Radiolab - Animal Minds

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

In this hour of Radiolab, stories of cross-species communication. When we gaze into the eyes of a wild animal, or even a beloved pet, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they're experiencing something close to human emotions? Or is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN'T feeling something like that? We get the story of a rescued whale that may have found a way to say thanks, ask whether dogs feel guilt, and wonder if a successful predator may have fallen in love with a photographer.

Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. Hey, it's Latif. And Lulu. And Radio Lab. We both sound a little scratchy, but you're not going to hear a lot of us today, because we're traveling back into the past for a very special, warm, fuzzy, yet complicated episode from the archives. But first, we wanted to tell you about something new and shiny.

Yeah, which is a new and shiny delivery mechanism for this show that we love so much, which is you can get it on YouTube now. Yeah, so Radio Lab has recently made this whole massive YouTube channel, which has some kind of amazing things from over the years. It has animated shorts. It's got music videos from collaborations we've done with different musicians. It's got live shows.

It's got, yeah, it's got, yeah, it's got a ton of stuff, but the best thing of all, I think, is it has these bundles, it has these themed lists, including a sort of a starter kit. So for people who are maybe more recent to the show, like you can just quickly just race gallop through all our favorite episodes. That's youtube.com slash radio lab pod.

So as we were putting that together, thinking about, you know, what are the really special radio labs? We started thinking about this, Oldie but a goodie, which is called Animal Mines. Are you in this? I've heard a voice.

I am, this is like baby reporter me. Are you in this? I have heard of voice. I am. This is like baby reporter me. This is one of my favorite assignments of all time. I was just- Don't spoil the top though, but it's so good. But I was just starting out and they said, hey, can you go record this almost surreal sounding event, which I didn't quite believe took place.

And that's how it kicks off. Don't forget. Okay, I won't say anymore. There's a good tussle ahead and yeah, let's just let the radio lavish of the past take us away. So where are we? We're in a church. In a church. Oh, that's a different from. It's not usually where we start. We're in a church. You know church. Oh, that's a different phrase.

It's not usually where we start, we're in a church. Cathedral, really, a huge cathedral, upper Manhattan, and St. John the Divine. Got an organ. The preacher, the preacher. A congregation, of course. Couple thousand people in the pews at least. Your basics on day service. Except today. You've also got here it comes. The reason we began here is because today the church is filled with dogs.

Can I talk to you about your dog? Yeah. What's his name is Blizzard? And what is he? He's a Labador and Puddle Mix. Well I have legend. Well I just adopted in January. I have Denzel.

Go by the way. You need more than dogs. You've got birds. The name is Jesse. It's a bar now. And now has this guy ever been blessed before? I don't think so, no. I just won this year.

In hamsters, his name is Tubby, Teddy Toes. And if he'd come out, you'd see why, because he's really fat. And all kinds of creatures. We've got a little girl with a falcon and behind her. Oh, it's a giant tortoise. This is the St. Francis Day of the Animals, and behind her. Oh, it's a giant tortoise. This is the Saint Francis Day of the Animals, the yearly event.

And coming toward us. Where people bring their animals to be blessed. Is it donkey? The folks that are gathered here. So there's a little girl with a hermit crab. They don't think there's anything weird or inappropriate about this. In fact, if you ask them.

And here comes a bull. Here's what they say. I don't know if he means anything to her but it means it to me because you know you want to that ties your babies and this is more or less the same kind of thing. And what does it mean to you? This means when she finally does go away she's gonna go to heaven. What kind of parrot is she? Oh yeah don't put you here nearest face. And what's his new? Chuckles, chuckle. Do you feel like he has a soul or an inner life of some sort? It's a thinking being there, there is smart as we are really injured.

Yeah, since you invited me, I don't want to be in polite or anything. So what you got to say? Well, okay. These people, of course they love their animals. Sure, yeah, you can hear that. Because when I'm feeling sad, he comes in the bed and he lays down, spying to spying with me and he just doesn't leave my side. But aren't they presuming a little bit that the animals they love are going to feel

the grace of the prayer or the feel the blessing, which is a... What we trace is a question. Rare or feel the blessing which is a what which raises a question What do we really know about what goes on inside the animals mind? Yeah, all those things you might feel in a church grace gratitude guilt Can the animals Feel those things too? How much can we share? Can you measure it? Yeah, I'm Chad Abumran. I'm Robert Grohlwitz.

This is Radio Lab. Music And we'll begin the hour with a story about an animal who I'm sure loved to have been at the worship service But it was a very inconvenient thing. It didn't get to you. I couldn't quite get there Okay, just to get things rolling. This is a story that we heard about First from the following dude. Hey, is it Mika? Is it Mike? I go by Mick? There's way too many mics around. MIG, MENIGO is his name. And we met MIG recently at the Emriville Marina, which is not far from San Francisco, where he's got a boat called the Superfish.

The MIG says he rents out for all kinds of things. Eat your trips to ash gathering, Bash the Party, fireworks watching. I have a little cardboard sign that's named by the freeway. It says, have both need work. So yeah, that's Mick. And our story begins one morning in December. Probably eight o'clock in the morning or something as I recall.

A few years back, Mick, just kind of sitting at home. I was at home, yeah, it was the middle of December, we didn't have any work. But then it gets this call. Hello? I got this call. Hello there. It was a call relaying a message from a fisherman way out at sea

18 miles maybe outside the Golden Gate Bridge They told me that there was a whale in trouble tangled up in crab gear and it didn't appear to be able to move So after he hangs up make immediately calls a few dive buddies Jim young Jim young Air Force Perra Rescue. And let's see. James Mosquito. James Mosquito. Professional diver.

I called him and said, hey, here's the deal. Are you interested? He was a no-brainer. I said, yeah, I'm in. Absolutely. All right, we're going. So I packed up my stuff. Yeah, my gear and I went directly to the boat.

And we left underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The nothing but the horizon in front of us. My name is Holly Duryard. I am James's significant other. We motored out for about two hours. I had to do west towards the Fairland Islands. What were you feeling when you were on about heading out? I didn't think we'd find her.

I really didn't. But about 18 miles off the coast, completely open water. One of the divers spots some crab buoys in the distance and some seagulls flying overhead. And as they got closer. Why, it saw the whale. It was just the very top of the whale.

Sticking up about maybe six inches out of the water. At the surface. A tiny sliver of black. That was it I said, okay, we need to see what's going on So Tim and James jumping to an inflatable boat and they paddle about a couple hundred feet from the whale And it just wasn't happening every time that the swale came on up It would just displace the boat back again. So it would push us back again not to mention the visibility in the water Was just terrible

They couldn't even see down there to see you know what they were dealing with and you know what sometimes plans Have to change in mid flight so to men James look at each other and without saying a word boom We got out of the boat and slush Into the water And I see a shadow. This massive animal, a hazy silhouette, and we just started swimming to the whale. About a hundred feet away.

You know, parts of a blubber and skin floating around. Thirty-five feet. Twenty feet. And then they see it. My goodness, this thing's the size of a school bus. A female humpback whale is one of the largest creatures on the planet. Fifty feet long, 50 tons. And this particular whale was in a kind of sea shape where its head was at the top of the water,

but its tail was almost pointed directly down. It was almost like somebody was pulling her down by the tail to the bottom of the ocean. Yeah, there was probably 20 crab traps, 2,000 pounds at least, just tied up to the tail she had just become an anchor and to see her not be able to move that tail and to struggle. Just like the whale was actually really laboring to breathe. It's a little puff and there's just rope everywhere. It went around the whale's mouth, around the

whale's head. Across her eye, over her back. Around the pectoral fins, all the way down to his tail. I thought there was no hope, there's no chance. We're looking at a dead whale. The whale just doesn't know it yet. But I knew that I had to try. Went to swim to the whale.

And as soon as I decided, okay, I went to swim to the whale, the whale decided she wasn't going to have that. What you do? She put up her pectoral fin, which is like her arm, and this pectoral fin is about 15 feet long, it's about 4 feet wide, and she just splashed down the water in front of me. You know, this is the size of an airplane wing coming down on top of you. Just inches from my head. So at that point I backed off and waited. Waited for the whale to settle down. She was physically exhausted. Which she did. And

then they both swim back. James goes to the tail and Tim up to the whale's head. You know, I was there with a six-inch dive knife cutting out line right near her eye, which was the size of a grapefruit. And her eye was moving. Keep an eye on me. Really? Absolutely. He would go left or I would go left. He'd go right or I would go right. She was tracking me. And all the while, they're just cutting as much rope as they can. You really had a saw on it. It was very strong, very tight. Sometimes I'd cut a rope and it would be a loose rope

and all of a sudden something else would tighten up. Which was a one rope that would let it all free. This whole process took hours. But finally, James gets to the end of it. At the tail, sawing his way through that big clump of line and he realizes at a certain point that to cut through all that line. When I have to stab the whale to get my knife underneath the rope, it was that tight. Though, I jab my knife into the whale's tail and pull the rope and then cut it.

And it wants the rope when... It was a very surreal moment looking down and seeing the 20 crab traps and buoys just disappear into the abyss. And just like that, the whale was gone. I'm spinning around going where she go, where she go. But as the water settled, they realized they'd done it. They'd freed her. As soon as I came up, I was like, woo-hoo-wow! Who put it up and yelling? Unbelievable. As soon as they came up, I was like, woo-hoo-wow, hoopin' it up and yelling. Unbelievable.

I was screaming. Can you imagine? Now here's where the story takes a pretty startling turn. In fact, the whole reason we wanted to tell this story to begin with is for what happens next. So Tim and James and the other divers are in the water. They're celebrating, high-fiving. And then all of a sudden,

James looks down. Next thing I know, I have this 50-ton whale coming right at me. I'm thinking oh my god stop I just stayed wait so this whale is coming at you from below like jaws yeah she's rising up towards me oh god now just thinking this is going to hurt. And when she was only inches away from my chest, she stopped. And pushed me on the chest backwards, and then released me and then kind of pushed again. And then released and pushed again. And again. Wow. And then she swam up right next to me,

picks her head up above the water so that her eye was above the water. And then came up and looked directly at me. And for what felt like 30 seconds, he says, she just stared at him. The people didn't move around. She wasn't looking for anything else. She was just looking at me. You're in the presence of something that great makes you feel small. It really was a very emotional feeling.

You know, wasn't quite sure what to make out of it, make of it. But then he says, she went off to the next diver. I did the same thing. I remembered stinkly. How is 18 inches away from her eye? And she just looked at me and let me touch her and Then swam off and then she went off to the next diver and did the same thing and the next person and did the same thing one by one coming up right next to him Looking at him really good, you know inches away. I bow in them. She swam around to every diver all the guys guys so it was about desk

the water was glass flat. I was sitting at the helm of the boat just in awe. And they had to leave the whale. She didn't want to leave them. Now there's a real question here. What exactly was that whale doing? We're saying, was she saying anything? If you ask James or Tim or maker any of the other divers that were in the water that day, they'll tell you.

I felt this whale was really thank-n-us. I know it sounds crazy, but I could see the look in her eye. This mammal, this this 50 ton mammal was literally saying thanks. Thanks for helping me out. And, you know, I'll bring that to my grave knowing the gratification that I felt. Wow. So what do you think? I mean, here's the question really. Was that whale saying thank you? Was the whale saying, well, I think the whale was saying something. I mean, a whale, if she was just free of her ups, I would think she would just go off

and say, woo, I'm free. So the fact that she would... She hung around. And make these specific eyeballs. A specific eyeball. Visits, like, I'm free. So the fact that she would... She hung around. And make these specific eyeballs. Visits, like, I don't know. I feel that there's something intentional about that. She didn't leave anyone out, right? No, she went to the...

Fact according to one of the guys on the boat. She ex-he went to the boats and did the same thing to the boats. She said, thank you to the boats. Yeah. Well, yeah. So she was looking at the people, but she also thought the craft was something she should say, thank you, or say, deal with. Yeah, so maybe she was just sighted. Maybe she was just

I really don't know what I mean, I don't I don't feel completely comfortable just saying Of course, I know where I want to feel Yeah, me too, but let's just try to Straighten up for a second. We have a guy named Clive Win is teaches the University. Hello. Hey. Oh hi. Is this Mr. Clive Win? Yeah, this is Clive Win Clive is with the psychology department of the University of Florida. Who's this? This is Chad from Radio Heaven. Right. Hi, Chad. Clive also happens to be an expert on animal psychology. Hi, and this is Robert also I'm hi Robert. Can you hear us pretty well? I can hear you pretty well. I'm I'm wondering how well I'm going into distinguishing your voices. No need to do that. Pre-dust is a unitary figure. Yeah. Okay.

But so let me let me begin. This is Robert talking. We'll tell you a story and we want to know what you think of the story. So once upon a time, I'm not too long ago. All right. We're going to fast forward a bit. Thank you. I wish I was. Because we ran Clive through the entire Whale story. Front to back. My question to you is, if a diver said to you, this wheel said thank you to me, what would you say? Well, I would be put in a difficult situation because I don't doubt that what these people experienced was a very moving moment with that whale. But the problem is, I just don't speak whale.

So I don't know what thank you looks like in whale. But the problem is I just don't speak whale. So I don't know what thank you looks like in whale. If I'm gonna be a cynic about it, I would say, well, the whale has been trapped for, I believe, over a day and may just be disoriented. Well, but this was this was parking herself with one individual and then moving to the next. That's not a distracted. That looks like it's got some intention. It shows some interest in the individuals. I'll give you that. But how do we how do we get from that? To deducing that the whale is trying to express things. Let's play a different example. Let's suppose that you found a bear in the woods that was caught up in

some netting that ended up in the woods. And you work for hours to free the bear, and then the bear eats you. Does that mean that the bears are an ungrateful species of animal? Yes. Yeah. No, I don't truly believe that. Right, well, so I mean, it would make as much sense

to ascribe ingratitude to the bear as it does to ascribe gratitude to the whale. I just don't think that's a useful way of trying to understand animals, and I think it ultimately it demeans them because it means that instead of living in a world that's full of a diversity of wonderful creatures, each with its own ways of relating to other members of its own species and other members of other species, we say, well, we don't live in a world like that.

We live in a world that's basically a world of human beings. It doesn't matter some of these human beings have pursuits on. Some of these human beings weigh hundreds of tons and live under the ocean and can hold their breath for a very long time. None of that really matters. Ultimately, they're all basically like us. And I just don't find that satisfying. Are you saying that you don't know if there's a possibility of sharing

or that you don't think that there's a possibility of sharing at an emotional level between two species. I don't doubt that there is the possibility of sharing between two species. I mean, I see it with dogs all the time, but I think it will be a mistake if we thought that the love we feel for our dogs is the same feeling that the dog has back to us. It has different qualities, and it's where. When you pet your dog, and it wags its tail, and it seems happy to see you.

Yeah. Do you just like not trust that? Well, okay, so let me make clear that I wear two hats. When I'm talking about a dog, particularly a pet of my own, I'm wearing, I have two possible hats I can wear. And one is that when the dog pants back at me, I just hug the dog and let him kiss me, and that's life with a dog.

But if I'm now wearing my scientific hat, I'm getting my blanket as wet as I possibly can, then I ask myself, what did these behaviors mean among dogs? Oh. I see. There's a beautiful study that came out recently from Alexander Horowitz. I'm Alexander Horowitz, and I study dog cognition.

Where do we find her? She's around the corner from you. She's a Barnard Colley. So we sent our producers to our wheeler. Yo, that's me. To meet her, and he ended up hanging out with her and her dog, Finningan, in the park. Oh, good snuffle.

That's a nice snuffle. That snuffle is the mic. She did this beautiful experiment that shows that when people in the park. Oh, good snuffle. That's a nice snuffle. You want snuffle in the mic? She did this beautiful experiment that shows that when people think their dog is looking guilty, ears back, eyes lowered, tail between the legs. Actually, the dog is just being submissive. So here's what she did. She tracked down a bunch of dog owners.

Posted and Craigslist and put out posters. And she found a bunch of owners who believe that, like most dog owners do, that their dogs feel guilty. Yes, my dog feels guilty when he's done something wrong. And then she set up a situation where all of the dog owners had to scold their dogs, because they'd been told that their dogs did something bad. But the trick of the experiment is that only half the dogs

had done something wrong. Half the dogs had actually been naughty, and half the dogs had done something wrong. Half the dogs had actually been naughty and half the dogs had not been naughty. But then she... Misinformed the owners. Lied to half of the owners. So we lied to the owners. So even the owners who this dogs hadn't been bad? Thought their dogs had been bad.

So everybody scolded their dog. And almost everyone did this the same way, which was to say no loudly to their dogs and made but put their hands on their hip and expressed his approval. Yes, Finnegan! Finnegan! Oh, good old, it's okay. See, Finnegan just made the look. Even though he hadn't done anything wrong.

And that's essentially what she found. Even the non-guilty dogs made the guilty look. It didn't matter whether the dog had transgressed or not. All that mattered was whether it was being chastised by its owner. So bad dog, bad dog. That creates the look, not the deed. That's exactly right. But for me, the pivotal question here is not whether or not they all had to look, but

what's attached to that look? What feeling in the dog is attached to that guilty look? Maybe the dogs who were falsely accused still felt bad. Well, maybe they did. Maybe they did. And maybe there are angels on top of this control console here. I thought it was a perfectly valid question. Yeah. We should think Alexandra Horowitz, her latest book is called Inside of a Dog.

Oh, see! And before we end this section, have we resolved the question of what was that whale doing with those people? Was she saying thank you or no? No, and do we ever resolve any questions at all? Well, we try. We get a little closer than we got in this section. No, we have not resolved. But we will try harder. But, but, but, but, in our next section, a mere 70 seconds away, we will try very hard to actually get scientific about it.

Good. Hey, I'm Chad Abumrod. And I'm Robert Krohlwich. This is Radio Lab. Today's hour. Animal minds, animal minds. Right. Do, do, do, can, can an animal really know what's going on in another animal's head? This is Radio Lab. Today's hour. Animal Minds, animal minds. Right.

Do a kid in that one animal really know what's going on in another animal's head? Yeah. Like, really now. Really now. Thanks for being here. So we were thinking about that whale story that we heard before the break. Yeah. You know where the divers meet the whale and they were sure the whale was saying thanks.

Literally. Saying thanks. Thanks for helping me out. Okay, that is their opinion, but we want to know like, what can you actually scientifically say about that kind of exchange? That question, let us introduce yourself to this guy. My name is Patrick Hough, I am a neuroscientist at Monsana School of Medicine in New York. He may have found a way of separating the animals,

of knowing which animals can genuinely have human emotions, and which can't. It starts in 1995. We were studying the anatomy of the human singulate cortex. It's part of the brains right here, between your eyes, but down. And a student in my lab, Estonim Chinsky. She was looking at some brains, and she saw something

this very slender bipolar neuron. I've never seen an neuron like that. Maybe it's abnormal, it's probably pathological. Just to be sure, she got some slides of other human brains looked in the same place. And there it was again. Started to see them. And again. She got some slides of other human brains looked in the same place. There was again. It started to see them and we were very pleased.

Okay, we have discovered a new cell type, something that is unique to human. But then they went to the library and discovered that some guy. His name is Constantin von Ekonemo. Constantin von Ekonemo. Constantin von Ekonemo. It's Romania guy. Constantin von Ekonemo. It's seen these cells 70 years ago. And you name them spindle cells.

Because of their shape. Well, that must have been a very sad day for us to know. No, no, no. Now they believe that these little brain cells may be a key to how humans relate to one another. And whether or not other creatures can relate to us in the same way. Right. Is it possible for us to see a spindle cell?

Yeah, we can show you a spindle cell. Patrick Hough took us down the hall. Yep. Chad went first and parked him in front of a big microscope. Here, for instance, you can look at it. Will it be obvious to me looking at it? Crossing the middle of the field, you can see a series of toll slender.

Making me dizzy a little bit. So long, two, three, four, five. Is that the spindles? Yeah. Oh, they're everywhere. Yeah. Oh, you want to see them? Well, you can't want to see them, yeah.

You hold them, mate. Come on, I'm going. Oh, yeah, there's a whole troop of them, and they're long and skinny and purple. It's funny, because the normal brain cells, which you can also see in there, are like, that, that, that, that. But these ones are dooooooo,

it's like a little purple bananas. Like a team of purple bananas. And the thing that makes these cells so interesting. All seeming to head off in this direction. According to Patrick Hough, is that, you know, in the normal brain cells, they just talk to their neighbors. But these ones, because they're so long,

they seem to be yelling across a big distance. Exactly. We know that these cells send an action at some distance. So it's a hello. It's across the valley. Yeah, it's across the valley. Exactly.

It's projecting. But projecting what? And from where to where? Well, Patrick Hoff doesn't entirely know, but he says he can make a pretty good guess based on, well, if you look at the microscope, you do notice some things. Yeah, yeah. So here, here, the top of the spindle

points to all the surface of the brain. The top, he says, seems to shoot up towards those more modern parts of the brain that involve all your recognition. Yeah, language, abstract thinking, where is the bottom of the spindle seems to shoot? Down, deep down. Lower centers in the brain. Towards those older parts of our brain that involve feelings, emotions, instinct. So, perhaps this is what Patrick Off thinks that these cells are a kind of network, a

really important one that allows the different parts of our inner selves to connect. Like you've got the parts of us down here that feel things. Can now communicate with the parts of us up here that think things. This is an oversimplification, of course, but the point, the larger point, is that this is exactly what happens when you look into the eyes of another human being. Because it begins with a kind of thought, your eyes seem sad, but then that thought within you travels a great distance and connects with a feeling of sadness so that you feel sad too. I mean it's the basis of a kind of empathy of...

Exactly, exactly. I see you're happy. So that I feel good about it. And consider those times, I mean not just empathy, you're like, your thoughts and feelings are in conflict and they've got to really talk to one another. Like, for example, when you can't in front of me at the microphone yet again, and I hate you, but I know that I have to work with you, so I sit on that feeling. I just sit on my, it's going down to the bottom of my brain,

but I say, take a nap. See, that's the best part of your spindle situation is that it's not just a thought to connect to feelings, but that's thoughts can sometimes suppress feelings. Yeah, I think that's the idea is that humans in social interactions can rely on these hard-wired emotions and the same way other animals might be able to. That's Jonah Lair's science writer. You know, we can't, like a dog, just hump every other dog and see what happens. We've got a flirt and be funny,

and he, you know, buy a couple drinks. But that was, you guys have to cut that, because I don't know how to do that. I was astonished. Well, I was like, wow. We've got to use that. I just turned into a fat boy. But the point being that our social directions

are very complicated, and that we can't rely, it's much tougher for humans to rely on simply these hardwired primitive instincts. The use of the job of spindle cells is to simply broadcast content to the rest of the brain. Because without our whole brain involved, we never be able to navigate the social world and make any kind of connection. Right. So if spindle cells then allow us to talk gently and emotionally to one another, the question is, this is the question for our hour, what about intra species? Is it intra or inter? Intra? Intra? Intra can be within. Intra net? Yeah, that's inside. I think across species is what you mean. Does any other animal have spindle cells?

And as it happens... So, we are taking you to my cold room. Just down the hall from his office, Professor Hoth has a freezer. Where I stored the specimens... Very big door to the snow. Full of brains. So it's going to get really cooler here. All different kinds.

We have brains of our use species. The citations are over there. We have the great apes around whale wall. That's the whale wall, yeah. He's got dozens and dozens of brains and buckets and jars and he keeps them all organized. Well, each category of species has its own shell. You have more apes down there with gorillas in our angle tanks.

So, what they did was they took a bunch of those brains off the shelf and walked them down the halls of lab and put little pieces of them under a microscope. They didn't expect to find any of those bizarre neurons in any of these other creatures. Because he was pretty sure. This is something that is unique to human. But one day we were looking at the brain of the humback whale and we stumbled on spindle cells. Plenty of spindle cells. So what was that?

Did you, were you surprised? And I was there saying, okay, this is fascinating. You weren't expecting that. I was not at all expecting that. But on the other hand. Here we have the hum back whale, which is a very social animal. They, they, they form clans, they communicate, the males have a song. They hunt together, they develop hunting strategies,

which requires perfect coordination of many whales, so they have to act together to do that. Now if acting together is the key, you know, having complex social structures, well then these things shouldn't just be limited to whales. And in fact, over the years, half another scientist have found spindle sails in chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, gorillas, which begs the question. Like, if we want to have an experience with another creature and not just at the zoo, but a real shared experience,

do those creatures need to have these things? Do you think the existence of spin-dose those creates more of a possibility of having that cross-beatsy sharing moment? I think so. If we assume that they sell the absorption influence on the sociability of the species, it is very likely that you would experience something of that kind with the species that has them. I doubt you would get a very good experience

if you were trying to do this with a hyena. So maybe what we see when we look into, you know, the sad eyes of a blue whale or when we look into, you know, the eyes of an elephant, cradleing a baby elephant, which are just the cutest things on earth. Maybe what we recognize is that same flavor of emotion that same inner life, a feeling. Maybe, and this is a big,

maybe, maybe that inner life requires spindle cells. But how big is that maybe? It sounds like a really maybe maybe. I mean, you know, it's important that this is all just a, I think this is still very theoretical. And in fact, if you asked people, like Clive Win, the fellow who poop-poop-pood are whale, thank you from before, asked Clive, like, could you look at an animal and find something in the animal that says, yep, if he has that, he's got feeling? Well, wrong. I don't for a moment imagine that there's going to be a type of

nerve cell or a type of structure in the brain, which is going to be such an acid test of whether an animal has a particular psychological capacity that we could then find that kind of neuron and say, well now we know, without having to look at the behavior of the animal, now we know that this species has this or that psychological ability. Let me ask a question a different way. I mean, do you think spindle cells are no spindle cells? This has tossed them out for a second. Do you think there are a category of creatures that are more likely to have empathic experiences with us? Would you draw lines between beings?

Well, the thing I would emphasize if we're looking for empathy between different species is their developmental experiences. To make his point, Clive told us about this experiment. He says, let's take a chimp with all the spindle cells inside the chimp right in there, put the chimp in a room, and in front of the chimp, let's put two cups face down. Now, one of the cups has a grape,

something delicious under it, and the chimp doesn't know where the grape is, could be under cup A or cup B. So what you the experimenter do, is you simply point to the cup that has the grape. Like, that's the one, that one, right there. And all the animal has to do is to go to the cup that has the grape. Like, that's the one. That one, right there. And all the animal has to do is to go to the cup that's pointed to.

It seems simpler now. But chimps, Clive says, chimps find this stunningly difficult to understand. Get this wrong. What do you mean? I mean, they just look at you pointing and they look at you pointing and they look and you're pointing and they just go,

what? Whereas dogs who don't have spindle cells? Most pet dogs get this from the get-go. The dogs can do this and chips can't? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They quite spontaneously recognize that you should go where they point. And Clive says the explanation here

is not that dogs have some special cell in their brain. It's simply because they grow up in a household. They grow up with us. Right. To test this idea, he did the same study. The pointing one? Yep. Except this time with some wolves. Because wolves are the animals from which dogs are descended, but they haven't lived in human households, obviously. And normally, like the chimps, wolves totally screw up the pointing test. But we've done some tests on some wolves that were hand-reared by human beings and are very friendly to human beings, and we find that those wolves behave just like the dogs,

that they are just as good at following the human pointing to find the food. Really? Did you have to train them or? No, we did not train them. They just picked it up? Well, they just picked it up. But these are exceptional wolves in so far as they were read by human beings They were bottle fed when they were wee babies

Because there are things that go on earlier in our development that are crucial and that include learning who are your Who are your kind? What do who am I? What am I and you learn that in a critical period in your early life by looking around you and seeing who you're interacting with. Pretty much every dog you might meet has learned to accept humans as social companions, and that's because it was read in a human home, and because evolution has prepared it with a relatively slow development so that it's pretty easy to tame a dog. The wolf on the other hand, it goes through its childhood and adolescence, in the blink of an eye, in the course of just a handfuler dog. The wolf on the other hand, it goes through its childhood and adolescence

in the blink of an eye and the course of just a handful of weeks. And so it's actually extremely difficult to successfully hand rear a wolf because you have so little time available to you and you have to invest 24 hours a day, seven days a week during that brief period that a wolf is open to the possibility of learning who its companions might be. That's really interesting. That's so interesting. I'm now sitting here thinking, boy, if I could raise a whale with a baby bottle, then I

would know whether the whale was saying thank you to me because I would have learned, it's not like I have to learn, but whale would have learned human. Well, that's right. I mean, of course, this is completely hypothetical. The whales are really bad examples to choose. But my guess would be if you bottle-faird a whale, you would get a whale that might plausibly do something like a behavior that expresses things. That is such a hard mental image to conjure. Well, that's right. That's right.

Not a bottle feeding a whale. Yeah, well, because we have to keep rising to the surface for 21 years to breathe before I actually get to the experiment. Yes, there are a number of drawbacks to that. Radio lab will continue in a moment. Hey, I'm Chad Abel-Mrod. I'm Robert Kroich. Radio lab today.

Ah. Kind of a hard topic to describe. We're calling it animal minds. Or maybe the better way to say this is, minds other than our own. Which would be the animals, no? That's the animals. We're animals though.

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, so we live with, yeah. So we live with, yeah, we're having enough trouble just talking to each other. But imagine if you were a Labrador. That'd be tough. See, then we'd have a problem or a way. No, maybe we wouldn't. That's kind of what we're having enough trouble just talking to each other. But imagine if you were a Labrador. That'd be tough. See, then we'd have a problem or a whale. No, maybe we wouldn't.

That's kind of what we're looking at. How much can you really share with a Labrador or a whale? Right. And we're not solving this problem in this show at all. No. But we can do this. Maybe instead of talking to scientists about other minds, maybe we should talk to a writer.

Yeah. Paul, can you hear me? Paul, can you hear? Paul, oh, Paul. Paul, Paul? The writer we chose to look for, you may now know, was named Paul. Okay, stand by.

Paul Theroux. He's the author of any number of travel books, novels. Didn't he win a big prize? I'm sure. Yes. Is that Chad? Yes, hi. JD.

That's me. Like a Pulitzer, one of the big ones. Okay. No, I didn Chad? Yes, hi. JAD. That's me. Like a Pulitzer, one of the big ones. Okay, no, you didn't win a Pulitzer, but he won prize of my heart when he wrote the Patagonia Express. Also, you're taping, okay, good. Yes, anyhow. Paul Theroux travels all around the world

writing about all kinds of things, but the reason we called him is for something that actually happened in his backyard, which luckily for him happens to be in the state of Hawaii. I own seven acres on a slope, a west facing slope on the north shore of Oahu, and I had very, very long grass. And someone said, oh, I know what you need, some geese. They'll take care of that grass.

So I got a couple. And you decided not to go to the hardware store and buy a lawn mower. You decided to buy two animate birds. That's right. I would have need some really really serious industrial Moa instead. I got two non-industrial geese I actually got three two gandas and a goose and a strange thing happened one of the gandas imprinted on me One of the gandas imprinted on me. So what does that mean? So it means that the baby chick boy looked at you

and the first moving thing they see is the mother figure. This goose became very attached, very protective. It would sit my lap when another goose came up, it would peck at them. Anyway, it was both protective and attentive. But as the gander grew up, strange things began to happen. First, it became detached from me, then aggressive toward me, and then needed me. It was very strange, and it made me think I want to get some more geese, and I to read more about them and then and then watch them so he

Well, he asked friends and friends and then look if you want to know everything that's important to know about geese you have to read E.B. White most people mention E.B. White when they talk about geese and of course I know and love E.B. White and if you're not a Martian you probably love E.B. White And if you're not a Martian, you probably love EBY-2. But, I mean, what do you mean? And people, it's possible for people to not be able to. How many people read Stuart Little or how many people read Charlotte's web? And if you don't love the children's fiction, he's certainly one of the greatest of all American SAS.

Yes, see, that's the point. He's one of the great American writers. He actually wrote the Bible for a right. The Elements of style. The Elements of style. Which is still the Bible for writing weirdly, and it was written like 50 years ago. So when people point to anything by B. White,

you point seriously. And in this case, very late in life, after he moved up to a cabinet in Maine, he was in his 70s, and this particular essay we're going to talk about is called very simply. The Geese. The Geese, Alan K coge July 9th 1971

I have had a pair of elderly grey geese goose and a gander living on this place for a number of years and they have been my friend so Paul threw open the essay. Early in the spring. Fully expecting to learn all about keys. But then he kept running across these little phrases and adjectives that made him cringe. You know, he talks about a gauzeling that grows into, I'm quoting now, a real dandy.

Full of pompous thoughts and surly gestures. pompous thoughts and surly gestures. You know, you know. But come on, I mean, doesn't that make the goose a little bit more um, easy to relate to? All right, take one word, Malice. I could now tell whether the looking his eye was one of Malice or affection.

Malice, Malice is a word you use for, you know, Mussolini or, you know, somebody else, not for a ghost. But what's the sin in that if a man who's a professional storyteller in one of the greatest ones says, let me tell you about my geese and then talks about them as though they were uncles and aunts and neighbors with moods that are distinctly human. So what? Well, I suppose you could say so.

You could say, so what if he put them in, you know, little Halloween costumes too, for that matter, so what? But I'm in the writing business. The writing business should be unsparing. He could be quite unsparing himself in his writing. You're giving E.V. White too much license if you're saying it really doesn't matter. It does matter to me. And the reason it matters, as Paul Thoreau,

is that E.B. White got so attached to the idea of those geese as aging critters like himself. That he missed something deep and important about the Geese? The elements of that behavior that is pure Goose all pointed to the end of the essay. Suddenly I heard sounds of a rumble outside in the Bonyard where the gander's were. Where a formerly great gander gets unseated by a younger male goose as a big fight lets us squawking, and the old gander loses. I watched as he threaded his way slowly down the narrow path between clumps of fissils and daisies.

His head was barely visible above the grasses, but his broken spirit was plain to any eye. I felt very deeply his sorrow and his defeat. Well, the defeated Ganda goes off. Well, this isn't true at all. When Ganda loses a battle, he goes off, gets his strength back, and waits for a chance to attack again. That Ganda is going to come back and fight again. So you say that he got it wrong? Of course. Of course. Here is a man who is solitary. He's a New Yorker who goes to Maine and becomes a gentleman farmer of a kind and begins to relate to his geese and then writes about them as though he's one of them. I know I'm not one of them. But if you can't use words that are very human and psychological words, and if you can't

because you're not a goose, have whatever it is that geese have on their insides, then what if you wanted to share something with a goose? I bet you you do. Is there any way in which you could honestly describe yourself as a friend of any of these geese? I would say, you know, this is a very good question. I had a very surly to use an eb white word, a very, a very, um, Ram Bunches, Ganda, and he got very sick. You know, the thing is sitting on the ground, just fouling its nest. I thought he was really going to die.

And I nursed him back to health. I gave him, uh, uh, antibiotic with a turkey based, uh, and it took about three or four weeks. And the first thing he did when he was nurse back to health, he was, he got up on two legs, and I came up with a turkey based to give him one last drink, and he bit me. And I thought, where did he lay you? He bit my leg. Hard. And I thought, okay, he's back to health. You didn't think, how, how could you? Well, I thought he's healthy again, and he's behaving just as a goose. But don't you see though that if the moment of true,

of your true most goosey moment, is the moment when you're with the goose that you help bite you, then you are out of this story in effect. I absolutely agree with that. In all of this this there's an implied loneliness. I'm not his friend, I'm not a feathered creature, I'm a human being among birds. Although curiously Paul Therau does have an approach to communing with his geese, he

takes a chair, puts it on the lawn, plops down in the chair, and disappears. You know, my writing day ends in the early afternoon, I have lunch, and after lunch, there's a long, sunny period in the afternoon when I'm alone I'm with the geese and I sit around with them and try to make out What they're doing among each other and paying no particular attention to me? It's simply watching the world as it was you're seeing creatures who are behaving as though cities don't exist presidents don't exist governments don't exist roads don't exist, presidents don't exist, governments don't exist, roads don't exist, as if it's before the fall, was though it's the peaceable kingdom.

Simply watching animals who are content doing their thing, then you feel a bit like Adam. Radio Lab is produced by Chad Abelmrad and Thorin Wheeler, Michael Raphael, Ellen Horn, and Lulu Miller with help from Adin Ariane and Kim Howard. Special thanks to Brianna Brin and Kelly Comedy. The politics for picturing any name. Wait a second. Stop, stop the machine. It just feels weird to end the show this way with this lonely geese thing. So we're going to play for you one final story.

It's kind of a continuation of Paul Threw and his geese, except it involves a very different guy, and a very different climate. First of all, who are you? What's your name? My name is Paul Nicklin, an anime contributing photographer to National Geographic magazine. Paul Nicklin is basically National Geographic's Arctic Guy. It's, I've been pegged as their polar specialist. And this particular tale involves his attempt to photograph one of the great Arctic predators.

The leopard seal. Leopard seal, which by reputation is a very nasty creature. Preface to this story is, in 2003, tragically, a scientist was actually killed. Kirstie Brown was doing underwater research, and she was taken down by a leopard seal in drown. Was she just yanked off the ice, or? She was swimming and it just came up and grabbed her and took her down to 300 feet. On the list, our story starts with Paul

and his guide, Go-Dan, they're in a boat in the Arctic Ocean, looking for seals. The first seal we encountered, I'd never seen a leopard seal before, and we came around into this bay where there was a penguin colony and Right away go on who's seen many many leopard seals He said to me, you know bloody hell that's the biggest seal I've ever seen and she came up to the boat with a penguin in her mouth

She went underneath the boat and she started ramming the penguin underneath the hole of the boat lifting the bow out of the water And that's when good on looks to me and he says Paul it's time for you to get to the water, yeah. And his thick, Swedish accent. Wow, were you freaking out? I had dry mouth, just from the nervousness. I was trembling and I put my mask on and slipped over the 29 degree Fahrenheit water. And there she was instantly right there.

Mass of huge. Well, how huge? Probably over a thousand pounds. Oh my god, 12 feet long. She dropped her penguin, she came right over to me and she opened her per mouth. And she engulfed the front of the camera. Her canines were up on top of my head to her below my chin and I'm basically staring down her throat. I can't believe you managed to take a picture of this because I'm looking at this picture and these teeth are huge. The canines.

You look massive. So you were doing business at this moment? Yeah, I'm working at that point. You can even see the texture of the seals' tongues. Like, she has these little fibers on it. Oh, it's 180 degree view. So you had to get that perspective. I'm basically in the mouth to get that shot.

Wow. So then what happened? She backs off. Looks at me. Sn sniffed my flippers, touched on with her nose, poked me in the bum, came up, did this open mouth threat display again. And then she swims away. Wow.

Just I was just getting ready to swim back to the zodiac. I've been in the water for quite a while and I'm cold. And all of a sudden, she shows up with a freshly caught life penguin chicken her mouth. And I'm sitting there staring at her and she stops about 10 feet away from me. And she's got the penguin by the feet

and the penguin's flapping. It's flippers trying to get away. She lines the penguin up to face perfectly in my direction and she lets it go. The penguin swam right by me and she chases off after it and grabs it, comes back and does it again and again and again. Why?

Yeah, I mean, what was she doing? At first I couldn't figure out what was going on. I thought maybe she was having a hard time eating it. And then at dawn, Tommy, she was trying to feed me. Did you make any attempt during this period to say, no, thank you? No. No, I'm so, and such disbelief at this point, I'm just trying to capture it. Did you make any attempt during this period to say, no, thank you? No. No. I'm so, and such disbelief at this point,

I'm just trying to capture it. Well, didn't you feel compelled as a social human to just offer some kind of gestural explanation? I mean, with me, I would have made some look like, come, I read that stuff, or... Or maybe it's like you take the penguin at that point. Well, I mean, I couldn't touch the penguin swimming 15 miles an hour, you know?

Oh, so you mean when she lets go, it just goes, fum! Like a bullet. No, he's pathetic, is what he's saying. I'm a pathetic creature, I can't actually catch the thing. I'm thinking exposures get the shot, keep shooting. You're such a photo dude, you know? Well, I work for Nash too.

I don't want to anthropomorphize too much, but as the penguin was swimming by, it's huge seal. She looked over at me and I swear she had a look of disgust in her face. So she goes off and gets another penguin. And this penguin now is quite weak and tired looking. So I think she's worn it down.

She lets the penguin go, penguin takes off. She grabs it, does that a couple more times. And you still not eat the penguin. Right, next encounter was bringing me dead penguins. And sometimes she would just drop off a dead penguin right on top of the camera, and she would just sit there in with this dejected look on her face, staring at me. And then she went to the stage of flipping dead penguins

on top of my head and trying to force feed me these penguins. Telling me at this point, you know, eat these damn penguins. I'm trying to feed you. Why won't you eat my penguins? Eat the penguins. And she would start to eat the penguins right in front of me and show me how to eat them. She would rip them apart on the surface, get the skin off them, and she's shredding them in the water in front of me. And how much time is passing here? I mean, we're talking minutes, hours? This went on for four days. Four days. And when you're in the water, day after day,

what's happening for you at this point? Are you still just a guy with a camera or? I mean, I was starting to fall in love with the seal. It's just this animal that's just so intelligent, and so powerful, and it could kill you in an instant. Yet you're, I mean, but when you say you're in love, what you would love with the idea of this, or did you really like her?

I really liked her. She was beautiful. She was big. She had this beautiful face, beautiful silver color to her. She kind of glowed underwater. I'm just so in love with this seal at this point. I'm not sleeping at night. I have a hard time eating. I just can't wait to see or I can't. The first thing in the morning, you know, the first sign of light, I'm in that zodiac. And then on the fourth day is when, you know, I was thinking, okay, maybe she's weary of me and she's getting tired of me. So I'm just going to totally leave her alone. That's when I started going off and presenting myself to other seals who were swimming around the Rookery. And I was in the water and the same big female came up to me and she started to do all these really beautiful belly-like moves. I'm photographing her and looking at her and also she drops

her pang when she turns upside down and she does this big guttural, this big jarring noise is vibrating my whole body, I can really feel it in my chest. It's so loud. And I'm thinking, am I being attacked? She finally told me that she sick of me and wants me off her feeding grounds. But as soon as she did that, another leopard seal shot out from right behind me. And so this leopard seal had stuck in behind me. And she did that noise to chase that seal away, a smaller seal.

She chased a seal away, it too had a penguin. She grabbed its penguin and brought me that seals penguin and dropped it off in front of me. Oh! You're a lucky guy. I mean, almost getting emotional reliving that. I mean, it's very powerful. Have you ever been in love with an animal in quite this way before? Never, never.

Have you ever had an experience with another human that rivals this? Perhaps when I was a kid with my mom, someone taking care of you and feeling safe and nurtured and protected, but I've never had that in my life as an adult. It sounds this is such an interesting species moment here. I mean, it sounds like you're doing something, you're transgressing or something. It sounds like you're stealing something from the gods right here right at this moment. I mean I don't know what words I can find to explain it. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Radio Love was created by Jada Broomrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler.

Lulu Miller and La Tifnair are her co-hosts. Susie Leftonberg is our executive producer and Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Qsick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sndunion Assambandum, Matt Kilti, Annie McEwen, Alex Niesin, Sara Kari, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Tongue Chabla, Shima Oliai, and Sarah Saunbach. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shibil. This is Michael Burles from Portland, Oregon. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

the dancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. This Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.