Factually! with Adam Conover - We're Not So Special, Animals Can Talk Too with Dr. Arik Kershenbaum

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

We humans often like to think we're superior to animals, and that our ability to speak makes us extra special. While it's true that language is unique to humans, we're definitely not the only ones communicating. In fact, many animals have complex ways of talking to each other that we're only just starting to understand. This week, Adam is joined by Dr. Arik Kershenbaum, author of Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication, to explore how animals communicate and what that reveals about our place in the natural world. Find Arik's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hello and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, it's hard to be a human out there. We keep getting less special. We used to think we lived in the center of the universe, but then some guy named Copernicus came along and showed it was the sun that was the center of things, and not our home. In fact, we've figured out that our solar system is just one among billions, and that all of those solar systems in fact spin around in one galaxy, which is among billions or

trillions of those. Astronomically speaking, we are devastatingly insignificant. But you know, even as this cosmic demotion got underway, we could still feel secure as the most important and special creature on Earth, right? Humans after all have always thought of ourselves as creation's favorite little guys. But then Darwin came along and totally boned us. Apparently, we're just one weird and very successful monkey. We weren't created from nothing to rule over nature by a god or gods.

We're simply natural, a product of the same evolution and natural selection that made every other living thing. Great. But you know, at the very least, we have always comforted ourselves with the thought that humans have these super special abilities, consciousness, reason, morality, language, that no other thing could possibly have. Well, the more we learn about the living world, the less we realize that that's the case. For instance, we've always thought that language

was something that made us totally different from other creatures. But as our guest today will explain, advances in the study of animal communication make clear that we are not special, or at least not special in the way that we thought. In fact, it turns out that animals communicate in ways that are more interesting and dynamic than we ever expected.

And some of the new discoveries in this field will blow your goddamn mind. We have an incredible expert on the show today to lay all of them out for you. But before we get into it, I just wanna remind you that if you wanna support this show and all of the animal communication we do with you guys, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover.

Five bucks a month gets you access to every single one of these episodes ad free. You can join our awesome online community. We would love to have you. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. And if you like standup comedy and you wanna come see me on the road, pretty soon I'm heading to Baltimore, Maryland,

Austin, Texas, Batavia, Illinois, San Francisco, California, Toronto, Ontario, and many other cities coming soon, head to adamkonover.net for tickets and tour dates. And now, let's get to this week's interview. My guest today, Dr. Arik Kerschenbaum, is a zoologist at the University of Cambridge who studies animal communication. And his wonderful new book is called

Why Animals Talk, The New Science of Animal Communication. I know you are gonna find this interview absolutely fascinating. Please welcome, Arik Kerschenbaum. Arik, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for inviting me. So tell me, what are the most recent developments in the field of animal communication?

What do we know now that we didn't used to? Oh my goodness, well, you know, it's not gonna surprise you that a lot of the new stuff that we're discovering is all to do with, well, I don't want to say AI, but a lot to do with the new directions that algorithms are going and the way that modern technology is able to attack problems that have been around for decades. What we're finding now is that we're understanding a lot more about the structure of animal communication, things that perhaps weren't accessible before

we had the kind of algorithms, the kind of AI machine learning that we have today. We're really in a place where we can start to look for meaning, look for why these animals are making the particular sounds that they are. So it's a really exciting time in terms of where we think we can go. Well, I love this because I've been a big critic of AI as sold by the tech booster industry here in the United States,

as the next big thing in the tech economy, et cetera, et cetera. But I also know that a lot of technology that's labeled AI has been really helpful in the sciences. So, I love this as an example. Tell me about how these algorithms, or this AI as some call it, have been used to... How does this help us understand how animals communicate? Yeah, I totally agree with you. I'm a big critic as well. And I don't like this idea that, oh, we've got AI, so now we can do like an automatic translation of animals. No, that's not going to happen. And there are many reasons why that won't happen. And probably the biggest reason is that these animals aren't speaking a language. By and large, the things

they have to say are much more simple. The kind of concepts they're conveying to each other, to other animals, right? They evolve to speak to other animals, not to us. So the kind of things they have to say are very different from what we understand as language. So we can put that aside, this idea that there's this miracle AI that's just going to translate squirrels talking to, that's not going to happen. Or our dogs. I mean, that's a very common science fiction know, gonna translate squirrel stalking, that's not gonna happen. Or our dogs. I mean, that's a very common science fiction idea, your dog wearing a little necklace that says, I'm hungry or whatever when the dog barks.

Well, but that is actually, that's a little bit more realistic because there you've got a limited number of ideas, right? There's no doubt your dog communicates with you. No doubt. This is a part of what the domestication is all about. This is part of why we get on so well with dogs. We can communicate, not always vocally, but we communicate with our posture and with our tone and things like that. There is a lot of communication going on there,

but the concepts are fairly limited. I want to go for a walk. I'm hungry. I'm not very happy at the moment. These kinds of ideas, I think you can. There is a prospect there that we could identify. Well, this sound is a happy sound and this sound is sad. It sounds trivial, right? And any dog owner is going to tell you, I know when my dog's happy and when my dog is sad. Turning that into an algorithm, turning that into something that a computer can do, hasn't really been in our grasp up until now. I think a lot of these algorithms that are capable of the way they process those sounds and the way they analyze them afterwards and compare them, I think that is something that is within the reach of modern machine learning. So give us an example. What is an animal whose communication we understand better because of these

machine learning algorithms? So a lot of it's been focused on, on cetaceans, of course, because there's this sort of sense that, that actually whales and dolphins have quite a lot to say. Now that may be true. That may not be true. I suspect they don't have all that much to say, but what it's done is that it's... They certainly have beautiful singing voices. I mean, you know, there's many, I've gotten many a good massage to whale conversation. But you know, I mean, talking about singing, this is a really important point.

Yes, whales have this wonderful song and it is really complex. There's no doubt it's really complex. But birds have really complex songs as well. Some do. And we don't think that they're actually saying very much. We kind of know that they're not. They're really just saying come and mate with me. This is like the more complex my song is, the more you'll want to come and mate with me. So just because something is complex doesn't mean it's got a lot of information in it. Right. But I think that some of the really exciting stuff that's being done at the moment with whales,

with whale song, is using that algorithm to pick apart the song, to divide it up into different types, into different elements. And that's really where the new information is coming because when you think about it, you listen to a bird singing or a whale singing or something like that. I can't even, as a human, I can't even break it up into little bits. When we speak words, we think, oh, our sentence is made up of these words and these words each have a meaning, but we don't even know how to divide up animal sounds. And so a big, you know, big development at the moment is it's like working on that.

How do you split it up? How do you split it up in the way that really makes sense? Splitting it up, implying that there is meaning in the whale song, that there's something corresponding to a word or no? Well, no, it doesn't necessarily mean that because, you know, you can, if you think again, coming back to Birdsong is the best example, come back to Birdsong, it's made up of lots of notes. But just because it's made up of lots of notes doesn't mean each note has a meaning.

And in fact, with birds, in the case of Birdsong, as we know that what's important there is the complexity. The complexity is the message. There's important there is the complexity. The complexity is the message. There's no message in the complexity. It's just the more complex, the more impressive the birds sound. I see. The mates are like, oh my God, this guy is really great at Birdsong. He's really, he's doing Christina Aguilera, he's going up and down, wow, what an impressive bird, I wanna screw him. That's exactly it, ain't it? And we're pretty confident with a lot of animals,

not just birds, that that's what's going on. Now, is that what's going on with whales, with their song? Yeah, I don't think so. I think there is more to it than that. There does seem to be more to it than that. But one thing that there isn't, and this we're pretty confident about,

there aren't words, right. Animals don't have words. Okay. There are a lot of reasons that we think that, you know, a lot of it's not just, we're not just guessing. There are reasons to think that's the case. But words are a kind of, are a strange thing about humans. The way we use words is very, very, very unique. Animals don't have to. Why do you need words? You need words if you want to combine, if you want to make this sort of huge, vast, almost infinite number of concepts that humans can convey by combining words. This is our specialty. This is what we do really well. We combine lots of words in lots of different ways

and you have lots of, all the books, you know, every book that's been written is just a combination of words. And animals don't do that. And words are universal across human cultures, languages, right? Like every human language has some equivalent of words. So would you call the way that whales are communicating, would you call it a language or no?

So there are people who get really upset when they're asked to define language or when someone else defines language. Sounds like a linguist thing to do. Linguists would get really pissed off. They really do. They really don't like it. And fair enough, you know, when it's your trade, then it's got to be really clearly defined. They're just always complaining linguists. I find them to be a very complaining scholarly discipline. They're always mad about what people are saying.

And you know what? And people are saying it in language. So why are they so pissed? Cause people are using their favorite thing. But come on, I'm gonna be honest with you. If someone said to me, well, I don't agree with your definition of animal, I'd probably be quite upset as well.

You know, someone said to you, I don't agree with what you think comedy is, then I think that then they're going to be very happy. So definitions have a role. They really do. Yeah. But language, it's contentious. Okay. My sort of shortcut definition, which I think is actually a really good working definition, is language is the ability to convey an unlimited number of concepts. I don't care how you do it, you might have to use words, maybe, maybe that's part of it, but whatever it is, it's that ability to say, not to have a limit

on what you can convey. And I think that's a really good, that just seems to work for a lot of cases. And so is that the case for whales or for any of the other species you write about? So answering that question implies that we know what the meaning is. And we don't by and large. We are pretty confident that's not the case, not with whales, not with dolphins, not with chimpanzees, not with anything. We really don't think that any other animal has a language as I just defined it. Now, we know there are plenty of animals that have lots of meanings in what they communicate. Some have a few, some have more, some have quite a lot, but we don't think there's any animal that actually isn't limited in what they can

say. And that's not because they're dumb and it's not because they haven't yet reached some sort of stage they need to reach. It's because they really don't need that. And it's actually quite a wasteful ability that humans have developed here. And yet you kind of sometimes think that the dolphins and the chimpanzees are looking at us and thinking like, you know, they're really wasting their time with all that language stuff. We really don't need it. Why?

Why are you doing that? They look at us like we look at, and they look at us the way we look at poetry majors. We're like, why do you need to be able to express any concept through the beauty of language? It's so stupid. You should learn to code. That's how dogs and whales look at us.

Basically that's, I mean, they're not looking, they're not actually thinking that because to think that they would need to have a language to start with, because you just expressed that thought in their language. But I think that is, I think that's what's going on with natural selection. I think that natural selection is essentially not favoring animals that have communication that's too complex

for their needs. It doesn't do them any good. But you need this great big brain. You don't need that great big brain. Well, that's very interesting because to me it raises the question of how successful is humanity? Are we in fact, because you could say we don't need it, but we are the species that has completely reshaped planet Earth and et cetera, et cetera. But maybe that's a little bit far afield. It's certainly, we are the only species

that has made use of language, right? And none other has needed to thus far. Right, but also, I mean, remember that we did not evolve language so that we could build spaceships and the internet and things. That's not why we evolved language. That was a byproduct. That's all a byproduct.

Why did we? So we don't know. This is another thing that's gonna annoy linguists because we don't really know how and when language evolved. But we've got a good guess. We've got a good idea. We think that language evolved because our ancestors, our sort of proto-human ancestors,

lived in really, really complex societies, in really complex groups. They needed really complex brains to deal with all the complexities of living in this group. Who's my friend? Who's my enemy? Well, that's quite easy. All animals, many animals need to do that. But who's my friend's friend? If I go and talk to my friend's enemy and get them to be my friend, what does that mean about my relationship with my enemy? All these kinds of complex, manipulative social interactions drove the evolution of large brains. We're pretty confident about that. But then once you get these large brains and you have these complex social interactions,

then language actually becomes quite a useful thing. So we think language arose not so we could develop technology, but so that we could sharpen our manipulative social skills. And then technology came afterwards. That's fascinating. And so is, again, maybe we're getting a little bit far field, but we were talking about humans, not about animals, but what would take us then from, you know, Again, maybe we're getting a little bit far-field, but we're talking about humans, not about animals.

But what would take us then from, you know, needing to represent the complicated social hierarchies and manipulate those and manage those to the ability to express anything, any concepts, including abstract concepts, which is what language is so good at. You know, even words like language are like relatively, are about somewhat abstract things, right?

Or the word abstract that I just used is about an abstract concept. Is that just a happy accident that, hey, once you need to manage social hierarchies, well, you, along with it comes the ability to represent abstract ideas in any combination? Maybe. It's, it.

Ah! Great answer. There really are. There really are a lot of different theories on this. But I think that one of the key things, it may not be the only thing, it may not even be the main thing, but one of the key things is

that when you have these complex social interactions, complex manipulative interactions, then there's a real advantage to being able to understand that you are an individual and someone else is a different individual. Now, this is an ability that is not very widespread amongst animals. There are a few that can do that. There are a few that do understand, I'm one individual, this one is a different individual. But you really need that for that social manipulation. But once you have that, then abstraction becomes much, much more obvious because, you know, I have my thoughts and they're different from your thoughts. We're not necessarily talking about concrete objects and an apple.

Here's an apple in between us. We can also envisage what I think about the apple and what you think about the apple and they're not the same thing. So I think there is a connection between the social interaction leading to that sense of self and that sense of other leading to abstract concepts. Got it. That is so fascinating. Folks, I'm so excited to tell you about this week's sponsor, Delete Me.

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You can take it from me caveman odor, AKA Adam Conover. Well, I want to bring this back to whales, which is where we got started. What have we, so they do not use words. We are maybe learning how to divide their speech or their sounds, the complex sounds that they make. What else have we learned about whale song, whale speech, whatever you want to call it. I mean, I've worked a lot with wolves and I really love working with wolves and their communication is amazing.

And it's just amazing just to listen to it. I said whales, did you hear wolves? I said whales. You said what? I said whales, in the ocean. Whales, oh, okay. Were we saying, the whole time before that you were talking about whales,

I thought you were talking about whales. Were we talking about wolves? Before we were talking about whales. Whales say. We were talking about whales, now we're talking about wolves. All right, our own linguistic skills have eluded us in this conversation. We might need AI for the two of us to communicate.

So we can do wolves, we can do whales, which you prefer. You gotta start talking about wolves, we can do whales, which you prefer. You got to start talking about wolves. I want to hear about wolves now. Okay, we can do wolves. And strangely enough, there's a connection. There is a connection. I'm going to make the connection.

Okay, great. I love it. So wolves howl, of course. We all know about howling wolves. And dolphins howl, but you don't think that they do, right? Dolphins, which are small whales. They are. We'll tie into the whales like that. So, dolphins also howl, but it sounds like squeaks. And it sounds like squeaks just because those howls are faster and higher pitch. If you slow. If you take a recording

of a dolphin and you slow it down, it sounds just like a wolf. Just like a wolf. Wow. So what's really interesting here is that the same thing is going on, the same kind of signal. And that signal evolved for the same reason, same way in dolphins and in wolves. It's because this is a long distance signal. This is a signal you've got to send across a long way or a way where there's a lot of interference, where the signal gets distorted. When the signal gets distorted, or if you're trying to communicate over a long distance, there are physical constraints on how you put information into that signal. When we

talk, when humans talk, a lot of the information in our words is in what we call amplitude modulation, the consonants. We have a few vowels, E, A, but a lot of the information is in the subtle variation in the sounds that disappears at long distance. If you try and shout at someone, nevermind over the internet between the USA and the UK, but if you're like, if you're actually in a field shouting someone at the other end of the field, they're gonna find it very difficult to understand you.

Right, and it's hard to convey emotion to that distance. Like if I'm yelling at my friend across the Grand Canyon, whose mother has just passed away, it's hard for me to convey, you know, I'm sorry for your loss. You know, I'm not really effectively conveying the emotion that I want to at that volume or distance. Because that emotion is all encoded in

this subtle amplitude modulation of our speech. And what's carried is what we call the frequency modulation, the way that the pitch goes up and down. So if you want to have that long distance signal, you take something like a whistle or howl and you move the pitch up and down. And wolves, if you think about wolf howls, the pitch goes up and down. Any kid who pretends to howl like a wolf, you know, this is this is pitch going up and down. That's how you get information across long distances. But it's very little information in that.

That's why you can't convey your emotion. And when we see that that dolphins do the same thing for the same reasons underwater, you know, there can't be very much information in that. There's information. There is. Don't get me wrong. Dolphins do communicate a lot, but those whistles are constrained by nature, constrained by physics and how much information they can contain. So sometimes you can look at an animal, you can look at the actual physics of their communication and say, this is simple communication or this is complex communication. And so what are they communicating across such distances?

It's not, they can't, they don't have that big of a vocabulary, I guess you would say, or that great of a number of different meanings they can convey. But what is the purpose of a wolf howl or a long distance dolphin whistle? Right, so that's a B words because it's too constrained to what it can be. So we know that wolves have things they need to convey, right?

They need to convey, they need to call to each other if they need each other, if they need help for instance. Perhaps they want to go hunting, perhaps they're being attacked by other wolves. They need to call to each other. They need to need to know where each other are because they do tend to spread out a little bit and to get lost. They need to advertise their territory. It's like, we're here, we're a strong wolf pack, don't you come and mess with us. They need to look for mates if they're dispersing lone wolves and things like that. There's a handful of meanings, but every wolf howl is different.

Somehow that handful of meanings is being conveyed by quite a wide range of howls. This is sort of cutting edge. This is the sort of research that I'm doing is trying to figure out how do you, you know, what's the difference between an angry wolf howl and a happy wolf howl. But whatever it is, it's going to be in the way that that pitch moves up and down. And that's probably similar to what's going on with dolphins as well. That's so fascinating. What about... Initially, we were talking about whale whales,

like, let's say blue whales, etc., which have, I believe, very, very long distance and very complex songs, famously. Have we learned anything new about their communication? Just because I'm sure people are curious, since we brought it up 15 minutes ago. Tell me about whales. Everyone wants to know about Whalesong. Well, Whalesong's been studied for years without a great deal of progress. We know that Humpback Wailsong, for instance, which is the most complex, we know that it's conveyed culturally. So they learn from each other. They hear the songs,

they pick bits from it, they pick up motifs, incorporate it into their song and carry on and develop it and develop it into something more complex. They're like, that one's a banger, I'm gonna start singing that song. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they do seem to do that, but you know, whales live so far apart in the ocean.

So if we go back, if you bought what I said before about social interaction and language, and that is that social interaction is really driving the need for really complex communication. I mean, the whales are communicating to each other over miles and miles, tens, maybe even hundreds of miles. They're not actually interacting all that much. maybe even hundreds of miles. They're not actually interacting all that much. The song probably has quite a different kind of meaning from what we consider to be language.

It's got a lot to do with mating. There's no doubt that that's an element of it. But I think there's something. There is more to it than that. There's definitely the complexity and the subtleties of the complexity of the song would seem to imply there's more to it than that. And there are people who are out there doing AI to try and figure out exactly what it means, but we don't have an answer to that yet. But we are, we are discovering things about Whale Song via AI. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like I said, the number one thing to understand is what are the different elements? What actually are the different elements of this communication?

Because when you listen to, well, let's take Wolf Howl for example, you know, the Wolf Howl goes up in pitch and then it goes down in pitch. So what is that like an up plus a down? Is that a thing? Or perhaps up down is one communicative element. What are those communicative elements? That's really difficult to tease apart. It's actually difficult to tease apart in humans. We think we're speaking in words because we're thinking them as we're saying them. But if you listen to what we say, they all just merge together. Even when you're not talking quickly like I am, they

still merge together. There's that famous line from Purple Haze, I don't know if you know, the Jimi Hendrix, excuse me while I kiss the sky. It always comes across as excuse me while I kiss the sky. It's the same, right? It's just the same thing because the words are just running together. So that question of dividing out where are the important elements of an animal sounds? What really matters between one sound and another? It's not easy to do. And I think that there's an often remarked upon difference in humans between spoken language and written language,

because in spoken language, we're using so many other elements beyond just the words themselves. For instance, the distinction that you made between this guy and this guy was like the smallest little, you know little sound difference. And it's helped if people are watching this episode on YouTube, which by the way, you can watch this show on YouTube

if you listen in podcast form. It's probably helped by being able to watch your mouth and the way that you move and all of those nonverbal elements that make spoken speech much different. I imagine the same thing must be true of animal communication that, I don't know, the vag true of animal communication that, you

know, the, I don't know, the vagaries of where the animal's position is in space or whatever, or all these other physical attributes must like be beyond simply the sound itself, right? Yeah. But so, yes, and we're all familiar with this with our pets as well. Of course, you pay a lot of attention to the posture and the movement of the body, but what about those signals where you don't have that? Wolf howls. You can't see the other wolf. It could be miles away.

Even dolphin whistles. Underwater, visibility is really, really poor. Most of the time, you cannot see the other animal. What actually happens is there are two types of communication. really, really poor. Most of the time you cannot see the other animal. Now what actually happens is there are two types of communication. The one that's long range and the one that's short range. So if you ever get near a pack of wolves, they are whining and whimpering and growling and barking and they're making all these other sounds that are close range communicative sounds that tie in with their posture and their body language and so on.

Same with dolphins. When they're close, they're rubbing flippers and making sounds that are designed for close range communication. But you've also got to have that long range, or at least these species also need that long range communication as well, where you don't see the other one.

Are there any animals that we know of that have names that they use to refer to each other as, I mean, that's not quite a word, but it is somehow related to language, right? Yeah. Well, so dolphins do. We've known that for a while. Dolphins, as they grow up, when they're young, they develop their own whistle, which represents them. And they all have these unique signature whistles they're called. So that's pretty amazing. This is something pretty spectacular.

There was just something published just recently, literally last few days, about elephants. Elephants also have names. But think about that. These are, these are going to be those animals that do have a sense of self and a sense of other. Right. What does, what the names, where the names come into it? If you, if you don't realize that you're one individual and another is another individual. So there are a handful of animals that can do that.

And we thought there was only, only the dolphins that, that, that actually do that. And we thought there was only the dolphins that actually used that for names and now elephants as well. So there may be a few here and there, but that's a really, that's an exceptional ability. I have two questions off of that. One is, do they use names for each other, or is it just for themselves? Or do they go, you know, whistle, whistle,

referring to a different dolphin and the other dolphins know who they're talking about? And then secondly, how do we know that they have that sort of self-consciousness? Is it like literally the mirror test, which is my dog fails every day? Well, so I don't know how the elephants use their names. I don't think anyone does.

This is not clear. This is new news. How dolphins use their names is also remarkably, still a subject of remarkable uncertainty, because we've known this for a long time, but dolphins are really, really hard to study in the wild. To know what they're doing actually in the wild is very, very difficult because like I said, you can't see much underwater and they swim much faster than you do. But we do believe it's got a lot to do with, well, there's two things.

Mother-calf interaction, so how a mother keeps track of her babies, but also to do with gang formation. The males in particular, they come together in these, well, gangs basically, and then go and bully other dolphins and the females in particular. They seem to use their name as a membership sign. But this is something that people are still working on a lot. But to answer your question about how do we know, mirror test, does an animal recognize itself in a mirror? It's not a great test. There's a much better one, which is still difficult to do, which is where you present a, you have an observing animal, you have one animal watching the scene, right? And in the scene, there's another animal and the other animal watches, usually it's done

with chimpanzees, watches an experiment to come and put a banana in a box. Okay? Great. And then a screen comes down, so the second animal cannot see what's going on. But the first animal can. The first animal can see everything. And then the experiment comes and moves the banana to another box. And then the screen is lifted. So now, obviously, the second chimp is going to go to the first box, right? Because he saw the experiment to put the banana there. The first chimps

saw the experiment to move the banana. So the question now is what's that first chimps thinking? Is he thinking, ah, my friend is going to go for the first box because he didn't see the banana move? Or is he thinking, no, he's going to go to the second box because that's where the banana is, right? Now that distinction is a distinction between, I know what you think is not what I think. That's the innovation. Do you think what I think? Or do you have different information?

And you can test that. You can see how surprised the first jump is. He's like, oh, you went to the wrong box. And that's a... Ha ha ha ha ha ha. First of all, I love that first, before we do this test, we have to come up with a way to figure out whether chimps are surprised.

I like that. Just like, oh, they pop their monocle. Whoa, whoa, you know, that's fun. But also that's almost more complex to me than just having a sense of myself as an individual and you as another. That's what I believe we call often a theory of mind, right? That that animal has a sense there are other minds

in the world that know things the same way my mind does. And other animals can know something or not know something, which would be a step on the way to what you're talking about humans developed, which is a very complex idea of who knows what and how do I keep track of what everybody knows. So this is something that chimps and dolphins have, but it's very, very rare.

Yeah, and I think you've got to remember that these aren't sort of abstract abilities that just pop up because they pop up. These are things that are useful. Natural selection has favored them because they're useful in the context in which these animals live. They're not going to develop theory of mind if it doesn't give them anything. That ability to understand that another animal is thinking something different from what you're thinking is only gonna evolve if it gives an advantage. And where does it give an advantage?

Well, when you've got these complex societies and complex interactions, and it's important for me to know what you're thinking. So they go together. I love this because so often we hear about chimps and dolphins, especially dolphins as being very similar to people. And I was wondered

Oh, is that just because they're cute and you know, we look at them and say how they remind me We also have flipper as kids and you know We we just sort of are making assumptions But these are honestly very complex behaviors that are especially like humans including Joining into gangs and harassing women and children, which is something that humans are very good at. And we are really good at young men forming into gangs that use their own names as group identity, like, hey, Brian, Brian, Brian, over here, dude, Trent, Trent,

like that sort of thing. That is a very human thing to do. Yeah, it is. And it's something that arises out of a complex social organization. You've got to understand individuals, you've got to understand who your friends are and who are not your friends.

A lot of animal groups, a lot of animal societies are basically families. They're extended families. And mostly when you're in an extended family, you don't mess about with your own family. You've all got each other's interests at heart. But what's interesting about dolphins, they live in what's called a fish and fusion society. They all come together and then they break up into little groups. Some groups come together and then they break up into little groups. Then some groups

come together and then they break up into other. You've got some very fluid composition of who's swimming with whom, which makes sense if you think about it. The ocean's a big place. It does make sense that they live that way, but that means they're not in family groups. And once you're not in family groups, then the idea of harassing other individuals is much easier because you're not harassing your own family. Again, this has like almost too much relevance to human society. Yeah, when people are not with their families,

yeah, they tend to band together in groups and harass non-relatives and they hate outsiders and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's just amazing how much this reflects on human society as a whole. I know, I wanna go to another animal. I know you also write about parrots and I always thought that parrot language,

they just learn to parrot us. It's not really that complex a form of communication. Am I wrong about that? Like, what have we learned about how parrots communicate? Well, it's, I think a lot of them do copy, just copy. But that in itself isn't that straightforward. I mean, why are they copying? What is that all about? It's a bit of a strange thing for them to do just in isolation.

But more importantly, there have been experiments that have shown that parrots, at least some parrots, are capable of learning the principles of language to quite a sophisticated level. I mean, I would say a surprisingly sophisticated level. Now, you need clever experiments, right? You need some really clever experiments to be able to distinguish between, oh, it's just copying and no, they actually are understanding what you're saying. But they've been done. They've developed and they've been done.

So, for instance, if I show you a cracker and say, what's this? And you say it's a cracker, that's not that clever. Almost any animal can learn to recognize something and to click on the right button or to make the right response to something. Right. And that might not even be them using the word in a linguistic sense. They're just, oh, here's the stimulus and then here's the thing I do to get a treat. Exactly. Exactly. So, you can do experiments where you present a parrot. This was famously done with a parrot called Alex a couple of decades ago. And some more. He wasn't the only one, but he was by far the most famous one. You show a tray of objects and say, how many are there? He'll say five. You're like, wow, that's really clever. But that's not learning language. What was the real killer, the real test, was like you

show him a tray of objects and let's say you've got green squares and green circles, and you say to him what's different. And he says the shape. That is that, I mean, it's a whole series of experiments, but that kind of thing, that idea of, I'm gonna ask you a question there, but you have to bring me the answer. It's not just that, you can't just memorize it. You have to think through it and get the answer. So, there does seem to be the case.

And this is something that Alex did. This is something Alex did, absolutely, absolutely. And this is really weird, right? Because we're pretty sure that Paris This is something that Alex did. This is something Alex did, absolutely. Absolutely. Wow. This is really weird, right? Because we're pretty sure that parrots don't speak in the wild. I'm pretty sure that that does not happen. I think we would notice if they did.

But there's something going on here, and it's something similar to what's going on with the chimps, for instance, that have been taught to use a little bit of human language. There seem to be some animals that are capable of learning the essence of language, even though they don't use it in the wild. And that tells us that this sort of infrastructure is there. There's a lot of the foundations that are necessary for whatever language is, it actually occur in quite a few different species, but not quite come together to the point where actual language results, because I guess they didn't have the need for it. But it is fascinating

that there are so many animals that actually can do this. Yeah. And they're using just a little bit of what we would call language, right? Like they seem to have access to some small part of it if we really train them to. But, and we're certain that this is actually language use and it's not just, you know, us reading what we want to read into it.

I mean, let me ask you about Coco the Gorilla, very famous example that everyone has heard of, as a kid growing up, PBS saw the documentary, whatever, the Sesame Street episode, Coco the Gorilla learned sign language, named her Cat Ball, learned X many words, right? Then I saw, 15 years later in my life, tons of debunks of Coco the Gorilla.

And the debunk went something like, all Coco was really doing was just spamming random signs, Coco food, Coco, Coco food, ball, ball, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, until the researcher went, ah, I saw Coco loves me, oh, Coco loves me, et cetera, right? When in reality, that's, you know, nothing of the sort was happening.

What is the truth of that famous case, in your opinion? I think you're right. I think- Big question. In that particular famous case, I think that was not use of language. And I think you're right. It's really, really difficult to do these experiments. It really, really is.

It's particularly difficult when you don't have And I think you're right, it's really, really difficult to do these experiments. It really, really is. It's particularly difficult when you don't have a really strict quantitative, well-defined protocol that tells you how am I going to measure whether this is language or not. But people do that, all right? So Irene Pepperberg, who did the experiments with Alex the Parrot, really did some very, very rigorous protocols. And there have been work with chimpanzees and bonobos that have shown that they have a certain amount of ability to learn language. Rigorous studies. There's a huge difference

between that and saying, well, they can speak. Yeah. Okay. And one has to be a little bit skeptical of someone who says, well, the animal I'm working with has learned how to speak. Okay. Why though? What are you trying to say here? It's not even logical. You tell me that there are some species, chimpanzees, bonobos, parrots, dolphins, elephants, whatever, that have certain elements of linguistic ability. Fine. That doesn't even surprise me because of course, all evolutionary developments on a continuum. You know, you've got to build on things that were already there. That doesn't surprise me. But yeah, the experiments have to be really rigorous and really careful.

And sometimes, sometimes we all just get carried away. I'm not even going to say I'm immune. We all want our animals to talk. Of course we do. I mean, who doesn't? Yeah, it's so fun. And also it makes great footage to get on PBS with. You know, listeners of Factually know

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to receive $40 off. That's code factually at joinmochi.com. In that list of animals that you mentioned, dolphins, chimps, elephants, parrots, parrots seem to stand out a little bit because all the other ones you mentioned are pretty high level mammals, right? Pretty, you know, high level's a bad word.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm saying. Like, you know, mammals of whom there's a small number and live in a complex social organization, and they seem sort of human-like in that way, right? You described how dolphins, you know, will disperse and have complex social hierarchies. That doesn't connect to my understanding of birds, right? Of parrots.

No, but I think you've, I think you hit the nail on the head there, because the thing that people mostly complain about Paris is that they've got really small brains. But no, the key thing here is what social structure do they live in? What societies do they live in? That's the key thing. Higher, lower. I don't even know what higher and lower animals are, but you could certainly make an argument, for instance, that bigger animals are more likely to be, I don't know, more intelligent. I don't think it's true, but you could claim that. That's not what comes in.

That's not the point here. The point is what kind of social societies, what social organization do they live in? Okay. Tigers are big, but they are solitary. So they don't need this stuff. Parrots do. I mean, parrots are social animals. Firstly, they're social animals. Secondly, they are very intelligent because they need a lot of intelligence to survive. They are faced with actual technological challenges all the time. Finding food for parrots is very difficult. You've got to open the nuts. How do you open this nut? You've got to find your food. Another interesting driver of this animal intelligence is how easy is your food to find? If you eat grass that's everywhere, okay, there's no clever trick there. But if you eat fruit that is only ripe, you live in the rainforest and it could

be ripe at any time, which tree has got the ripe fruit today? I don't know. You have to go find it and remember which one had the ripe fruit, almost ripe fruit yesterday. The way they find their food even can be a driver of intelligence in animals. It's a combination of sociality and problem of problem solving intelligence. So parrots, that's interesting. It's not that they have big brains. It's not that they are, you know, sort of large mammals like some of the other ones that we mentioned, but they have a social structure or social needs that are different from most other bird species.

Yeah, yeah. Social, their social structure and their way of finding food and their need for problem solving. That is fascinating. I want to talk about another animal that I believe you write about. What is a hyrax? I actually have no idea what this animal is.

I had to include hyraxes, I really did. Oh, you had to do it. You had to have a hyrax just to spite me in here. Just because you knew I didn't know what it was. I think just to surprise everyone because no one's heard of them. But they really do exist. It sounds fake. It sounds like something I'd kill in a video game.

You can Google it. They are bizarre creatures. Yeah. So, these are, they live sort of like East Africa up until the Middle East. And they're little furry mammals. That's big, like a big, like a Jackrabbit size, I suppose. And they make so much noise. They make so much noise. And really, for a mammal, they make a lot of noise. Most mammals don't actually. What kind of sound do they make? Can you make it for us? Can you make the hyrax? I could do your wolf howl. I don't know if I could do you a hyrax. It's really difficult. I don't know if I could do you a hyrax, a hyrax, it's really difficult. Okay, well, you asked me so I have to do it. So, typically, so the male, it's the male that sings and he will sing this song and then repeat it again and again and it's very complex combination of notes. It always starts with it with a long sort of wail. So he goes, and He goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh You know, these animals, they also love living near human habitation. And people just get so annoyed with them because they're making this sound all the time.

Anyway, the point is, it's a male. He's singing to chase away rivals and to attract females. So it's kind of like Birdsong in that sense. And it's the complexity that is the key. They're not saying anything fancy. They're just saying, I'm a big fat male and you stay away from me if you're a male and you come over here if you're female. That's the message. But they're doing it according to how complex it is. The more complex it is, the more impressive the male is. There were a couple of reasons I had to include hyraxes, partly because they were the species

I studied for my PhD, so I kind of wanted to. But also, firstly, they learn their songs from each other. Like we were talking about the humpback whales, they think, oh, this is a good motif. They pick that up and they use that in a similar way when they hear other animals doing that. And these are not animals that have much to say. So even hyraxes, even songbirds, they have this fundamental ability to understand syntax, to understand how you

combine notes together. This is another one of those sort of building blocks of language, which by the way, people used to think were very unique to language, understanding syntax. Now loads of animals have that. Even hyraxes have it. That's why I had to include them. That is really fascinating because I have heard the argument that, you know, syntax is somehow inherent to the human brain that we're, you know, evolved for language.

You're saying that these animals also have an inherent understanding of syntax, even though they are not using what we would call a language, and even though they don't have shit to say, even though they're just saying what we would call a language, and even though they don't have shit to say, even though they're just saying, come over here, I wanna fuck, there is still syntax happening, and that is, sheds light on our understanding

of syntax as well. Yeah, okay, yes, but first I need to say that it is true that we have better syntax, right? We do have something special in our syntax that does seem to be more unique. A particular way of combining sounds that people do think is essential for true language and isn't found in very many animals, if at all. But that's not the point. The point is it's built on a deeper understanding of syntax.

All of these wonderful things that we put together to make language, they're built of building blocks that are present in other animals. You can't have this, what's called a merge operation, which doesn't tell you very much about what it means. This genius syntax innovation that humans have, you couldn't have that if you didn't understand the difference between different orderings of notes. So that is widespread. And then we elaborated on that to produce something

that's capable of making a language. That is so cool. And I love how it connects what is unique about humans to what is perhaps universal or common about all animals. That you're both explaining what makes us special, but connecting it to the rest of the animal world in a way that makes us simultaneously less special. I also think you could argue that most human speech

is also, please come fuck me. I feel like that's what most people are saying a lot of the time. And so we're similar to hierarchies in that way as well. I wouldn't disagree with you. The purpose of speech, again, the complexity of human language and like all of the books and all of the literature

and the plays and the movies and everything, it's all byproduct. It's a byproduct of why language evolved. We didn't evolve language so that we could have Shakespeare and... No! We evolved language to do some very simple things. Yes, to attract mates, but more important. That side of it is, like I said, all animals will do that. More important was to manipulate subdominant structures. That's really where language, I think, that's really where language gave this real boost. And then everything came afterwards.

Everything else came after it. That is so cool. Well, I want to ask about this. I hope this question will make sense because it's a little bit of a complex one. But when I think about what makes humans unique among animals, it is that we have culture, and that culture moves much more quickly than genetics. That if you look at the last 10,000 years of human society,

our, if you had a God's eye view or an alien's eye view of humans on earth, we have changed massively in 10,000 years in terms of our social organization, the things we do, the clothes we wear, the things we do with our speech, the amount that we've transformed the planet on a vastly faster scale than any other animal has changed over that amount of time. You know, Shakespeare was just a couple hundred years ago, you know, et cetera. And that that has been cultural

evolution or cultural change. And that language somehow enabled us to do that, enabled us to like layer an extra level of complexity on top of our genetics. And so human society or the human species has changed very, very quickly.

But if so many of these animals have proto language of some degree or some some precursor of language that we can see in ourselves, I'm wondering, do they also have But if so many of these animals have proto-language of some degree, or some precursor of language that we can see in ourselves, I'm wondering, do they also have culture, you know, in a way that we would recognize? Because to me, it seems like culture goes with language, that you sort of... Culture comes out of language in a way. I don't know if that's too simple. Tell me where I'm wrong.

There is connection, but it's not quite... It's not quite... It's not quite that simple. Animals do have culture. There are animals that have culture. If we're going to define, we've got to define again, right? Some sociologists will probably say we're defining culture wrong. But if we define culture as ideas or behaviors or concepts that are transmitted from one generation to the next through communication, for instance, or any form of communication,

then we do know that there are definitely a number of species that can do that. Famously, orca do it with their calls. Some chimpanzees do learn from each other different ways of manipulating the environment and finding food and pass that on to their offspring. Dolphins are famous, really famous for teaching their daughters. Mothers teach their daughters a particular way of foraging in one part of Australia. A particular way of foraging for food and the daughters learn that and teach their daughters and like no dolphins anywhere else do this. So that sort of culture does exist, but it doesn't have that characteristic that you just described, that absolutely accelerating evolution by orders of magnitude. That doesn't come until

language comes. You can get these concepts that can be conveyed, yes, but it's language that really drove our departure from being constrained by our physical evolution. Um, so that is some, it's always, it's, it's always tough when, when people say, oh, well, well, maybe humans aren't different from, from animals. Well, we are. What's the difference? How can we put our finger on the difference? It does seem to be language. Language seems to be the thing that, that, that did it and set off that

whole process that you described. But it does seem as though dolphins, which have something that is a little bit like language or has some elements of language, as you would say, also have a little bit of culture. If they ever start speaking properly, then we'll know, oh, they're about to accelerate and we might be screwed. But as it is, like they do have a little bit of culture.

So I would be, So, I would be cautious about confusing causation and correlation. Maybe it's just that the dolphins and the orca and the elephants, they're the ones that are living in the complex social groups and culture could be a result of living in complex social group as is language. It doesn't mean that one causes the other. So, yeah, how that arose is... Because they might not be teaching each other these cultural changes via anything approaching speech. They might just be doing it through behavior or something along those lines. And then the speech and then the proto-language, if you wanna call it that, also arose for the same reasons,

but didn't actually, it's not actually what drove the culture. Yeah, but these are still really cool examples of things that we think of as being inherently human. Ah, here is a version of it in another animal that has, like us, a relatively complex social organization. This is sort of out of left field,

I'm not sure if you cover it, but I'm curious about animals that have a hive-based social organization, ants or naked mole rats or things like that. Is that, in terms of the way that those animals communicate, is that something that you write about at all? Yeah, and there's a big difference between ants and mole rats, of course.

Of course. But I always think of naked mole rats as being, oh, they're a very cool example of like an insect-like social hierarchy. So a couple of things are different. One, obviously, there are gonna be physical constraints, right? Ants simply may not have the physical capacity

to communicate a lot of information. They're too small. These things do happen. Physics does come into it. But the really big difference between ants, naked mole rats, and all the other examples that we've had, except possibly wolves, but we can elaborate on that, is the family groups. These are very, very, very closely related individuals. So they're cooperating because they're closely related. Now they do complex things together and they do have a social structure, but it's not gonna be as complex as a group of animals

that are not closely related because there's less conflict. Right, because ant colonies are essentially all siblings, right, because of the interesting, unique genetic structure and reproductive history of ants. And so they don't have that complex, maybe conflict that they could come into, like dolphins would, where they're like, hold on a second, I'm not related to you.

I actually hate you and I need to remember that. Yep, yep. And that's why the communication in these essentially large family groups is going to be less complex than where there's all this conflict, all this competition, all this interaction and manipulation. A lot of it comes down to manipulation.

Communication is manipulation. Actually, that's the definition of communication is a signal from one individual that affects the behavior of another individual. That's the dictionary definition of communication. So it's all manipulation. It's all manipulation. You're just making me realize the next time

that you're at a big family gathering and your family is coming into conflict and you're like, oh my gathering and your family is coming into conflict and you're like, oh my God, Aunt Brenda is like trying to manipulate the whole situation and oh, you know what she's trying to do? She's X, Y, Z. And so we gotta go talk to grandma.

The next time you're in that stressful situation, you have to remember, this is why humans have language at all, is to navigate family reunions around the holidays is basically what you're saying. Well, no, the family reunions are actually easy. Next time that happens to you, you remind yourself, you know what, this is easy.

I can do this. This is easy. It's when I go out, like when I go downtown and I'm on the subway and I'm trying to get a seat, then it gets difficult. Well, one more question I have in my notes here that I have to ask you, do animals have accents? Oh yeah, accents? Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. Accents are pretty straightforward. So accents, you see them in lots of different animals. Songbirds often have accents because they learn the song from what they hear around them. So your song is going to be more like your neighbors than it's gonna be like someone far away. I did a nice little little study with my higher access come back to the higher access where these higher access lived in in in little colonies along a line it was in a deep valley. So they couldn't go anywhere else they had to be along this this long winding valley.

I can actually see that the syntax that they use. winding valley. You can actually see that the syntax that they use varies gradually from one end of the valley to the other. It's just because the neighbors are picking up the same structure, the same way of communicating from each other, innovating a little bit. Then as you go along, it gets more and more and more different. You certainly see that. I did some work on dialects in wolves, which is a little different because the wolves are all over the world. You get wolves in the Arctic, you get wolves in the desert. So it's perhaps not surprising that they howl differently, but they do. They howl very, very characteristically differently. That is so incredibly cool.

I mean, you're really making me think about animal communication really differently. I wonder if there is any larger takeaway from you that you, how do you think about animals differently as a result of doing all this work? And how do you suggest that people think about it differently in their daily lives, if at all? Yeah, well, this is kind of, in some ways, it's kind of why I wrote the book. I want

people to get this takeaway. You know, some people think that animals talk just like we do. And some people think that animals don't talk at all. And it's obvious to me, at least, that the answer is somewhere in between. But the key thing we've got to remember is that they're not doing it for us. What we want animals to do is not the point. Animals communicate for their needs and what they do, how much they say, how much is like language or not like language is all to do with what they need to do. So, we need to look at animal communication. We need to look at animals at all as being well adapted for their environment, for what they need to do. Not what we want them to do. We want them to be furry people. Okay,

I know, we all want that. But appreciate them for what they are. It doesn't make them any less. You know, dolphins, chimpanzees, they're not less than humans because they don't have language. They are what they're doing what they do, and they're doing it well. And it's much better to appreciate them for what they really are than for what we want them to be. That's such a beautiful message, and it rhymes with one

that we sort of come back to every time we talk about animals on this show. A past interview we did with the wonderful science writer Emma Maris about our ethical obligations to animals. We hit this topic a lot. That we make a mistake when we anthropomorphize animals too much and we think about how are they like humans or how can they serve human needs? And really what we should try to think about more is how are they serving their own needs?

How are they serving their own desires and wants in their own animal way? And how can we make sure that they have agency to do so? Or when we're understanding them, how do we understand them in terms of their own agency? Like it's just taking them as they are rather than imposing a human frame on them is really important. Do I have that right?

It is. It really is important because that's how they evolved, right? They didn't pop into existence for us. They evolved to do what they do. Yeah. Amazing. Well, the name of the book is called Why Animals Talk. You can get it, of course, at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. Arik, where else can people find it? And where else can people follow your work? Yeah. So the book is available everywhere and my previous one as well, but you can just Google me. It's not a common name.

And I'm at the University of Cambridge. If you want to narrow your search down at all. So there you go. You'll find me. Arik, thank you so much for being on the show. It was a delight talking to you. It was great fun. Thank you for inviting me.

Well, thank you once again to Arik for coming on the show. If you want to pick up a copy of his book, Why Animals Talk, head to factuallypod.com slash books. And just a reminder, every book you buy from that link will support not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you would like to support this show and all of the incredible conversations we bring you week in and week out, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free.

For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits of this show and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week, I wanna thank Codename Italian, Matthew Reimer, Ethan, Barack Pellett, Gabriel G, Carrie Hill, Ed, Ruben Solving, Valen, and CryptocurrencyAttorneys.com, not to mention A Screaming Batman. Thank you so much for your support, A Screaming Batman. If you want to join them,

head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover, and you can also have your weird name read at the end of this show. I want to thank my producers, Sam Radman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. Once again, you can find my tickets and tour dates at adamconover.net. Until next week, I'll see you on Factually.

Thank you so much for listening. I don't know anything. That was a HateGum podcast.