it in their mouths, this

515
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: was a challenge, and they sometimes appeared to eat the

516
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: food on the way quote almost by accident. I sympathize

517
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: with that the best of intentions. You know, sometimes that

518
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 1: sweet potatoes in your mouth and you're just going to

519
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:55,600
Speaker 1: start you in the other thing was that, in terms

520
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: of hoarding raw ingredients in the hopes that they could

521
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,560
Speaker 1: later be exchanged for cooked food, chimps in some cases

522
00:30:01,600 --> 00:30:05,440
Speaker 1: hoarded up to twenty eight slices of sweet potato, and

523
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 1: Varniken said to the Guardian quote delayed gratification is a

524
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: problem for us as well. We also have a tendency

525
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: to nibble at food before we finished cooking. So that's

526
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 1: exactly what we were talking about. And they don't even

527
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:19,280
Speaker 1: have excuses for it, like you know, they can't use

528
00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:21,959
Speaker 1: the Rationelle Well, I need to taste it to make

529
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: sure that the flavor profiles appropriate. They need to make

530
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 1: sure I don't need to add more salt or pepper. Right.

531
00:30:27,120 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 1: But while I think this is interesting and it's informative

532
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 1: to the question of when humans first started cooking their

533
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 1: food and what effects that may have had on our

534
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: ancestors one to two million years ago. Of course, the

535
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:44,480
Speaker 1: fact remains that there are no widely observed natural instances

536
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 1: of animals in their natural habitat cooking foods by applying heat.

537
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: But as we said earlier, heating is not the only

538
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: form of cooking. Humans do all kinds of things to

539
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:58,120
Speaker 1: food that fall under the umbrella of cooking or cuisine

540
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: that are unrelated to heat. So we take raw or

541
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: cooked food items and we wash them, or we age them,

542
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: or we ferment them, or we season them, we butcher

543
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: them in certain ways, we skewer them or cut them

544
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:15,000
Speaker 1: up in special ways, we combine them together in interesting ways.

545
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 1: And it's frankly surprising how many of these culinary manipulations

546
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: and modifications that humans do are mirrored at some level

547
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: throughout the animal world. And so I thought that's what

548
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:28,120
Speaker 1: we could explore for the remainder of this series, all

549
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:37,840
Speaker 1: the different ways that animals cook. And you had some

550
00:31:37,920 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 1: really interesting examples. I think that had to do with

551
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: maybe what could broadly be called some form of butchering

552
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:48,720
Speaker 1: or skewering of food as a preparation method. Yeah, yeah,

553
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: I have a couple of good examples here, and one

554
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: of them I think is a pretty pretty obvious one.

555
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:58,440
Speaker 1: Let's start with an amusing one, but perhaps the less

556
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: involved one, and that is the case of the lamber

557
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 1: guy or bearded vulture. So these birds are found in

558
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:08,080
Speaker 1: parts of Africa and Eurasia, and these birds are known

559
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:12,080
Speaker 1: for their amazing ability to eat and digest bones. And

560
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: I think that's that's one of the reasons this is

561
00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: a great example bird to start with, because it already

562
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: has robust anatomical features and internal abilities when it comes

563
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:26,240
Speaker 1: to the processing of of what is, you know, arguably

564
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: a very difficult food. They're they're eating bones, but they

565
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:31,880
Speaker 1: have you know, they have these wonderful bites. They can

566
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:36,280
Speaker 1: bite through brittle bones, they can swallow large chunks of bones,

567
00:32:36,320 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 1: and their digestive system can handle it. And yet there

568
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:42,640
Speaker 1: are still going to be challenges that are too great

569
00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 1: for them to handle without a little ingenuity. And so

570
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 1: basically they have a butchering challenge ahead of them. You know.

571
00:32:50,560 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 1: Butchering is what we do when we have a carcass

572
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: and we don't just want to eat from the carcass.

573
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: We can't cook the whole carcass. We have to take

574
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:01,120
Speaker 1: things apart, remove things that are inedible, are not desired

575
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: or used for at another time or for another purpose,

576
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 1: you know, all the various reasons you have to take

577
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,320
Speaker 1: a part of a carcass. Yeah, And in fact, external

578
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:13,720
Speaker 1: processing of animal carcasses is Hypothi's not known for sure,

579
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: but it is hypothesized to be one of the earliest

580
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: drivers of tool use in humans. That yeah, why would

581
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 1: a human start using a flat rock as a cutting surface,

582
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:26,240
Speaker 1: maybe to get meat and tough hide parts and stuff

583
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: off of an animal kill. Yeah, yeah, that We've talked

584
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: about that on the show in the past when when

585
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: talking about early tool use and evidence of how those

586
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 1: tools are being used, you know, we can look for

587
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:41,360
Speaker 1: those signs on the bones of them having been scraped.

588
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:45,840
Speaker 1: In some cases, it's also evidence of cannibalism taking place

589
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: in a given people versus you know, I'm just mere

590
00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:53,320
Speaker 1: you know, murder or warfare. Oh, because of the signs

591
00:33:53,360 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 1: of tool use on the brains. Yeah, yeah, so yeah,

592
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 1: this is a case where the lambur guyer is going

593
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: to occasionally find some chunks of bone that are too

594
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 1: big to handle. They need to butcher it, they need

595
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:08,719
Speaker 1: to take it apart. But what tools are available to them. Well,

596
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: luckily they can. They can pick up a pretty big bone,

597
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:13,640
Speaker 1: I think, I think they can basically take off with

598
00:34:13,719 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: something equal to their own weight. So they've developed the

599
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:21,359
Speaker 1: practice of taking larger bones up high into the air

600
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,560
Speaker 1: and then dropping them onto rocks in order to break

601
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: them open or shatter them. Sometimes it takes more than

602
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: one try, and it's it's also a learned tactic, so

603
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: generally it takes around seven years for one of these

604
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 1: birds to master it. And you'll find examples of immature

605
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: birds just dropping bones incorrectly, like they haven't really figured

606
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 1: out exactly where you're supposed to drop them or or

607
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:47,800
Speaker 1: when you release them. But they'll get there. They'll eventually

608
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,319
Speaker 1: learn it, and it will open up new possibilities to

609
00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: them in terms of what they can eat. Oh that's

610
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:58,320
Speaker 1: my second al buddy of the episode, imagining the vulture

611
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 1: is dropping the bones wrong. Yeah, nice job, Ted. Now

612
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: they sometimes prey on live creatures as well, it's not

613
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:11,920
Speaker 1: just bones. And probably one of the more alarming and

614
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 1: interesting examples is that of the tortoise. They may fly

615
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: up with a tortoise that again has to be a

616
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,960
Speaker 1: tortoise that can physically carry up, but then they can

617
00:35:20,040 --> 00:35:24,520
Speaker 1: drop that as well, treat it like an oversized bone

618
00:35:24,880 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 1: in attempt to bust through those bony defenses. And this

619
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 1: may ring a bell for for some of you out there,

620
00:35:31,239 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 1: because this is of course how the Greek father of tragedy, Escalus,

621
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: was said to have died in four fifty eight BCE.

622
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: This according to the two accounts by Valerius Maximus and

623
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 1: our old friend Plenty of the Elder. Now this may

624
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,399
Speaker 1: well just be a story. We have to drive them,

625
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 1: but it basically goes like this. Yeah, Escalus goes to

626
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: an oracle. He receives a prophecy that he will he

627
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: will one day be killed by a falling object. So

628
00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:05,000
Speaker 1: he's a smart guy. He says, well, nothing can fall

629
00:36:05,080 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 1: on me if I'm outdoors. So he spends more and

630
00:36:08,719 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 1: more time outdoors because yeah, there's nothing's going to fall

631
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:13,959
Speaker 1: from the roof. There no shelves. Sounds like a pretty

632
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,879
Speaker 1: safe debt. Yeah, that makes sense. It's like, if there's

633
00:36:16,920 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: an earthquake, where do you want to be get away

634
00:36:18,560 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 1: from buildings? You're gonna be out in the middle of

635
00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:24,919
Speaker 1: a field, right. Unfortunately he is in the territory of

636
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: the Lambur guy or it's thought that this may may

637
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:32,840
Speaker 1: be referring to Lambur guyers. Suddenly a great bird flies overhead.

638
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:37,319
Speaker 1: That great bird has a tortoise in its clutches, and

639
00:36:37,440 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 1: it mistakes Escalus's head for a hard rock. A lot

640
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: of times he's depicted as being, you know, bald on top,

641
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 1: and so the bird drops the tortoise on him, killing

642
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:54,280
Speaker 1: him instantly. Again, possibly just a misunderstanding or an entertaining tale,

643
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: But you'll find various accounts of deaths like this from

644
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: the ancient world where you have to stop and ask,

645
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:04,279
Speaker 1: did they really die like this or is this just

646
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:07,520
Speaker 1: a nice story? This is the story that developed about

647
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: their death. If true, he died by accidentally running a

648
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 1: foul of an avian butchery process. Yes, I'm seeing vague

649
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:21,120
Speaker 1: connections to the Texas chainsaw masker. But now when it

650
00:37:21,160 --> 00:37:25,280
Speaker 1: comes to a van butchery. The best example, of course,

651
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: is the shrike. Now, if you've never seen a shrike,

652
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:31,800
Speaker 1: look up pictures of them. But they're generally, I mean,

653
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:35,400
Speaker 1: for me, they're an unimpressive looking bird. This is going

654
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:38,600
Speaker 1: to be different for you depending on how into birds

655
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: you are and if you're a board birdwatcher, etc. But

656
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:45,319
Speaker 1: you know, they when you compare what they look like

657
00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: with what they do, they don't look quite as impressive

658
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 1: in my opinion, because what they do is very impressive.

659
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 1: They are thirty four species of shrike in four genera

660
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 1: in the family Lanta day And if you're yeah, if

661
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: you're not a bird enthusiast or a birdwatcher. You might

662
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:03,919
Speaker 1: just look at a shrike and say, well, that looks

663
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: like a bird, but it's not what they look like.

664
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 1: It's what they do. And basically what they do is

665
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: they engage in a kind of a complex butchery situation.

666
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:15,719
Speaker 1: That's why we call them butcher birds. Lanta day is

667
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 1: derived from the Latin lantius, which means butcher. So they

668
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:23,640
Speaker 1: don't wear little aprons or wrap morsels of meat and

669
00:38:23,719 --> 00:38:27,160
Speaker 1: white butcher's paper. But what they do is they take

670
00:38:27,239 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 1: insects and even small vertebrates that they kill and they

671
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: impale them onto thorns like little lad draculas. Wow. And

672
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:38,359
Speaker 1: by the way, their methods. You know, it's one thing

673
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:42,240
Speaker 1: to get those various bugs and insects, but their method

674
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: of killing small rodents is actually quite brutal, as pointed

675
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 1: out by Hannah Waters in a twenty eighteen article for

676
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 1: the Audubon Society. Quote, they grasp mice by the neck

677
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 1: with their pointed beak, pinch the spinal cord to induce paralysis,

678
00:38:56,080 --> 00:38:58,880
Speaker 1: and then vigorously shake their prey with enough force to

679
00:38:58,880 --> 00:39:01,359
Speaker 1: break its neck. Oh that's interesting because it's like a

680
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:05,320
Speaker 1: bird version of a common predatory tactic. I think he

681
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: used about like some big cats, right. I think we

682
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 1: talked about this with Mary Roach in her book, talking

683
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:14,280
Speaker 1: about various kinds of big predatory cats that will attempt

684
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: to bite along the back of the neck, which is

685
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 1: how their characteristic attacks are identified in humans. Yeah. I

686
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: have noticed this when I watched all the Jurassic Park

687
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 1: movies with my son a year or so ago. Well,

688
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: I forget which one it was in, but there's one

689
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:33,880
Speaker 1: in particular where you see the dinosaurs, the raptors in particular,

690
00:39:34,680 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 1: killing by by clamping onto the back of the neck,

691
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 1: which I thought was a nice touch. So anyway, but no, waits, no,

692
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: but I've got a question. Okay, so this seems gratuitous.

693
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 1: The bird just takes its prey, which normal bird would

694
00:39:48,760 --> 00:39:51,120
Speaker 1: would just capture and then kill and then eat. But

695
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:54,400
Speaker 1: this bird impales it on a thorn on a plant.

696
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: Why do we have any idea like what the purpose

697
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: of this is? Yeah, and there seemed to be three

698
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: different reasons, um and and I do have to acknowledge that, yes,

699
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: this is exactly what you mentioned Texas Chainsaw, Maska earlier.

700
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: This is exactly what happens in one of the kills

701
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:14,880
Speaker 1: in TCMU. He cracks a victim on the head, uh,

702
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:16,400
Speaker 1: you know, and take takes her out, but then he

703
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: sticks her onto a meat hook. Uh. And that's that's

704
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 1: basically what the shrike is doing. So there are three

705
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 1: different reasons to do this that that researchers have identified.

706
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:30,839
Speaker 1: One and this is pretty neat and this is this

707
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: is that it's about tearing the meat once. And let's

708
00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:37,759
Speaker 1: say an insect is impaled on that thorn. You can

709
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:41,359
Speaker 1: then pull on the creature's body and you can rip it,

710
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 1: cut it into smaller pieces. So it's leverage. It allows

711
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:48,319
Speaker 1: you to get better leverage on the for butchering the

712
00:40:48,320 --> 00:40:51,839
Speaker 1: insect body. Right. It's it's not something we really do

713
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: because we you know, we can use farm, you know,

714
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: all these other tools. But imagine if you didn't have tools,

715
00:40:56,719 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 1: if the thorn was the only tool. Um, because that's

716
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 1: particularly I mean, that's exactly the situation that the bird

717
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:07,000
Speaker 1: is in. The Next reason it's for the shrike to

718
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 1: put something on the on the thorn is just as

719
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 1: a means of storing the meat. Uneaten portions of the

720
00:41:13,320 --> 00:41:15,839
Speaker 1: meat can be left on the thorns and the bird

721
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: can return later to eat some more m okay, as

722
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 1: opposed to like storing it on the ground where something

723
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: else is more likely to come along and take it. Right.

724
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:27,439
Speaker 1: And then finally, this is I think probably the most

725
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:30,799
Speaker 1: interesting of the three and one that I wasn't really

726
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: familiar with that I was. I knew about the shrikes

727
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,359
Speaker 1: and about the category one and two here. But the

728
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 1: third reason is to potentially detoxify the meat. And this

729
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:43,719
Speaker 1: is where we get more specific with some of the

730
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 1: prey species that are targeted. Uh, it's a way of

731
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 1: processing the meat of a toxic prey animal so that

732
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 1: the bird can then eat it. So the bird will

733
00:41:54,200 --> 00:41:57,160
Speaker 1: leave a body on the spike for like a period

734
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: of one to two days, allowing the toxins in the

735
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:03,920
Speaker 1: body to degrade to the point where it can be

736
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: safely eaten. Okay, So this might be the case in

737
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 1: like an insect that has a poison within its body

738
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 1: that has a fairly short chemical half life, and it's

739
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: if it's not replenished by the live animals body, it's

740
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: going to eventually degrade over time exactly. Yeah, and some

741
00:42:19,680 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: for some specific examples, the loggerhead shrike does this with

742
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:27,240
Speaker 1: luber grasshoppers as well as with a species of beetle

743
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 1: and moth, and great gray shrikes have been observed to

744
00:42:30,040 --> 00:42:33,879
Speaker 1: do this with black cone headed grasshoppers. So so, yeah,

745
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: the shrike is fascinating, not only because there's something kind

746
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:39,959
Speaker 1: of grizzly and wonderful about what it does, but yeah,

747
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: by doing these three things with its practice, it's engaging

748
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:46,759
Speaker 1: in a in several different things that that we do

749
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:50,719
Speaker 1: with our cooking process, you know, the butchery of the meat,

750
00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 1: the butcher or they just the taking a part of

751
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:57,279
Speaker 1: a given element, the storing of that element, and then

752
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 1: detoxifying that element. Now, we tend to we do this

753
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: in a number of different ways. It may be cooking

754
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: something and the cooking process, the heating process itself destroys

755
00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: the toxins. It also maybe, and we've touched on this

756
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 1: before in our Dangerous Food series, it may also be

757
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:17,359
Speaker 1: about removing parts of the body or parts of the

758
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: plant that would otherwise be toxic to us. But we

759
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: have just specific cases of the shrike carrying this out

760
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 1: just by leaving it on the thorn long enough. Well,

761
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:32,279
Speaker 1: I'm impressed. Yes, they are impressive creatures. All right, Well,

762
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: we need to wrap up part one here, but we're

763
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 1: going to be back next time with more of the

764
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: quote cooking or otherwise, you know, meal prep, cuisine, behaviors

765
00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:44,799
Speaker 1: of non human animals. Definitely want to talk about some

766
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 1: interesting behaviors that have been called washing, but maybe more

767
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 1: obscure in nature than that. Yeah, in some cases at

768
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 1: least it's kind of mysterious. And we'll get into into

769
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: all of that, plus plus other examples in the meantime. Certainly,

770
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 1: right in, let us know what you think about what

771
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: we discussed here today, especially if you have any direct

772
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: experience with us. Have you observed the shrikes in the

773
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:15,800
Speaker 1: wild have Lammergeyer's drop tortoises at you, and you've luckily

774
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:18,799
Speaker 1: been able to get a less rocky looking hat over

775
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: your head just in time. Do you prefer raw potatoes

776
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,640
Speaker 1: to cook? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I mean he's going to

777
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:28,400
Speaker 1: have some insight on all of that, so yeah, right in,

778
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:31,239
Speaker 1: let us know, we'd love to hear from you. In

779
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:32,880
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you would like to check out other

780
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,320
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Core episodes published

781
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:38,719
Speaker 1: on two season Thursdays. On Monday, we do a listener mail.

782
00:44:38,840 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: On Wednesday, we do a short form monster fact or

783
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:44,800
Speaker 1: artifact episode, and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema.

784
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:47,120
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and

785
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 1: just talk about a strange film, huge things. As always

786
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

787
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

788
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

789
00:44:57,680 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

790
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,919
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

791
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.

792
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, this is the

793
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,040
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

794
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: favorite shows.