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The Decline of the Primate Handyman · Luke's English Podcast

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Well welcome everyone to another episode of Science of the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Times and Simon this week we're going to be talking
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: to a behavioural ecologist so somebody who spent her life
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: studying animals and why they behave like there are and
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: is now kind of getting into animal brains.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah I think it's fascinating because she's actually studied a
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: very wide range of animals right?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: From pigeons through to fish through to chimpanzees that we'll
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: talk about today no it's I mean you know it's
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: it's really broad and she's particularly interested, uh, you know,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: in what we'll talk to her about is about tool
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: use in animals.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess as humans, we're, we might arrogantly
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: think we're the only ones who can do this and,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of use and manipulate tools, but it
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: turns out we're certainly not the only ones.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: No, I know.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: It's, um, you know, so chimpanzees, you know, use rocks
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and sticks and whatever for doing all sorts of things.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Um, birds some birds.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Like crows use tools even there's some evidence of insects
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: using tools so it's pretty it's kind of it's it's
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting behaviors it's not super common but
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: it happens you know across across i think fish even
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: some fish have been seen using tools they're not like
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: going down to b and q and getting an electric
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: drill or anything i mean you know it's like just
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: using a stick or something.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: But it's pretty cool Well, I'm glad you clarified that, Tim,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: because I wasn't confused for a second.
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: I'm a mere chemist that I am.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Anyway, should we get Dora on?
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: OK, well, it's our great pleasure to welcome Dora Biro,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: who's based over on the east coast of the US.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: So good morning to you, Dora. Thanks very much for
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: joining us. Perhaps you just say a few words to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: introduce yourself.
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks, Tim.
• 1:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks very much for having me.
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: Um, yeah, my name is Dora Biro.
• 1:58
  Speaker 6: I'm currently a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at
• 2:02
  Speaker 6: the university of Rochester, which is in upstate New York,
• 2:07
  Speaker 6: technically Western New York, but, uh, upstate is, uh, uh, uh, more,
• 2:16
  Speaker 6: more attractive sounding. Um, yeah, and I work on, um,
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: animal cognition in a number of different species, um, primarily, uh,
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: primates and birds, uh, but recently also kind of getting
• 2:29
  Speaker 6: into fish, uh, fish cognition, fish behavior as well.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Now that's really exciting. How did you get into, um,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: animal behavior? I have to say, you know, it's, it's
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: probably the same at Rochester. And you spent some time
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: at Oxford, obviously. It's like what most of our biology
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: students want to do, isn't it? And they want to
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: understand why the animals are doing like kind of the
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: behaviours they're doing.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: So how did you get into it?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, is it because you'd always enjoyed watching sort
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of chickens walk around going step, step, peck or.
• 3:03
  Speaker 6: I mean, I think you put your finger on it.
• 3:05
  Speaker 6: It's just something that I think most people will find fascinating.
• 3:09
  Speaker 6: I mean, anyone who's got pets or happen to watch animals,
• 3:14
  Speaker 6: you know, wherever, you know, whether in cities or out
• 3:19
  Speaker 6: in the countryside, you know, they do amazing things.
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: They do puzzling things. You know, they.
• 3:27
  Speaker 6: you know, clearly have their own minds that sort of
• 3:31
  Speaker 6: drive how they interact with the world and with each other.
• 3:35
  Speaker 6: And those minds are going to be somewhat different from ours,
• 3:39
  Speaker 6: in some cases, fairly similar, in some cases, pretty significantly different.
• 3:44
  Speaker 6: And so to me, that was just a fascinating question
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: always is, you know, evolution has produced a bunch of
• 3:50
  Speaker 6: different brains, right? And those brains each process information, they
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: each sort of guide how the animal, yeah, interacts with
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: the world. And so those kinds of similarities and differences
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: between how, yeah, different species, different, you know, individual creatures
• 4:08
  Speaker 6: engage with the world was always very, very interesting to me.
• 4:11
  Speaker 6: And I think a really, another sort of driving force
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: for me, and I grew up in a city and
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: my family was never very outdoorsy.
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: So, you know, I.
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: Um, didn't really engage with nature in, in my youth.
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: But what I did do was watch a lot of
• 4:30
  Speaker 6: David Attenborough documentaries. And in particular, I think in the
• 4:35
  Speaker 6: very first one, I think it's, um, I'd say life
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: on earth.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: That was, that was, that would be about right. I
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: think that was out in the, probably the early eighties, maybe.
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah. This is, this is, this is my sort of
• 4:48
  Speaker 6: memory from the eighties is my whole family sort of
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: gathering around the TV and watching, um, life on earth
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: week after week. And that particular series I think was
• 4:57
  Speaker 6: really great because it was really focused on evolution and
• 5:00
  Speaker 6: on sort of showing you these very, um, kind of
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: curious things that animals do that, um, you know, these,
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: and these curious things are things that natural selection has produced.
• 5:13
  Speaker 6: And so that really fascinated me as to sort of
• 5:15
  Speaker 6: understand how, um, you know, this, this completely random process
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: was able to produce, um, just the, you know, the,
• 5:25
  Speaker 6: the most fascinating, the kind of cleverest solutions to, to
• 5:28
  Speaker 6: some of the problems that animals encounter in the environment.
• 5:31
  Speaker 5: So I think that, yeah, that, that was a really, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:36
  Speaker 6: So just sort of wanting to understand how we've ended
• 5:38
  Speaker 6: up in a world where, yeah, animals do these, these
• 5:42
  Speaker 6: amazing things.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: And I guess it's amazing since those days, which actually
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: wasn't that long ago with that very first series you
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: talk about David Attenborough, how far we've come in our understanding.
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: Of, Yes, absolutely.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:53
  Speaker 6: I mean, you know, animal cognition has been around for
• 5:57
  Speaker 6: a good number of decades, but I think we're really, yeah,
• 6:02
  Speaker 6: we're really beginning to understand a lot more about, you know,
• 6:05
  Speaker 6: how and why animals do the kinds of things that
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: they do. So, yeah, I think it's endlessly fascinating.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: And as you said, you've kind of worked on all
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: sorts of organisms and you mentioned fish. So just for
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: our listeners, You know, I remember, you know, a few
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: years ago hearing that goldfish have a memory of like
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: three seconds and swim around the bowl going, oh, oh,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: a bowl. But I think we've kind of moved on
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a little bit from there, haven't we?
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah.
• 6:37
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's a regular joke in our lab, actually,
• 6:39
  Speaker 6: that goldfish three second memory rule whenever, you know, the
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: fish fail to, you know, complete some task or something
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: like that will sort of.
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: Just about that.
• 6:52
  Speaker 6: But I mean, yes, of course, we've seen that fish
• 6:57
  Speaker 6: can learn, they can solve problems, they can work together
• 7:02
  Speaker 6: to solve problems even. And so, yeah, I think that's
• 7:08
  Speaker 6: one of the things that the field of animal cognition
• 7:10
  Speaker 6: has done is kind of debunk a lot of these
• 7:13
  Speaker 6: sort of myths about the limitations that animals have.
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: Although it's also taught us.
• 7:17
  Speaker 6: About some of the limitations that they have, which are
• 7:20
  Speaker 6: equally important. But yeah, I think that's one of the
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: things that also drives me is sort of understanding how
• 7:34
  Speaker 6: or exploring the extent to which our sort of.
• 7:39
  Speaker 5: Understanding of.
• 7:42
  Speaker 6: What's going on in the animals' minds can be explored experimentally,
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: you know, rather than just sort of looking at them
• 7:48
  Speaker 6: and then anthropomorphizing about what might be going on in
• 7:51
  Speaker 6: their brains. We can actually, you know, study this systematically
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: through the scientific method to get a much better understanding of, yeah,
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: what their sort of constraints, limitations, capacities really are.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: So Dora, what's been the most sort of, I guess
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  Speaker 2: the most surprising thing that you found in terms of
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: animal culture, something you weren't, is there something that, you know,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: sort of just came completely unexpected, for example?
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: Um, uh, animal culture specifically.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Or any aspect of sort of the animal learning, for example,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: that you've encountered.
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  Speaker 6: Ooh.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: Oh, gosh, that's a good question. Sorry. I mean, there's
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: lots of surprising things. I think that's, yeah, sorry, I'm
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: not going to, I need to think about this a
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: little bit. But along these.
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: Lines of sort of surprising findings, I think that's actually
• 8:46
  Speaker 6: one of the ways in which I've kind of been
• 8:49
  Speaker 6: quite fortunate in my work that I, you know, I
• 8:54
  Speaker 6: sort of, I've had several experiences of this kind where
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: you sort of watch an animal and you sort of
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: kind of think you understand what's happening. And then they
• 9:04
  Speaker 6: do something completely unexpected that, you know, and it's either
• 9:09
  Speaker 6: through some mistake you made in setting up the experiment or, yeah,
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: something went wrong.
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: And then you observe something.
• 9:17
  Speaker 6: That is, you know, it's a kind of fortuitous occasion
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: where you see something that you really weren't expecting to see.
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  Speaker 6: And it's a moment of realization where you, you know,
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: you suddenly think, actually, this is really important. And, you know,
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: I can actually now take this and run with it
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: and do something interesting with it. So, yeah, so I have,
• 9:41
  Speaker 6: you know, a couple of examples of this of where, yeah,
• 9:45
  Speaker 6: something unexpected happened in an experiment. And it just, you know,
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: it was really a kind of aha moment that gives
• 9:51
  Speaker 6: you gives you an idea for, um, sort of, you know, uh,
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: for the work to, to, to really dissect what you've,
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: what you've just observed.
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: Um, and actually one of the examples of that.
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: Comes from, uh, the paper that I think Tim is,
• 10:07
  Speaker 6: is hoping to discuss, um, where, um, uh, you know,
• 10:14
  Speaker 6: we'd been studying tool use in, in wild chimpanzees for
• 10:16
  Speaker 6: a number of years and, there actually happened to be
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: a sort of gap in my fieldwork schedule.
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: So I had been going to this field site for
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: many years and then had a break of, I.
• 10:29
  Speaker 6: Think, about five years or something like that, went back
• 10:32
  Speaker 6: and then saw an individual do something that we had
• 10:36
  Speaker 6: never seen her do before. And we felt that this
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: was potentially due to this individual having aged too into
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: kind of reaching towards the kind of extreme old age,
• 10:55
  Speaker 6: which these animals reach in the wild. And so, yeah,
• 10:59
  Speaker 6: so her behavior was just so very different from what
• 11:02
  Speaker 6: we had been used to seeing from her for the
• 11:07
  Speaker 6: past 10, 15 years. She seemed, yeah, she seemed to
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: be kind of really heavily affected by aging. And so
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: that then sort of opened up a whole new research
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: line for us in looking at kind of how, yeah,
• 11:26
  Speaker 6: we'd been interested in how young animals learn certain complex
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: behaviors in the wild.
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: So kind of at the beginning of the.
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: Lifetime of an individual, you know, how are complex skills acquired?
• 11:39
  Speaker 6: And then suddenly this whole new question of, okay, now
• 11:43
  Speaker 6: what happens at the end of life?
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: Open up to us you know and.
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: That's that's a really really understudied um area and suddenly
• 11:51
  Speaker 6: we had this opportunity to look into that in in
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: more detail in in the wild which yeah was was.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Amazing so so we'll come on to the onto that
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: paper on chimps in the the second half of the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: podcast before we get there the whole kind of animal
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: cognition and and why they're behaving like they are has
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: really advanced a lot in recent years, partly because there's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: been kind of advances in tech. We can scan animal
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: brains sometimes when they're doing behaviour. Some very clever experiments
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: that people have come up. But can we ever know
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: what it's like to be.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: A bat or a cat or my dog, Woofler?
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Is that ever going to be, I mean, is that
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: ever going to be possible? It must, it strikes me that,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you know, my dog has very different senses. Obviously, same senses,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: but he, I mean, he's, well, he smells appalling, but
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: he's very good at smelling.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: And, you know, he's got pretty good vision.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: So how far, you know, how much can we really
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: learn about what it's like to be a different species?
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you're right.
• 12:53
  Speaker 6: You know, it's not just about the cognition of the
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: animal and how it processes information, but it's also about
• 13:02
  Speaker 6: the sensory experience of that animal. So what are the,
• 13:06
  Speaker 6: you know, the senses that it's actually using to, to
• 13:09
  Speaker 6: sort of map and interpret the world. So I think,
• 13:14
  Speaker 6: you know, already at that stage, we, yeah, you know,
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: the differences can be so huge that, you know, imagine
• 13:23
  Speaker 6: what it's like, for instance, for a bird to perceive
• 13:27
  Speaker 6: magnetic fields or something like that. You know, there was
• 13:31
  Speaker 6: a paper a while ago that showed that these magnetoreceptors
• 13:35
  Speaker 6: might be located in the eye. So the suggestion was
• 13:37
  Speaker 6: that maybe they're actually seeing it. these magnetic fields. But yeah,
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: for us to imagine something like that is, yeah, I
• 13:45
  Speaker 6: think that's.
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: A very difficult task.
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: But just sort of anecdotally, also, I recently got kittens
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: for the first time. I've never had mammalian pets before.
• 13:58
  Speaker 6: And that's actually been really interesting to me to watch
• 14:01
  Speaker 6: their behavior, because I realized that, you know, as predators,
• 14:05
  Speaker 6: they actually engage with the world in a very different
• 14:08
  Speaker 6: way from what we're used to as primates, in that,
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: for instance, they don't seem to be motivated to change
• 14:17
  Speaker 6: the environment in any way, to engage with it actively.
• 14:22
  Speaker 6: They move through the environment, they weave through obstacles and
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: things like that, but they don't tend to open boxes.
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: Or try and change the environment. in significant ways.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: Like monkeys and chimps would, right?
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: Right, yeah, like primates would. Yeah, yeah, right, right.
• 14:41
  Speaker 6: And so, yeah, I mean, you know, if something moves,
• 14:43
  Speaker 6: they'll chase it because that's what predators do.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: But, you know, to them, it made.
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: Me think that perhaps, yeah, they perceive the world differently
• 14:52
  Speaker 6: in the sense that they don't perceive it as something
• 14:55
  Speaker 6: they can change, right?
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: It's just there and you move through it as best
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: you can.
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: But, you know, when you're a primate, you will manipulate
• 15:03
  Speaker 6: everything and, you know, turn things over and open and,
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: you know, bang and so on.
• 15:09
  Speaker 5: So, you know, that's sort of fundamental.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I guess you have sort of habitat building, though, in non-primates,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: like sort of dam building.
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: I guess there's a sort of a manipulation of the environment, perhaps.
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It very much depends on the animal's lifestyle, right?
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: I mean, that's, I think, one of the lessons we
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: learn from animal cognition, especially when there's a sort of
• 15:36
  Speaker 6: bridge between behavioral ecology and animal cognition that we sort
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: of try to understand why the cognition of that animal
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: is the way it is given the kind of lifestyle
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: that it has. So dam building makes sense for an
• 15:52
  Speaker 6: animal that lives in an environment where something like that
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: can happen and can be beneficial.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: And Dora, so I'm not a biologist, as Tim will
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: point out many times, but I need to stretch the imagination.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: So I'm actually a chemist and a biochemist. So it's
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: interesting for me to sort of, many of these behaviors
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: and things, I'm guessing, and I don't know the answer
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: to this, and you'll know this more than I do,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: can it be directly linked to intelligence? Are there sort of,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Or is it more, you know, more nuanced than that?
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 16:28
  Speaker 6: And I think actually tool use in animals is a
• 16:33
  Speaker 6: good example of this because it's, you know, it's, there's
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: a whole line of research on tool use in animals, right?
• 16:44
  Speaker 6: And so to study tool use in animals, you have
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: to first define what tool use is.
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: And that's already kind of hurdle number.
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: One that I don't think we've really fully cleared because
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: there's multiple different definitions of tool use.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: They agree on some aspects, but they also differ in
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: some aspects.
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: So what you class as tool use in the first
• 17:08
  Speaker 6: place might differ depending on what definition you use. There's
• 17:11
  Speaker 6: always going to be edge cases where we're not quite
• 17:14
  Speaker 6: sure is this tool use or not.
• 17:18
  Speaker 5: And, but I think one of the really important.
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: Aspects of this in relation to your question is that
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: we tend to think of tool use as.
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: Kind of clever, right?
• 17:30
  Speaker 6: So, you know, this is the animal being creative, you know,
• 17:33
  Speaker 6: using objects creatively to solve problems in the environment. But
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: if you actually look at which species use tools and how,
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: what you find is, first of all, it's a very
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: rare tool. behavior, very rare trait in the wild. So
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: I think we worked at once that something like less
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: than 0.1% of all known animal genera, so not species,
• 17:59
  Speaker 6: but genera, use tools.
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: So it is very rare. And at the same time,
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: the distribution.
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: Of tool use is very sort of eclectic around the
• 18:10
  Speaker 6: animal kingdom. So it's not the case that you get
• 18:12
  Speaker 6: one lineage where most of the tool users are occur
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: but it's it's you know it's distributed very very widely
• 18:18
  Speaker 6: phylogenetically very kind of you know it pops up in
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: you know i think four out of the five animal
• 18:25
  Speaker 6: phyla so so yeah so you get you know a
• 18:28
  Speaker 6: bunch of different tool using species but it's actually very
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: difficult to work out what they have in common because
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: um and actually you can sort of um you know
• 18:41
  Speaker 6: if you look at um uh how an individual animal
• 18:45
  Speaker 6: actually comes to use tools, you find that in some
• 18:49
  Speaker 6: cases it's very much genetic or, or at least to
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: some extent under genetic control. And so, you know, this
• 18:56
  Speaker 6: argument that it's, it's a form of creative problem solving
• 18:59
  Speaker 6: kind of falls apart. Whereas in other species, uh, it
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: does seem to be a case of, of, of, of
• 19:06
  Speaker 6: creative problem solving. So, um, uh, I think it shows
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: that we tend to think of tool use as this
• 19:17
  Speaker 6: unified phenomenon. It's an animal using an object in the
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: environment to achieve a certain goal. But actually, in terms
• 19:25
  Speaker 6: of what it says about their cognition, we then need
• 19:28
  Speaker 6: to think about whether it's a learned behavior, whether the
• 19:32
  Speaker 6: animal actually innovated and was creative about solving some problem
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: in the environment, or simply that it was, you know,
• 19:39
  Speaker 6: it's essentially genetically pre-programmed to do this.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: So, yeah.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: So I think this is a really good point because
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: we're going to come back and talk about your recent
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: paper but we'll just take a um a brief break.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Hi tim you're looking particularly snazzy today.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: What are you wearing i'm wearing um a piece from
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: a company called grace and garbo and actually you know
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: a little bit more about them than i do to
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: be honest.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah you're right i do you're the fashion queen I'm.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: Also wearing a piece from Grace and Garbo. So this
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: is a delightful knitwear outfit set up in Birmingham. What
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: they do is they source knitwear, quality knitwear from all
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: around the world. It's vintage, one-off pieces, many of which
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: they then hand embellish, like the one you're wearing today
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: with its beautiful purple flowers. And so they're big on sustainability.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: You know, nothing goes to waste. Everything is sort of
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: recycled and reused. And if you want to know more
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: about them, then have a look at the link beneath
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: this episode.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: And thank you very much to them for supporting our podcast.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I hope their sales soar.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Grace and Garvo.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Well, welcome back, everyone.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And we're chatting to Dora Biru, who's a behavioural ecologist,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: animal behaviour specialist, works on animal cognition as well. And
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: You've recently published a very nice paper, Dora, in a
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: journal called eLife.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: That's a very good journal.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: It's called Old Age Variability Impacts, Chimpanzee Engagement and Efficiency
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: in Stone Tool Use. And we'll put a link to
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: your paper below for our listeners. And it's free to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: anyone to download. It's not behind a paywall or anything.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: So congratulations on that. So chimps use tools in all
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: sorts of ways, don't they? Perhaps you can kind of
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: explain what they use tools for. I know it differs
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: between populations and individuals as well.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: Chimpanzees, alongside bonobos, are humans' closest evolutionary relatives. They also
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: happen to be the most prolific tool users in the
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: wild out of any non-human animal. They have a variety
• 21:56
  Speaker 6: of different tools that they use in the wild, ranging
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: from tools that aid them in foraging to, uh, tools
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: that they use in sort of self-maintenance or even in
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: social situations. So they have tools that they use in
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: order to, um, interact with another individual in certain ways, but, um, uh,
• 22:20
  Speaker 6: and yeah, so, so in, in, uh, primarily though, the
• 22:23
  Speaker 6: tools are really used in foraging and that can take
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: many different forms. Um, I think, you know, maybe the
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: most famous example of chimpanzee tool use is termite fishing,
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: which is actually where the field of animal tool use
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: really begins.
• 22:39
  Speaker 5: So that was a discovery by Jane Goodall.
• 22:41
  Speaker 6: In the 70s that chimpanzees basically will break off a
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: little branch.
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: They'll strip it of leaves and.
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: Then they'll take the kind of remaining stem and they'll
• 22:51
  Speaker 6: insert it into, holes in termite mounds, the termites climb
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: up on the stick, the chimpanzee then withdraws the stick
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: and they can eat the insects off the end.
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: So that's one form of cooling. Yeah, and there's many others.
• 23:09
  Speaker 6: So the one that we have been studying in Guinea
• 23:14
  Speaker 6: and West Africa, is called nut cracking um and that's
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: where chimpanzees uh use uh stone tools so um hammer
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: stone and in our case a separate anvil stone where
• 23:28
  Speaker 6: they will place a nut on top of the anvil
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: and then they'll use the other stone to kind of
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: pound that nut until it breaks open and then they
• 23:35
  Speaker 6: get access to the nutritious kernel so the nut is
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: basically too strong to be opened with um teeth alone.
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: So you need these, um, stolen tools to actually process, um,
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: the item.
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: And, um, yeah, so that's, that's the behavior that we've
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: been studying in this one particular community of chimpanzees in, in, uh, Guinea,
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: the field sites called Bosu. It's one of the longest running, uh,
• 24:02
  Speaker 6: wild chimpanzee field sites, um, in Africa. It was, uh,
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: launched in the seventies by, um, Kyoto university, um, Yukimaru
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: Sugiyama was the individual who first established BOSU as a
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: long-term field site.
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: And it's been running ever since.
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: And over those decades, we've discovered a number of other
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: tool use behaviors that this particular community performs. Interestingly, they
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: don't do termite fishing, but they do do a sort
• 24:36
  Speaker 6: of related variant called ant dipping, where instead of going
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: to a termite mound they'll find a marching line of
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: army ants.
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: And they'll sort of perch safely above.
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: Very aggressive ants so you don't want to be in
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: their path but but then they'll take a stick and
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: they'll dip that into a line of marching army ants
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: and then again the army ants climb up the stick
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: and then you can sort of pull the stick through
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: your teeth and just very quickly before um before they
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: sting you so that's yeah that's another behavior that they
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: perform algae scooping is another one where they'll take a
• 25:13
  Speaker 6: stick to and they use that to kind of scrape
• 25:15
  Speaker 6: algae off the surface of a pond so it's a
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: way of avoiding getting wet.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Um that's amazing actually it's a real broad range so
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: sorry i think you had a question.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just sort of curious.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: You said that, so you go, you know, you've got,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: you've got this site where you've got this community of
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: chimpanzees and there's this, you know, that they're using these tools.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: So when you, when you sort of start the study,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: do you know, you know, is it hypothesis driven?
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Do you know what you're looking for?
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Or is the idea observation and then you find traits
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: and then you then you know these are the ones
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: we're going to follow because it's a very different way
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: of doing science than the one I'm.
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: Used to it's fascinating yeah I think this is where
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: sort of I mean natural history I think is something
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: that um has become somewhat sidelined in in in recent
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: decades right like that's that's sort of you know the
• 26:18
  Speaker 6: the beginnings of our our sort of interest in animals
• 26:21
  Speaker 6: is is is a natural history driven interest, right? We
• 26:25
  Speaker 6: watch the animals and we see what interesting things they do.
• 26:27
  Speaker 6: And then on the basis of that, we can then
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: think of, you know, how to now, you know, dig
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: into it, these things more carefully through experimentation. But I
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: think essentially, I think you're right, Simon, that, yeah, you know,
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: there is no hypothesis at the very beginning of this, right?
• 26:44
  Speaker 6: You sort of have to go and watch these animals
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: in their natural habitat during their sort of natural everyday behaviors.
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: to basically see what it is that they do that
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: you can then kind of try and probe.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: I think it's wonderful because it's sort of in a way,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: perhaps many of us are here as scientists because of observation, right?
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: It's the first point, isn't it? Yeah, first point of
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: the scientific journey.
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 27:12
  Speaker 6: I think it's, yeah, I mean, yeah, I think you
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: can't do science with that, that you can't sort of
• 27:19
  Speaker 6: come in with a hypothesis not having seen something you know,
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: what the animals actually do. And, yeah, like I was
• 27:26
  Speaker 6: sort of referencing at the beginning, I think that's where
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: some of the best ideas come from is just sort
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: of sitting back and watching and letting your kind of
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: mind take in what's happening and then noticing something, you know.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: But I think what's really impressive, actually, and it kind
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: of relates to this, is this study that you're talking
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: about and you've been working on has been running for
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: so long And you've been looking at you were able
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: to observe the same animals doing the same type of
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: behavior over decades, right? And you discovered that a bit
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: like as I'm getting worse and worse as I get
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: older at doing various tasks. chimps do the same, right?
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: So they senesce almost as quickly as I'm senescing.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: Yes, I can relate to this too, for sure.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Before, just for our readers' sakes, what is the lifespan
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: of one of these chimpanzees? So just to get an
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: idea of what younger... It's a great question.
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: So it's going to differ in the wild from what
• 28:30
  Speaker 6: it is in captivity. So in captivity, there have been
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: chimps that have really lived to some extraordinary ages, 60s, 70s,
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: potentially even 80s. I'm not sure if those reports are legit.
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: But in the wild, animals don't tend to live as
• 28:52
  Speaker 6: long as they do in captivity. In fact, this was
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: one of the kind of hypotheses for why we might
• 28:58
  Speaker 6: not observe senescence in animals, because outside of a kind
• 29:02
  Speaker 6: of domestication domesticated setting or in zoo settings or something
• 29:07
  Speaker 6: like that, you know, animals are going to die or
• 29:10
  Speaker 6: starvation or disease or predation or, you know, whatever, well
• 29:14
  Speaker 6: before they get to the age at which they might
• 29:17
  Speaker 6: exhibit senescence. But that hypothesis has been challenged since, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 6: there is now data out there from a good number
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: of species showing that yes, indeed animals do reach ages
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: at which they senesce even in the wild.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: As you're studying are about 70, you said they can
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: live to about 70 years.
• 29:38
  Speaker 5: It's very, very, very rare.
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: I think in captivity, I would say probably around 50s
• 29:43
  Speaker 6: might be the typical kind of.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: That's what you have to work with, right?
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: A lifespan of about 50 years.
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. And actually, yeah, so in the wild,
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: like I said, it's going to be less, but.
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: we are kind of fortunate to work with a group
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: of chimpanzees that I think are.
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: Possibly kind of.
• 30:06
  Speaker 6: Best placed to allow individuals to reach these very old
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: ages because they, so the community, the group that we
• 30:17
  Speaker 6: study is a relatively small one. And it happens to
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: live on this kind of basically island of forest that
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: is surrounded by savannah and agricultural land. I mean, all
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: apes pretty much in Africa are affected in some way
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: by anthropogenic change. And so these guys live on this
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: island of forest where, as it also happens, the local
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: human population, the ethnic group who live there, consider chimpanzees
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: to be their ancestors. So they're essentially totem animals for
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: this particular group of people, which means they don't hunt them.
• 30:55
  Speaker 6: In fact, the forest itself is a sacred forest, so
• 30:57
  Speaker 6: there's really relatively very little encroachment on the chimpanzee space.
• 31:04
  Speaker 6: But they are stuck on this island, and they don't
• 31:07
  Speaker 6: really have any neighbors that they interact with, neighboring chimpanzee groups,
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: which also means.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: They're not They're not biting all the time, are they?
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: Biting or, you know, patrolling their territory, getting into fights
• 31:18
  Speaker 6: with neighboring groups. They also don't have any natural predators around.
• 31:23
  Speaker 6: So basically, you know, the scene is set for them
• 31:26
  Speaker 6: to live as long as, you know, they can possibly
• 31:29
  Speaker 6: make it.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: So tell us what you found. Tell us what you
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: found in the study. Because we're kind of running out
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: of time a little bit.
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: Yes, sorry.
• 31:36
  Speaker 6: OK, so what we found, so we had been studying
• 31:39
  Speaker 6: nutcracking in these chimpanzees for many, many years. My particular
• 31:43
  Speaker 6: interest was in the development of this skill. So we
• 31:46
  Speaker 6: were looking at how young chimpanzees sort of learn this
• 31:51
  Speaker 6: relatively very complex skill.
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: And it is a very long learning process. It takes
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: them years.
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: To actually get to the point where they're able to
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: open a nut with stones. Uh, and yeah, so, so
• 32:07
  Speaker 6: we'd been studying how this skill sort of comes, uh,
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: to be part of the chimpanzees repertoire at the, in the,
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: in the early.
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: Stages of life.
• 32:18
  Speaker 6: Um, and then, uh, one year we had this, uh,
• 32:23
  Speaker 6: we made this fortuitous observation where one of the adult
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: females in the group who. had been one of the
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: most prolific, most sort of proficient, skilled, very streamlined nutcracker.
• 32:36
  Speaker 6: We hadn't seen her in a few years because we
• 32:38
  Speaker 6: hadn't been to the field site in a few years.
• 32:40
  Speaker 6: And so when we went back a number of years later,
• 32:44
  Speaker 6: there had been this really profound change in her behavior
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: that really struck us. That, you know, whereas before she
• 32:55
  Speaker 6: was kind of very, you know, Very proficient. Her actions were,
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: you know, very clean, you know, very streamlined. Now she seemed,
• 33:07
  Speaker 6: and I'm going to sound like I'm enterprising now, but
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: she just looked very confused all of a sudden about
• 33:14
  Speaker 6: what she was doing. So she would be sort of
• 33:16
  Speaker 6: halfway through cracking a nut and then sort of stop
• 33:19
  Speaker 6: and look at the stone and put it down and
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: pick up another one.
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: And so she almost.
• 33:23
  Speaker 6: Seemed to kind of forget halfway through what it was
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: that she was doing. Um, you know, before she would just,
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: you know, pick up two stones and then use those
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: same two, two stones, uh, repeatedly until she was done.
• 33:35
  Speaker 6: Now she was kind of picking up, you know, seven
• 33:37
  Speaker 6: different stones and like dropping them, picking up, you know,
• 33:41
  Speaker 6: swapping her, uh, tools out halfway through, um, having, uh,
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: attempted to crack a.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: Knot and, you know, So she was a bit confused,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: do you think?
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: She seemed confused.
• 33:52
  Speaker 6: She seemed like she had kind of forgotten how to
• 33:54
  Speaker 6: do the whole, you know, the whole process. Um, Cause,
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: cause nutcracking itself is, is, is, it's really one of
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: the most complex forms of tool use in the wild because,
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: and it's, you know, it's a different ways you can
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: define complexity, but you think about it in terms of the,
• 34:09
  Speaker 6: you know, the number of different objects you have to
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: combine in a specific space, your temporal order, right? So
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: you have to, you know, first place an anvil down
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: and it has to be, uh, place such that it
• 34:22
  Speaker 6: has a level enough surface that you can put a
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: knot on top. So then you put the knot and
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: then you have to bring in this third object, right.
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: That you then use it, use to pound the object with.
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: So the knot width.
• 34:33
  Speaker 6: So it's, it's, it's complex in the sense that, yeah,
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: you have to get all these objects into the right
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: place at the right time with the right kinds of actions. Um,
• 34:43
  Speaker 6: and so, yeah, our, our feeling was that, you know,
• 34:46
  Speaker 6: if you're going to, see cognitive decline in old age
• 34:50
  Speaker 6: in in any behavior in the wild it's probably going
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: to you know be evident in these kind of more
• 34:56
  Speaker 6: complex behaviors that really require you know things like you
• 35:00
  Speaker 6: know memory spatial temporal organization planning yeah all kinds of
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: things and you know these.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Are only sorry was this only seen in one out
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: of the five elderly chimps so.
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: Then yeah so then we it was very.
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: Obvious in this one chimpanzee but we did have a
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: number of other um individuals who were kind of reaching
• 35:20
  Speaker 6: similarly old ages. And so that then gave us the
• 35:24
  Speaker 6: idea to look in more detail at those individuals as
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: well and to really sort of try and look at
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: multiple different aspects of the tool using behavior. So, you know,
• 35:36
  Speaker 6: how streamlined the actions are, how quickly they're able to
• 35:40
  Speaker 6: do it, you know, how many hits of the hammerstone
• 35:43
  Speaker 6: they need to actually open a single nut, you know,
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: various sort of metrics that, that give us a sense
• 35:49
  Speaker 6: of the efficiency with which, um, these animals were, were able.
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: To crack nuts.
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: And, um, and so what we then saw was that,
• 35:58
  Speaker 6: you know, across these five different individuals that we ended
• 36:02
  Speaker 6: up sampling, um, there was, most of them showed some
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: signs of, of deterioration in terms of the efficiency of
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: the behavior. Um, uh, And different individuals showed stronger effects
• 36:19
  Speaker 6: in the different metrics. So, yeah, it sort of showed
• 36:24
  Speaker 6: us really that there is an effect of old age
• 36:28
  Speaker 6: on the efficiency with which these animals are able to
• 36:31
  Speaker 6: perform this particular tool use behavior, but that there's also
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: variation in how.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: So it's very unlike humans.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I know that this is anthropomorphizing
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and speculative, but do you think she was, you know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: this highly proficient chimp that then lost the ability to
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: do this had something like Alzheimer's or dementia?
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: So that was my immediate thought.
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: And I'll sort of roll back on that a little
• 36:56
  Speaker 6: bit because, I mean, that's a fairly strong claim that
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: I think we would need to support with uropathological data
• 37:04
  Speaker 6: and things like that, which unfortunately we weren't able to do.
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: There are captive studies, though, that have shown that, um,
• 37:11
  Speaker 6: so if you do, if you do look at the
• 37:13
  Speaker 6: brain of a deceased old aged individuals, you individual, uh, chimpanzee,
• 37:19
  Speaker 6: you do find the kind of neuropathological signatures of Alzheimer's,
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: which it's a relatively recent discovery, but that I think
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: that would support that, that hypothesis that this could have
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: been a case of that. Um, but the trouble is
• 37:34
  Speaker 6: it's also tied in with physical deterioration in all age. So,
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: you know, the loss of strength, the loss of muscle.
• 37:40
  Speaker 6: or sort of maybe, yeah, coordination of some kind. So yeah,
• 37:45
  Speaker 6: I don't want to claim, I don't.
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: Want to make that claim that this is the case
• 37:50
  Speaker 5: of dementia.
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: It looked like it, but yeah, I think it's hard
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: to separate from sort of other ways in.
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: Which the animals- Physical decline, yeah. Physical decline, yeah.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: So I think we better wrap this up soon. One
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: last question, Simon.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess- So this.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Sounds sort of almost counter to everything you've said, because
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: we're saying that they're getting confused in perhaps this particular one.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: But I was thinking, was there any evidence that they
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: are then sort of compensating by choosing other tasks that
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: are easier to do?
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: Oh, great question.
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: So the nutrition that these chimpanzees get from nut cracking is, it's.
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: Not, absolutely essential to them. So not all chimpanzees crack nuts.
• 38:41
  Speaker 6: And even, even within our community, we have a couple
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: of adults that just never learned, um, the scale. We're
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: not entirely sure why, but you know, there's, it's, it's
• 38:51
  Speaker 6: not like they're the ones who end up starving.
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: Within the group.
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: So there's plenty of other food around. It's, it's more
• 38:56
  Speaker 6: of a, I mean, it's, it's, um, it's very nutritious.
• 38:59
  Speaker 6: The nuts are very nutritious. So the chimps do like them,
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: but there is plentiful food available in the forest for
• 39:05
  Speaker 6: them to, to fall back on. So, Um, so yeah, it's,
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: it's hard to say how they're compensating or if, even
• 39:14
  Speaker 6: if they need to really compensate, um, for, for any
• 39:17
  Speaker 6: loss of nutrition through this. We did also notice that they, so,
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: so the oldest studies take place in this, um, uh,
• 39:25
  Speaker 6: location called the outdoor laboratory at, at, at our field site,
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: which is basically a clearing in the forest where we
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: can provide objects. So we basically put out a bunch
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: of stones of different sizes, shapes, materials to kind of
• 39:38
  Speaker 6: see how chimps select appropriate objects from the environment to
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: use as tools.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: And we basically rely on.
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: These chimpanzees to just pass through the outdoor lab during
• 39:51
  Speaker 6: their daily travels. And then they usually stop and we'll
• 39:54
  Speaker 6: start to not crack and engage with the objects there.
• 39:56
  Speaker 6: But one thing we also noticed was that these older
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: females in particular, they stopped coming less into the, to the,
• 40:04
  Speaker 6: to the outdoor lab. And we weren't entirely sure why
• 40:09
  Speaker 6: that was. It could be that they're not really interested
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: in not cracking so much anymore because they're finding it
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: more difficult.
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: It could have been that.
• 40:16
  Speaker 6: So this outdoor lab is at the top of one
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: of the, rather steep hills within the forest. So maybe
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: they just don't have the strength to climb there anymore.
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: So they're certainly, you know, spending their time in other ways.
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: Um, but, uh, uh, but yeah, it's unclear if they
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: really kind of need to compensate specifically for, for, for
• 40:36
  Speaker 6: loss of nutrition in this case.
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: Um, yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: So, I mean, lots of things change in, in the, uh,
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: at this kind of very advanced age in chimpanzees. So
• 40:46
  Speaker 6: for example, we also found that, we look at kind
• 40:49
  Speaker 6: of social network analysis that, that they sort.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: Of withdraw from the group.
• 40:56
  Speaker 6: They kind of become peripheral, much more peripheral within, within
• 41:00
  Speaker 6: the group's social network.
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: So again, very similar to, you know, to humans, right.
• 41:07
  Speaker 6: Where it's also shown that your sort of social circle
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: shrinks as you, as you become older. So that's exactly
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: what's happening in these teams too.
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: So they're spending their days in, you know, differently than,
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: in old age than they did when they were younger.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: No, and it's fascinating stuff, Dora.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: And we better wrap it up, actually, because I said
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: we'd try and keep it, as always, we end up,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you know, getting into hearing about all the research that
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: people do. But really fascinating stuff. Thank you so much
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: for taking the time to join us. And we'll put
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: a link to the paper below. But it really has
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: been fascinating.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Roy, for
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: having me. Not at all.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: Our pleasure.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: Well, Tim, so that was fascinating.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: It really was.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I think learning, you know, I think
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: everyone loves animals. She's right. So many of us got
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: into biology, or even if we didn't, so many people
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: were impressed by those David Attenborough shows.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: He's still making it over 90, right? I mean, it's
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: just incredible.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: And it's great that it's actually driving science by bringing
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: people like Dora in.
• 42:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many different ways in which they're important.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: I guess they're visual. I mean, interestingly, my grandmother, paternal grandmother,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: was completely illiterate. And when she came to England, the
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: thing that kept her watching television was David Attenborough.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, wow.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Because it was visual.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: And she couldn't understand what he was saying, but she'd
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: get the gist and maybe not the nuances, but work
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: it out. And yeah, I think there's this for all
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: of us, there's these connections and this, you know, you
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: try not to anthropomorphize, I can't say that word, things,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: but we do, right?
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: No, we do.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: But I mean, some animals behave very differently. I mean,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: my dog, Woosler, isn't behind me at the moment. But
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: you know, if he was, I'd be able to sort
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: of say, here I am. But anyway, yeah. So, and I,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I think it's, it's fascinating. I think one
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: of the really interesting things is, there were there were
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: it's so difficult to keep a study going on a
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: population of animals for as long as this chimp study
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: has been going on because you've got to get grant
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: funding to go over there you know um you you've
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: you've got to find students who are interested in working
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: on it although i suspect there's quite a lot of
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: students who say yeah i'll go and look at some
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: chimps in the forest.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely and i think well we were one of
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: the very first episodes we did with um nilo and
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: ben when they talked about the great tip study at
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: whiteham and that is a very long study you know
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: very long running study but it's sort of in a
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: way more straightforward for them to do because it's in
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: oxford and it.
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: Was easy you know easier.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Just down the road yeah and you can do it
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: in in a way without you know of course you
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: need grant funding but you can do it with undergraduate
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: project students and you know it's some aspects of it
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: anyway but this is yeah this is another level and
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: in terms of difficulty and it's uh And even then,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: even though they've kept it going for such a long time,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: it is five chimpanzees that they're looking at.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, data from those five, I think there's more
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: in the group. But it's, and it is interesting, isn't it,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: that they're living long enough, because for many animals, as
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: soon as you start to have those declines, something's going
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: to kill you, right? You know, I work in Yellowstone,
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: and wolves will tend to take the older elk, right,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: as they start to slow down, they can't run as fast,
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: they get eaten. I mean, they take the babies as well,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: but So it's really interesting, I think, that they can
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: detect these in wild living animals, in these chimpanzees, that
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: they can start to see these behavioural declines.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: I know that she's very cautious.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: To sort of say it looks like some sort of
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: brain degenerative disease, but it is similar, isn't it, to
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: what we see in people?
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what she described as this sort of confusion and
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know, forgetting halfway through. what she was
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: doing with trying to break open these nuts is, as
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: you said, it's something we see.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, it happens to all of us as we
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: get older, right?
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: Speak for yourself.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: You mean you've always been like this?
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever tried to actually crack.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: A walnut on an anvil with a rock, but I
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: might start monitoring myself from now on.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think I mean, I learned a lot.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: I think it was interesting to me about these. Well,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: I think we didn't quite get into it, but would
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: be good to follow up with her at some point
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: is sort of, you know, the sort of full spectrum
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: of characteristics.
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: And traits we see in humans.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: How big is that spectrum in chimpanzees, for example? How
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: wide is that spectrum?
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, exactly. Exactly.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: Anyway, that was great fun. And if you've enjoyed the podcast,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: please like, share and subscribe. Details below. And we'll be
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: back next week with another episode.
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: So thank you for listening.