Radiolab - The Shy Baboon

Episode Date: February 8, 2010

In this podcast, a biopsychologist attempts to find an elusive bit of shared space across species lines.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Shorts. From.

W. N. Y. C. See? Yes. And NPR. All right. For the money. For all the glory.

For the gold. Robert. Jad, take four. Hey, I'm Jad Avumrad. I'm Robert Colch. I'm going to keep that, actually. Okay. Sorry.

I'm Jad Abumrod. I'm Robert Colwitch. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. The podcast. So we've been talking about animals for the last few podcasts, particularly how difficult it is to find something like a shared space. We're building to the podcast that follows this one,

where we've got this enormous and wonderful story. But this one, the podcast you're about to hear, is an elegant and kind of momentary communion between us and them. Hi, this is Michigan Radio. I have your guest. Hi, this is Barb. Hi, this is Robert Kulich. Hi.

And how do you say your last name? Smuts. Smuts. So not smuts, but smuts. Barbara Smuts is a professor at the University of Michigan. Where I teach courses on animal behavior. And back in the 70s, she moved to Kenya in Africa,

to a remote area way out on the plains. Fairly open grassland. And she tried to get friendly and then get access to a troop of... Baboons. Now, how... What was this? a deal like you would wake up, drive somewhere, get out of your van or whatever, walk in, like at the break of day?

Before the break of day. And then follow them around all day. For how many days a week? Seven. For weeks at a time or a month at a time? Two years. Two years. Yeah.

This troop hadn't been studied before, so they were afraid of people. But because the area was very open, it was possible to approach them from an distance. She'd position herself you know like about a hundred feet away and then... And day by day I would kind of inch closer. 80 feet away and 50 feet away.

And then as soon as they started running I would stop moving towards them. She says sometimes they would flash their teeth at her. Long, sharp, canine teeth. And then she'd edge off. It's pretty scary. And then slowly she'd try again.

I'd get a little bit closer. 30 feet, 20 feet. Until finally, after a couple of months... I got close enough so that I could see their faces. I could begin to recognize them as individuals, and they could recognize me. That's when things started to shift. It was like they realized that I was a social animal like them,

and that we could negotiate the distance between us. How does that work? I started by just talking to them, telling them that I wasn't a threat. In English or in grunt? In English, yet all mammals recognize that a fairly high-pitched voice is someone who's not threatening, as opposed to a very deep voice, which scares them.

So I would talk to them in a light tone of voice to reassure them. Finally, I got to the point where I could be just a few feet from them, and nobody would even glance at me. And what if one comes up to you and goes, or whatever they do? Then I would think it was a wardhog. What does a baboon grunt sound like? They smack their lips in between grunts, the females. So if they do that to you.

And they're getting closer. Do you respond in kind or what do you do? Yes, sometimes I would respond in kind with a grunt. It's not polite if someone says something to you to just act like a rock. Would that be an insult? Yes. Oh, because you're supposed to say hello when I say hello. Right.

Like humans. But isn't this one of these rules of field biology? Aren't you supposed to act like you're not there and they'll act like you're not there? Yeah, but it doesn't really work that way. They're social animals, and they know that you are. So your solution was to become, as I figured, you try to become a very shy baboons. Yeah, shy and pretty boring.

And did that work? Did you become? It did. I found myself very naturally sitting the way that many baboons do, which is they stick their legs out in front of them, and they hold their toes. The longer I was with them, the more, well, completely automoboons.

it became for me to be a shy baboon. I didn't have to think about it. I just was. As this progresses, are you beginning to feel like you're a shy baboon? Yeah. I felt increasingly aware of my animal self. I mean, the scientist is doing the things the scientist needs to do, but I think I was kind of in this sub-universe.

Me and the baboons. I was going where they were. went and resting when they rested and walking when they walked. One day, she says she saw a beautiful baby gazelle prancing by, and the baboons pounced on the animal, ripped it apart to eat it. And watching, Barbara admits that she salivated. Yeah, I did. I couldn't help it.

And I am a vegetarian. Oh. But she says the real transforming moment was she was out on the planes one day, and I got caught in this pouring rain and lost the baboons, so I headed downhill toward the lake because that was the way home. And when I got to the beach, it was still pouring. So I ducked into this hut. There were these little fishermen's huts on the beach

that were empty, completely dark inside. and after I was in there for a minute or two, my eyes started adjusting to the dark, and the first thing I noticed were these sort of lumpy shapes. And then I realized that there were baboons in there. Wow. And as my vision got better, I could see about 15 or 20 members of my troop

who had gone. into the hut probably just before me. I had the same idea that I had. And I was quite touched that they were silent when I moved in there and that nobody, you know, nobody said, what are you doing in here? This is our hut. They were just silent. I think someone even shifted over slightly to make room for me. And we just sat there for about 15 minutes, started started to kind of steam up, you know, from their breath. And they smell like, kind of like grass and leaves because that's what they've been eating.

It's a nice smell. Did you ever think for even at a while, maybe in that hut was the moment, did you ever think that you had done something close to some kind of trespass? Did you steal something here? No. No.

No. You know, we are so loose, used to this dividing line. there's humans on one side and then there's all the other animals on the other side and we don't meet up but if you go back in evolutionary time i mean that line wasn't there so rather than feeling like i was stealing something i felt like i was retrieving something that was my heritage it felt so completely natural to just be with them, to not be doing anything to just be. Barbara Smuts now spends her days in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She's a teacher there at the big university, and her African days are, well, they're now a couple of decades old, but what a tale.

Yeah. Speaking of tales, we are at the tail end of this little podcast. If you want any more information on this piece or anything you've ever heard on this program, radio lab.org is the place. I'm Chad Abumrod. I'm Robert Quilwich. Thanks for listening. Start of message.

Devon Lucero from Chico, California, and I'm a radio lab listener. The radio lab podcast is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. End of message.