August 15, 2023 • 53 mins
If we could talk with the animals, grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals, what would we say? We’d better start thinking of something good because researchers are learning to speak sperm whale, prairie dog, and a bunch of other species' languages.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
And I was gonna say Jerry's here, but she totally
flaked on us.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, I've never
wanted to be able to make a dolphin sound.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
More in my life.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I mean, that was medium better than I could do.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, let's hear yours. I put I've heard better out there.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
No, I mean I can't. I don't even want to try. Okay,
how about this bet my nose. I'm a dolphin.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
That was good.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
A dolphin that speaks English is pretty impressive, Chuck.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
I like that interpretation.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, Usa, so USA and Canada. So we're talking today.
The reason we're trying to speak dolphin, Chuck, is because
we're talking about anim communication. And just to clear things
up right out of the gate, we're not talking about
animal communication where we try to teach animals to speak
(01:12):
human languages, whether it be sign language, English, whatever. Yeah,
we already did that in our Live Coco the Gorilla episode.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Now we're going the other way here because there's a
whole other tranche. As the French would say, of research
that is going into listening to, decoding, understanding and potentially
speaking animal animal languages.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, and this is one. It's like one of the
rare cases whereas we'll see for a lot of year,
science was like, animals don't do this, Like they grunt
at each other, they make little instinctual noises, but they're
not really communicating with each other or us. Don't kid yourself.
And this is a rare case where I'm like, I
(02:02):
don't care what science says. My pets speak to me
and I understand what they're saying.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, no, this researching this, I was haunted by the
ghost of Tracy Wilson. Do you remember like how hard
core she was about not anthropomorphizing years back?
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Yeah, sorry, Will, Yeah, sorry Tracy.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I do it.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And Tracy's a cat person, I know for it, she
refuses to speak to her cat. No, I'm sure that's
not true, but yeah, I mean that's a that's a
fair point, and I think we've made that point many
times whenever we've talked about pets like communicating or I
think anytime we talk about pets, we kind of both
agree that no, there's they're obviously communicating in ways we're
(02:46):
just not fully aware of. And it's actually pretty anthropercentric
to just assume that because we don't understand it, they're
not doing it. Luckily, Like I said, there's a whole
tranche of search that is assuming no, these these animals
have communication patterns that yeah, kind of follow the same
(03:10):
general idea of human language. Yeah, and as such we
have a chance of being able to understand it. But
the whole, the whole thing is based on this idea.
Like you said, science has long thought like that there
was not that any any sounds they make were instinctual,
that there wasn't any purpose behind them. It was just
(03:31):
that it was an involuntary response to something that evolution
had kind of bred into that animal. And that was
also predicated on this idea that Renee Descartes put out there,
which is animals have like no inner lives whatsoever, only
humans do.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Boo.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, I'm very disappointed with Descartes, and I know we've
talked about this before, probably multiple times, but it bears
repeating because he set that tone for centuries to follow.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, oh for sure. But I mean you needn't only
look at your dog and to a certain degree, your
cat but you know the first couple of animals we're
going to talk about that Olivia helped us with this
that she was keen to point out humans have been
around for a while and you know, communicate with if
you are the owner, slash, you know, mother, father, caretaker
(04:23):
of these animals. We're talking about dogs and horses, and
if you have ever had a dog, you know what
at least this one thing is. And that's called puppy
dog eyes. And this is a trade. It's actually a
muscle called the loam, the lam, the levator anguli oculi
(04:44):
media alis cristo. It's a muscle in the eyebrow basically
of a dog that evolved from a wolf. Like They've
done studies and found that wolves don't still have this
or wolves don't have this right and that the only
dog out of like the eight breeds they studied that
(05:05):
didn't evolve this way was the Siberian husky, which is
I guess closely related to a wolf.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
It's a wolf posing as a dog.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And I don't know if you've ever known huskies. I'm
not knocking any breed. I like huskies just fine. I've
known a few, but and I've never been able to
have a good connection with them. Yeah, and that may
be part of the reason is that there haven't evolved
as far away as as you know we have with
our other domesticated friends.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
That's a great point.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But they have done studies. There was one published in
the proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences who studied
dogs out for adoption at like a you know, what
do you call it? Well, I can't even think.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Of the word an adoption dry.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Sure, it wouldn't a dry, but just in the in
the pound.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Okay, what do you call those? Though? An animal shelter?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Animal shelter. You know how the easiest word won't come
to you sometimes.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, I do. I've been there, buddy, it's very frustrating.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Anyway, sheltered dogs. And they found they studied all these dogs,
like hundreds and hundreds of them over long periods of time,
and the found that the dogs to use these lone
muscles to make their eyes bigger and raise that inner
brow were adopted quicker.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I think it has to do with exaggerating the shape
of the eyes, which, as we've talked about the Kinder schema.
I believe in the science of cute Yeah, that would
just make them automatically cuter.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah, bigger eyes. I mean, that's why those Disney characters
have big eyes.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
But the exactly, but the point of this is that dogs.
We have clear evidence that dogs evolved a way to
be expressive through their facial expressions in ways that affect humans.
And that's a form of communication, exactly. That's just one
form of communication. So it isn't anthe promorphizing to say that,
(07:01):
you know, dogs have emotions and that they express these
emotions like things like being happy to see their their friend,
their human friend. There's a guy named ecologist Carl Sephina,
and he points out that his whole thing is like
dogs love us. Clearly, it's clear as day. Anybody who
(07:22):
owns a dog knows this, and anybody who says otherwise
is just being a real stick in the mud, basically.
But he pointed out that really the the whole thing
broke open. Finally, Descartes Smelly Corpse was finally cast off
of the animal behavior field in the sixties, I believe
(07:45):
when observational studies of animals really started in earnest thanks
to people like Jane Goodall and I can't remember who
her Lewis leaky that those people were coming back with report.
It's like, guys, these are these animals clearly interact with
one another in ways that humans would consider empathy. They're communicating,
(08:08):
they're doing all sorts of stuff we supposedly think they
can't and then today it's being demonstrated. All of these
these observations are being proven because we've fashioned MRI machines
that dogs can go in, and we don't like, sedate
the dog and put them in there. It's not going
to have any effect. They've made these open machines and
(08:30):
then they kind of introduce them to the dogs, and
the dogs free to come or go in the MRI,
and if the dog says there long enough, they can
study the dog's brain activity and what they're seeing is Nope,
these these dogs are smart. They definitely have an inner life,
and most of what we're taking as emotional communication is
probably totally correct.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, and if they sit there long enough, they're good
boys and good girls.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
That's right, and they get treats, that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
We also have horses. If you want to look at
another animal that humans have probably had the longest relationship with,
and there's a horse trainer slash neuroscientist, which is a
very handy thing if you're going to talk about animal communication.
Her name is Janet Jones, not the former gymnasts who
was married to Wayne Gretzky. Remember, Oh, I knew.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
That name sounded familiar, but I didn't know why.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I say former gymnast, former actress. She was a gymnast too, though, right.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I haven't paid that much attention to Wayne Gretzky's marital.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Life anyway, different Janet Jones, and she said that horses
and humans are are different because humans evolved into predators,
horses evolved from prey species, So like we have different
ways of looking at the world when you're riding a
horse around outside, and we communicate that to one another,
(09:50):
you know. Also throwing the fact that horses have a
three hundred and forty degree range of vision with those awesome,
humongous eyes on the sides of their heads.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, that last degrees really ticks horses.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
It really does. But if you're like, if you're riding
along and a horse, a horse might be scared about.
And Olivia uses a great illustration of like an umbrella opening.
It might spook a horse, but the human's like, Hey,
that's just an umbrella. So they're gonna, you know, sitting
atop the horse. They're going to relax the horse by
you know, I'm not a horse rider certainly know how
(10:22):
you do this, but by moving your body and flexing
your muscles in a certain way with the rhythm of
the horse to let them know that it's cool.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So, what Janet Jones is basically saying is she wrote
this really cool article called Becoming a Centaur and aon
is that through this communication that horses and humans have
have co evolved together to understand with one another and
to be able to train one another with you're becoming
like kind of a super organism for that time where
(10:55):
you are a top of horse, yeah, and the horses
below you and you guys are working conjuncture together, sharing
sensory information.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I love that. I want to ride more horses in
my life.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
There's a that's a great, great thing to try to do, Chuck, I've.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Only done it a couple of times that I loved it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I haven't for a really long time. I used to
as a kid a lot more. I have it on
the prairie.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, when you were when you were westward bound.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, in the wagon train.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Birds, we're gonna talk a lot about birds, because obviously
bird vocalizations are you can just listen to birds and
and tell that they are specific and that that probably
means something. But humans and birds interact in different ways
around the world. Specifically, a couple of tribes, the Jahua
people in Mozambique and the Hods of Tanzania both use
(11:50):
what are called honeyguides, and they are birds that they
can call. They each you know, use different calls in
their inner respective places to call over these birds, and
the birds come a flying in and say, hey, follow
me and we'll show you the honey, and they go
and get the honey. And if you're asking, like, well,
why in the world would they do this, it's because
the birds get the wax after they're finished, so it's
(12:13):
a mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah, And they've actually tested to make sure it's not
just the presence of humans making sounds that catch the
birds attention and then the birds associate humans with getting honey.
They've tested other like control sounds, but there are specific
calls that Jahwua people use. It's like a bird something
(12:36):
like that, and that is what the honey guides respond to.
They don't respond to hey, honeyguide or anything like that.
They respond to this call that the Jahua people have
been using for countless generations, and that the Jahwa have
been passing down from generation to generation. That also means
that the honey guides wild birds, not tamed in any way.
(12:57):
They're not coerced to do this. They're wild animals who
clearly communicate with humans. They're passing down that that burr
hum sound that a Jahua person makes in the woods
means go find that person and take them to some honey,
and they'll they'll leave. The honey comes for you. Like
people and birds passing down this common information that forms
(13:19):
the symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
That's nuts.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah, And I imagine if they said, hey, honey guides,
come over here, the birds would say, why else speak
in English?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
That's really weird.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, it happened to burr hume.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
They're also, of course, and we're not going to get,
you know, too much into this, but you know, for hunters,
all kinds of mating calls and and I guess you
don't have to hunt to use a maiding call if
you want to. If you want to call a mooseover
just to say hello, you could use a moose mating call,
but all kinds of and it's not just mating calls,
but usually it's some kind of mating call for any
kind of game that you're hunting, or ducks or stuff
(13:55):
like that.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Yeah, I crossed that part.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Out those people communicating with animals at the very least.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
So you mentioned birds and how we're going to talk
about birds a lot. But birds are just an obvious
place to start, and that's where humans kind of started
in tracking animal communication, whether they realized it was animal
communication or not. Bird song has always kind of captured
the human imagination and apparently back in the day they
(14:25):
started to try to assign musical notation to recording bird
song by hand on paper. Good luck, right, And then
as you know, the technology progressed and we got better
at recording and reproducing sound. One of the things that
we really started compiling a lot of we're bird song.
(14:46):
Bird songs is bird song plural and singular?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I feel like the kind of word that would be
I think, so.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Bird's song guy.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
And there's actually a really great collection at Cornell. There
are Ornithology Lab has what's called the McAuley Library. And
I've got this app called Merlin. It's a bird identification app.
It's free.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I think.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
You just have to sign up with your email and
if you hear a bird call, you just open Merlin
and it's like Shazam for birds.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It is amazing and like it just sits there and
listens and then it goes, oh is it this burden.
It shows you a picture and tells you what that
bird is, and you say, that's exactly what bird that is.
Thanks Merlin. Merlin gives you a wink and goes back
to sleep.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
In your phone.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, it's It's a very popular app and very popular
in my family. We use it all the time. A
lot of We have a lot of identification apps that
are really handy. We have like bird apps and plant
of course and flower apps, and we has those. And
then I have an art app where you can point
it at a painting or something and it'll it'll tell
(15:55):
you if it's in the database. Of course, it'll tell
you who it is.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Cubist.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Now it'll tell you the actual artist I got, you know,
Max Cubist.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So let me just set this up real quick, Chuck
and I say we take a break. But although people
were like, okay, animals have somewhat richer inner lives than
we had always suspected, but they're still not using anything
like what we would consider language. That carried on until
the seventies until a couple of studies came through chick
(16:26):
the legs out from under that what a.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Great cliffy, So I said, cliffy.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
People know that means cliffhanger. I hope longtime listeners to
longtime listeners. So, yeah, you were talking about until the seventies,
and that's what I mentioned that science had always kind
of poo pooed it, and it was in the seventies
where people finally started you know, there were some sort
of rogue hippie scientists here and there that was like
nobody was listening to basically. But in the seventies is
(17:14):
when a couple of big studies came out that you
mentioned pre break. One was in nineteen seventy seven a
couple of primate scientists named Robert C. Farth say Farth
and Dorothy Cheney, and they were working with one of
those hippies, Peter Marler, who was an animal communication expert.
When that wasn't cool. And they were studying vervet monkeys
(17:35):
and Kenya, and this is a pretty big breakthrough and
pretty remarkable. They found that they they are using different
we're going to say things like words for lack of
a better term, sounds, vocalizations, but they used different words
for different threats. So like they noticed that like something
(17:56):
flying like an eagle versus something on the ground like
a snake like a python, they would use those to
indicate one or the other. And they learned this by
making recordings of it. And when they played it, sure enough,
the monkey would look up into the sky or search
the ground around them for the snake.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, depending on what call they played.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Back, that's right, not depending on what Brian Adams song
they played.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
So okay, smarty, So you can still make a case that, okay,
so what they have these specific words for snake or
for eagle, But it doesn't mean that it's anything more
than instinct for a monkey to utter this particular cry
when it sees a snake, and other monkeys to respond
(18:40):
in kind, And it's all innate and none of it
means that they're using grammar or language. It's okay, fine, fine,
just keep waiting a few more years, and we're going
to go forward to Klaus Zuberbueler, great name, who is Swiss,
as people who name their family's Zuber are wont to be.
(19:02):
He studied the Campbell's monkeys in the Cote Duvoir, I
believe the tomato Campbell's monkeys, and he found nothing.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Not Campbell's tomato soup.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, and he found that they actually use suffixes. Right,
So if they use the alarm called crock or crack
k r a K, that's how they spelled it, not
the Campbell's monkeys, but Zuberbueler and his friends, Yeah, that
means leopard is coming, but crack ou means it's just
(19:37):
a general alarm like lookout or heads up or something
like this. They can also like supplement crack or crack
oo with booms that they will make. It can mean
like come this way. They can mean that there's a
falling tree branch, depending on if they amend it with
the suffix Ooh. So Zuberbueler is saying, like, guys, this
(20:00):
is grammar. Those are words. This cannot possibly just be instinctual.
And even if it is instinctual, then that would suggest
that animals, at least some types of monkeys have a
language instinct too. Who that's a whole other ball of wax,
like we talked about before. But Zuberbueler's like, dude, come on,
and people started to finally be like, all right, fine,
(20:23):
we'll kind of get on board with this idea that
the animals are using something like language possibly.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah, And he even, you know, as an example of
how it's something that humans can potentially understand once they
learn it, he was warned off by a leopard by
hearing the leopard call apparently, and this was in a
radio lab at one point shout out to Radio Lab,
Yeah some of the ogs like us. But yeah, zuber
(20:49):
Bueler was like, hey, you know, I heard them sound
the leopard alarm, and that meant that I needed to to,
you know, be watchful.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah they weren't. I didn't understand. I didn't go listen
to that episode of Radio Lab, So I'm not sure
if they were warning him or he was just paying
attention that they were.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I think it's that okay, So I think, but who knows,
Maybe they're like Zuberbueler.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
He spoke, he spoke Campbell's monkey for that moment and
it helped them out. Yeah, sure so, and it wasn't
just a zuberbueler who did. Apparently other animals, including birds
and other monkeys that live around Campbell's monkeys have learned
what crock or crack means too and will respond in kind.
(21:31):
So there's evidence that there's interspecial communication, and not necessarily
that monkey talking to that bird, but that bird just
from being around these monkeys using language, picking up certain
words and speaking monkey ease, even though the bird actually
speaks parodies or something.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah. I mean, it's not any different, I think than
you know. I have cats and dogs, and they each
have their own respective feeding times and programs and systems
and treat systems, and sometimes one will get a little
of the other. Like, for instance, my dog Charlie will
lick the wet cat food spoon after I give them
(22:10):
their wet cat food. So now Charlie knows when I say, uh,
do you want your good stuff, which is what I
say to the cats, and they come running in there
for the wet food, Charlie knows, Hey, that's when I
get to lick that spoon. So I'm speaking English and
each of these animals is understanding what I'm saying, even
(22:30):
though for Charlie I'm speaking cat, although that's really not true.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
No, I know what you mean. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It holds up and it applies. It's also you can
make the case very much like an English speaking person
in America who's got a bodega down the street. M
h understands what ka pasa means or aii or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Right. Yeah, it's think this.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Living in proximity of people who speak other languages, you
pick up other languages. And that seems to very much
be analogous to what we're talking about with the birds
living around the Campbell's monkeys.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I guess the true comparison would be if my cats
made a distinctive meal when they wanted, and who knows,
they might when they want that good stuff, and that
that signal. Charlie.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, but I think your analogy still worked.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Okay, thanks man, No problem.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
You want to tell them about Con, I'll.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Leave it to you.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
It there's a biologist name Con slobotic cough slobota. Oh No,
that's not right at all. No, it's not slow bod Chikhov.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Oh, nice work. I think you totally nailed it.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Yeah, oddly enough, Con is the one that throws me.
I've never heard that as a first name.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Con like Con.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, right, this is just gone anyway. That person is
a biologist and they study prairie dogs and that they
found that they have very distinct sounds that when they're
talking about predators that basically say what kind of predator
is coming, how what color they are, how big they
are are, how fast they're coming at us, And they
(24:03):
can combine all those sounds in different ways. If it's
an let's say it's an animal they've never a predator
they've never seen, they can combine those other words to
kind of say this is a new thing and not
the whatever hunts a prairie dog.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Right Like if you saw a somehow a terrasaar came
through a time warp into example, modern day Atlanta, and
we were standing outside and we didn't know a TerraSAR
because we'd never seen one before. We might say something
like look a flying green dragon monster. And that gets
(24:37):
generally the point across what Slobodchikov found is that prairie
dogs do the same thing. Yeah, and that they also
have a tonal language very similar to Mandarin, where different
changes in intonation of the same phoneme mean totally different things,
and that they layer these different tones, that these prairie
(24:59):
dogs language may actually be more complex than other languages
in in that use that are used by humans.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah tonally right, Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I thought you were making a joke, like totally.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
No, no, no, tonally yeah, tonally tonally speaking, not like
the number.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Of words or whatever, totally tubular.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
And that they he fed all this stuff through a
computer to pick out like just very I called that,
by the way.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
I know, but you're giving me nothing today, are you,
mac as I keep fooling you these days?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah, maybe that's it, okay to the max. Uh. So
he fed this stuff into a computer so they could analyze, like,
you know, stuff that humans can't even hear, like a
program designed to analyze little minute differences. And what they
found out was when they did experiments of like human
beings walking and approaching the prairie dogs, they would say
something different, for here comes the tall guy and the
(25:54):
hat rather than here comes the short woman in the
high heat.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Right walking through the prairie.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, you know, because all those short ladies and high heels.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Right, and the tall man in the yellow hat.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, I'm not sure what happened there.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
So so things are starting to kind of pick up here.
There's a one more we need to throw out that
really had a big effect on demonstrating language use among
among animals, and that was among Japanese tits using grammar.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
These are birds, by the way.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Cute little birds. Yes, thank you for rescuing me from
angry parents. And they have a distinct sound for snake.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And if you say that, if you take that sound,
I'm not quite sure what the sound is, but I
believe it's more than one part. And you play it
out of order, it means nothing to them. To the birds,
But if you play in order, they're like, oh my god,
a snake ware and they've they've That shows that there
is grammar, there's word order mountains. And if it were
(27:02):
just innate, if it were just an involuntary reflex, it
wouldn't matter how you said that. If they heard one
of those tones or whatever, it would it would evoke
some sort of reaction or response. So you can speak
Gibberish to Japanese tits just by switching the word order
or the order of the sounds, which is the same thing,
(27:22):
basically switching word order.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, pretty cool this, you know. Now we get to
the question of is this something that they've learned or
is it instinctive, Like are their older counterparts teaching in
them these languages? Are they born with it? And we
have a couple of really cool examples. One is something
we talked about at length in the b episode, which
(27:45):
is the waggle dance that honey bees do. Basically to
show another bee where the food is. They use their
body position in relation to the sun and do this
little vibrating waggle to indicate the distance, and that's how
they tell everyone like, hey, let's go find this honey.
In nineteen seventy three, a gentleman named Carl von Frisch
(28:07):
won a Nobel Prize in physiology by translating this dance
and kind of figuring it out. And then just this
year in twenty twenty three, they did a study about
whether this was learned or something they're born with, and
they found that it's super cool, but it's a little
bit of both. So they got little baby bees who
hadn't seen this waggle dance yet isolated them, and they
(28:30):
found that they actually did try the waggle dance, so
it is somewhat innate something they're born with, but they
weren't very good at it. And when they compared those
to other baby bees who were living with adult bees
who were ostensibly teaching them this dance, they did it
much much better, were way more accurate as far as
the distance goes. And so they found that like, yeah,
(28:51):
they are born with it to a certain degree, but
they get better at it by being taught.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yes, and just a teeny teensy bit of it is mabelin.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right, all right, there you go, you heavy?
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Yes, thanks you.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So there's so bees that's a wiggle dances is almost
just entirely incomprehensible to us, except for Carl von Hirsch.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
He figured it out.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
A much more closely relatable to us are hand signals,
the communication that a lot of the great apes use.
And what they found is that across apes there's similar
similar gestures for similar meanings, but that groups and different
species can use slightly different gestures. Whether it's a hand gesture,
(29:38):
I think chewing on a leaf a certain way is flirting,
there's a lot of different communicative body language or body
gestures that apes use, but that they can be slightly
different based on groups, which is a dialect. A dialect
is the use of a similar language or the same
(29:59):
language in slightly different ways based on your group, your culture,
your geography, what region you live in. It's exactly the
same thing as the distinction between soda or pop or
coke depending on where you live in the United States.
Same thing, same meaning. Those are all English words, but
you would say that based on where you live or
(30:21):
where you were raised or the culture that you were
raised in.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, and you know, chimpanzees, of course, get a lot
of research on stuff like this, and I think people
are more apt to believe that a chimp would do
something like that because they're just more like us. But
they found the same thing in all kinds of animals,
one of which is the naked mole rat, that they
respond as far as the dialects go, they respond to
(30:45):
soft chirps from people in their own colonies more than
they do those a similar sounding soft chirp in a
different colony. So, in other words, it's a different dialect,
and we're going to be doing one on naked mole
rats at some point.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Easy it is.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I forgot forgot how much I love this animal from
watching the great documentary Fast, Cheap and out of Control
by master documentarian Errol Morris. And we'll talk about it
when we eventually get to that episode. Okay, so, same
great doc I have a recommend it though. You want
to hear something super amazing? Yes, do you remember?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And I think our Evolution of Human Intelligence episode we
talked about how they think the word he might actually
be so old that Neanderthals might have used it, like
it's one of the oldest sounds that humans make. There's
the hand gesture for come here that you use where
you kind of point right in front of you with
your fingers downward.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
M Yeah, apes, apes use that.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Oh wow, we still use the same hand gesture that
we used back when we were.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Full on great apes.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
It just works so well. Why why fix what ain't broke?
We decided over millions and millions of years.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
That's super cool. I think we should take a break
because we have a star of the show that's about
to appear several but a big star of the show
is about to appear in Communication and that's called the Whale.
And we'll be back to talk about wales right.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
After this, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
So, in addition to the Naked mole Rat episode, I
want to do an episode on the Save the Whales
movement that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Was oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, we're.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Gonna do that, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But central to that was a guy named Roger Payne,
who I'm sure will come quite a bit in that episode,
so we won't get into him too deeply, but he
was a I believe, a biological acoustician, some really arcane
specialty made he Basically, he, I guess, had friends in
(33:08):
US Navy listening stations that had been set up to
eavesdrop on ro Soviet submarines, and those navy stations were
turning up these amazing recordings of whale songs that people
just didn't realize existed up to that point, and Roger
Paine wrote a science article on it that came out
(33:29):
in the early seventies, and then simultaneous to that, he
introduced it to the larger public, not just the scientific community,
with an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. It
was released in nineteen seventy. It is recordings, I think,
a thirty five minute album of recording of whale songs.
It went multi platinum because I imagine that you could take
(33:52):
acid or smoke pot and just sit there and zone
out to that for hours. But also it really dovetailed
with the nascent environmental movement that was coming along at
the same time too, and that actually helped contribute to
the Save the Whales campaign that was highly successful just
from releasing that album.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, I've listened to it today. You can stream it
anytime you want. It's I'm sure you listen to it, right.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I found it distracting, Like even though it's instrumental silent,
I was my mind kept being like, what the hell
is that? And I couldn't concentrate, so I did turn
it off.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Oh interesting, because I found it to be because I
can only listen to very specific kinds of music when
I do this study stuff, like mainly it's Brian Eno
and now songs of the humpback Whales in Brian Adams
and Brian Adams. It was good though I like it.
I mean it's not it's very much background music and
it's not even like a like I would defy anyone
(34:51):
to even say, like, oh, if you listen to this
like a melodic and it's like a song, it's really not.
It's whales making noises. But I just found it very relaxing.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I can imagine like if I were, if I were
just kind of sitting around zoning out on that, it
would be extraordinarily pleasant. But my brain just wants to focus.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah, on acid on PCP. There are all kinds of whales, though,
and they have all kinds of communications that we've learned
about over the years. The sperm whale they have what
they call like a coda click pattern, and it depends
It's kind of like a dialect as well, I guess,
because it depends on what clan and clans are, you know,
(35:31):
groups of huge, huge groups of whales. Sometimes there are
thousands of them, made up of smaller groups, usually five
to ten female adults and their kids. But they get
together in these big clans and the different clans have
you know, variations of their language, and when they have
overlapping territories, they get really really distinct because they're overlapping,
(35:52):
so they can tell one another apart.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah, they have like a clan signifier that they use
identify themselves to others, right, because these whales don't really
navigate the world by eyesight, they mostly do it from sound,
so that's how you would do that. And these clicks
apparently can last about ten milliseconds, but they're two hundred
and thirty six decibels in volume, And to give you
(36:18):
a a comparison, that's the word I'm groping for. Totally
gunshot is one hundred and forty decibels. Okay, okay, your
pain threshold starts around there. So if you happen to
be sitting next to a sperm whale underwater when it
let out one of these clicks, it would blow your
(36:40):
ear drums right out and possibly your entire head.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
I can only picture you now underwater, sitting in your
don't be Dumb chair, just floating above it or standing
awkwardly beside it, yeah, or underneath it, or who knows,
things got weird.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, it did get a little weird right out of
the gate.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Really well, that was the whole point. And I love
for your Instagram birthday posts. When I ask people to
make their favorite Josh moments, those a lot of don't
be dumb in there. I don't know if you noticed.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
I did, and thank you for that. That was extraordinarily
kind of you.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Of course, man, that's all true, but people love. Don't
be dumb.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
I get it, like I get it. Everybody just shut up.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
No, it was great. Baby sperm whales and orcas have
like baby talk. They babble just like a little human
baby would. When they're learning. Newborn orcas make a really
high pitched call. It changes as they grow into adults
into a completely different sound, and it starts at about
two months. The adult sounding stuff they start to learn, basically,
(37:45):
it seems like it about two months, and then for
years and years until they hit pubert. They are learning
new vocalizations aka words.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Exactly like the development of human kids too. Yeah, orcas
all so very much like those birds that live around
the Campbell's monkeys. They can learn the calls of other
species too that they live around. Apparently, orcus can understand
what bottlenose dolphins are saying to one another. Again, bottlenose
dolphin is not trying to communicate with the orca. The
(38:16):
orc is just eavesdropping and if it hears like O,
there's some really great salmon over here you're clear, the
orca will be like, I'm going straight to it because
I love chinook salmon.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah. The dolphin actually has my fact of the podcast
that I can't wait to tell Ruby later on what
they name themselves. Within the first few months of being born,
they create a very signature whistle to identify themselves, so
they you know, that's their name.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, And so I really want to make sure that
this lands because sperm whales have clan codas you're saying
to other sperm whales, I'm a member of the Jamboree
clan or whatever whatever they would name themselves. Sure, it's
like in click sounds, Yeah, but that's for their clan membership,
(39:05):
not them as individuals. Bottlenose dolphins name themselves as individuals,
like this is my name. I'm Josh the dolphin. Good
to meet you. That is what they're doing. Like that,
it's that level of identity, individual identity that they're using
to introduce themselves to other dolphins.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Amazing it is.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
That really is one of the facts of the podcast.
In the podcast chock full of facts of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
So we should probably talk about the brain a little bit,
and like, you know, the question like have we ever
actually studied the brain of these animals to see if
there are anything like humans, because we know so much
about human brains and the areas of the brain that
handle communication and like emotion and stuff like that that
comes out through communication. And yes, they have. And we're
(39:50):
gonna talk about something called spindle cells, which were discovered
in eighteen eighty one and then basically went away and
were rediscovered in nineteen ninety five. And these are specialized
neurons that are in two very specific brain regions, the ACC,
the anterior cingulate cortex, and the frontal insula the FI.
(40:12):
And they've basically established that both of these regions of
the brain and humans are where we experience our emotion
and are really important for monitoring ourselves and our bodies
and how we feel, like are we in pain? Are
we hungry? Did we goof something up? Like self monitoring?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Basically yeah, and not just self monitoring like on the
individual level, but in relation to other people, like you said,
like did we goof something up? Should we feel embarrassed?
Have we made a social gaff? All of these things
are kind of controlled self monitoring, self reflection by the
anterior cingulate cortex and the frontal insula. Right, So our
ability to empathize, essentially is what we're talking about, is
(40:58):
from the activity of these two and they're characterized by
a large number of spindle cells, and only spindle cells
are found in these areas. Okay, so we're like, okay,
spindle cells, that's the seat of empathy, of emotion, of
understanding other people. Well, it turns out that I don't
know if it's neuron for neuron, sperm whales have more
(41:23):
spindle cells than human beings do. Yeah, okay, so we
have really good evidence and it's not just sperm whales.
There are other cetaceans. A lot of the great apes
have spindle cells too. Don't ask how we know this,
by the way, but where we've found that they have
the makings of what it would take to empathize with others.
And if you put that together with the assumption or
(41:46):
the growing understanding that they're communicating in very deep levels,
it would make sense that if we can decode what
they're saying, we'll find they have quite a bit to
say that we could conceivably, you know, understand and connect with.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's just incredible.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It really is, because what we're seeing with those spindle
cells is they're not like, you know, I'm hungry, let's
eat that snake. And that's like the extent, the most
fascinating thing a chimp says on any given day. Who
knows what they're thinking, Like, it just opens up a
whole universe of possibility about what they're thinking, what they're feeling,
(42:24):
because bear in mind, they're also experiencing life in the universe,
in the world and everything in a totally different way
than we are. So the idea of being able to
tap into that and then to share our experience with them,
I mean, I can't imagine what just massive impacts that
would have on humanity and hopefully on the world and
(42:45):
in general if we could do that.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Oh yeah, well, and to be able to figure a
lot of this stuff out, they've they've we've long realized
that some of this stuff is just beyond our abilities.
The crow is one example. They use, like have a
lot of different vocalizations of varying pitches and durations and
inflections and rhythms and cadences, and there's just no way
(43:10):
that humans could listen enough basically and isolate these crows
by sex and age and social status and where they
are and to be able to really learn all of
this stuff. So, you know, we talked about AI and
large language models recently and got a few emails from
people that are like, you know, there seem to be
a lot of fear based stuff in this, which is true,
(43:33):
and you guys didn't focus on any of the great
possibilities and maybe we didn't. So here's one cool thing
that AI is gonna potentially do and that they're already
starting to use, is helping out just sort of like
we have figured out or how AI is working with
large language models as predictors of like how a human
might type of sentence that makes sense, and doing the
(43:56):
same thing with animals basically and trying to figure out
their language.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, just detecting patterns, figuring out what words are important,
how they're being used, all this stuff. They've already got it.
I think Deep Squeak was the first one that analyzes
rodent sounds. And there's a couple of groups. One is
seti ceti cetacean translation initiative project that's led by a
guy named David Gruber. They have there. The way I
(44:23):
saw it put is that they're going all in on
one plan, the EC two clan of sperm whales off
the island of Dominica, and they are completely observing and
monitoring this clan of sperm whales twenty four hours a day,
every day of the year. They're down to using robotic
fish that are gathering video and audio and everything that
(44:45):
swim along with the whales. They know everything that these
whales are doing at any given moment. And so not
only are they getting these whale songs and collecting them
to feed into this the large language model to understand it,
they're all so notating this stuff so that the context
is also understood too, because what they what they think
(45:06):
is that a different click or coda depending on the context,
can totally change meaning. So they also need to know
this too. But it's a huge undertaking. They have like
tens of thousands of whale song right now. To probably
crack this language, they're gonna need millions. So it's they
they started on the road, but they've got a ways
to go.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, And it's like, I think what they're looking for
is that next level, which is not oh wow, the
whales told other whales where the good fish were or whatever,
is they want answers to things like do whales tell stories,
like very rudimentary stories to one another.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Or very advanced stories? Why does it have to be
rude to artry?
Speaker 4 (45:46):
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yeah, exactly do they if something like something big happens
to a whale clan, do they talk about it afterward?
Like a week later? Does someone bring this up? Do
they do these maths in any way? And these are
all like questions that would just blast open the door,
like if answered, just blast open the door of our
understanding of how animals may talk to one another.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, so SETI is eavesdropping in order to understand what
whales are saying. There's another project called the Earth's Species
Project ESP that is in part looking at types of
whales not only to learn what they're saying, but to
speak to them directly. So the difference between the two
projects is almost like the difference between SETI and Mehdi
as far as searching for alien intelligence is concern. It's
(46:31):
very similar in nature. But one of the things that
Earth Species Project is trying to do is map all
species languages to find universal terms or universal concepts and
understand the different words, so you could translate tiger into whale,
into human into you know Japanese tit.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Right, or if they're like conceptually like you were talking about,
are there overlaps in things like grief or joy or
these other like big sort of umbrella experiences that seemingly
any living thing could.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Experience right exactly, and like you said, it would blow
things open it totally. Some people are like, this would
change humans forever, Like how could anybody eat meat after
that point? If you can understand a pig is saying
please don't kill me, Please don't kill me while you're
killing it, right, you couldn't do it, and if you did,
people would stop you kind of thing. Other people are like, well,
(47:29):
I'm worried that we're going to use it to manipulate animals,
and people will probably try to do that too. Up
the outcome would likely be both, like humans would be changed,
our relationship with the animal world would be forever changed
for the better and the worse. And that's just kind
of how life goes. But that kind of change, I
can't imagine how amazing it would be to witness that.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, I also thought this thing, the one thing you
said was really cool about, like because the idea of
like all right, let's say we could only get there
like or understand. You know, I think who was the
guy that was named.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Garber, he's the head of setting Ruber. Yeah, Gruber, Yeah, yeah,
Gruber was.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
He was like, you know, everyone's really excited. He said
that also could be a real letdown. It could be
like the do talk is just super boring. But the
idea that you know, this thing that you said about, like, well,
what if we could communicate, what.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
Would what would we have to talk about with the whale?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
And that's where you start to look at like larger
commonalities of living things.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
And in the case of a whale, like you know,
I got kids, You got kids. I love to swim,
I love to sleep. We're both mammals, like we got
we have a handful of things we could actually talk about. Uh.
And then the idea of like objectivity as a scientist
comes in because it's and not objectivity in that like
(48:53):
I really want this to happen or not, but objectivity
of just like an experience that a whale can understand,
can't even understand, like being dry, Like we would talk
about being wet in a different context that a whale
would because a whale would just say, like, what do
you mean wet? Like all is wet exactly, and we
would say no, like wet's when you take a shower
(49:14):
or get in a swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
But the hope is is that if they are capable
of empathy, they're probably capable of metaphor, and that we
could explain things to one another like prairie dogs do,
like yellow tall human inhabit getting getting ideas and concepts
across just enough for the other one to kind of
understand things that are totally foreign.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
To them, or whaling ship nearby swim the other way exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
There was a I saw somebody theorize that you could
teach like a large language model to analyze and learn
to speak teach itself to speak whale. But because we
don't understand how large language models actually work, the AI
and the whale could have a conversation and we would
have no idea what they were seeing.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
It's frightening, it is.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
It's frightening, but it's also like wah wah, hilarious too,
Like imagine putting all that work into it and that's
the outcome.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, you'd have to.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Build another AI to tell you what the first, AI
is talking about let's do it cool, pretty neat stuff.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
I agree, And I feel like we're not done with
this topic, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (50:23):
Oh, okay, I think.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
There's more more to come, all right. Oh, by the way,
there is a listener who is Did you see that
email that has grouped our stuff into uh tranches sweets?
Speaker 2 (50:35):
No, I didn't see that one.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
I'll make sure I'll forward it to you. I haven't
even answered him back yet, but his name is Robert Fiddler.
Ironically enough, because he's fiddling about with with our content
and he has created sweets and subsuitees a in a
spreadsheet for us.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
That's awesome, Thanks Robert.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
And it's she's looking over it. Justice system, police, true crime.
Those are the big ones. Economics, finance, atmospheric science, weird,
natural disasters, natural resources. Boy, this is amazing.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
I haven't even really looked through it yet, but anyway,
shout out to He called himself Robbie, Robbie Fiddler. Yeah,
maybe we could publish it at some point or something
on our website.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Oh I have to copyright Robbie Fiddler.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Yeah, we'll see anyway, did you say you listener mail? No, Okay,
why don't you set me up then in the traditional way.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Chuck's feeling like the chatty Kathy, so that means it's
time for a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
There you go, Hey guys, I'm an eleven year old
Canadian living in Australia and we've been listening to your
show my whole life. My dad's tell me he would
listen to stuff you should know when cuddling me in
the middle of the night when I was just a bbe.
We love your podcast and hope you make many more
for many years to come. We hope to see a
live show soon. I love it when you guys do
mysteries because they're one of my favorite things to listen
to on your channel. You've expanded my imagination and creativity
(51:58):
and intelligence. Me and my get into big conversations about
your episodes because you're so intriguing, and we discuss what
we've learned and what we think. I'm just emailing you
to let you know that my dad and I are
traveling across a big chunk of Australia on a road
trip in July to see the Australian Zoo. My dad
has so many stuff you should know, just to listen
to in the way, and I'm really excited to listen
(52:19):
to the podcast and go to the zoo. Oh and
your jokes are pretty funny, but I make them even
funnier and we all have a good laugh.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Nice, he's playing off jokes. It's collaborative.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
I love it. So that says love dictated but not
read from Reese.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Reese, You're pretty cool. I just have to say.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Yeah. And a little request from Reese, I imagine the
samed at you please do one more of the voice
from the last Halloween special. It's my dad's favorite.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
I gotta think that Reese is talking about my friend Spiegel.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yeah, I have to go back and listen to Sniegel
again because he apparently was off last time I tried it.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
So I'm not sousy.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, from what I hear, all right, some people emailed
in and were like, that was not right.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
All right, I'm shooting let down an eleven year old.
I'm fine if you're fine.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah, I'm prepared to do that.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
All right.
Speaker 3 (53:17):
Well, just listen in recent Josh. I will brush up
on his smigle.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
And eventually recent when I do it next, you can
be like that was for me.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Okay, Well, if you want to be like recent show
how super cool you are naturally without any effort whatsoever,
we would love to hear from you. You can send
it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1 (53:48):
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck.
And I was gonna say Jerry's here, but she totally
flaked on us.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, I've never
wanted to be able to make a dolphin sound.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
More in my life.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I mean, that was medium better than I could do.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Well, let's hear yours. I put I've heard better out there.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
No, I mean I can't. I don't even want to try. Okay,
how about this bet my nose. I'm a dolphin.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
That was good.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
A dolphin that speaks English is pretty impressive, Chuck.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
I like that interpretation.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, Usa, so USA and Canada. So we're talking today.
The reason we're trying to speak dolphin, Chuck, is because
we're talking about anim communication. And just to clear things
up right out of the gate, we're not talking about
animal communication where we try to teach animals to speak
(01:12):
human languages, whether it be sign language, English, whatever. Yeah,
we already did that in our Live Coco the Gorilla episode.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Now we're going the other way here because there's a
whole other tranche. As the French would say, of research
that is going into listening to, decoding, understanding and potentially
speaking animal animal languages.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yeah, and this is one. It's like one of the
rare cases whereas we'll see for a lot of year,
science was like, animals don't do this, Like they grunt
at each other, they make little instinctual noises, but they're
not really communicating with each other or us. Don't kid yourself.
And this is a rare case where I'm like, I
(02:02):
don't care what science says. My pets speak to me
and I understand what they're saying.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yeah, no, this researching this, I was haunted by the
ghost of Tracy Wilson. Do you remember like how hard
core she was about not anthropomorphizing years back?
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Yeah, sorry, Will, Yeah, sorry Tracy.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I do it.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And Tracy's a cat person, I know for it, she
refuses to speak to her cat. No, I'm sure that's
not true, but yeah, I mean that's a that's a
fair point, and I think we've made that point many
times whenever we've talked about pets like communicating or I
think anytime we talk about pets, we kind of both
agree that no, there's they're obviously communicating in ways we're
(02:46):
just not fully aware of. And it's actually pretty anthropercentric
to just assume that because we don't understand it, they're
not doing it. Luckily, Like I said, there's a whole
tranche of search that is assuming no, these these animals
have communication patterns that yeah, kind of follow the same
(03:10):
general idea of human language. Yeah, and as such we
have a chance of being able to understand it. But
the whole, the whole thing is based on this idea.
Like you said, science has long thought like that there
was not that any any sounds they make were instinctual,
that there wasn't any purpose behind them. It was just
(03:31):
that it was an involuntary response to something that evolution
had kind of bred into that animal. And that was
also predicated on this idea that Renee Descartes put out there,
which is animals have like no inner lives whatsoever, only
humans do.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Boo.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, I'm very disappointed with Descartes, and I know we've
talked about this before, probably multiple times, but it bears
repeating because he set that tone for centuries to follow.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, oh for sure. But I mean you needn't only
look at your dog and to a certain degree, your
cat but you know the first couple of animals we're
going to talk about that Olivia helped us with this
that she was keen to point out humans have been
around for a while and you know, communicate with if
you are the owner, slash, you know, mother, father, caretaker
(04:23):
of these animals. We're talking about dogs and horses, and
if you have ever had a dog, you know what
at least this one thing is. And that's called puppy
dog eyes. And this is a trade. It's actually a
muscle called the loam, the lam, the levator anguli oculi
(04:44):
media alis cristo. It's a muscle in the eyebrow basically
of a dog that evolved from a wolf. Like They've
done studies and found that wolves don't still have this
or wolves don't have this right and that the only
dog out of like the eight breeds they studied that
(05:05):
didn't evolve this way was the Siberian husky, which is
I guess closely related to a wolf.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
It's a wolf posing as a dog.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And I don't know if you've ever known huskies. I'm
not knocking any breed. I like huskies just fine. I've
known a few, but and I've never been able to
have a good connection with them. Yeah, and that may
be part of the reason is that there haven't evolved
as far away as as you know we have with
our other domesticated friends.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
That's a great point.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
But they have done studies. There was one published in
the proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences who studied
dogs out for adoption at like a you know, what
do you call it? Well, I can't even think.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Of the word an adoption dry.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Sure, it wouldn't a dry, but just in the in
the pound.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
Okay, what do you call those? Though? An animal shelter?
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Animal shelter. You know how the easiest word won't come
to you sometimes.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
Yeah, I do. I've been there, buddy, it's very frustrating.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Anyway, sheltered dogs. And they found they studied all these dogs,
like hundreds and hundreds of them over long periods of time,
and the found that the dogs to use these lone
muscles to make their eyes bigger and raise that inner
brow were adopted quicker.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I think it has to do with exaggerating the shape
of the eyes, which, as we've talked about the Kinder schema.
I believe in the science of cute Yeah, that would
just make them automatically cuter.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah, bigger eyes. I mean, that's why those Disney characters
have big eyes.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
But the exactly, but the point of this is that dogs.
We have clear evidence that dogs evolved a way to
be expressive through their facial expressions in ways that affect humans.
And that's a form of communication, exactly. That's just one
form of communication. So it isn't anthe promorphizing to say that,
(07:01):
you know, dogs have emotions and that they express these
emotions like things like being happy to see their their friend,
their human friend. There's a guy named ecologist Carl Sephina,
and he points out that his whole thing is like
dogs love us. Clearly, it's clear as day. Anybody who
(07:22):
owns a dog knows this, and anybody who says otherwise
is just being a real stick in the mud, basically.
But he pointed out that really the the whole thing
broke open. Finally, Descartes Smelly Corpse was finally cast off
of the animal behavior field in the sixties, I believe
(07:45):
when observational studies of animals really started in earnest thanks
to people like Jane Goodall and I can't remember who
her Lewis leaky that those people were coming back with report.
It's like, guys, these are these animals clearly interact with
one another in ways that humans would consider empathy. They're communicating,
(08:08):
they're doing all sorts of stuff we supposedly think they
can't and then today it's being demonstrated. All of these
these observations are being proven because we've fashioned MRI machines
that dogs can go in, and we don't like, sedate
the dog and put them in there. It's not going
to have any effect. They've made these open machines and
(08:30):
then they kind of introduce them to the dogs, and
the dogs free to come or go in the MRI,
and if the dog says there long enough, they can
study the dog's brain activity and what they're seeing is Nope,
these these dogs are smart. They definitely have an inner life,
and most of what we're taking as emotional communication is
probably totally correct.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah, and if they sit there long enough, they're good
boys and good girls.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
That's right, and they get treats, that's right.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
We also have horses. If you want to look at
another animal that humans have probably had the longest relationship with,
and there's a horse trainer slash neuroscientist, which is a
very handy thing if you're going to talk about animal communication.
Her name is Janet Jones, not the former gymnasts who
was married to Wayne Gretzky. Remember, Oh, I knew.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
That name sounded familiar, but I didn't know why.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I say former gymnast, former actress. She was a gymnast too, though, right.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
I haven't paid that much attention to Wayne Gretzky's marital.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Life anyway, different Janet Jones, and she said that horses
and humans are are different because humans evolved into predators,
horses evolved from prey species, So like we have different
ways of looking at the world when you're riding a
horse around outside, and we communicate that to one another,
(09:50):
you know. Also throwing the fact that horses have a
three hundred and forty degree range of vision with those awesome,
humongous eyes on the sides of their heads.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yeah, that last degrees really ticks horses.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
It really does. But if you're like, if you're riding
along and a horse, a horse might be scared about.
And Olivia uses a great illustration of like an umbrella opening.
It might spook a horse, but the human's like, Hey,
that's just an umbrella. So they're gonna, you know, sitting
atop the horse. They're going to relax the horse by
you know, I'm not a horse rider certainly know how
(10:22):
you do this, but by moving your body and flexing
your muscles in a certain way with the rhythm of
the horse to let them know that it's cool.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So, what Janet Jones is basically saying is she wrote
this really cool article called Becoming a Centaur and aon
is that through this communication that horses and humans have
have co evolved together to understand with one another and
to be able to train one another with you're becoming
like kind of a super organism for that time where
(10:55):
you are a top of horse, yeah, and the horses
below you and you guys are working conjuncture together, sharing
sensory information.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I love that. I want to ride more horses in
my life.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
There's a that's a great, great thing to try to do, Chuck, I've.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Only done it a couple of times that I loved it.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I haven't for a really long time. I used to
as a kid a lot more. I have it on
the prairie.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, when you were when you were westward bound.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, in the wagon train.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Birds, we're gonna talk a lot about birds, because obviously
bird vocalizations are you can just listen to birds and
and tell that they are specific and that that probably
means something. But humans and birds interact in different ways
around the world. Specifically, a couple of tribes, the Jahua
people in Mozambique and the Hods of Tanzania both use
(11:50):
what are called honeyguides, and they are birds that they
can call. They each you know, use different calls in
their inner respective places to call over these birds, and
the birds come a flying in and say, hey, follow
me and we'll show you the honey, and they go
and get the honey. And if you're asking, like, well,
why in the world would they do this, it's because
the birds get the wax after they're finished, so it's
(12:13):
a mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah, And they've actually tested to make sure it's not
just the presence of humans making sounds that catch the
birds attention and then the birds associate humans with getting honey.
They've tested other like control sounds, but there are specific
calls that Jahwua people use. It's like a bird something
(12:36):
like that, and that is what the honey guides respond to.
They don't respond to hey, honeyguide or anything like that.
They respond to this call that the Jahua people have
been using for countless generations, and that the Jahwa have
been passing down from generation to generation. That also means
that the honey guides wild birds, not tamed in any way.
(12:57):
They're not coerced to do this. They're wild animals who
clearly communicate with humans. They're passing down that that burr
hum sound that a Jahua person makes in the woods
means go find that person and take them to some honey,
and they'll they'll leave. The honey comes for you. Like
people and birds passing down this common information that forms
(13:19):
the symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
That's nuts.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah, And I imagine if they said, hey, honey guides,
come over here, the birds would say, why else speak
in English?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:30):
That's really weird.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Yeah, it happened to burr hume.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
They're also, of course, and we're not going to get,
you know, too much into this, but you know, for hunters,
all kinds of mating calls and and I guess you
don't have to hunt to use a maiding call if
you want to. If you want to call a mooseover
just to say hello, you could use a moose mating call,
but all kinds of and it's not just mating calls,
but usually it's some kind of mating call for any
kind of game that you're hunting, or ducks or stuff
(13:55):
like that.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Yeah, I crossed that part.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Out those people communicating with animals at the very least.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
So you mentioned birds and how we're going to talk
about birds a lot. But birds are just an obvious
place to start, and that's where humans kind of started
in tracking animal communication, whether they realized it was animal
communication or not. Bird song has always kind of captured
the human imagination and apparently back in the day they
(14:25):
started to try to assign musical notation to recording bird
song by hand on paper. Good luck, right, And then
as you know, the technology progressed and we got better
at recording and reproducing sound. One of the things that
we really started compiling a lot of we're bird song.
(14:46):
Bird songs is bird song plural and singular?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
I feel like the kind of word that would be
I think, so.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Bird's song guy.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
And there's actually a really great collection at Cornell. There
are Ornithology Lab has what's called the McAuley Library. And
I've got this app called Merlin. It's a bird identification app.
It's free.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I think.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
You just have to sign up with your email and
if you hear a bird call, you just open Merlin
and it's like Shazam for birds.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It is amazing and like it just sits there and
listens and then it goes, oh is it this burden.
It shows you a picture and tells you what that
bird is, and you say, that's exactly what bird that is.
Thanks Merlin. Merlin gives you a wink and goes back
to sleep.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
In your phone.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Yeah, it's It's a very popular app and very popular
in my family. We use it all the time. A
lot of We have a lot of identification apps that
are really handy. We have like bird apps and plant
of course and flower apps, and we has those. And
then I have an art app where you can point
it at a painting or something and it'll it'll tell
(15:55):
you if it's in the database. Of course, it'll tell
you who it is.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
Cubist.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Now it'll tell you the actual artist I got, you know,
Max Cubist.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
So let me just set this up real quick, Chuck
and I say we take a break. But although people
were like, okay, animals have somewhat richer inner lives than
we had always suspected, but they're still not using anything
like what we would consider language. That carried on until
the seventies until a couple of studies came through chick
(16:26):
the legs out from under that what a.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Great cliffy, So I said, cliffy.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
People know that means cliffhanger. I hope longtime listeners to
longtime listeners. So, yeah, you were talking about until the seventies,
and that's what I mentioned that science had always kind
of poo pooed it, and it was in the seventies
where people finally started you know, there were some sort
of rogue hippie scientists here and there that was like
nobody was listening to basically. But in the seventies is
(17:14):
when a couple of big studies came out that you
mentioned pre break. One was in nineteen seventy seven a
couple of primate scientists named Robert C. Farth say Farth
and Dorothy Cheney, and they were working with one of
those hippies, Peter Marler, who was an animal communication expert.
When that wasn't cool. And they were studying vervet monkeys
(17:35):
and Kenya, and this is a pretty big breakthrough and
pretty remarkable. They found that they they are using different
we're going to say things like words for lack of
a better term, sounds, vocalizations, but they used different words
for different threats. So like they noticed that like something
(17:56):
flying like an eagle versus something on the ground like
a snake like a python, they would use those to
indicate one or the other. And they learned this by
making recordings of it. And when they played it, sure enough,
the monkey would look up into the sky or search
the ground around them for the snake.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Yeah, depending on what call they played.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Back, that's right, not depending on what Brian Adams song
they played.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
So okay, smarty, So you can still make a case that, okay,
so what they have these specific words for snake or
for eagle, But it doesn't mean that it's anything more
than instinct for a monkey to utter this particular cry
when it sees a snake, and other monkeys to respond
(18:40):
in kind, And it's all innate and none of it
means that they're using grammar or language. It's okay, fine, fine,
just keep waiting a few more years, and we're going
to go forward to Klaus Zuberbueler, great name, who is Swiss,
as people who name their family's Zuber are wont to be.
(19:02):
He studied the Campbell's monkeys in the Cote Duvoir, I
believe the tomato Campbell's monkeys, and he found nothing.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Not Campbell's tomato soup.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, and he found that they actually use suffixes. Right,
So if they use the alarm called crock or crack
k r a K, that's how they spelled it, not
the Campbell's monkeys, but Zuberbueler and his friends, Yeah, that
means leopard is coming, but crack ou means it's just
(19:37):
a general alarm like lookout or heads up or something
like this. They can also like supplement crack or crack
oo with booms that they will make. It can mean
like come this way. They can mean that there's a
falling tree branch, depending on if they amend it with
the suffix Ooh. So Zuberbueler is saying, like, guys, this
(20:00):
is grammar. Those are words. This cannot possibly just be instinctual.
And even if it is instinctual, then that would suggest
that animals, at least some types of monkeys have a
language instinct too. Who that's a whole other ball of wax,
like we talked about before. But Zuberbueler's like, dude, come on,
and people started to finally be like, all right, fine,
(20:23):
we'll kind of get on board with this idea that
the animals are using something like language possibly.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah, And he even, you know, as an example of
how it's something that humans can potentially understand once they
learn it, he was warned off by a leopard by
hearing the leopard call apparently, and this was in a
radio lab at one point shout out to Radio Lab,
Yeah some of the ogs like us. But yeah, zuber
(20:49):
Bueler was like, hey, you know, I heard them sound
the leopard alarm, and that meant that I needed to to,
you know, be watchful.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah they weren't. I didn't understand. I didn't go listen
to that episode of Radio Lab, So I'm not sure
if they were warning him or he was just paying
attention that they were.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
I think it's that okay, So I think, but who knows,
Maybe they're like Zuberbueler.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
He spoke, he spoke Campbell's monkey for that moment and
it helped them out. Yeah, sure so, and it wasn't
just a zuberbueler who did. Apparently other animals, including birds
and other monkeys that live around Campbell's monkeys have learned
what crock or crack means too and will respond in kind.
(21:31):
So there's evidence that there's interspecial communication, and not necessarily
that monkey talking to that bird, but that bird just
from being around these monkeys using language, picking up certain
words and speaking monkey ease, even though the bird actually
speaks parodies or something.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah. I mean, it's not any different, I think than
you know. I have cats and dogs, and they each
have their own respective feeding times and programs and systems
and treat systems, and sometimes one will get a little
of the other. Like, for instance, my dog Charlie will
lick the wet cat food spoon after I give them
(22:10):
their wet cat food. So now Charlie knows when I say, uh,
do you want your good stuff, which is what I
say to the cats, and they come running in there
for the wet food, Charlie knows, Hey, that's when I
get to lick that spoon. So I'm speaking English and
each of these animals is understanding what I'm saying, even
(22:30):
though for Charlie I'm speaking cat, although that's really not true.
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
No, I know what you mean. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It holds up and it applies. It's also you can
make the case very much like an English speaking person
in America who's got a bodega down the street. M
h understands what ka pasa means or aii or something
like that.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Right. Yeah, it's think this.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Living in proximity of people who speak other languages, you
pick up other languages. And that seems to very much
be analogous to what we're talking about with the birds
living around the Campbell's monkeys.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I guess the true comparison would be if my cats
made a distinctive meal when they wanted, and who knows,
they might when they want that good stuff, and that
that signal. Charlie.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, but I think your analogy still worked.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Okay, thanks man, No problem.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
You want to tell them about Con, I'll.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Leave it to you.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
It there's a biologist name Con slobotic cough slobota. Oh No,
that's not right at all. No, it's not slow bod Chikhov.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Oh, nice work. I think you totally nailed it.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Yeah, oddly enough, Con is the one that throws me.
I've never heard that as a first name.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Con like Con.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, right, this is just gone anyway. That person is
a biologist and they study prairie dogs and that they
found that they have very distinct sounds that when they're
talking about predators that basically say what kind of predator
is coming, how what color they are, how big they
are are, how fast they're coming at us, And they
(24:03):
can combine all those sounds in different ways. If it's
an let's say it's an animal they've never a predator
they've never seen, they can combine those other words to
kind of say this is a new thing and not
the whatever hunts a prairie dog.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Right Like if you saw a somehow a terrasaar came
through a time warp into example, modern day Atlanta, and
we were standing outside and we didn't know a TerraSAR
because we'd never seen one before. We might say something
like look a flying green dragon monster. And that gets
(24:37):
generally the point across what Slobodchikov found is that prairie
dogs do the same thing. Yeah, and that they also
have a tonal language very similar to Mandarin, where different
changes in intonation of the same phoneme mean totally different things,
and that they layer these different tones, that these prairie
(24:59):
dogs language may actually be more complex than other languages
in in that use that are used by humans.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah tonally right, Oh.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I thought you were making a joke, like totally.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
No, no, no, tonally yeah, tonally tonally speaking, not like
the number.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Of words or whatever, totally tubular.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
And that they he fed all this stuff through a
computer to pick out like just very I called that,
by the way.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
I know, but you're giving me nothing today, are you,
mac as I keep fooling you these days?
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah, maybe that's it, okay to the max. Uh. So
he fed this stuff into a computer so they could analyze, like,
you know, stuff that humans can't even hear, like a
program designed to analyze little minute differences. And what they
found out was when they did experiments of like human
beings walking and approaching the prairie dogs, they would say
something different, for here comes the tall guy and the
(25:54):
hat rather than here comes the short woman in the
high heat.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Right walking through the prairie.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, you know, because all those short ladies and high heels.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Right, and the tall man in the yellow hat.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Yeah, I'm not sure what happened there.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
So so things are starting to kind of pick up here.
There's a one more we need to throw out that
really had a big effect on demonstrating language use among
among animals, and that was among Japanese tits using grammar.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
These are birds, by the way.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Cute little birds. Yes, thank you for rescuing me from
angry parents. And they have a distinct sound for snake.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And if you say that, if you take that sound,
I'm not quite sure what the sound is, but I
believe it's more than one part. And you play it
out of order, it means nothing to them. To the birds,
But if you play in order, they're like, oh my god,
a snake ware and they've they've That shows that there
is grammar, there's word order mountains. And if it were
(27:02):
just innate, if it were just an involuntary reflex, it
wouldn't matter how you said that. If they heard one
of those tones or whatever, it would it would evoke
some sort of reaction or response. So you can speak
Gibberish to Japanese tits just by switching the word order
or the order of the sounds, which is the same thing,
(27:22):
basically switching word order.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, pretty cool this, you know. Now we get to
the question of is this something that they've learned or
is it instinctive, Like are their older counterparts teaching in
them these languages? Are they born with it? And we
have a couple of really cool examples. One is something
we talked about at length in the b episode, which
(27:45):
is the waggle dance that honey bees do. Basically to
show another bee where the food is. They use their
body position in relation to the sun and do this
little vibrating waggle to indicate the distance, and that's how
they tell everyone like, hey, let's go find this honey.
In nineteen seventy three, a gentleman named Carl von Frisch
(28:07):
won a Nobel Prize in physiology by translating this dance
and kind of figuring it out. And then just this
year in twenty twenty three, they did a study about
whether this was learned or something they're born with, and
they found that it's super cool, but it's a little
bit of both. So they got little baby bees who
hadn't seen this waggle dance yet isolated them, and they
(28:30):
found that they actually did try the waggle dance, so
it is somewhat innate something they're born with, but they
weren't very good at it. And when they compared those
to other baby bees who were living with adult bees
who were ostensibly teaching them this dance, they did it
much much better, were way more accurate as far as
the distance goes. And so they found that like, yeah,
(28:51):
they are born with it to a certain degree, but
they get better at it by being taught.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yes, and just a teeny teensy bit of it is mabelin.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right, all right, there you go, you heavy?
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Yes, thanks you.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
So there's so bees that's a wiggle dances is almost
just entirely incomprehensible to us, except for Carl von Hirsch.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
He figured it out.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
A much more closely relatable to us are hand signals,
the communication that a lot of the great apes use.
And what they found is that across apes there's similar
similar gestures for similar meanings, but that groups and different
species can use slightly different gestures. Whether it's a hand gesture,
(29:38):
I think chewing on a leaf a certain way is flirting,
there's a lot of different communicative body language or body
gestures that apes use, but that they can be slightly
different based on groups, which is a dialect. A dialect
is the use of a similar language or the same
(29:59):
language in slightly different ways based on your group, your culture,
your geography, what region you live in. It's exactly the
same thing as the distinction between soda or pop or
coke depending on where you live in the United States.
Same thing, same meaning. Those are all English words, but
you would say that based on where you live or
(30:21):
where you were raised or the culture that you were
raised in.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, and you know, chimpanzees, of course, get a lot
of research on stuff like this, and I think people
are more apt to believe that a chimp would do
something like that because they're just more like us. But
they found the same thing in all kinds of animals,
one of which is the naked mole rat, that they
respond as far as the dialects go, they respond to
(30:45):
soft chirps from people in their own colonies more than
they do those a similar sounding soft chirp in a
different colony. So, in other words, it's a different dialect,
and we're going to be doing one on naked mole
rats at some point.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Easy it is.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I forgot forgot how much I love this animal from
watching the great documentary Fast, Cheap and out of Control
by master documentarian Errol Morris. And we'll talk about it
when we eventually get to that episode. Okay, so, same
great doc I have a recommend it though. You want
to hear something super amazing? Yes, do you remember?
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And I think our Evolution of Human Intelligence episode we
talked about how they think the word he might actually
be so old that Neanderthals might have used it, like
it's one of the oldest sounds that humans make. There's
the hand gesture for come here that you use where
you kind of point right in front of you with
your fingers downward.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
M Yeah, apes, apes use that.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Oh wow, we still use the same hand gesture that
we used back when we were.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Full on great apes.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Ye?
Speaker 2 (31:54):
It just works so well. Why why fix what ain't broke?
We decided over millions and millions of years.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
That's super cool. I think we should take a break
because we have a star of the show that's about
to appear several but a big star of the show
is about to appear in Communication and that's called the Whale.
And we'll be back to talk about wales right.
Speaker 4 (32:16):
After this, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
So, in addition to the Naked mole Rat episode, I
want to do an episode on the Save the Whales
movement that.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Was oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, we're.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Gonna do that, okay.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
But central to that was a guy named Roger Payne,
who I'm sure will come quite a bit in that episode,
so we won't get into him too deeply, but he
was a I believe, a biological acoustician, some really arcane
specialty made he Basically, he, I guess, had friends in
(33:08):
US Navy listening stations that had been set up to
eavesdrop on ro Soviet submarines, and those navy stations were
turning up these amazing recordings of whale songs that people
just didn't realize existed up to that point, and Roger
Paine wrote a science article on it that came out
(33:29):
in the early seventies, and then simultaneous to that, he
introduced it to the larger public, not just the scientific community,
with an album called Songs of the Humpback Whale. It
was released in nineteen seventy. It is recordings, I think,
a thirty five minute album of recording of whale songs.
It went multi platinum because I imagine that you could take
(33:52):
acid or smoke pot and just sit there and zone
out to that for hours. But also it really dovetailed
with the nascent environmental movement that was coming along at
the same time too, and that actually helped contribute to
the Save the Whales campaign that was highly successful just
from releasing that album.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, I've listened to it today. You can stream it
anytime you want. It's I'm sure you listen to it, right.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I found it distracting, Like even though it's instrumental silent,
I was my mind kept being like, what the hell
is that? And I couldn't concentrate, so I did turn
it off.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Oh interesting, because I found it to be because I
can only listen to very specific kinds of music when
I do this study stuff, like mainly it's Brian Eno
and now songs of the humpback Whales in Brian Adams
and Brian Adams. It was good though I like it.
I mean it's not it's very much background music and
it's not even like a like I would defy anyone
(34:51):
to even say, like, oh, if you listen to this
like a melodic and it's like a song, it's really not.
It's whales making noises. But I just found it very relaxing.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I can imagine like if I were, if I were
just kind of sitting around zoning out on that, it
would be extraordinarily pleasant. But my brain just wants to focus.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Yeah, on acid on PCP. There are all kinds of whales, though,
and they have all kinds of communications that we've learned
about over the years. The sperm whale they have what
they call like a coda click pattern, and it depends
It's kind of like a dialect as well, I guess,
because it depends on what clan and clans are, you know,
(35:31):
groups of huge, huge groups of whales. Sometimes there are
thousands of them, made up of smaller groups, usually five
to ten female adults and their kids. But they get
together in these big clans and the different clans have
you know, variations of their language, and when they have
overlapping territories, they get really really distinct because they're overlapping,
(35:52):
so they can tell one another apart.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yeah, they have like a clan signifier that they use
identify themselves to others, right, because these whales don't really
navigate the world by eyesight, they mostly do it from sound,
so that's how you would do that. And these clicks
apparently can last about ten milliseconds, but they're two hundred
and thirty six decibels in volume, And to give you
(36:18):
a a comparison, that's the word I'm groping for. Totally
gunshot is one hundred and forty decibels. Okay, okay, your
pain threshold starts around there. So if you happen to
be sitting next to a sperm whale underwater when it
let out one of these clicks, it would blow your
(36:40):
ear drums right out and possibly your entire head.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
I can only picture you now underwater, sitting in your
don't be Dumb chair, just floating above it or standing
awkwardly beside it, yeah, or underneath it, or who knows,
things got weird.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Yeah, it did get a little weird right out of
the gate.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Really well, that was the whole point. And I love
for your Instagram birthday posts. When I ask people to
make their favorite Josh moments, those a lot of don't
be dumb in there. I don't know if you noticed.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
I did, and thank you for that. That was extraordinarily
kind of you.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Of course, man, that's all true, but people love. Don't
be dumb.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
I get it, like I get it. Everybody just shut up.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
No, it was great. Baby sperm whales and orcas have
like baby talk. They babble just like a little human
baby would. When they're learning. Newborn orcas make a really
high pitched call. It changes as they grow into adults
into a completely different sound, and it starts at about
two months. The adult sounding stuff they start to learn, basically,
(37:45):
it seems like it about two months, and then for
years and years until they hit pubert. They are learning
new vocalizations aka words.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Exactly like the development of human kids too. Yeah, orcas
all so very much like those birds that live around
the Campbell's monkeys. They can learn the calls of other
species too that they live around. Apparently, orcus can understand
what bottlenose dolphins are saying to one another. Again, bottlenose
dolphin is not trying to communicate with the orca. The
(38:16):
orc is just eavesdropping and if it hears like O,
there's some really great salmon over here you're clear, the
orca will be like, I'm going straight to it because
I love chinook salmon.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah. The dolphin actually has my fact of the podcast
that I can't wait to tell Ruby later on what
they name themselves. Within the first few months of being born,
they create a very signature whistle to identify themselves, so
they you know, that's their name.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, And so I really want to make sure that
this lands because sperm whales have clan codas you're saying
to other sperm whales, I'm a member of the Jamboree
clan or whatever whatever they would name themselves. Sure, it's
like in click sounds, Yeah, but that's for their clan membership,
(39:05):
not them as individuals. Bottlenose dolphins name themselves as individuals,
like this is my name. I'm Josh the dolphin. Good
to meet you. That is what they're doing. Like that,
it's that level of identity, individual identity that they're using
to introduce themselves to other dolphins.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Amazing it is.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
That really is one of the facts of the podcast.
In the podcast chock full of facts of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
So we should probably talk about the brain a little bit,
and like, you know, the question like have we ever
actually studied the brain of these animals to see if
there are anything like humans, because we know so much
about human brains and the areas of the brain that
handle communication and like emotion and stuff like that that
comes out through communication. And yes, they have. And we're
(39:50):
gonna talk about something called spindle cells, which were discovered
in eighteen eighty one and then basically went away and
were rediscovered in nineteen ninety five. And these are specialized
neurons that are in two very specific brain regions, the ACC,
the anterior cingulate cortex, and the frontal insula the FI.
(40:12):
And they've basically established that both of these regions of
the brain and humans are where we experience our emotion
and are really important for monitoring ourselves and our bodies
and how we feel, like are we in pain? Are
we hungry? Did we goof something up? Like self monitoring?
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Basically yeah, and not just self monitoring like on the
individual level, but in relation to other people, like you said,
like did we goof something up? Should we feel embarrassed?
Have we made a social gaff? All of these things
are kind of controlled self monitoring, self reflection by the
anterior cingulate cortex and the frontal insula. Right, So our
ability to empathize, essentially is what we're talking about, is
(40:58):
from the activity of these two and they're characterized by
a large number of spindle cells, and only spindle cells
are found in these areas. Okay, so we're like, okay,
spindle cells, that's the seat of empathy, of emotion, of
understanding other people. Well, it turns out that I don't
know if it's neuron for neuron, sperm whales have more
(41:23):
spindle cells than human beings do. Yeah, okay, so we
have really good evidence and it's not just sperm whales.
There are other cetaceans. A lot of the great apes
have spindle cells too. Don't ask how we know this,
by the way, but where we've found that they have
the makings of what it would take to empathize with others.
And if you put that together with the assumption or
(41:46):
the growing understanding that they're communicating in very deep levels,
it would make sense that if we can decode what
they're saying, we'll find they have quite a bit to
say that we could conceivably, you know, understand and connect with.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, that's I mean, that's just incredible.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It really is, because what we're seeing with those spindle
cells is they're not like, you know, I'm hungry, let's
eat that snake. And that's like the extent, the most
fascinating thing a chimp says on any given day. Who
knows what they're thinking, Like, it just opens up a
whole universe of possibility about what they're thinking, what they're feeling,
(42:24):
because bear in mind, they're also experiencing life in the universe,
in the world and everything in a totally different way
than we are. So the idea of being able to
tap into that and then to share our experience with them,
I mean, I can't imagine what just massive impacts that
would have on humanity and hopefully on the world and
(42:45):
in general if we could do that.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Oh yeah, well, and to be able to figure a
lot of this stuff out, they've they've we've long realized
that some of this stuff is just beyond our abilities.
The crow is one example. They use, like have a
lot of different vocalizations of varying pitches and durations and
inflections and rhythms and cadences, and there's just no way
(43:10):
that humans could listen enough basically and isolate these crows
by sex and age and social status and where they
are and to be able to really learn all of
this stuff. So, you know, we talked about AI and
large language models recently and got a few emails from
people that are like, you know, there seem to be
a lot of fear based stuff in this, which is true,
(43:33):
and you guys didn't focus on any of the great
possibilities and maybe we didn't. So here's one cool thing
that AI is gonna potentially do and that they're already
starting to use, is helping out just sort of like
we have figured out or how AI is working with
large language models as predictors of like how a human
might type of sentence that makes sense, and doing the
(43:56):
same thing with animals basically and trying to figure out
their language.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, just detecting patterns, figuring out what words are important,
how they're being used, all this stuff. They've already got it.
I think Deep Squeak was the first one that analyzes
rodent sounds. And there's a couple of groups. One is
seti ceti cetacean translation initiative project that's led by a
guy named David Gruber. They have there. The way I
(44:23):
saw it put is that they're going all in on
one plan, the EC two clan of sperm whales off
the island of Dominica, and they are completely observing and
monitoring this clan of sperm whales twenty four hours a day,
every day of the year. They're down to using robotic
fish that are gathering video and audio and everything that
(44:45):
swim along with the whales. They know everything that these
whales are doing at any given moment. And so not
only are they getting these whale songs and collecting them
to feed into this the large language model to understand it,
they're all so notating this stuff so that the context
is also understood too, because what they what they think
(45:06):
is that a different click or coda depending on the context,
can totally change meaning. So they also need to know
this too. But it's a huge undertaking. They have like
tens of thousands of whale song right now. To probably
crack this language, they're gonna need millions. So it's they
they started on the road, but they've got a ways
to go.
Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yeah, And it's like, I think what they're looking for
is that next level, which is not oh wow, the
whales told other whales where the good fish were or whatever,
is they want answers to things like do whales tell stories,
like very rudimentary stories to one another.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Or very advanced stories? Why does it have to be
rude to artry?
Speaker 4 (45:46):
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yeah, exactly do they if something like something big happens
to a whale clan, do they talk about it afterward?
Like a week later? Does someone bring this up? Do
they do these maths in any way? And these are
all like questions that would just blast open the door,
like if answered, just blast open the door of our
understanding of how animals may talk to one another.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah, so SETI is eavesdropping in order to understand what
whales are saying. There's another project called the Earth's Species
Project ESP that is in part looking at types of
whales not only to learn what they're saying, but to
speak to them directly. So the difference between the two
projects is almost like the difference between SETI and Mehdi
as far as searching for alien intelligence is concern. It's
(46:31):
very similar in nature. But one of the things that
Earth Species Project is trying to do is map all
species languages to find universal terms or universal concepts and
understand the different words, so you could translate tiger into whale,
into human into you know Japanese tit.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Right, or if they're like conceptually like you were talking about,
are there overlaps in things like grief or joy or
these other like big sort of umbrella experiences that seemingly
any living thing could.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Experience right exactly, and like you said, it would blow
things open it totally. Some people are like, this would
change humans forever, Like how could anybody eat meat after
that point? If you can understand a pig is saying
please don't kill me, Please don't kill me while you're
killing it, right, you couldn't do it, and if you did,
people would stop you kind of thing. Other people are like, well,
(47:29):
I'm worried that we're going to use it to manipulate animals,
and people will probably try to do that too. Up
the outcome would likely be both, like humans would be changed,
our relationship with the animal world would be forever changed
for the better and the worse. And that's just kind
of how life goes. But that kind of change, I
can't imagine how amazing it would be to witness that.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Yeah, I also thought this thing, the one thing you
said was really cool about, like because the idea of
like all right, let's say we could only get there
like or understand. You know, I think who was the
guy that was named.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Garber, he's the head of setting Ruber. Yeah, Gruber, Yeah, yeah,
Gruber was.
Speaker 3 (48:12):
He was like, you know, everyone's really excited. He said
that also could be a real letdown. It could be
like the do talk is just super boring. But the
idea that you know, this thing that you said about, like, well,
what if we could communicate, what.
Speaker 4 (48:24):
Would what would we have to talk about with the whale?
Speaker 3 (48:27):
And that's where you start to look at like larger
commonalities of living things.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
And in the case of a whale, like you know,
I got kids, You got kids. I love to swim,
I love to sleep. We're both mammals, like we got
we have a handful of things we could actually talk about. Uh.
And then the idea of like objectivity as a scientist
comes in because it's and not objectivity in that like
(48:53):
I really want this to happen or not, but objectivity
of just like an experience that a whale can understand,
can't even understand, like being dry, Like we would talk
about being wet in a different context that a whale
would because a whale would just say, like, what do
you mean wet? Like all is wet exactly, and we
would say no, like wet's when you take a shower
(49:14):
or get in a swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
But the hope is is that if they are capable
of empathy, they're probably capable of metaphor, and that we
could explain things to one another like prairie dogs do,
like yellow tall human inhabit getting getting ideas and concepts
across just enough for the other one to kind of
understand things that are totally foreign.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
To them, or whaling ship nearby swim the other way exactly.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
There was a I saw somebody theorize that you could
teach like a large language model to analyze and learn
to speak teach itself to speak whale. But because we
don't understand how large language models actually work, the AI
and the whale could have a conversation and we would
have no idea what they were seeing.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
It's frightening, it is.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
It's frightening, but it's also like wah wah, hilarious too,
Like imagine putting all that work into it and that's
the outcome.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yeah, you'd have to.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
Build another AI to tell you what the first, AI
is talking about let's do it cool, pretty neat stuff.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
I agree, And I feel like we're not done with
this topic, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (50:23):
Oh, okay, I think.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
There's more more to come, all right. Oh, by the way,
there is a listener who is Did you see that
email that has grouped our stuff into uh tranches sweets?
Speaker 2 (50:35):
No, I didn't see that one.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
I'll make sure I'll forward it to you. I haven't
even answered him back yet, but his name is Robert Fiddler.
Ironically enough, because he's fiddling about with with our content
and he has created sweets and subsuitees a in a
spreadsheet for us.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
That's awesome, Thanks Robert.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
And it's she's looking over it. Justice system, police, true crime.
Those are the big ones. Economics, finance, atmospheric science, weird,
natural disasters, natural resources. Boy, this is amazing.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (51:09):
I haven't even really looked through it yet, but anyway,
shout out to He called himself Robbie, Robbie Fiddler. Yeah,
maybe we could publish it at some point or something
on our website.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
Oh I have to copyright Robbie Fiddler.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
Yeah, we'll see anyway, did you say you listener mail? No, Okay,
why don't you set me up then in the traditional way.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
Chuck's feeling like the chatty Kathy, so that means it's
time for a listener mail.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
There you go, Hey guys, I'm an eleven year old
Canadian living in Australia and we've been listening to your
show my whole life. My dad's tell me he would
listen to stuff you should know when cuddling me in
the middle of the night when I was just a bbe.
We love your podcast and hope you make many more
for many years to come. We hope to see a
live show soon. I love it when you guys do
mysteries because they're one of my favorite things to listen
to on your channel. You've expanded my imagination and creativity
(51:58):
and intelligence. Me and my get into big conversations about
your episodes because you're so intriguing, and we discuss what
we've learned and what we think. I'm just emailing you
to let you know that my dad and I are
traveling across a big chunk of Australia on a road
trip in July to see the Australian Zoo. My dad
has so many stuff you should know, just to listen
to in the way, and I'm really excited to listen
(52:19):
to the podcast and go to the zoo. Oh and
your jokes are pretty funny, but I make them even
funnier and we all have a good laugh.
Speaker 2 (52:27):
Nice, he's playing off jokes. It's collaborative.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
I love it. So that says love dictated but not
read from Reese.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Reese, You're pretty cool. I just have to say.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Yeah. And a little request from Reese, I imagine the
samed at you please do one more of the voice
from the last Halloween special. It's my dad's favorite.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:50):
I gotta think that Reese is talking about my friend Spiegel.
Speaker 2 (52:54):
Yeah, I have to go back and listen to Sniegel
again because he apparently was off last time I tried it.
Speaker 3 (53:01):
So I'm not sousy.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, from what I hear, all right, some people emailed
in and were like, that was not right.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
All right, I'm shooting let down an eleven year old.
I'm fine if you're fine.
Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah, I'm prepared to do that.
Speaker 4 (53:17):
All right.
Speaker 3 (53:17):
Well, just listen in recent Josh. I will brush up
on his smigle.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
And eventually recent when I do it next, you can
be like that was for me.
Speaker 3 (53:25):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Okay, Well, if you want to be like recent show
how super cool you are naturally without any effort whatsoever,
we would love to hear from you. You can send
it in an email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio
Speaker 1 (53:48):
App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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