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How We’re Learning to Talk to Animals · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: And I was gonna say Jerry's here, but she totally
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: flaked on us.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, I've never
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: wanted to be able to make a dolphin sound.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: More in my life.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, that was medium better than I could do.
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: Well, let's hear yours. I put I've heard better out there.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: No, I mean I can't. I don't even want to try. Okay,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: how about this bet my nose. I'm a dolphin.
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: That was good.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: A dolphin that speaks English is pretty impressive, Chuck.
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: I like that interpretation.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Usa, so USA and Canada. So we're talking today.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: The reason we're trying to speak dolphin, Chuck, is because
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: we're talking about anim communication. And just to clear things
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: up right out of the gate, we're not talking about
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: animal communication where we try to teach animals to speak
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: human languages, whether it be sign language, English, whatever. Yeah,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: we already did that in our Live Coco the Gorilla episode.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Now we're going the other way here because there's a
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: whole other tranche. As the French would say, of research
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: that is going into listening to, decoding, understanding and potentially
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: speaking animal animal languages.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is one. It's like one of the
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: rare cases whereas we'll see for a lot of year,
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: science was like, animals don't do this, Like they grunt
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: at each other, they make little instinctual noises, but they're
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: not really communicating with each other or us. Don't kid yourself.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: And this is a rare case where I'm like, I
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: don't care what science says. My pets speak to me
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: and I understand what they're saying.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, this researching this, I was haunted by the
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: ghost of Tracy Wilson. Do you remember like how hard
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: core she was about not anthropomorphizing years back?
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry, Will, Yeah, sorry Tracy.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: I do it.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: And Tracy's a cat person, I know for it, she
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: refuses to speak to her cat. No, I'm sure that's
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: not true, but yeah, I mean that's a that's a
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: fair point, and I think we've made that point many
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: times whenever we've talked about pets like communicating or I
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: think anytime we talk about pets, we kind of both
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: agree that no, there's they're obviously communicating in ways we're
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: just not fully aware of. And it's actually pretty anthropercentric
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: to just assume that because we don't understand it, they're
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: not doing it. Luckily, Like I said, there's a whole
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: tranche of search that is assuming no, these these animals
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: have communication patterns that yeah, kind of follow the same
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: general idea of human language. Yeah, and as such we
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: have a chance of being able to understand it. But
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: the whole, the whole thing is based on this idea.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Like you said, science has long thought like that there
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: was not that any any sounds they make were instinctual,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: that there wasn't any purpose behind them. It was just
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: that it was an involuntary response to something that evolution
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: had kind of bred into that animal. And that was
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: also predicated on this idea that Renee Descartes put out there,
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: which is animals have like no inner lives whatsoever, only
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: humans do.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: Boo.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very disappointed with Descartes, and I know we've
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: talked about this before, probably multiple times, but it bears
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: repeating because he set that tone for centuries to follow.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh for sure. But I mean you needn't only
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: look at your dog and to a certain degree, your
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: cat but you know the first couple of animals we're
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: going to talk about that Olivia helped us with this
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: that she was keen to point out humans have been
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: around for a while and you know, communicate with if
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: you are the owner, slash, you know, mother, father, caretaker
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: of these animals. We're talking about dogs and horses, and
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: if you have ever had a dog, you know what
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: at least this one thing is. And that's called puppy
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: dog eyes. And this is a trade. It's actually a
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: muscle called the loam, the lam, the levator anguli oculi
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: media alis cristo. It's a muscle in the eyebrow basically
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: of a dog that evolved from a wolf. Like They've
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: done studies and found that wolves don't still have this
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: or wolves don't have this right and that the only
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: dog out of like the eight breeds they studied that
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: didn't evolve this way was the Siberian husky, which is
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: I guess closely related to a wolf.
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  Speaker 2: It's a wolf posing as a dog.
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  Speaker 3: And I don't know if you've ever known huskies. I'm
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: not knocking any breed. I like huskies just fine. I've
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: known a few, but and I've never been able to
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: have a good connection with them. Yeah, and that may
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: be part of the reason is that there haven't evolved
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: as far away as as you know we have with
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: our other domesticated friends.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: That's a great point.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: But they have done studies. There was one published in
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: the proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences who studied
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: dogs out for adoption at like a you know, what
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: do you call it? Well, I can't even think.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: Of the word an adoption dry.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: Sure, it wouldn't a dry, but just in the in
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: the pound.
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, what do you call those? Though? An animal shelter?
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Animal shelter. You know how the easiest word won't come
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: to you sometimes.
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I do. I've been there, buddy, it's very frustrating.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Anyway, sheltered dogs. And they found they studied all these dogs,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: like hundreds and hundreds of them over long periods of time,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: and the found that the dogs to use these lone
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: muscles to make their eyes bigger and raise that inner
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: brow were adopted quicker.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I think it has to do with exaggerating the shape
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: of the eyes, which, as we've talked about the Kinder schema.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: I believe in the science of cute Yeah, that would
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: just make them automatically cuter.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, bigger eyes. I mean, that's why those Disney characters
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: have big eyes.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: But the exactly, but the point of this is that dogs.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: We have clear evidence that dogs evolved a way to
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: be expressive through their facial expressions in ways that affect humans.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: And that's a form of communication, exactly. That's just one
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: form of communication. So it isn't anthe promorphizing to say that,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: you know, dogs have emotions and that they express these
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: emotions like things like being happy to see their their friend,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: their human friend. There's a guy named ecologist Carl Sephina,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and he points out that his whole thing is like
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: dogs love us. Clearly, it's clear as day. Anybody who
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: owns a dog knows this, and anybody who says otherwise
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: is just being a real stick in the mud, basically.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: But he pointed out that really the the whole thing
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: broke open. Finally, Descartes Smelly Corpse was finally cast off
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: of the animal behavior field in the sixties, I believe
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: when observational studies of animals really started in earnest thanks
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: to people like Jane Goodall and I can't remember who
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: her Lewis leaky that those people were coming back with report.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: It's like, guys, these are these animals clearly interact with
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: one another in ways that humans would consider empathy. They're communicating,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: they're doing all sorts of stuff we supposedly think they
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: can't and then today it's being demonstrated. All of these
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: these observations are being proven because we've fashioned MRI machines
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: that dogs can go in, and we don't like, sedate
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: the dog and put them in there. It's not going
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: to have any effect. They've made these open machines and
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: then they kind of introduce them to the dogs, and
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: the dogs free to come or go in the MRI,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and if the dog says there long enough, they can
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: study the dog's brain activity and what they're seeing is Nope,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: these these dogs are smart. They definitely have an inner life,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: and most of what we're taking as emotional communication is
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: probably totally correct.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if they sit there long enough, they're good
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: boys and good girls.
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  Speaker 4: That's right, and they get treats, that's right.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: We also have horses. If you want to look at
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  Speaker 3: another animal that humans have probably had the longest relationship with,
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: and there's a horse trainer slash neuroscientist, which is a
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: very handy thing if you're going to talk about animal communication.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: Her name is Janet Jones, not the former gymnasts who
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: was married to Wayne Gretzky. Remember, Oh, I knew.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: That name sounded familiar, but I didn't know why.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I say former gymnast, former actress. She was a gymnast too, though, right.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: I haven't paid that much attention to Wayne Gretzky's marital.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Life anyway, different Janet Jones, and she said that horses
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: and humans are are different because humans evolved into predators,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: horses evolved from prey species, So like we have different
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: ways of looking at the world when you're riding a
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: horse around outside, and we communicate that to one another,
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: you know. Also throwing the fact that horses have a
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: three hundred and forty degree range of vision with those awesome,
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: humongous eyes on the sides of their heads.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that last degrees really ticks horses.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: It really does. But if you're like, if you're riding
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: along and a horse, a horse might be scared about.
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  Speaker 3: And Olivia uses a great illustration of like an umbrella opening.
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  Speaker 3: It might spook a horse, but the human's like, Hey,
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  Speaker 3: that's just an umbrella. So they're gonna, you know, sitting
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: atop the horse. They're going to relax the horse by
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm not a horse rider certainly know how
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: you do this, but by moving your body and flexing
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: your muscles in a certain way with the rhythm of
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: the horse to let them know that it's cool.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 2: So, what Janet Jones is basically saying is she wrote
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: this really cool article called Becoming a Centaur and aon
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: is that through this communication that horses and humans have
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: have co evolved together to understand with one another and
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: to be able to train one another with you're becoming
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: like kind of a super organism for that time where
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: you are a top of horse, yeah, and the horses
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: below you and you guys are working conjuncture together, sharing
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: sensory information.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: I love that. I want to ride more horses in
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: my life.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: There's a that's a great, great thing to try to do, Chuck, I've.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Only done it a couple of times that I loved it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: I haven't for a really long time. I used to
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: as a kid a lot more. I have it on
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the prairie.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when you were when you were westward bound.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in the wagon train.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Birds, we're gonna talk a lot about birds, because obviously
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: bird vocalizations are you can just listen to birds and
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: and tell that they are specific and that that probably
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: means something. But humans and birds interact in different ways
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: around the world. Specifically, a couple of tribes, the Jahua
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: people in Mozambique and the Hods of Tanzania both use
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: what are called honeyguides, and they are birds that they
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: can call. They each you know, use different calls in
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: their inner respective places to call over these birds, and
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: the birds come a flying in and say, hey, follow
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: me and we'll show you the honey, and they go
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: and get the honey. And if you're asking, like, well,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: why in the world would they do this, it's because
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: the birds get the wax after they're finished, so it's
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: a mutually beneficial relationship.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And they've actually tested to make sure it's not
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: just the presence of humans making sounds that catch the
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: birds attention and then the birds associate humans with getting honey.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: They've tested other like control sounds, but there are specific
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: calls that Jahwua people use. It's like a bird something
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: like that, and that is what the honey guides respond to.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: They don't respond to hey, honeyguide or anything like that.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: They respond to this call that the Jahua people have
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: been using for countless generations, and that the Jahwa have
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: been passing down from generation to generation. That also means
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: that the honey guides wild birds, not tamed in any way.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: They're not coerced to do this. They're wild animals who
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: clearly communicate with humans. They're passing down that that burr
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: hum sound that a Jahua person makes in the woods
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: means go find that person and take them to some honey,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: and they'll they'll leave. The honey comes for you. Like
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: people and birds passing down this common information that forms
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the symbiotic relationship.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: That's nuts.
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I imagine if they said, hey, honey guides,
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: come over here, the birds would say, why else speak
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: in English?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: That's really weird.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it happened to burr hume.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: They're also, of course, and we're not going to get,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: you know, too much into this, but you know, for hunters,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: all kinds of mating calls and and I guess you
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: don't have to hunt to use a maiding call if
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: you want to. If you want to call a mooseover
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: just to say hello, you could use a moose mating call,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: but all kinds of and it's not just mating calls,
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: but usually it's some kind of mating call for any
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: kind of game that you're hunting, or ducks or stuff
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: like that.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I crossed that part.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Out those people communicating with animals at the very least.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: So you mentioned birds and how we're going to talk
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: about birds a lot. But birds are just an obvious
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: place to start, and that's where humans kind of started
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: in tracking animal communication, whether they realized it was animal
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: communication or not. Bird song has always kind of captured
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: the human imagination and apparently back in the day they
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: started to try to assign musical notation to recording bird
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: song by hand on paper. Good luck, right, And then
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: as you know, the technology progressed and we got better
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: at recording and reproducing sound. One of the things that
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: we really started compiling a lot of we're bird song.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Bird songs is bird song plural and singular?
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: I feel like the kind of word that would be
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: I think, so.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: Bird's song guy.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: And there's actually a really great collection at Cornell. There
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: are Ornithology Lab has what's called the McAuley Library. And
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: I've got this app called Merlin. It's a bird identification app.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: It's free.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: I think.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: You just have to sign up with your email and
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: if you hear a bird call, you just open Merlin
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: and it's like Shazam for birds.
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: Amazing.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: It is amazing and like it just sits there and
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: listens and then it goes, oh is it this burden.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: It shows you a picture and tells you what that
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: bird is, and you say, that's exactly what bird that is.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Thanks Merlin. Merlin gives you a wink and goes back
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: to sleep.
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: In your phone.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's It's a very popular app and very popular
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: in my family. We use it all the time. A
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: lot of We have a lot of identification apps that
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: are really handy. We have like bird apps and plant
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: of course and flower apps, and we has those. And
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: then I have an art app where you can point
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: it at a painting or something and it'll it'll tell
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: you if it's in the database. Of course, it'll tell
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: you who it is.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Cubist.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Now it'll tell you the actual artist I got, you know,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Max Cubist.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: So let me just set this up real quick, Chuck
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: and I say we take a break. But although people
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: were like, okay, animals have somewhat richer inner lives than
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: we had always suspected, but they're still not using anything
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: like what we would consider language. That carried on until
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: the seventies until a couple of studies came through chick
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: the legs out from under that what a.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Great cliffy, So I said, cliffy.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: People know that means cliffhanger. I hope longtime listeners to
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: longtime listeners. So, yeah, you were talking about until the seventies,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: and that's what I mentioned that science had always kind
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: of poo pooed it, and it was in the seventies
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: where people finally started you know, there were some sort
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: of rogue hippie scientists here and there that was like
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: nobody was listening to basically. But in the seventies is
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: when a couple of big studies came out that you
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: mentioned pre break. One was in nineteen seventy seven a
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: couple of primate scientists named Robert C. Farth say Farth
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: and Dorothy Cheney, and they were working with one of
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: those hippies, Peter Marler, who was an animal communication expert.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: When that wasn't cool. And they were studying vervet monkeys
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: and Kenya, and this is a pretty big breakthrough and
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: pretty remarkable. They found that they they are using different
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: we're going to say things like words for lack of
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: a better term, sounds, vocalizations, but they used different words
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: for different threats. So like they noticed that like something
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: flying like an eagle versus something on the ground like
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: a snake like a python, they would use those to
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: indicate one or the other. And they learned this by
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: making recordings of it. And when they played it, sure enough,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: the monkey would look up into the sky or search
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: the ground around them for the snake.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, depending on what call they played.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: Back, that's right, not depending on what Brian Adams song
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: they played.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: So okay, smarty, So you can still make a case that, okay,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: so what they have these specific words for snake or
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: for eagle, But it doesn't mean that it's anything more
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: than instinct for a monkey to utter this particular cry
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: when it sees a snake, and other monkeys to respond
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: in kind, And it's all innate and none of it
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: means that they're using grammar or language. It's okay, fine, fine,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: just keep waiting a few more years, and we're going
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to go forward to Klaus Zuberbueler, great name, who is Swiss,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: as people who name their family's Zuber are wont to be.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: He studied the Campbell's monkeys in the Cote Duvoir, I
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: believe the tomato Campbell's monkeys, and he found nothing.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Not Campbell's tomato soup.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he found that they actually use suffixes. Right,
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: So if they use the alarm called crock or crack
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: k r a K, that's how they spelled it, not
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: the Campbell's monkeys, but Zuberbueler and his friends, Yeah, that
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: means leopard is coming, but crack ou means it's just
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: a general alarm like lookout or heads up or something
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: like this. They can also like supplement crack or crack
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: oo with booms that they will make. It can mean
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: like come this way. They can mean that there's a
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: falling tree branch, depending on if they amend it with
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: the suffix Ooh. So Zuberbueler is saying, like, guys, this
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: is grammar. Those are words. This cannot possibly just be instinctual.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: And even if it is instinctual, then that would suggest
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: that animals, at least some types of monkeys have a
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: language instinct too. Who that's a whole other ball of wax,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: like we talked about before. But Zuberbueler's like, dude, come on,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: and people started to finally be like, all right, fine,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: we'll kind of get on board with this idea that
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: the animals are using something like language possibly.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And he even, you know, as an example of
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: how it's something that humans can potentially understand once they
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: learn it, he was warned off by a leopard by
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: hearing the leopard call apparently, and this was in a
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: radio lab at one point shout out to Radio Lab,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah some of the ogs like us. But yeah, zuber
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: Bueler was like, hey, you know, I heard them sound
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: the leopard alarm, and that meant that I needed to to,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: you know, be watchful.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah they weren't. I didn't understand. I didn't go listen
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: to that episode of Radio Lab, So I'm not sure
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: if they were warning him or he was just paying
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: attention that they were.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: I think it's that okay, So I think, but who knows,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: Maybe they're like Zuberbueler.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: He spoke, he spoke Campbell's monkey for that moment and
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: it helped them out. Yeah, sure so, and it wasn't
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: just a zuberbueler who did. Apparently other animals, including birds
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: and other monkeys that live around Campbell's monkeys have learned
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: what crock or crack means too and will respond in kind.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: So there's evidence that there's interspecial communication, and not necessarily
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: that monkey talking to that bird, but that bird just
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: from being around these monkeys using language, picking up certain
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: words and speaking monkey ease, even though the bird actually
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: speaks parodies or something.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it's not any different, I think than
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: you know. I have cats and dogs, and they each
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: have their own respective feeding times and programs and systems
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: and treat systems, and sometimes one will get a little
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: of the other. Like, for instance, my dog Charlie will
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: lick the wet cat food spoon after I give them
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: their wet cat food. So now Charlie knows when I say, uh,
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: do you want your good stuff, which is what I
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: say to the cats, and they come running in there
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: for the wet food, Charlie knows, Hey, that's when I
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: get to lick that spoon. So I'm speaking English and
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: each of these animals is understanding what I'm saying, even
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: though for Charlie I'm speaking cat, although that's really not true.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: No, I know what you mean. You know what I mean.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: It holds up and it applies. It's also you can
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: make the case very much like an English speaking person
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: in America who's got a bodega down the street. M
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: h understands what ka pasa means or aii or something
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, it's think this.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Living in proximity of people who speak other languages, you
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: pick up other languages. And that seems to very much
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: be analogous to what we're talking about with the birds
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: living around the Campbell's monkeys.
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: I guess the true comparison would be if my cats
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: made a distinctive meal when they wanted, and who knows,
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: they might when they want that good stuff, and that
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: that signal. Charlie.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think your analogy still worked.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: Okay, thanks man, No problem.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: You want to tell them about Con, I'll.
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: Leave it to you.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: It there's a biologist name Con slobotic cough slobota. Oh No,
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: that's not right at all. No, it's not slow bod Chikhov.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: Oh, nice work. I think you totally nailed it.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oddly enough, Con is the one that throws me.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: I've never heard that as a first name.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: Con like Con.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, this is just gone anyway. That person is
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: a biologist and they study prairie dogs and that they
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: found that they have very distinct sounds that when they're
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: talking about predators that basically say what kind of predator
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: is coming, how what color they are, how big they
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: are are, how fast they're coming at us, And they
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: can combine all those sounds in different ways. If it's
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: an let's say it's an animal they've never a predator
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: they've never seen, they can combine those other words to
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: kind of say this is a new thing and not
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: the whatever hunts a prairie dog.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: Right Like if you saw a somehow a terrasaar came
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: through a time warp into example, modern day Atlanta, and
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: we were standing outside and we didn't know a TerraSAR
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: because we'd never seen one before. We might say something
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: like look a flying green dragon monster. And that gets
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: generally the point across what Slobodchikov found is that prairie
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: dogs do the same thing. Yeah, and that they also
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: have a tonal language very similar to Mandarin, where different
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: changes in intonation of the same phoneme mean totally different things,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: and that they layer these different tones, that these prairie
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: dogs language may actually be more complex than other languages
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: in in that use that are used by humans.
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah tonally right, Oh.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: I thought you were making a joke, like totally.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, tonally yeah, tonally tonally speaking, not like
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: the number.
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: Of words or whatever, totally tubular.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: And that they he fed all this stuff through a
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: computer to pick out like just very I called that,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: by the way.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I know, but you're giving me nothing today, are you,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: mac as I keep fooling you these days?
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe that's it, okay to the max. Uh. So
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: he fed this stuff into a computer so they could analyze, like,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: you know, stuff that humans can't even hear, like a
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: program designed to analyze little minute differences. And what they
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: found out was when they did experiments of like human
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: beings walking and approaching the prairie dogs, they would say
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: something different, for here comes the tall guy and the
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: hat rather than here comes the short woman in the
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: high heat.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Right walking through the prairie.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, because all those short ladies and high heels.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Right, and the tall man in the yellow hat.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure what happened there.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: So so things are starting to kind of pick up here.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: There's a one more we need to throw out that
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: really had a big effect on demonstrating language use among
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: among animals, and that was among Japanese tits using grammar.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: These are birds, by the way.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Cute little birds. Yes, thank you for rescuing me from
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: angry parents. And they have a distinct sound for snake.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: And if you say that, if you take that sound,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure what the sound is, but I
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: believe it's more than one part. And you play it
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: out of order, it means nothing to them. To the birds,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: But if you play in order, they're like, oh my god,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: a snake ware and they've they've That shows that there
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: is grammar, there's word order mountains. And if it were
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: just innate, if it were just an involuntary reflex, it
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: wouldn't matter how you said that. If they heard one
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: of those tones or whatever, it would it would evoke
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: some sort of reaction or response. So you can speak
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Gibberish to Japanese tits just by switching the word order
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: or the order of the sounds, which is the same thing,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: basically switching word order.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty cool this, you know. Now we get to
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: the question of is this something that they've learned or
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: is it instinctive, Like are their older counterparts teaching in
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: them these languages? Are they born with it? And we
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: have a couple of really cool examples. One is something
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: we talked about at length in the b episode, which
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: is the waggle dance that honey bees do. Basically to
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: show another bee where the food is. They use their
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: body position in relation to the sun and do this
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: little vibrating waggle to indicate the distance, and that's how
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: they tell everyone like, hey, let's go find this honey.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy three, a gentleman named Carl von Frisch
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: won a Nobel Prize in physiology by translating this dance
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: and kind of figuring it out. And then just this
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: year in twenty twenty three, they did a study about
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: whether this was learned or something they're born with, and
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: they found that it's super cool, but it's a little
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: bit of both. So they got little baby bees who
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: hadn't seen this waggle dance yet isolated them, and they
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: found that they actually did try the waggle dance, so
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: it is somewhat innate something they're born with, but they
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: weren't very good at it. And when they compared those
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: to other baby bees who were living with adult bees
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: who were ostensibly teaching them this dance, they did it
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: much much better, were way more accurate as far as
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: the distance goes. And so they found that like, yeah,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: they are born with it to a certain degree, but
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: they get better at it by being taught.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, and just a teeny teensy bit of it is mabelin.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Right, all right, there you go, you heavy?
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: Yes, thanks you.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: So there's so bees that's a wiggle dances is almost
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: just entirely incomprehensible to us, except for Carl von Hirsch.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: He figured it out.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: A much more closely relatable to us are hand signals,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: the communication that a lot of the great apes use.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: And what they found is that across apes there's similar
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: similar gestures for similar meanings, but that groups and different
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: species can use slightly different gestures. Whether it's a hand gesture,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: I think chewing on a leaf a certain way is flirting,
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of different communicative body language or body
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: gestures that apes use, but that they can be slightly
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: different based on groups, which is a dialect. A dialect
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: is the use of a similar language or the same
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: language in slightly different ways based on your group, your culture,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: your geography, what region you live in. It's exactly the
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: same thing as the distinction between soda or pop or
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: coke depending on where you live in the United States.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Same thing, same meaning. Those are all English words, but
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: you would say that based on where you live or
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: where you were raised or the culture that you were
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: raised in.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, chimpanzees, of course, get a lot
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: of research on stuff like this, and I think people
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: are more apt to believe that a chimp would do
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: something like that because they're just more like us. But
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: they found the same thing in all kinds of animals,
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: one of which is the naked mole rat, that they
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: respond as far as the dialects go, they respond to
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: soft chirps from people in their own colonies more than
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: they do those a similar sounding soft chirp in a
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: different colony. So, in other words, it's a different dialect,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: and we're going to be doing one on naked mole
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: rats at some point.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: Easy it is.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: I forgot forgot how much I love this animal from
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: watching the great documentary Fast, Cheap and out of Control
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: by master documentarian Errol Morris. And we'll talk about it
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: when we eventually get to that episode. Okay, so, same
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: great doc I have a recommend it though. You want
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: to hear something super amazing? Yes, do you remember?
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: And I think our Evolution of Human Intelligence episode we
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: talked about how they think the word he might actually
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: be so old that Neanderthals might have used it, like
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: it's one of the oldest sounds that humans make. There's
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: the hand gesture for come here that you use where
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: you kind of point right in front of you with
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: your fingers downward.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: M Yeah, apes, apes use that.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, we still use the same hand gesture that
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: we used back when we were.
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: Full on great apes.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Ye?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It just works so well. Why why fix what ain't broke?
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: We decided over millions and millions of years.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: That's super cool. I think we should take a break
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: because we have a star of the show that's about
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: to appear several but a big star of the show
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: is about to appear in Communication and that's called the Whale.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: And we'll be back to talk about wales right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: After this, okay, Chuck.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: So, in addition to the Naked mole Rat episode, I
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: want to do an episode on the Save the Whales
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: movement that.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Was oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, we're.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: Gonna do that, okay.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: But central to that was a guy named Roger Payne,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: who I'm sure will come quite a bit in that episode,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: so we won't get into him too deeply, but he
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: was a I believe, a biological acoustician, some really arcane
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: specialty made he Basically, he, I guess, had friends in
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: US Navy listening stations that had been set up to
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: eavesdrop on ro Soviet submarines, and those navy stations were
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: turning up these amazing recordings of whale songs that people
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: just didn't realize existed up to that point, and Roger
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: Paine wrote a science article on it that came out
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: in the early seventies, and then simultaneous to that, he
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: introduced it to the larger public, not just the scientific community,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: with an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. It
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: was released in nineteen seventy. It is recordings, I think,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: a thirty five minute album of recording of whale songs.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: It went multi platinum because I imagine that you could take
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: acid or smoke pot and just sit there and zone
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: out to that for hours. But also it really dovetailed
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: with the nascent environmental movement that was coming along at
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: the same time too, and that actually helped contribute to
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: the Save the Whales campaign that was highly successful just
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: from releasing that album.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've listened to it today. You can stream it
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: anytime you want. It's I'm sure you listen to it, right.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: I didn't.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: I found it distracting, Like even though it's instrumental silent,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: I was my mind kept being like, what the hell
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: is that? And I couldn't concentrate, so I did turn
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: it off.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Oh interesting, because I found it to be because I
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: can only listen to very specific kinds of music when
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: I do this study stuff, like mainly it's Brian Eno
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: and now songs of the humpback Whales in Brian Adams
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: and Brian Adams. It was good though I like it.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: I mean it's not it's very much background music and
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: it's not even like a like I would defy anyone
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: to even say, like, oh, if you listen to this
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: like a melodic and it's like a song, it's really not.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: It's whales making noises. But I just found it very relaxing.
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: I can imagine like if I were, if I were
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: just kind of sitting around zoning out on that, it
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: would be extraordinarily pleasant. But my brain just wants to focus.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, on acid on PCP. There are all kinds of whales, though,
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: and they have all kinds of communications that we've learned
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: about over the years. The sperm whale they have what
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: they call like a coda click pattern, and it depends
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like a dialect as well, I guess,
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: because it depends on what clan and clans are, you know,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: groups of huge, huge groups of whales. Sometimes there are
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: thousands of them, made up of smaller groups, usually five
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: to ten female adults and their kids. But they get
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: together in these big clans and the different clans have
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: you know, variations of their language, and when they have
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: overlapping territories, they get really really distinct because they're overlapping,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: so they can tell one another apart.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they have like a clan signifier that they use
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: identify themselves to others, right, because these whales don't really
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: navigate the world by eyesight, they mostly do it from sound,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: so that's how you would do that. And these clicks
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: apparently can last about ten milliseconds, but they're two hundred
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: and thirty six decibels in volume, And to give you
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: a a comparison, that's the word I'm groping for. Totally
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: gunshot is one hundred and forty decibels. Okay, okay, your
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: pain threshold starts around there. So if you happen to
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: be sitting next to a sperm whale underwater when it
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: let out one of these clicks, it would blow your
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: ear drums right out and possibly your entire head.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: I can only picture you now underwater, sitting in your
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: don't be Dumb chair, just floating above it or standing
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: awkwardly beside it, yeah, or underneath it, or who knows,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: things got weird.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it did get a little weird right out of
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: the gate.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Really well, that was the whole point. And I love
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: for your Instagram birthday posts. When I ask people to
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: make their favorite Josh moments, those a lot of don't
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: be dumb in there. I don't know if you noticed.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: I did, and thank you for that. That was extraordinarily
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: kind of you.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: Of course, man, that's all true, but people love. Don't
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: be dumb.
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: I get it, like I get it. Everybody just shut up.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: No, it was great. Baby sperm whales and orcas have
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: like baby talk. They babble just like a little human
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: baby would. When they're learning. Newborn orcas make a really
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: high pitched call. It changes as they grow into adults
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: into a completely different sound, and it starts at about
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: two months. The adult sounding stuff they start to learn, basically,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: it seems like it about two months, and then for
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: years and years until they hit pubert. They are learning
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: new vocalizations aka words.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly like the development of human kids too. Yeah, orcas
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: all so very much like those birds that live around
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: the Campbell's monkeys. They can learn the calls of other
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: species too that they live around. Apparently, orcus can understand
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: what bottlenose dolphins are saying to one another. Again, bottlenose
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: dolphin is not trying to communicate with the orca. The
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: orc is just eavesdropping and if it hears like O,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: there's some really great salmon over here you're clear, the
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: orca will be like, I'm going straight to it because
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I love chinook salmon.
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The dolphin actually has my fact of the podcast
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: that I can't wait to tell Ruby later on what
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: they name themselves. Within the first few months of being born,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: they create a very signature whistle to identify themselves, so
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: they you know, that's their name.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I really want to make sure that
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: this lands because sperm whales have clan codas you're saying
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: to other sperm whales, I'm a member of the Jamboree
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: clan or whatever whatever they would name themselves. Sure, it's
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: like in click sounds, Yeah, but that's for their clan membership,
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: not them as individuals. Bottlenose dolphins name themselves as individuals,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: like this is my name. I'm Josh the dolphin. Good
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: to meet you. That is what they're doing. Like that,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: it's that level of identity, individual identity that they're using
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: to introduce themselves to other dolphins.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: Amazing it is.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: That really is one of the facts of the podcast.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: In the podcast chock full of facts of the podcast.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: So we should probably talk about the brain a little bit,
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: and like, you know, the question like have we ever
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: actually studied the brain of these animals to see if
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: there are anything like humans, because we know so much
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: about human brains and the areas of the brain that
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: handle communication and like emotion and stuff like that that
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: comes out through communication. And yes, they have. And we're
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: gonna talk about something called spindle cells, which were discovered
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: in eighteen eighty one and then basically went away and
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: were rediscovered in nineteen ninety five. And these are specialized
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: neurons that are in two very specific brain regions, the ACC,
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: the anterior cingulate cortex, and the frontal insula the FI.
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: And they've basically established that both of these regions of
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: the brain and humans are where we experience our emotion
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: and are really important for monitoring ourselves and our bodies
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: and how we feel, like are we in pain? Are
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: we hungry? Did we goof something up? Like self monitoring?
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Basically yeah, and not just self monitoring like on the
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: individual level, but in relation to other people, like you said,
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: like did we goof something up? Should we feel embarrassed?
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Have we made a social gaff? All of these things
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: are kind of controlled self monitoring, self reflection by the
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: anterior cingulate cortex and the frontal insula. Right, So our
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: ability to empathize, essentially is what we're talking about, is
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: from the activity of these two and they're characterized by
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: a large number of spindle cells, and only spindle cells
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: are found in these areas. Okay, so we're like, okay,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: spindle cells, that's the seat of empathy, of emotion, of
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: understanding other people. Well, it turns out that I don't
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: know if it's neuron for neuron, sperm whales have more
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: spindle cells than human beings do. Yeah, okay, so we
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: have really good evidence and it's not just sperm whales.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: There are other cetaceans. A lot of the great apes
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: have spindle cells too. Don't ask how we know this,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: by the way, but where we've found that they have
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: the makings of what it would take to empathize with others.
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: And if you put that together with the assumption or
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: the growing understanding that they're communicating in very deep levels,
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: it would make sense that if we can decode what
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: they're saying, we'll find they have quite a bit to
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: say that we could conceivably, you know, understand and connect with.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I mean, that's just incredible.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: It really is, because what we're seeing with those spindle
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: cells is they're not like, you know, I'm hungry, let's
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: eat that snake. And that's like the extent, the most
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: fascinating thing a chimp says on any given day. Who
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: knows what they're thinking, Like, it just opens up a
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: whole universe of possibility about what they're thinking, what they're feeling,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: because bear in mind, they're also experiencing life in the universe,
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: in the world and everything in a totally different way
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: than we are. So the idea of being able to
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: tap into that and then to share our experience with them,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can't imagine what just massive impacts that
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: would have on humanity and hopefully on the world and
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: in general if we could do that.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, and to be able to figure a
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: lot of this stuff out, they've they've we've long realized
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: that some of this stuff is just beyond our abilities.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: The crow is one example. They use, like have a
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: lot of different vocalizations of varying pitches and durations and
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: inflections and rhythms and cadences, and there's just no way
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: that humans could listen enough basically and isolate these crows
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: by sex and age and social status and where they
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: are and to be able to really learn all of
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: this stuff. So, you know, we talked about AI and
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: large language models recently and got a few emails from
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: people that are like, you know, there seem to be
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: a lot of fear based stuff in this, which is true,
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: and you guys didn't focus on any of the great
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: possibilities and maybe we didn't. So here's one cool thing
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: that AI is gonna potentially do and that they're already
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: starting to use, is helping out just sort of like
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: we have figured out or how AI is working with
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: large language models as predictors of like how a human
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: might type of sentence that makes sense, and doing the
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: same thing with animals basically and trying to figure out
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: their language.
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just detecting patterns, figuring out what words are important,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: how they're being used, all this stuff. They've already got it.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: I think Deep Squeak was the first one that analyzes
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: rodent sounds. And there's a couple of groups. One is
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: seti ceti cetacean translation initiative project that's led by a
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: guy named David Gruber. They have there. The way I
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: saw it put is that they're going all in on
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: one plan, the EC two clan of sperm whales off
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: the island of Dominica, and they are completely observing and
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: monitoring this clan of sperm whales twenty four hours a day,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: every day of the year. They're down to using robotic
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: fish that are gathering video and audio and everything that
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: swim along with the whales. They know everything that these
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: whales are doing at any given moment. And so not
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: only are they getting these whale songs and collecting them
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: to feed into this the large language model to understand it,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: they're all so notating this stuff so that the context
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: is also understood too, because what they what they think
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: is that a different click or coda depending on the context,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: can totally change meaning. So they also need to know
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: this too. But it's a huge undertaking. They have like
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: tens of thousands of whale song right now. To probably
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: crack this language, they're gonna need millions. So it's they
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: they started on the road, but they've got a ways
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: to go.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's like, I think what they're looking for
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: is that next level, which is not oh wow, the
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: whales told other whales where the good fish were or whatever,
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: is they want answers to things like do whales tell stories,
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: like very rudimentary stories to one another.
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: Or very advanced stories? Why does it have to be
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: rude to artry?
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly do they if something like something big happens
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: to a whale clan, do they talk about it afterward?
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Like a week later? Does someone bring this up? Do
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: they do these maths in any way? And these are
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: all like questions that would just blast open the door,
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: like if answered, just blast open the door of our
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: understanding of how animals may talk to one another.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so SETI is eavesdropping in order to understand what
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: whales are saying. There's another project called the Earth's Species
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Project ESP that is in part looking at types of
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: whales not only to learn what they're saying, but to
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: speak to them directly. So the difference between the two
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: projects is almost like the difference between SETI and Mehdi
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: as far as searching for alien intelligence is concern. It's
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: very similar in nature. But one of the things that
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: Earth Species Project is trying to do is map all
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: species languages to find universal terms or universal concepts and
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: understand the different words, so you could translate tiger into whale,
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: into human into you know Japanese tit.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: Right, or if they're like conceptually like you were talking about,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: are there overlaps in things like grief or joy or
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: these other like big sort of umbrella experiences that seemingly
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: any living thing could.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Experience right exactly, and like you said, it would blow
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: things open it totally. Some people are like, this would
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: change humans forever, Like how could anybody eat meat after
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: that point? If you can understand a pig is saying
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: please don't kill me, Please don't kill me while you're
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: killing it, right, you couldn't do it, and if you did,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: people would stop you kind of thing. Other people are like, well,
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: I'm worried that we're going to use it to manipulate animals,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: and people will probably try to do that too. Up
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: the outcome would likely be both, like humans would be changed,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: our relationship with the animal world would be forever changed
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: for the better and the worse. And that's just kind
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: of how life goes. But that kind of change, I
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: can't imagine how amazing it would be to witness that.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I also thought this thing, the one thing you
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: said was really cool about, like because the idea of
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: like all right, let's say we could only get there
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: like or understand. You know, I think who was the
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: guy that was named.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Garber, he's the head of setting Ruber. Yeah, Gruber, Yeah, yeah,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Gruber was.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: He was like, you know, everyone's really excited. He said
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: that also could be a real letdown. It could be
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: like the do talk is just super boring. But the
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: idea that you know, this thing that you said about, like, well,
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: what if we could communicate, what.
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: Would what would we have to talk about with the whale?
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: And that's where you start to look at like larger
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: commonalities of living things.
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: And in the case of a whale, like you know,
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: I got kids, You got kids. I love to swim,
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: I love to sleep. We're both mammals, like we got
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: we have a handful of things we could actually talk about. Uh.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: And then the idea of like objectivity as a scientist
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: comes in because it's and not objectivity in that like
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: I really want this to happen or not, but objectivity
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: of just like an experience that a whale can understand,
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: can't even understand, like being dry, Like we would talk
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: about being wet in a different context that a whale
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: would because a whale would just say, like, what do
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: you mean wet? Like all is wet exactly, and we
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: would say no, like wet's when you take a shower
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: or get in a swimming pool.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: But the hope is is that if they are capable
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: of empathy, they're probably capable of metaphor, and that we
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: could explain things to one another like prairie dogs do,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: like yellow tall human inhabit getting getting ideas and concepts
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: across just enough for the other one to kind of
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: understand things that are totally foreign.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: To them, or whaling ship nearby swim the other way exactly.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: There was a I saw somebody theorize that you could
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: teach like a large language model to analyze and learn
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: to speak teach itself to speak whale. But because we
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: don't understand how large language models actually work, the AI
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: and the whale could have a conversation and we would
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: have no idea what they were seeing.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: It's frightening, it is.
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: It's frightening, but it's also like wah wah, hilarious too,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: Like imagine putting all that work into it and that's
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: the outcome.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you'd have to.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: Build another AI to tell you what the first, AI
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: is talking about let's do it cool, pretty neat stuff.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: I agree, And I feel like we're not done with
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: this topic, you know what I mean?
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: Oh, okay, I think.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: There's more more to come, all right. Oh, by the way,
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: there is a listener who is Did you see that
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: email that has grouped our stuff into uh tranches sweets?
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't see that one.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I'll make sure I'll forward it to you. I haven't
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: even answered him back yet, but his name is Robert Fiddler.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: Ironically enough, because he's fiddling about with with our content
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: and he has created sweets and subsuitees a in a
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: spreadsheet for us.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: That's awesome, Thanks Robert.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: And it's she's looking over it. Justice system, police, true crime.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: Those are the big ones. Economics, finance, atmospheric science, weird,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: natural disasters, natural resources. Boy, this is amazing.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: I haven't even really looked through it yet, but anyway,
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: shout out to He called himself Robbie, Robbie Fiddler. Yeah,
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: maybe we could publish it at some point or something
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: on our website.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: Oh I have to copyright Robbie Fiddler.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see anyway, did you say you listener mail? No, Okay,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: why don't you set me up then in the traditional way.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Chuck's feeling like the chatty Kathy, so that means it's
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: time for a listener mail.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: There you go, Hey guys, I'm an eleven year old
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: Canadian living in Australia and we've been listening to your
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: show my whole life. My dad's tell me he would
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: listen to stuff you should know when cuddling me in
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: the middle of the night when I was just a bbe.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: We love your podcast and hope you make many more
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: for many years to come. We hope to see a
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: live show soon. I love it when you guys do
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: mysteries because they're one of my favorite things to listen
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: to on your channel. You've expanded my imagination and creativity
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: and intelligence. Me and my get into big conversations about
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: your episodes because you're so intriguing, and we discuss what
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: we've learned and what we think. I'm just emailing you
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: to let you know that my dad and I are
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: traveling across a big chunk of Australia on a road
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: trip in July to see the Australian Zoo. My dad
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: has so many stuff you should know, just to listen
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: to in the way, and I'm really excited to listen
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: to the podcast and go to the zoo. Oh and
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: your jokes are pretty funny, but I make them even
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: funnier and we all have a good laugh.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: Nice, he's playing off jokes. It's collaborative.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: I love it. So that says love dictated but not
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: read from Reese.
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: Reese, You're pretty cool. I just have to say.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And a little request from Reese, I imagine the
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: samed at you please do one more of the voice
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: from the last Halloween special. It's my dad's favorite.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: I gotta think that Reese is talking about my friend Spiegel.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to go back and listen to Sniegel
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: again because he apparently was off last time I tried it.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: So I'm not sousy.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I hear, all right, some people emailed
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: in and were like, that was not right.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: All right, I'm shooting let down an eleven year old.
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: I'm fine if you're fine.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm prepared to do that.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: Well, just listen in recent Josh. I will brush up
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: on his smigle.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: And eventually recent when I do it next, you can
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: be like that was for me.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want to be like recent show
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: how super cool you are naturally without any effort whatsoever,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: we would love to hear from you. You can send
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.