Radiolab - G: The World's Smartest Animal

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

This episode begins with a rant. This rant, in particular, comes from Dan Engber - a science writer who loves animals but despises animal intelligence research. Dan told us that so much of the way we study animals involves tests that we think show a human is smart ... not the animals we intend to study. Dan’s rant got us thinking: What is the smartest animal in the world? And if we threw out our human intelligence rubric, is there a fair way to figure it out?Obviously, there is. And it’s a live game show, judged by Jad, Robert … and a dog.The last episode of G, our series on intelligence, was recorded as a live show back in May 2019 at the Greene Space in New York City and now we’re sharing that game show with you, again. Two science writers, Dan Engber and Laurel Braitman, and two comedians, Tracy Clayton and Jordan Mendoza, compete against one another to find the world’s smartest animal. They treated us to a series of funny, delightful stories about unexpectedly smart animals and helped us shift the way we think about intelligence across all the animals - including us.Special thanks to Bill Berloni and Macy (the dog) and everyone at The Greene Space.EPISODE CITATIONS:Podcasts:If you want to listen to more of the RADIOLAB G SERIES, CLICK HERE (https://radiolab.org/series/radiolab-presents-g). Videos:Check out the video of our live event here! (https://fb.watch/qczu3n1ooA/) Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, I'm Lutthip Nasser. Now if you asked me before I listened to the Radiolab Rewind from 2019 that you were about to hear, to name the smartest animal on planet earth besides us, it'd be a pretty short list. And everything on it would be pretty obvious, like chimpanzee, dolphin, maybe octopus, dog's cats, pigs, all feel pretty smart. I think that would be the whole list. And I would be dead wrong. I'm not going to spoil what other unlikely creatures show up in this episode, but I will say that what you are about to hear will make you strain your brain trying to imagine your way into other animals, umvelt, which is a fancy

term for what they perceive and how they understand the world. And once you do that work of trying to de-center your own human self and imagine the world from an animal perspective, it takes you to some extraordinarily beautiful places. Okay, so here it is, the world's smartest animal from Radio Lab's G-Series. Wait, wait, you're listening. Okay. All right.

Okay. All right. Okay. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From... WNYC. Hey, this is Pat Walters coming at you today with the final episode of our Radio Lab mini-series on intelligence, G. And so for this last episode, we wanted to shift the mood

a little bit. Because as we're putting this series together, we did lots of stories on human intelligence, but we also found ourselves thinking about intelligence in other animals. And so to get into that, we decided to host an event all about animal intelligence. And today we're going to share that event with you. Just a quick warning, there are some curse words in the show, so bear that in mind. So, and the reason that we're doing this is because a couple of months ago, I ended up on the phone with a science writer

I really love named Dan Engber. And Dan went on a rant about how messed up it is that we only seem able to talk about animal intelligence in terms of our own intelligence. He said, so much of animal intelligence research is built on making animals do stuff that we feel like humans would be good at doing, instead of considering their intelligence on their own terms.

And so tonight, we decided we would do an episode about animal intelligence that shifts the focus from us to them, that considers their unique abilities on their own terms. And in doing so, hopefully, might help us redefine a little bit what we think about intelligence in general for all of us. And because we're humans and we like contests, we decided to make it a competition. So here's how to work. We have four contestants who will engage in a series of head-to-head bouts

to convince a panel of judges that their animal is the smartest. I'm going to bring up our first pair of contestants in a moment, but first, let's meet our judges. Oh, real music. Nice. Okay. But first, let's meet our judges. Oh, real music, nice, okay. So first, please welcome. These two guys have done hundreds of stories about all kinds of smart animals. Please welcome the co-host of Radio Lab,

Jad Abramrod and Robert Kralich. Kind of had to use the guys, the obvious choices, but we also invited one more surprise judge. The real star of our judging panel, from humble beginnings in a shelter in Oklahoma City, she's risen to the highest levels of success in show business in New York. Her television credits include high maintenance

and the leftovers, and she has appeared in more productions of the Broadway play Annie in the role of Sandy than any other actor. Like any great star, she goes by only one name, please welcome Macy. Macy is a dog. It's about 35 pounds, has that scruffy brown fur. She tried it right on the stage and that hopped onto a chair next to Chad Robert Okay, so before we start I just want to ask the judges here one question to kind of set the terms and make sure we all know

What we're looking for I I want you guys to just define Intelligence in you know two or three sentences. How would you define what you're looking for in the contestants stories tonight? Robert, why don't you start? what you're looking for in the contestants' stories tonight. Robert, why don't you start? Animal intelligence. Animal intelligence. Well, I would say that a very smart animal should be asked, how well do you understand your world,

knowing that some are sniffers and some are tasters and some are good flyers and so on. But really, when you see a fox on a snowy day jump into a pound of snow and somehow land right on the little mouse that's two feet down, I think that's a smart, smart animal. Jen? I think what I'm gonna pay attention to

are arguments on behalf of creatures where you see the creatures encounter some kind of obstacle and then problems solve their way around it. So creatures like are flexible, can adapt very quickly, and I'm gonna give a special nod I think to creatures that show collective intelligence or like moral intelligence if that's even a thing. So that's what I'm gonna be paying attention to. Okay, good. Macy, what do you think,

how would you define intelligence, Macy? She's just repeating jab, really. Okay. So once we had our judges set, we brought our contestants onto the stage. And the way it worked is they each had four minutes to make the case for why they thought their animal was the smartest of them all. And at the end of each round, the judges would vote, and we'd bring out the next two contestants. Y'all ready to meet our contestants?

Okay, so first up we have Tracy Clayton and Jordan Mendoza. Tracy Clayton hosts the hit podcast Another Round and more recently the podcast Strong Black Legends. And Jordan Mendoza is a comedian, a writer for Comedy Central and hosts a live science and comedy show in Brooklyn called Drunk Science. Okay, so Tracy, what animal did you bring for this first entry? The smartest animal in the world, hands down, is the crow. Boo! Wow!

Okay, okay, so the crow? I was just kidding, I don't really, they're fine. No, he meant that, this is war now, this is a fight. We're fighting, we're fighting. Jordan, what's your entry for this round? A slime mold. So first round, crow versus slime mold. We're gonna start with Tracy, ready?

Okay. Go. So, if you don't know how amazing crows are, it's not your fault, it's because the media's racist and they told you how to feel about crows. For example, the most famous crows in the world are these. Here you got the dumbs, the crows from Dumbo. They're dressed like street pimps. Five crows wearing brightly colored hats,

one of them smoking a cigar. No jobs, shiflus, lazy, black coincidence, I'm sure. And then here, this is Jim Crow. If you don't know that Google, you gotta do a Google. Oh. We don't have enough time. So, here's why Crows are the best and the smartest. Number one, they are extremely resourceful.

Have you all heard of this dude named Aesop? He wrote some fables. One of them was about a crow who had to get like a treat or something out of like a pitcher or something. And so what he did was he dropped stones into the pitcher so the water level would raise. Got what he wanted. Guess what?

Crows really do that for real in real life. Then Tracy showed a video of a crow and a half empty glass of water and the crow kept adding stones into the glass until the water was at the rim and the crow could get a treat. Most of my exes cannot do this. Crows can solve problems, puzzles with as many as eight steps. Definitely none of my ex could do that. Point number dose. Crows can be taught to talk.

Right? The surprise gasps. To talk what? To talk. Crow or to talk? To say human English words or human words, human languages. Crows are songbirds, y'all, solo ravens, but you don't know that because they're not parrots,

they're not brightly colored. They're black, again, racist, just because they don't sing the same way the parrots do, you know, it's not, it doesn't count. But their vocalization skills are really, really, really good. When you get a chance, Google, talk in crow. And you'll find some videos. I think we have one.

Hello. Uh-huh. Hello. Uh-huh. Oh my God. There it is. Yup. Yup.

Exactly. That's a real crow video? Yes. That's an actual crow. Crowles can talk as can ravens. Point number three, B, exactly. That's a real crow video? Yes, that's an actual crow. Crows can talk as can ravens. Point number three, B, C, point number C. Crows have funerals, right? But they have funerals for good reasons.

Not that humans don't have funerals for good reasons. But humans have funerals to make ourselves feel better. Like, oh my god, I miss Big Mama so much. I just need to see her one more time before she goes on to the whatever in the sky. Crows, also we still have wakes where we literally sit around and look at a dead body and wait for it to wake up even though we know it's not going to evolve out of that.

Please, it's not time. Here's why crows have funerals, right? So Rashid dies. Bless Rashid, he's just plop. Rashid is the crow. Rashad is the crow. So the crows are like, oh, can I, what is, what is the curse word thing? You can say what I said. Oh, shit, man. Rashad. What the fuck, bro? What happened? And so all the crows like congregate around Rashad to see what killed him. So they can be like,

we need to stay away from whatever Rashad was doing because looking for Rashad now, you know? Point number four is that they can recognize faces for up to five years and they hold grudges. So if you walk past the- It's actually two and a half years. They just like, nah, don't fuck with this one over here. They tell all their friends,

the next time you come around, the crows are gonna just, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa the crows are gonna go this motherfucker back don't trust him it's amazing so in conclusion crows should not be called a murder they should be called something smarter like a symposium of crows all right a really good job that was great what a supportive enemy. I hate the support. I'm going to look like an adult. I think we're all winners here.

Okay, Jordan Mendoza wins the title. Next up was Jordan Mendoza with the slime mold. He put up a slide of a Petri dish with this like yellow lightning bolty streak going across it. Okay, you're probably wondering what is this. But guys, don't worry. I friggin' looked it up. A slime mold is a brainless, single-celled, pulsating wad of yellow goo.

I learned if you put a slime mold in an environment where there is a complex decision to make, for instance, which direction to choose to find a good food source, this superorganism can solve that problem relatively easily by spreading its cytoplasm out, advancing and retreating in response to what it finds. So this is a superorganism composed of thousands of nuclei, and they will collectively decide to make a decision for the group.

Humans, on the other hand, are not at all good at collectively finding a good food source. Have you ever tried to order seamless with another person? Not easy. What are we going to do? Pizza, Korean, Chinese, sushi. My roommate and I always end up choosing diarrhea. There are three general types of slime mold.

Plasmodial slime molds, cellular slime molds, and Gary Busey. Jordan put up a picture of Gary Busey if you don't know what he looks like. Google him. For those who don't know, the joke here is that Gary Busey looks and is like a slime mold. Plasmodial slime molds are masses of thousands of nuclei that move around by spreading out in a fractal pattern, learning the lay of the land and even solving mazes and mapping networks with incredible efficiency. How efficient?

It took human engineers years to map out a Tokyo rail system. It took a slime mold just hours. I read that in an article titled Watch This Slime Mold Dunk On Japanese Engineers. I'm just kidding. I made that article title up. No one wrote that. The second type is a cellular slime mold and this spends most of his life as a single free-wheeling amoeba, which sounds like a sitcom that just got greenlit on Fox. This quirky free-wheeling amoeba just got the consulting job of her dreams. But can she balance love, work, and New York City? Check out all the single-celled ladies starring Zoe Deschanel as the slime mold.

Then Jordan went on to explain how slime molds look out for each other in this amazing way. When one amoeba runs out of food, something incredible happens. It starts emitting chemical pulses, assembling clusters of other amoeba into a larger superorganism. This is a process called chemotaxis, or if it's trying to save money, chemo-uberpool. This superorganism then releases spores to find more food and then dies. Hemo taxes shows that slime molds are altruistic beings. They'll sacrifice

themselves for the benefit of the species. I on the other hand will never die for the benefit of others. I won't even give my subway seat up to an elderly pregnant woman who's carrying a piece of furniture. Finally the last category of slime mold is Gary Busey, an Oscar-nominated American actor who has appeared in over 150 films, including Lethal Weapon, The Firm, and Piranha 3DD. In conclusion, slime molds are very smart.

Please vote for me because I'm Asian. And if you don't vote for me, that's racist. I did not know we could do that for the record. I had no idea. Wow. Give it up for Jordy Mendoza in the slime world. Thank you. Okay.

All right. Judges, we'll do a couple minutes here. Deliberating, asking questions. What are your reactions to these two? Wow. Well, I respect that. I'm all. A scale like that, something so small, multiplied so many times, could come to complicated and

sophisticated conclusions is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Each individual. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's pretty cool. I don't know. Pretty cool. I don't know. Pretty cool.

But also, I was leaning in that direction, but just to sort of give the crow a fair shake. If a crow can see a person and then remember it and disseminate the reputation. Again, two and a half years? Well, that's some kind of crow language or something. Yeah. Wow. Very impressive. Macy, you have a crow feeling one way or the other? She does.

Crow? Crow? Yeah. Well, she's saying that she's not sure that she knows that many molds. Oklahoma City is a sort of dry town and they don't have a forest there. So she feels a little bit unequal to the challenge here. Well, with the unfamiliar... Oh well, she did study them once. Do you speak dog, Robert? I understand that I can't speak it.

I understand that I can't speak it. I see. I see. But she is parcel to Gary Busey, which has confused her. Well, let's vote. Why don't we go down the line? Jad, what do you choose? Gosh, I think just on... I think I'm gonna have to go with the slime mold.

Oh, wow. After giving it up for crows. Okay, to go with the slime mold. Oh wow, after giving it up for Crows. Okay, so, Jad's slime mold, Robert? I'm gonna, with great respect for Crows that hate well, I agree, but I'm gonna go with the slime mold as well. Okay, sister slime mold. And Macy. Macy. Sound like Crow to me. Oh my God. What do we have for Macy. All right. Macy. Sound like Carl to me.

Oh my God. What do we have for Macy? Crow. Crow. So surprising. All right. So surprising from an animal. Despite her love of Gary Busey,

she voted for Crow. So the judges voted in favor of the slime mold, and after that we brought up our next set of contestants to defend a whole new pair of animals. Okay, let's get our next contestants up here. Laurel Breitman and Dan Engberg, give it up everybody. Dan Engberg is a writer for Slate and the New York Times Magazine, and Laurel Breitman is the author

of the best-selling book, Animal Madness, and a teacher at Stanford. Laurel, what animal are you entering into the mix? Sperm whales. Sperm whales. Sperm whales. Okay, Laurel, what animal are you entering into the mix? Sperm whales. Sperm whales. Okay, good. And Dan, what will you be bringing to the table? The chicken.

The chicken. Okay. Zero content. Oh, that's a bull move. I'm so interested in how this is going to play out. I can't really find any quite numbers. Okay, we'll start with Laurel. Take it away.

Sperm whales are huge, the biggest tooth whales. But in a lot of ways, they're like us. They have big brains and really complex social lives. But unlike us, they live in a matriarchal culture. They probably even have stronger social and emotional bonds than we do. Young males go off on their own to find a new pod and then everyone else stays together for the life. Sperm whales communicate a lot like us too, physically and with language.

But they also have a third way and I think we should consider it like a sixth sense. Maybe you think about echolocation like boat sonar, like a ping goes out and then it bounces or the sound bounces off a thing in their environment and then it comes back and gives that boat like a grainy shape of whatever that object is. And dolphin and whale sonar does this too and so do bats, but animal sonar also comes back as a physical feeling. In the case of sperm whales, it's really loud too. They make the loudest sounds of any animal on Earth, up to 230 decibels.

I know. It's louder than standing next to a jet engine at takeoff. Our eardrums can rupture at 150 decibels, which is basically like a gun going off next to your head. Sperm whales make these click, creaking and buzzing sounds in their nasal passages. And then they amplify and direct them with this big, fatty, waxy organ in their foreheads called the melon. And it's like I know it's terrible word they probably have another word for it that's better but it's like a huge

built-in megaphone in their head it's just like that, but way louder. Like crazy loud, so loud that it would hurt us to be listening to it. And this echolocation is so powerful that they can track a squid up to a mile away. And their social messages probably travel just as far. So knowing what we know of their really complex social lives, their sixth sense likely comes with its own emotional experiences too. But we can't name those because we don't know what those feelings are like. So I want you to try to imagine it though. What would it be like to be like

reading a book while suddenly finding out just by it, that your ex-girlfriend is coming around the corner of an underwater shelf a half a mile away. Now she broke up with you, made your own culture, you've been so lonely, but now you know the signal is meant for you just because of how it feels when you pick it up. And not only that, but you have an immediate, accurate picture of exactly what she looks like, not just the shape of her, but the perfect curve of her jaw, her sexy 12-inch layer of blubber that you've missed so much. But also, you can also immediately tell how much she cares about you, too, and that's why she's coming back.

Also, you've been hunting a giant squid this whole time. So sperm whales might have a particular emotion that goes along with experiences like these and they maybe even have a different sense of self. In the mid 1980s a neuropsychologist named Harry Jarison proposed that echolocated communications that are emotional in nature, so like grief or joy, might be experienced by whales and dolphins as more than shared information, they actually might come in as shared feelings,

shared emotional experiences. Jarrison thought that this might give rise to something called the communal self, meaning that whales and dolphins might not say, I, they might always be a we. We are sad, we are sick. And there's some evidence for this. So like in whale strandings, for example,

when a bunch of whales will come up to the shore and strand themselves and die. But when we actually do studies on the whales, we find out that maybe only one or two in a hundred was actually sick. Something is going on here. And or two in 100 was actually sick. Something is going on here and I think it may be we sick. So I don't want to end on that super sad note guys.

It also might be why whales and I'm going to lose just because it's sad. Okay, I'm going to tell you one really nice thing and then we're going to turn it over to the mystery animal over here. It also might be why dolphins in whales, there's so many reports of them coming to the aid of swimmers who are struggling, or fending off sharks from somebody who really needs protection or help, or even doing things like this,

which I love. This is a case of sperm whales who adopted a deformed dolphin. So a dolphin with a spinal abnormality who they welcomed into their pod. So sperm whales, man. What looks like extreme empathy to us might just them be being themselves, or maybe it's a new kind of intelligence, one that

requires a kind of communal feeling as opposed to thoughts about other people's feelings. So, thank you. Alright, then. Firmwell. Great job. Okay. Well done.

Very good. Alright. Next up, Dan Engber. Chickens. With the chickens. Let me start with this. Good. All right. Next up, Dan Engber. Chickens. With the chickens.

Let me start with this. A chicken can beat a human in tic-tac-toe. A chicken almost always beats a human in tic-tac-toe. I learned this fact in high school when my friend Rob got obsessed with one particular tic-tac-toe playing chicken named Willie who lived at the video arcade at Mott Street. And Willie beat Rob over and over and over again at tic-tac-toe. Willie wasn't unique, birds like him were once a pretty common carnival attraction. Their popularity peaked in the early 80s when trained chickens were shipped around the

country, rented out for $200 a day, or sold for several thousand dollars each. And these chickens were so good at tic-tac-toe that humans were getting demoralized. At least one distributor started having the birds lose on purpose every fifth game to make it seem more fair. Now, it turned out this whole thing had started years earlier

in the South at a place called the IQ Zoo in Hot Springs, Arkansas. There, a pair of scientists, Marion and Keller Breeland, had built a business out of training up strange animal behaviors. Their zoo was like a product showroom, a place to demo the ducks they taught to play piano, or rabbits that

drove around in little fire trucks, or hamsters on trapeze. But the Breelins... You don't have to be that smart to go on trapeze. The Breelins' most popular and enduring act was the bird brain, a chicken in a box which disappeared behind a screen to peck O's onto a game board. Chinatown Willie was one of those or maybe someone else's knockoff. In any case, I watched that chicken play a lot of tic-tac-toe. Peering over Rob's shoulder, I tried to figure out the chicken's secret strategy. But then, last

week, really last week, I discovered that all those observations were for naught. As I got ready for tonight's talk, I stumbled across a copy of an old instruction manual, which the Breelins would send out with their bird-brain units. And according to that manual, the chicken in the box wasn't really playing tic-tac-toe at all. In fact, behind the screen, there was nothing but a single light bulb and a switch. When the light went on, the chicken pecked, and an O appeared somewhere on the board in the spot chosen by computer.

I found this kind of devastating. Partly because I promised Pat a talk on the intelligence of chickens. But here's the reality. Chickens are kind of dumb. As we've seen, they're even dumb compared to other birds. They don't have funerals. You know, they're not or make tools like crows. They don't learn to speak like parrots. In fact, if a chicken has any special talent at all, it's that when you chop off its head, it can go on acting like a chicken for days or weeks

or even months. But still, I think there's something amazing about Willie and the other bird brains. It's not that these chickens were smart enough to beat us at tic-tac-toe because they weren't. It's that we humans were dumb enough to beat us at Tic Tac Toe because they weren't. It's that we humans were dumb enough to lose. I mean, Tic Tac Toe is not a complicated game, actually. If you can think ahead just a bit,

you ought to be able to play any round of Tic Tac Toe to a draw even against a computer. And yet it seems we humans can't or won't succeed even at this very modest test of our intelligence. And I think that's useful to remember, especially tonight, because this whole project to rank species according to their smarts takes it as a given that a gulf exists between the very dumbest

and the very smartest animals, that the chicken and the chimpanzee or the sperm whale or the crow live on separate continents of cognition. But I call that vanity. That's what Willie taught us, that there we were standing in the same arcade, befuddled by the same computer, each unable to succeed at the same simple game. We were joined together across several hundred million years of evolution by what we couldn't do Judges a vote for chicken is a vote for finding that common ground It's a vote for unity and kinship a vote for chickens is a vote for all of us

A vote for chickens is a vote for all of us. Thank you. Dan Ingmur with the chicken. Okay. Wow. This is so... Yeah. This is dumb together. Dumb together or heartfelt together.

Yeah. Continuum. Wow. Why? I don't even know. Which way are you leaning? Well, I did. I did. I did. I did. I did. Dumb together or heartfelt together? Yeah. Continuum, wow.

Why, I don't even know, what are you, which way are you leaning? Well, I did not know that stuff about the sperm whales at all. I actually played on Mott Street with the Chinatown chicken in the 1980s, so I probably should not and lost. But, of course.

So, I don't know whether the other judge is awake. At this point, Macy had curled up into a ball, kind of taking a backseat on judging. This is like the Merrill Street purification. I mean, if we were better humans, we would have the kind of antenna and radar that a great actress would have, where you can just somehow kind of antenna and radar that a great actress would have where you can just somehow project and return you go to a movie like with her and you go you know every move she makes like touches you oh I can't I can't I am enthralled by this what you saying doesn't like Street What's she saying? It doesn't like Streep.

I don't know. Oh, because she's a Broadway star herself. Oh. Oh. What about? She's feeling Streep right now. Can I ask a fussy question about the sperm? Of course.

Is it all emotion somehow? It's a physical, right? We have a limbic system too. So is it a question of degrees? That somehow they are experiencing that in much or is it an entirely different kind of intelligence what do you think I think that they have another way of accessing their emotional life than we do so they have everything we have right like their friend can go up and clap them on the back or give them a sperm whale hug or whatever right like they still have that

and they also have language, but then they have this other thing, which to me, just because I avoid my inbox or whatever, it feels like some form of email, right? Like you send it at a great distance, but it's emotional and you pick it up with your face. I think I got, my heart goes sperm whale. As a political platform. I vote chicken Yeah, but as my heart says I gotta go for the school

So you vote I go I go sperm sperm sperm well to That's three a sweet That's three a sweet. Wow, okay, all right. Tough break, Dan. So at this point, the first round was finished. The judges had weighed in on some pretty compelling cases for the crow, the slime mold, the sperm whale, and the chicken. Next up, we had another round of competition.

Same basic idea. We asked each of our four contestants to bring a smart animal to the table to make a case for, but this time we threw a couple curveballs at them. That and the final crowning of the world's smartest animal after a quick break. So in part one of our competition we heard arguments for the intelligence of the crow, the slime mold, the sperm whale, and the chicken. And in part two, we decided to raise the stakes a little, give our competitors a couple more challenges.

The first challenge is that they are now going to have to compete with their nemesis from the first round. So we're going to team them up, and we're going to have a round, a two-on- first round. So we're gonna team them up, and we're gonna have a round, a two on two round. And the other challenge we gave them is we noticed that we weren't really paying that much attention to the furry mammals. I think a lot of us imagine that we may be among the smartest animals in the animal kingdom. Some of us won't, yeah?

And so, but we decided let's do some furry mammals, but the challenge was not to do any of the usual suspects. So no humans, of course. No chimpanzees, no elephants, no dogs. Sorry, Macy. Come up with an unexpectedly smart furry mammal with your new former enemy teammate. So first up were Dan and Laurel, who had absolutely no trouble at all

agreeing on a smart furry mammal. It was obviously the raccoon. It was obviously the raccoon, why? OG of the animal kingdom and showing us how to live in cities for a really long time. Yeah, I'm just like, there was no other choice. I don't even, why are we talking about this? It's a no brainer. I don't even why are we talking about this? No, it's a no-brainer

All right, take it away in the fall of 1906 In the fall of 1906 this headline smartaccoons, was picked up by several major newspapers. The column underneath described a Mr. and Mrs. Gullapard, who'd been traveling from town to town in a double-decker covered wagon beneath a family of trained raccoons that worked for them as chimney sweeps. It was not the only story of its kind. In those years, raccoons were often touted by reporters for their high intelligence, or their sagacity, or their skill at making mischief.

This is the odd and tragic story of how we came to understand briefly a century ago that raccoons were among the very shrewdest animals of all, and then we forgot. The link between an animal's slipperiness and its smarts was once well established among scientists. At Columbia University, Edward Thorndyke had been testing the intelligence of cats and dogs by locking them in boxes. He'd seal the box with latches, bolts, or string pulleys and leave a snack outside his motivation.

This was Houdini in the lab, an escape room, but for animals. Then in 1907, a psychologist in Oklahoma named Lawrence Wister Cole thought to put raccoons through those same puzzle boxes to learn as he put it their proper place in the scale of mammalian intelligence. And he found some amazing things. His raccoons, Tom, Jim, Jack, and Dolly, would at times break free of the puzzle box and then ignore the food reward. It was as if they'd gone through the exercise not in service of their hunger, as other animals might do, but to satisfy an inner curiosity. Cole also found that his raccoons, unlike cats, could learn to escape a given box just by watching humans do it.

And based on this and other work, a soft consensus came together in psychology that raccoons were in fact quite high on the scale of mammalian intelligence, much higher than a cat or dog at any rate, and maybe even on a par with primates. But alas, this whole idea was soon to be challenged and erased. In the same year Cole published his research, the president, Teddy Roosevelt, lashed out against the tendency of nature writers to ascribe human-like abilities

to raccoons and other animals. The president, who is an avid outdoorsman, called this fake news. Within a few years, some of Cole's most impressive findings with raccoons were challenged by his peers. Even scientists who believed in Cole's research would find it hard to follow up. For one thing, the raccoons they meant to study kept escaping. And a new paradigm was spreading through psychology, one that had little time from usings on a raccoon's imagination or its curiosity or its loneliness. In place of Tom and Jim and Jack and Dolly, there were rats. Nameless rats.

So raccoons vanished from the lab and then as cities grew, they vanished from our lives, out of sight and for a while out of mind. But turns out as people moved out of the country and into the cities, the raccoons followed us. And our urban spaces aren't just the perfect place for raccoons to demonstrate their intelligence. But I argue that they are also making them even smarter. Today though, the people that know the most about urban raccoons are the people whose job it is to get them out of our urban spaces.

Like Mr. Raccoon, aka Junior Costa, the number one no-kill humane raccoon trapper of the California Bay Area. He told me that the animals are bold and curious, and they eat pretty much everything. Raccoons move into our attics and our crawl spaces. They study us. They use their tiny, sensitive hands to manipulate locks and latches or pry out loose nails.

They gnaw things open, and then they take running leaps also to knock things over. A raccoon will work on a problem like lifting up a garage door or prying open a window or prying a vent cover off of a basement for hours until they figure it out. Sometimes they'll come back like night after night to work on the problem until they solve it. And once they do, they keep coming back. Mr. Raccoon told me that once he got a call every night from the same neighborhood for like two weeks, because one ambitious raccoon figured out they were all tractomes.

And so what would work to get into one of these tract houses would work in the entire neighborhood. So she just went house to house to house to house. So raccoons are really one of the only animal species to fare better as humans spread all over the planet. Not only that, but we are each problems for each other. They try to outsmart us. We try to outsmart them.

It's unclear to me which of us is getting more intelligent faster. Next up, we're Tracy Clayton and Jordan Mendoza. And agreeing on an animal was a little harder than they expected. So here's the thing. Okay, so what did you end up doing? We decided on a type of mammal. A type of mammal.

The marsupial. Yes. We have our own individual marsupials. Tracy kicked it off for 14 marsupial with this Adorable little creature called the quaca which looks sort of like a chubby squirrel with these teddy bear eyes and little black Literally if you're if you have a hat hold on to it if you're sitting in a chair hold on to the hold on to your blitz Sam Jackson, I thought that the response would be, okay, so.

This, ladies and gentlemen, not to oversell it, is the most amazing animal fact you will ever hear in your life. Are you ready? Judges, are you ready? Macy, she's into it, okay. Here's why the quacka is the smartest animal. When a...

Serious business. When approached by a predator. We're going to get through this as a family, I swear. Okay, when approached by a predator, a parent quacka, I don't know if it's the dad, the mom, the you know, pronouns, I don't know their lives, approached by a predator, if a parent is with their child, they will throw the child at the predator to distract it while it runs away. So I need to describe this image for the people who cannot see it. Where did you get this?

So at this point, Tracy had an illustration up in the screen of a mom tossing a baby into a basketball hoop. Like she's at the free throw line. That's what Quackas do, you know? And I think that this is really smart because you could make another one. You could make two or three. You know?

If the both of y'all die because, cause you're that attached to your child, then what happens to your genetic line? It doesn't get passed on, right? This way, Quack was like, oh, shit, I like Emily, but I can make another, I can make Emily the second. Emily said, pirm, pirm. And that's that.

The Quacka goes on to live another day. The Quacka goes on to survive longer than anyone else will. Thank you. It's your turn if you still want to go. It's very funny. I am scared. And Jordan decided to fight for kind of a weird choice. So, oh boy.

So this is supposed to be a presentation about what the smartest animal is. And a long time ago, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna do koalas. But then I looked it up and apparently koalas are famously stupid. Wow. Here's how dumb koalas are. Their brains only take 2% of their body mass, which is apparently one of the smallest brain to body mass ratios of any mammal. Koala's brains are also super smooth, which is bad

because the more folds your brain has, the smarter you are. The human brain is like Marie Kondo, lots of folding. Shout out to my Kondo heads out there, sparking joy. You know who you are. Honestly, I love her so much. Guys, qualas are so dumb, they even sound dumb. Listen to this. Ah!

Ah! Ah! Perhaps koalas aren't conventionally intelligent. Just like how choosing koalas for this presentation wasn't conventionally intelligent. But I propose that we rethink intelligence. Partly because I'm stuck with this animal, but mostly because I believe that this animal is in many ways smarter than us perhaps koalas are like how my mom describes me smart in their own special way let's compare koalas and humans to see who looks smart by comparison this is a koala's daily schedule a koala sleeps 20 hours a day.

While the remaining 4 hours they spend eating and mating. Incredible. Imagine only being awake for the amount of hours you need to eat and have sex. I mean I'm not a huge fan of sex because I'm quote unquote awful at it, but boy do I love eating. The human schedule on the other hand, is horrendous. We sleep on average 6.8 hours a night. We wake from our nightmares, then spend 10 hours reading emails and worrying, 5 hours

on a conference call, and 2 hours eating dinner out of a big bowl while watching billions and hoping to God that Paul Giamatti's voice can lull us to sleep again. In conclusion, koalas have optimized themselves for life's greatest gifts. Eating, having sex for those who enjoy that kind of thing. And sleeping without the need to listen to Paul Giamatti's voice. And that's smart.

Now who sounds stupid? Still koalas. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz I Realized I clapped with everyone else But you know what I am proud of myself You think a koala would have done that? Clap with everybody else. Yeah, it's a real koala move. Wow, okay. Wow, okay. So, we've heard from both the pairs, raccoons and marsupials slash quaka

and dumb slash smart koala. raccoons and marsupial slash quaca and Dumb slash smart koala. Yeah, so after that Let's proceed with you guys. It was time for the final judging There's a lot to take in there a lot of different arguments were put forward I think I got to give this to the marsupial duet a supial duet. Ooh, all right, all right, all right. I was, see me after the show. I said, this was good.

Mr. Krollwich. Oh, boy. Well, I was impressed by the boldness of the chicken of the... But before the judges even had a chance to all weigh in... Objection, objection. What is this? What's happening here? Laurel Brateman has walked a giant bone across the stage and given it to Macy, the dog

judge. A pretty serious incident of bribery went down. This is like witness tampering or something? What do you call it? Macy, don't you... Macy, don't you do it. So to keep things fair, we decided to just throw the whole thing over to the audience to vote with their applause for their take on the smartest animal of the evening.

So just to recap, the contenders were the crow, the slime mold, the sperm whale, the chicken, the raccoon, and the marsupials. And the winner, according to the audience, was... I think it's pretty clear who the winner is, right? I'd ask to queue up a drum roll, but yeah, I drum roll please. We're gonna do it here. I think the winner of the contest, the smartest animal in the world is the sperm. Well, the crown goes to Laurel Brayman.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! We had a prize somewhere. I don't know who out here from our team has it. There's a prize. We had planned to give a... give a gold fish to the winner.

And instead we have a red fish. We have a beta fish for our winner, Laurel Breitman. One more time for Laurel Breitman winning our competition. She flew here from California with the leg of an animal, and now she's flying back with a small fish. So do we not care that she attempted to bribe the judge? We just don't, we just don't care about that, right? I guess we're, I guess we're alive.

I mean, the people have spoken. I mean, the judge didn't want it, so it didn't work. Okay, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Congratulations. Okay, that's our show, everyone. Thank you, thank you to everyone. Please give it up.

Nice and thank you. Thank you to our contributors, Dan Engber, Laurel Brateman, Tracy Clayton, and Jordan Mendoza. Kick a bow. Thanks to our judges, Chad Auburnrod, Robert Krowich, Macy and Bill Berlone, her assistant. Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Thank you to the Radio Lab staff who put this night together, Rachel Cusick, Nora Keller, Susie Lackenberg,

and the whole team here at the green space. 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! Tonight's show and all our reporting on the Intelligent series that's starting to come out next Thursday has been supported by Science Sandbox assignments Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. We're very grateful to Simons an additional support for Radiolab provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world and most of all Thank you all for coming out. We can't do this without you. Thank you for coming in the rain and have a great night. By the way, Laurel Breitman published a book last year. It is a memoir called What Looks Like Bravery. It is gorgeous as everything she does is

Check it out. Hi, I'm Janine and I'm from Queens, New York. And here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Jed Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our stuff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Aketi Foster-Keys,

W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Pascuccieras, Sindhu Nyanyu Sambadam, Matt Kilti, Enimi Kewan, Alex Nisen, Thara Kari, Thera Sandbeck, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Beth from San Francisco. Leadership support for Radio Lab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simon Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.