Instant Genius - How opening our eyes, ears and noses can help us deepen our relationship with wildlife

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

From the distinctive caw of a crow to the musky scent of a beaver, the world around us is filled with the telltale signs of animals going about their daily business. But how can we teach ourselves to pick up on them more effectively and what can we learn from doing so? In this episode, we catch up with ecologist and author George Bumann to talk about his latest book, Eavesdropping on Animals: What We Can Learn from Wildlife Conversations. He tells us how by simply opening our eyes, ears and noses when we’re out we can begin to tune into to our environment more closely and in turn learn more about the lives and behaviours of the animals we share it with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, the BBC Science Focus. From the distinctive core of a crow to the musky scent of a beaver, the world around us is filled with the tell-tale science of animals going about their daily business. But how can we teach ourselves to pick up on the world? them more effectively, and what can we learn from doing so? In this episode, we catch up with ecologist and author George Booman to talk about his latest book, eavesdropping on animals,

what we can learn from wildlife conversations. He tells us how by simply opening our eyes, ears and noses when we're out, we can begin to tune into our environment more closely, and in turn learn more about the lives and behaviors of the animals we share it with. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Jason. So today we're talking about your book, Eavesdropping on Animals, what we can learn from wildlife conversations. So first off, what's the premise of the book?

You know, the premise is really that we all have within our own capabilities the chance to reenter the know of nature, if you want to phrase it that way, to get a glimpse into what our ancestors had for a relationship with the natural world. And really, it's at a pretty pivotal point in human history where we need to, start paying attention a little bit better, but it gives folks a channel and some direction to do that on a very personal level, which I think sort of steps away from a lot of our usual intake of news about the environment, right, which is largely big media and things that, you know, are going on around the globe. But this gives you a chance to really reorder and enhance your experiences in

your own backyard or in the town park or that walk to the subway or the bus. It can completely transform it. So we'll get into that in a moment. But first off, could you tell us a bit about your background and what originally sparked your interest in this? Sure. So as a boy, I was just, I loved art and I loved nature. My mother was a sculptor and I followed in her footsteps, but nature was the other side of that balance. And I grew up on a lake and just, I had always felt that there was something going on I couldn't quite put my finger on. And everyone else, everyone being the wild creatures in the environment, knew what was going on except me.

So I did all of these things to sort of dive deeper into their world as a way to try to understand what that veil or that curtain was that I felt partitioned by. And I went all the way through a graduate work and wildlife ecology, both bachelor's and graduate work. And I still, I learned a lot. I learned an immense amount out there. But I still came out of that experience feeling like the relational piece that I wanted to have with the more than human world was still at arm's length. So you often in the book talk about how to sort of tuning in to our environment more. So how can we go about that? You know, you don't have to do anything different is the real beauty of it.

And this doesn't matter whether you're in a city, a suburb, a rural environment, crown land, whatever. It's simply a changing of your perspective, your awareness. And so literally doing things you would normally do, walking to the bus, going to their friend's place, going on holiday, any of those things by simply just rotating your perspective on what might else be going on out there is enough. Yeah, you mentioned their cities. So I think that's sort of, a lot of people will say, well, I'd love to do this sort of thing, but I don't often get out into the woods, into the countryside. I live in a city. But they're getting that wrong, right?

Oh, absolutely. Yes. And it's amazing the amount of wildlife that in recent times have started to recolonize landscapes that we've basically held to ourselves or we thought we had. So even the most densely populated cities have lots of wildlife. And then this idea of eavesdropping on their conversations, all the conversationalists are on equal footing. Some will say, oh, I don't like this animal because it's non-native or this is a rat, literally a rat, you know, something we look down upon. But in that changing of perspective, you realize that, yes, that duck.

that's at the palm, that rat, that pigeon, many of these species will show you things that you didn't know existed right there in your shared space. And that just opens the door into just so much more. So obviously, by sort of tuning ourselves in a little bit more and taking a little bit more time to listen and to look, we can learn all sorts of things about animal behavior. So what are some of your favorite examples of that? Oh, goodness. You know, every day, every single day opens us up to something. You know, just the other morning we were laying in bed still and we heard the magpies outside the window going bananas, you know. And that's one of the things I really try to convey in the book is doing your normal things with that ear and eye out for what is going on normally gives you that diamond in the rough.

When something changes, that's your opportunity to say, hey, there's something more here. And in that particular morning, we jumped out of bed, opened up the door, and here's a hawk in the tree that, how could you possibly know this? It almost seems like magic. So you sort of touched on it there. So what can we learn from tuning in to these sounds? Let's start with sounds. So I imagine that the magpies were going bananas because of the hawk. Am I right there?

Correct. Yes. Yeah, they were alarming. So how can we sort of tune ourselves in to listen to these things? Well, the neat thing is you don't need to do anything else but turn your attention to them more. Just to realize that it's there is a big step for most folks. Oh my gosh, I didn't hear those birds ever before. And with that openness comes the fact that yes, they're saying things.

Yes, they exist there. But also, in many cases, they're saying very specific things. it's shocking how specific some of these creatures vocalizations can be. And then in turn, it really starts giving you a bit of feedback about yourself, both you as a person but your relationship with these more than human beings. So let's sort of switch around then. In the book, you talk about imitating the vocalizations of animals, which I think is really interesting.

So how do we go about doing that? is an imitation of a raven call. And I encourage people to imitate as I grew up to. I think most children, we are vocal learners as a species. You know, there's a small handful of other species around the planet that learn through listening and repeating what they hear. And, you know, when you make animal noises, people will make fun of you oftentimes. But if you're speaking Italian, German, Mandarin, Spanish, you know, in the human culture, we see that person as sophisticated. I think we need to change that dynamic because we often look down on animals and hence, you know,

think making their sounds is silly, but in reality, it is a really important tool to both help us focus on the fact that, yes, they're out there. By trying to mimic that call or maybe a woodpecker and you try pounding your fingertip to a tabletop to mimic that sound, you absorb it better. All of us learn in different ways. And so by trying to mimic it, in essence, sort of implants that deeper within our psyche so that the next time we hear it, we recognize it. But then also, is it the same pattern or is this something slightly different? And within that difference can be some interesting meaning.

So personally, I watch a lot of sort of wilderness television programs and things and hunting programs. You see a lot of them, they say they're hunting turkeys, they have this little device that they put in their mouth. or they have a moose call. And I've always wondered, you know, what are they? What are those devices? Yeah. Yeah, you know, there's the one for turkeys and elk and a few other species is basically an additional reed or a larynx, if you will.

So one device might look like, it's a small aluminum horseshoe, basically, with a bit of latex rubber stretch between. And it has some athletic taper or something around. that that lets it fit into the roof of one's mouth to pass air over and create sounds that our voice box normally wouldn't be able to do. And I experimented with all of those sorts of things. You know, I learned to call turkeys and, you know, many species still to this day. I learned to call beavers of all things. You can actually call beavers in. And most people don't think that's not even possible. But more so these days, I do it sort of under my breath. Because

to me, the real learning opportunities, not just to call them as a way to get a response, it's to watch their calls, mimic them to myself as a way to find the patterns, and then watch them as they continue rather than me injecting myself, I see what that call means in context to what they're doing. And that, to me, is much more expansive. It has much more utility and ultimately a lot more joy with it. When you need to build up your team to handle the, growing chaos at work. Use Indeed

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Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So in the book you say every animal is a genius. So what exactly do you mean by that? Yes, they so much are. I think if you took, well, I've done this with students, a classroom of students here in Yellowstone. And I said, okay, I'm wave an imaginary wand. I said, you are all now harlequin ducks.

You know, many won't even know what a harlequin duck is. They say, okay, show the picture and, you know, describe it a little bit. But, okay, now you need to exist. and survive and reproduce as a harlequin duck. We have no clue where to begin. We are completely lost. Do you eat fish? Do you eat plants?

Do you eat invertebrate? We don't even know what to eat, much less where to go. And say, for instance, this particular bird is a sea. It's a Pacific sea duck that comes into the intermountain west of the United States and other where in Canada, elsewhere in North America, to breed. and then the young, once they're born, the male departs, and then shortly they're after the female departs. And they are wired literally with this GPS unit that takes them back to the exact same place on the Pacific Ocean. And the children who've never traveled anywhere know to do the same.

So there's this beautiful tapestry of nature versus nurture just by virtue of being a pigeon, by being a red stag, by being a starling or a garter snake, you know things just in the very nature of your DNA and your being. And so some of those skills and abilities and knowledge have to be learned or refined through learning. Vervant monkeys, for instance, have buried within their inner being the sounds to alarm for a leopard versus an eagle versus a python. Yet the adults sort of have to help teach the young ones when to use them. No, that's not a snake. That one's a tree root, right? So there are these elements.

And so I say everyone is a genius because they come into their own culture. They come into their own body with this beautiful, beautiful palette of life skills. So following on from that, in the book you talk about something that you call grasping the theme of an animal. So what do you mean by that and how can we do it? Yes, I don't think it's a very far stretch to say that other species have culture. You know, a lot of things that we sort of held to the human animal actually does apply to other creatures. They have language. It's different than our language, but as Darwin said, it's not an issue of kind, rather, degree.

So the degree we use language is very advanced compared to many others. But for a lot of species, they have. have a way of doing things. They have a theme to their life. They have a, in this case, in the book, he's using it as a reference to, say, a sound. As you put yourself out there and realize, oh, gosh, you know, the squirrels are saying or doing this one thing every day, sometimes almost monotonously. You're like, oh, all right, they're not doing anything. But then there's that one day where you see that theme thrown on its head. It takes a decided turn. And you say, ha, today is different. Why is it? Is it something in the day, the season? Is there someone with a dog off leash in the park? All of these things matter. But until we sort of, in our own mind, solidify a common pattern, a common theme, we miss these details.

So just sort of going back to the vocalizations and the language that you just mentioned there, you're right about some animals giving members of their immediate group, names. So I think that's amazing. Yeah, isn't it? How does that work? It's, you know, we don't know. We haven't fully interviewed a bottlenose dolphin or a raven, right? We are the outsiders still to many degrees, and we don't know what that really means for them, but we definitely know they recognize each other as individuals. They respond to each other as individuals and make decisions, very critical decisions as individuals responding to other individuals. I think we overlook that when we look across the species divide. We interact as individuals, but, you know, say someone going on a holiday to do some birding, they're looking at species. That's an artificial categorical concept that we have

developed ourselves. It's very abstract. Yet those animals on the other side of that species divide are reacting to us as individuals. And we have examples of certain species, even domestic goats making up, you know, names for one another, it seems. But it goes much further. So moving on from that, in the book, you talk about something that you call second-hand knowing. So what do you mean by that? Yes. So firsthand, of course, is what we bring in with our own senses. You hear a duck quack. You see a squirrel waving its tail or a deer suddenly stuble. stop and lift its head and point its ears. Second hand knowing is taking your lead from these other species, these other wild individuals.

So you may not know exactly why that squirrel or that bat or that chipmunk did such initially. But the more you see these patterns unfold, the more you get a sense, hey, that's what happened when the neighbor's cat was on the prowl. Ah, you know, we had a friend who discovered that her cat would signal the presence of flies in the other part of the house. She would hear it making this kind of jumbled set of meows like sounds, and she would know without a shadow of a doubt that there was a fly in the window of the house. You know, so we are pattern making machines. Human beings are always looking for patterns in our environment. And so as we start to see that other species doing something that we only saw in association with this other presence, that's secondhand knowing. That's starting to say, okay, these behaviors are linked.

And predator prey and threats and danger are a really good place to start because we can see the cause and effect. The cause is an external thing rather than an internal state for that animal. And it's sort of, as a stepping off point, easier to get a foothold and begin. So let's flip around again and have a look at animals' perspectives of us. And I actually have a really interesting anecdote about this. So in my previous job, there were crows everywhere. And there was one particular contributor that would come in. And he had a bald head.

And they'd swoop him and peck him. So I imagined that at some point a bold man had interfered with them or something and they didn't like it. and they remembered, because they didn't go for me. They just went for him. Astonishing. Yes. Yes.

It's so true. And that's the neat thing is you just open the door to these other individuals from other species. You realize that they're seeing us. They're seeing you specifically. And they're remembering. And they're talking about you. One of the great examples of this is the study I cite in the book done by John Marsleff with crows, also, where they did this.

experiment where they suspected that the crows could tell one person from another by facial features. So they put on this mask as a control and they captured some birds, leg banded them, measured them, and then just sent them on their way. They did this once, one session of this. To this day, and it's been, I think it's going on 17 years, they would bring the mask to figure out once a year. And lo and behold, this, they use a caveman mask, this character is dive-bombed by the area of crows. They go bananas, right? And here it is, all but one, last time I talked to John Marslev, who had done the study, all but one of the original crows is gone. So this behavior and news about this individual person has spread throughout the crow, in this case, community,

and even beyond the campus where the study was done in Washington State and downtown in other places, these crows will also harass the caveman. So not only did they remember and act upon this in the immediacy of the encounter, but it's gone on years. And I just, every time I see a crow or real, I'm like, what do you know? What is that history with the bald man? Like, tell me the story. Of course, you will never know, but it's super intriguing that you can't then look upon just any other crow and say, it's just a crow.

It's this amalgam of memory and action and cause and effect. And sorry for the pun, slipped in there, cause and effect. But you get the idea that once you see and discover some of the potential in these other creatures, it's hard to go throughout the world and not extend. that possibility to others and in what a rich world we really do live in. So how about another sense that you talk about, which I think is really overlooked, which is the sense of smell. Because I think most people kind of, their sense of smell is kind of binary in some ways. It's either sweet flowers, delicious food, or, you know, something rotten and disgusting.

But there's a whole world out there, isn't it? Oh, yes. When, you know, if you had to make your living by your nose, of course. you know, you would be more attuned if you're a Somalié, you know, sniffing wine or, you know, an arborist who is cultivating flowers and shrubs and things of that nature. Maybe you would be a perfumist putting together all of those smells for someone to purchase. But most of us don't make our living by our nose. But that said, if we are exposed to something enough, it has a way of seeping in. And this is an interesting thing towards the way our senses work. In the conscious realm,

you know, if you were taking notes, let's say, from this episode, the things you're writing down are the things you're aware of. We handle only 50 to 100 of those in a very finite amount of time. Subconsciously, our body is absorbing potentially millions of data points. And so, yes, can you pay attention a little better when you're walking to the bus? Can you do that bit of office work? near an open window so that our bodies are allowed to absorb these things. And one of the things we naturally absorb that in some ways shockingly takes us on amazing journeys sometimes is smell. Man, I haven't that smell or sometimes it's a sound. But in the case of smell, my gosh, you know, it roots very deeply into that basal region of our existence. And so a great example. As a friend had

the opportunity to raise a porcupine as a boy. And, you know, this is not a common pet. But throughout the time of raising this porcupine, he discovered that they had a distinct odor. And I asked him, so what does it smell like? Because I don't know if I know what the smell of a porcupine. He says, it resembles something between earwax and popcorn, which don't ask me how he knows what earwax intimately smells like. But the bottom line is he could tell.

And there were times where in later in life, he's hiking with his dog and his father, let's say, and he smells porcupine. Oh my gosh, porcupine. Get the dog back. Otherwise, you know, you're going to be pulling quills for the next few hours, you know. And so it sneaks up on us. Another gal I interviewed did that with elephants. And she found that by volunteering at her local zoo, she came into. intimately connected with that hay dusty, awesome kind of smell, as she called it, of elephants.

Totally unique, similar to the barn-like atmosphere that she grew up around, but unique. And she, in Thailand and in Africa, was able to find elephants simply through her nose, and not a really good smeller per se, but just the exposure in order to know that difference. So this is something that you call something like learning by doing. Is that right? And we have a sort of, it's all about paying attention and noticing, right? Yes, absolutely. But also giving ourselves time.

I think that's one of the things I stress a lot of times. Like we have an in-person course. For instance, I'll flash up, you know, say a slide on a screen. And I'll say, okay, can you tell me whether this bison, this American bison is a male or female? And, you know, folks will be looking at the characteristics and trying to figure it out, and I'll take a poll and see what their guesses are. But then I show another slide of three Bisons standing facing all one direction with their tails in the air. And I say, is this different? Oh, yes.

Well, they're all standing. In the previous slide, there were some that were laying down and some were big and some were small and their tails were down. Exactly. Giving yourself the time. And this is our most precious resource, right? Spend it well, spend it in the moment, not what you're trying to do next. Be where you are because that offers us the opportunity for both passive and active engagement with our surroundings. And without having struggled even momentarily to figure out, is this a male or a female or a young creature or an old creature, we're absorbing far more than we realize.

How close are they? what's their body position so when that does change we may not realize it so much in the in the intellectual thought driven sense but in the emotional feeling sense this is different and by way of just allowing that exposure to happen eat your dinner on the veranda if you're in the city you know have lunch on the roof if you're at work at the office have your lunch on the picnic table in the lawn, you know, places that we don't typically think of finding creatures, but once you put yourself into those spaces, you realize, my gosh, there's a lot more we're sharing this place with. In the book, you detail lots of your own personal experiences. And I was just wondering,

to give the listeners a taste of what it's about, could you give us a couple of your favorite examples? Oh, may. There's so many, but in the book, I relay a few. And I think the most powerful manifestation of re-engaging our relationships with the wild world is when we meet these non-human individuals. And in turn, recognize that they recognize us. And this trust develops. You know, you can build trust with food. And you'll see this quite a bit, you know, a dog handler or a circus act. They're handing out food to get a creature to do something they want them to do. But in my view, it's much more moving and meaningful to enter into that space on the grounds of mutual respect. And for instance, we had this one mule deer, similar to whitetail deer, a little, you know,

looks similar to row deer for those in Europe. And she just had some markings that were different enough that we could recognize her over and over. Across years, you know, some of these animals, wild animals here in Yellowstone, you know, gotten to know them generationally. I knew the great grandmother and the grandmother and the mother and the daughters and the sons and you see these traits and behaviors passed along. But in the case of this deer, she became so trusting of us. She was still very much wild and we never fed her, but she would bring her fawns between me and the decking of the house, the front deck, you know, in space of 30 feet tops and feed. You know, she was that comfortable that she would

feed and we'd developed an understanding that you're safe here. And sadly, that one of the later winters, she'd had triplets, which was very unusual for the deer here. She started losing those fawns. And then by the end, she had lost all the fawns, and then she disappeared. And we just assume, my gosh, you know, maybe she went into the area that hunting is allowed and she was hunted, harvested. Maybe she was hit by a car. We didn't know. But late in the winter, her, she showed back up, and the poor thing was just a bag of bones. She had gotten injured somehow. She was missing some fur on her back. But in that terrible state, she remembered us. She remembered that we were a safe haven. And in her literal last hours, she came not just to our house, but she came up onto the deck

and bedded down and slept on the welcome mat outside of her glass front door. And she did that for three nights. And I sat next to her, literally, a pain's width apart from her, to be honest, with tears rolling down my face. At this deer we had known for years and known some of her travails and successes. And the fourth night, she went down underneath the deck and expired, you know. And when you see a wild animal come to build a relationship with you, I can't look at any other deer and not offer them that same capacity. That they too see me as unique, as I with time see them as unique. That they respond.

It truly is a two-way conversation, even if it isn't with words. You follow me. Yeah. And some animals, you know, I never got close to them and nor do what I want to. I want them to stay while. But at the same time, that degree of familiarity doesn't come at environmental issues and how we should relate to nature from above. You know, an NGO or a certain thought leader figure saying, you need to do this. Rather, this is from the ground up.

This is nature itself telling you what's important, what it needs, how they see us, they see one another. And that is something we have lost in our rush to modernism. That is so powerful that once we find it again, and I've seen students here in Yelstone literally change their entire career path from a weekend encounter. That's really powerful to observe. There aren't really words that encapsulate that, but we know that when we feel it. Just get out there. You know, you don't have to do anything different. You don't have to sell all your belongings and live in a cave in the forest. This is happening all around us. And yes, there are some species that obviously get on better

with humans than others and others are completely excluded yet. We're at a point in history. We really need any kind of relationship with the more than human. You know, with social media and the digital world we live in, we're having a hard time with relationships with other humans, say nothing of the more than human. And anywhere that we can get that is very powerful medicine. It's almost like you're getting outside, you're getting free exercise, you're getting to visit with these creatures that literally will reflect back to you their impressions of how you greet the world.

Are you okay to be around? Are you a fright? In essence, a little bit of psychotherapy maybe from across the species divide that tells us that even when we're by ourselves in nature, we're not alone. And that's an important thing. You know, loneliness and not feeling heard and not feeling seen is a source of a lot of suffering just in our human to human world. But we all probably know people who get on better with their cat than they do any other people, right, or a dog better than, you know, their coworkers or family, and there's a reason for that is that as social creatures ourselves, we crave that

connection. And if that connection can make this a better place for all, then I think it's more than a win-win, you know, so explore, try it. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was a psychologist and author George Booman. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out his latest book, eavesdropping on animals, what we can learn from wildlife conversations. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now.

Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost. through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship,

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