Science Friday - Ethics Of Hawaiian Telescope, Bird Song, Alaska Universities Budget Cut. August 2, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in Hawaii, towering over the Pacific at nearly 14,000 feet. That high altitude, combined with the mountain’s dry, still air and its extreme darkness at night, make it an ideal place for astronomy. There are already 13 observatories on the summit plateau. Now, astronomers want to build another, called the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, which would become the largest visible-light telescope on the mountain.  But many native Hawaiians don’t want it there, for a multitude of reasons. Science Friday talked with Kawika Winter, a multidisciplinary ecologist at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and the He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve, who summed it up this way:  "The notion of pursuit of knowledge is an important one here. But is it pursuit of knowledge at all costs? Is it pursuit of knowledge at the expense of our humanity?  From the native Hawaiian perspective this is just the same thing that's happened before. It's preventing people from accessing sacred places. It's desecration of sacred places through construction. It's all of these issues, but this time it's for a ‘good reason.’ This time it's for science, this time it's for knowledge, so now it should be ok, right? But it's the same thing that's been happening for 200 years. It doesn't matter what the reason is. Engaging native Hawaiians is not a box to check off in the process. And you check it off at the end, say 'yeah, we checked with native Hawaiians.' That's not the proper way to engage in science in indigenous places. So we're trying to advocate for a different model for approaching science, and integrating native peoples, indigenous peoples, and indigenous cultures into the process. And that's how we can make sure the science we conduct doesn't come at the expense of our humanity."  Many native Hawaiians say the way this fight has been portrayed in the media—as Hawaiian culture versus science—is disrespectful of their culture, ignorant of their motives, and oblivious to the fact that science has long been an important part of traditional Hawaiian culture. Nearly a thousand scientists and astronomers have now signed an open letter in solidarity with those who would like to see a halt in construction.  When a baby human learns to talk, there’s a predictable pattern of learning: First, they listen to the language spoken around them, then they babble and try to make the same sounds, and then they eventually learn the motor skills to shape that babble into words and meaning. Researchers who study songbirds know this is also the process by which a baby male zebra finch learns the unique songs that as an adult he will use to mate and defend territory. The same holds true for canaries, nightingales, warblers, and beyond. And for many birds, like humans, the window where they learn their “language” best is a short one that closes early in life. In fact, bird song is studied closely as an analogy for human speech—an example of sophisticated brain machinery for learning that evolved separately in birds and humans.  Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy’s budget cuts to the University of Alaska total about $136 million, or roughly 41 percent of state support. As a result, the University of Alaska Board of Regents voted 8 to 3 to move towards consolidating the entire university system to a single accredited university. UA president Jim Johnsen says under any plan, it’s likely that the cuts will have a ripple effect on enrollment and research. He says both are avenues that could result in less money for the university as a whole. A task force has been put together to determine how to move forward with the single university model.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, the surprising similarities between birdsong and human speech, but first. After years of decline, U.S. carbon emissions are on the rise again. Yet President Trump is attempting to roll back Obama-era car emissions regulations. The EPA has announced its fixing fuel economy standards at 37 miles per gallon, giving automakers a huge opportunity to scale back their efforts at designing more fuel efficiency vehicles. But guess what? Even carmakers say the rollback is too much. So this week, four carmakers struck their own deal with the state of California. Here to tell us why they did this as well as other short subjects in science.

Is Omer Erfahn, staff writer for Vox? Welcome back. Hi, Ira. So why did these companies make their own deal directly with the state? Why not follow the new more lax rules set by the EPA? It's kind of a long story, but in short, California is one of the largest vehicle markets in the country, and they historically have had an exemption from the Clean Air Act to set their own fuel economy and emissions rules. Right now, most of the rules are pretty uniform across the country, but because the EPA wants to relax these rules and California wants to keep them in place, automakers were worried that they would suddenly have to design cars for two different sets.

standards. And so these four companies, Ford, Honda, BMW, and Volkswagen decided that they wanted to kind of preempt this and strike their own deal that would keep them compliant with California and the federal government. So how does this compare with the Obama era rules and regulations? The Obama rules that were set out in 2012, they set a benchmark of roughly getting to 54.5 miles per gallon across a company's car fleet by 2025. They gave the car companies a few different ways to comply with this as well, including selling electric cars. But car companies were saying that they weren't selling enough of these EVs or these more fuel-efficient vehicles. Americans tend to prefer larger cars. And so they wanted a little bit more flexibility to do that. And

this California deal gives them that. The benchmark year is now 2026 instead of 2025, and the target is 51 miles per gallon rather than 54, which is still stronger than what the EPA wants to roll back to. So you get a little bit of something. I mean, you encourage electric cars and you still keep a little bit of those standards? Yeah, that's right. And part of the mechanism here is that this deal is voluntary, but California is promising these car companies that if a future administration decides to ramp up fuel economy standards,

they'll still hold them to this exact deal. And so that's a little bit of an added incentive. And, of course, where California goes, maybe the rest of the car makers will follow. Yeah, a few of them have already said that they're looking at this deal and they're considering it. And automakers like General Motors have said that they are betting on an all-electric future. So it's just a matter of time before they make the shift themselves.

All right. And speaking of emissions, teenage climate activist Greta Thumburg announced this week that she will be traveling to New York this fall for the UN summit by boat. Yeah, that's right. A philanthropist offered her spot on this 18-meter sailing yacht, and the trip is expected to take two weeks, and she's going to be going from Europe to the UN Climate Summit. And Greta, you may recall, went on strike from school last year protesting

her government's in action on climate change, and that has since spawned like a global movement among youth. And she's been kind of walking the walk here because she says that she won't fly because it's one of the most carbon-intensive forms of travel, and hence the sailing across the ocean. And they've actually coined the Swedish word for this, right? Yeah, the word is fligskam or flying shame. Sweden has somehow become the epicenter of this movement to reduce flying or people feeling guilty about flying. Aviation is only about 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but it's poised to grow, and there are very few opportunities to limit those emissions because there's just not the technology there.

And when you calculate your own personal footprint, for many people who do fly, it's often the largest component of it. And so it's a very important way that an individual can act to limit their impact on the climate. Why is it so hard to build fuel-efficient airplanes? Well, the challenge is that there's really nothing that's energy-dense as conventional aviation fuels. You want to pack a lot of energy into a small space when you're traveling by aircraft, so you don't have the luxury of having a much larger battery. The other issue is just that air travel, we haven't really invested a lot in trying to make it cleaner because governments really just haven't had an incentive to do so. There are technologies that people are researching right now, electrification,

hydrogen fuels, carbon neutral biofuels, and there are also some offsetting mechanisms as well. But the offsets sometimes don't deliver, and the other technologies are kind of in their infancy. So it'll be a few years before they take off. Do you think a fleck scam is going to attract attention? I mean, it already has in other countries. It's taken off. A lot of other activists have also vowed not to fly. There's also a group of activists that

is planning to sail to the UN climate conference in Chile later this year. And, yeah, it's kind of mounting, particularly among climate scientists, who are also looking at their own work. Let's talk about the Democratic debates that have happened. I make a point about saying

two years ago, hardly any mention of climate change was made at the debates, but things have changed a bit, have they not? Yeah, just about every candidate brought up climate change, and that's not too surprising given that polls show that primary voters consider climate change is one of their top-tier issues, if not the number one issue. So every candidate has to have an answer on climate change. And so what were some of the major programs that don't exist yet? Well, a lot of the candidates, they agree on the fundamentals that the U.S. has to decarbonize by about the middle of the century. But what I was surprised to hear was a couple candidates

talking about some of the specific tactics they want. Particularly, John Delaney was talking about direct air capture of carbon dioxide, and Tim Ryan was talking about regenerative agriculture. Now, you may recall the IPCC report last year that said that we had to decarbonize by 2050. It also said that after that point we need to pull CO2 out of the air. And so these are two technologies that kind of get at that part of the problem. And agriculture is a huge possibility, isn't it? Yeah, we devote a huge amount of land in the United States for growing crops,

but also growing crops to feed to animals that we also end up eating. And the idea behind regenerative agriculture is that you could engineer the crops to store more carbon in the soil, or you could raise livestock in a way that encourages pasture land and plants to grow in a way that puts more carbon out of the air than goes in. And what was the idea of the direct air capture of CO2? That's a little bit more straightforward. It's more like you build a giant machine that scrub CO2 from the air. There are actually some companies right now that are developing and have built some pilot-scale plants. The issue right now is just making them more energy efficient, bringing the costs down.

and then also coming up with a business model that can keep these companies going. Before anything like that can happen, though, you've got to make it a topic of discussion, don't you? Yeah, and yes, as you noted, like we saw more discussion of climate change in the first Democratic debate this season than in the entire 2016 election cycle combined. And so it's definitely getting some attention. The question is if it'll move the needle in terms of policy. We will be watching, Amer. Thank you for taking that to be with us today. Thanks for having me. Omer Infan is a staff writer for Vox.

And now it's time to check in on the State of Science. This is KERNO, St. Louis Public Radio News. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. This spring, Alaska Governor Mike Donlevy used a line item veto to dramatically cut state funding to higher education, including the University of Alaska system, which now has come to terms with a cut of some 41 percent. That's over $130 million. There is still the possibility of the state legislature adding back some of the funding, but officials don't have much hope for that.

And with the university's fiscal year already starting, you have to make hard choices. Do you know what I mean? Now to talk about the situation in Alaska is Wesley Early, education reporter for Alaska Public Media in Anchorage. Welcome, Wesley. Hi, Ira. Thanks to have you back. Let's talk about it. You just got back from a Board of Regents meeting.

How is the university facing this level of budget cut? So, yeah, the Board of Regents meeting was on Tuesday, and that was following a declaration of what's called financial exigency, which is kind of like bankruptcy for a university, and what it basically says is that the university can kind of bypass regulations that would protect people who have tenure. And so it allows for sort of an expedited firing process. And then at the Board of Regents meeting, what they decided to do was streamline the current University of Alaska structure, which is a campus in Fairbanks, which is in the middle of Alaska, and then one in Anchorage, the biggest city in sort of South Central Alaska, and then the University of Southeast and the capital in Juneau.

And so that is all going to be streamlined into one University of Alaska to sort of get rid of administrative costs and other things. So the engineering department might be in Anchorage. the biology department might be in Fairbanks, things spread around? Yeah, right now there are several university colleges of education. There's one in Fairbanks and one in Anchorage, and one of the things they're suggesting is sort of just consolidating them so that the University of Arts and Sciences will be in one spot, and engineering will be in one spot.

Yeah. Yeah. Big budget cuts. Is there any hope that the money will get put back? Well, the legislature has been really divided on this. At some points, literally split between two different legislative meeting sessions, and it requires a three-fourths vote of the legislature to override the governor's vetoes, and it doesn't look like they have that.

I don't think there's a lot of confidence about that. There's hope that the governor could restore some of the funding. He's indicated that he would put $38 million back in for a two-year reduction plan instead of a one-year reduction plan. But the governor's office of management and budget proposed very concentrated cuts, targeted cuts to certain departments, which really technically falls under the purview of the Board of Regents. And some people, including the university's accrediting agency, has called that move kind of a strong arm. move from the governor to sort of direct cuts when it's not really his purview. You know, for all these dramatic cuts, aren't there a lot of faculty tenured and would be protected from being fired in this case?

Well, not under exigency, which they just declared last week. So that basically allows the university to fire tenured faculty. Are there trickle-down effects that these cuts are going to have? The president, President Jim Johnson of the university certainly thinks so. So not only are they going to have cuts to state funding, but there's just this uneasiness among students and staff and faculty. I was just talking to a former teacher yesterday who said, yeah, all of these economics professors and business professors are saying they're leaving.

You know, I've talked with student leaders who are very involved in the, the process on campuses, and they said they wouldn't support, you know, they wouldn't recommend it to a student coming up because they just don't know what programs are going to be there. That's awful. You don't get students. You don't get tuition. It just is a positive feedback loop that gets worse. Thank you.

We'll be watching it with you, Wesley. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you, Ira. You're welcome, Wesley, early education reporter for Alaska Public Media in Anchorage. We're going to take a break, and we're going to check in on a battle over the 30-meet telescope atop Hawaii's Monacoia, the other state that was admitted along with Alaska back in 59. It's an interesting battle.

We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Irafledo. Monaca is the tallest mountain in Hawaii, towering over the Pacific at nearly 14,000 feet. That altitude combined with the mountains, still dry air and extreme darkness at night, make it an ideal place for astronomy. And there are already 13 observatories on the summit plateau,

but now astronomers want to build another called the 30-meter telescope or TMT, which would become the largest visible light telescope on the mountain. But many Native Hawaiians don't want it there for multiple reasons. We've talked with Kavika Winter, a multidisciplinary ecologist, at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, who had this to say. From the Native Hawaiian perspective, preventing people from accessing sacred places, it's desecration of sacred places through construction. It's all of these issues, but this time is for a good reason.

This time is for science. This time is for knowledge. So now it should be okay, right? But it's the same thing that's been happening for more than 200 years. It doesn't matter what the reason is. And many Native Hawaiians say the way this fight has been portrayed in the media as Hawaiian culture versus science, is disrespectful of their culture, ignorant of their motives,

and oblivious to the fact that science has long been an important part of traditional Hawaiian culture. Today we're going to talk about all of that and get an update about what's happening on the mountain with my guest. Let me introduce them. Rosie Alagado is an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii and Manoa. She wrote about the TMT in Nature. She joins us from Hawaii Public Radio in Honolulu. Welcome to Science Friday. Aloha, Ira.

Aloha, you too. Tricia Kahalani is vice president of the nonprofit Aina Mamona. She wrote about the conflict in Vox. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Interesting story, Trisha. Set the scene for us. Give us a snapshot of how we got to this point.

Well, we really got to this point over a number of decades. Native Hawaiians have always, and including environmental groups, have always had concerns about the observatories that were being built at the summit of Mauna Kea. This particular conflict with the 30-meter telescope really started about a decade ago when they started the permitting process. So since 2011, there have been regular legal challenges to this telescope and this project. That came to a head recently when they were about to start construction, and then you had a number of Native Hawaiians, originally a fairly small number, but including a number of elders who placed themselves in the middle of the access road to block the construction vehicles.

And I believe it was July 17th, 35 Native Hawaiian elders were arrested by law enforcement in their efforts. And that really created sort of a firestorm, not even locally, but nationally, where people were really appalled that there would be law enforcement and the National Guard called in on Native Hawaiian elders who really were just, trying to protect a site they consider sacred. Is that where we stand now? Has there been any budge on the government side? There's been a little bit of budge. They've now rescinded the emergency proclamation that allowed the governor to call in the National Guard. A lot of the additional law enforcement troops that were called in have been returned to their

islands of origin. And we, for better, for worse, have two hurricanes headed towards us. So I think everybody has recognized that there needs to be a little bit of pause on everything, and people are now sort of... preparing appropriately. Tricia, sorry for leaving out your last name, Watson. I introduced this, too. That's fine.

Absolutely fine. Let's go with my next question. Rosie, this conflict has been portrayed in the media as a fight between Hawaiian culture and science. But interestingly, you write in your editorial in nature that, quote, as a native Hawaiian scientist who studies how marine microbes have influenced ecosystems and evolution, it is not my experience that Hawaiian religion or culture has a problem. with Western science. Please expound on that a little bit for us. That's correct. I mean, I think the most important thing to realize is that all cultures have

science. Science is the methodology by which we discover information about our natural world, and that can be very applied in nature, or it can be very theoretical, meaning that we don't know what the current applications of that can be. For Hawaiian culture, for thousands of years, that was very applied. So, in other words, we utilize navigation, which is an accretion and accrual of knowledge about oceanography, atmospheric science, and biology to get to voyage between islands. And then, of course, we were completely self-sufficient and sustainable on our islands for over a thousand years. And that took ingenuity and know-how and knowledge of sustainable practices. So by those, you know,

just really major accomplishments, we can really see that Hawaiian culture and science were really intertwined. And what I mean by the fact that I don't, I have not experienced Hawaiian culture being in conflict with Western science is that historically what we really have seen is that we know that there has been conflicts between culture and religion, but those have been pretty particular to Western science. So if we look at my favorite example is the prosecution of Galileo Galilei by the Catholic church, right? So that really, I think, sets up this conflict of seeing, excuse me, Catholicism in conflict with Western science. But we have to remember that there are other knowledge systems that exist outside of Western culture. And those often do not have a conflict with science inherently.

Our number 844-8255, if you'd like to get in on the conversation. Tricia, how does this protest compare to other conflicts, example, Standing Rock protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline? Well, I actually think we, for better for worse, of the Dakota Pipeline conflict, we really benefited from it as a Hawaiian community. A number of our protectors who are currently in Mauna Kea went to Standing Rock and participated. And I think when I went to Mauna Kea this past weekend, so much of the infrastructure of what what has been built around this protest. Because remember, it went from maybe 50 people to 3,000 people in a very short period of time, was really learning from Standing Rock,

learning how they put that infrastructure together, learning how they were able to, in a very healthy and loving manner, take care of 3,000 people. And that's really what it's been these past couple of weeks, the ability to make sure all of those people have their medical needs taken care of, their food needs taking care of, their sleeping needs taking care of. So we are so grateful to the First Nations community who has been tremendously supportive of what we're doing here and then basically went first, at least in modern times, as to how to teach us how to protest in this very nonviolent manner. Are people, and I'll ask both of you this question, are people more upset or most upset that they just were not consulted about this when, not that they're adverse building the telescopes per se?

but they're not consulted. And even I was reading that they're upset about how the telescopes, the other telescopes on the mountain now are not being taken care of, the ground that they're on. So both of those are true. So Rosie and I both have PhDs. I also have a law degree. And I think what we saw was this project very intentionally avoid going through the National

Historic Preservation Act. So despite the fact that they had federal funding, they were able to not go through Section 106. consultation. And had they done so, they would have had to reconcile the fact that there are Native Hawaiians who consider this site of religious and cultural value. And we know that they're seeking now National Science Foundation funding. So they at some point will have to reconcile that, but I think you're absolutely correct. It speaks to some of the frustrations that although they obtained certain permissions, they really didn't go through consultation with the community.

and I feel like the science community, as Rosie very well wrote in her article, has better ethics than that, and these systems in play, and perhaps Rosie can speak to that. Yes, please, Rosie. Yeah, I mean, I think that science for all of the amazing progress that it has made towards, you know, humanity, technological innovations and improving our health, we cannot operate outside culture and therefore society morals and values. And we continue to grapple with that as scientists. And I think it's really important to recognize that even if our science in particular might not feel like it directly affects community, perhaps the placement of our instruments where we deploy things may have an effect on the local community. And I think it's important for science to always look and recognize where its blind spots are, scientists rather, where our blind spots are. And it's just really unfortunate that astronomy as a science is wrapped up in this because, you know, I would say as a community, Hawaiians really love astronomy, and it's just that the process by which these telescopes have been managed by U.H.

Over the last 50 years has really been subpar on this matter. So this is one way to address that issue, too. Absolutely. There's been talk of building this telescope in the Canary Islands instead of Hawaii. We talked with the Kailu-Fox Assistant Professor of Biology Anthropology at the University of University. of California, San Diego, and he had this to say about that proposal. This is sort of encouraging a musical chairs of colonialism where the baggage of building this giant instrument on one observational area that happens to be sacred to Hawaiian people

is moved to another place where there are probably equal consequences to the indigenous people of the Canary Islands, which was colonized in 1402 by the Spanish. So it doesn't provide a clear-cut solution. It just is a band-aid on something where we need to take away the knife. Tricia, you've been looking into this idea of relocating the telescope, correct? Yes. There have been numerous Native Hawaiians who have been in contact with the local community at La Pama. Unfortunately, their indigenous people are no longer around.

It was colonized in 1402, as Kiyolu said, but the indigenous people don't exist there anymore. So it's really matter of looking at the local community, and from everything we've received, the local community does want it. So I do think you're dealing with two very different scenarios, one where you have Native Hawaiian people where this is effectively our Garden of Eden. This is perhaps the most important spot in our cosmology. And you have a local community in La Pama who seems far more welcoming to this project. than the local people in Hawaii. So you're saying, well, just move it there and, you know, it makes everybody happy. Well, it possibly does.

I mean, I think we are very sensitive to not playing, I think as Kula put it, colonial musical chairs. We would never want to harm another group. We would never want to impose on another place what's being imposed on us. So I think we have a heightened sensitivity to make sure we are working with that local community and hearing from them. And again, everything we're hearing seems to indicate that they would like. like it. They see the benefits to their economy, whereas I don't think that is, we don't have that agreement here in Hawaii, and they have gone through steps, and they're welcoming to it.

So I think there might be some issues with the sighting there insofar as it might, the altitude isn't as high, so recognizing that the site might not be as ideal for an extremely large telescope, the ELT, but I think, as Rosie mentioned earlier, the social and the cultural conditions are far more suitable to this project. But is there a compromise still open to Hawaii if the state, the federal government, could become more sensitive and cooperative with your feelings about the place and about the maintenance of the older telescopes, which are not even working anymore, would you be open? Would the Hawaiians be open to allowing for the construction there?

You know, this is Rosie here. To be honest, I would have said that it might have been possible. in 2015, that by really opening it up and having a process by which perhaps there could have been an integration of how could this telescope and the way that it asks questions, what are some of the questions that the local community would like to explore? What research questions are they interested in knowing? How might the construction of the building itself incorporate a lot of the spiritual and cultural elements that are so important to Monacaea? None of that was done. So first of all, there's that. In addition to that, I really must emphasize that the arrest of our elders,

and these are some of the most revealed elders in Hawaii today, was just such a deep, deep insult to the Hawaiian community, and paired that with such a show of force that was completely unnecessary. The people who were arrested ranged from, you know, mid-50s or 60s to 80 years old. It just was such an unmitigated, unnecessary show of force that I think it's such a deep, deep wound right now. I really don't know that we can go backwards. I'm sorry. Am Ira Plato, there's a Science Friday from WNYC Studios talking about the controversy in Hawaii over building the TMT, the telescope.

The University of Hawaii President David Lassner made a statement about this week. He said, I realize that TMT now represents a huge source of friction in our work to become a model indigenous serving university and a Watton place of learning. We will need many conversations over the months ahead to work on that together. My heart and mind are open as I continue to listen and share. Tricia, you talked with the University of Hawaii president about various compromises that could be made on the mountain. What did he say? are you optimistic at all? Well, I think it's important to note that David has been part of Hawaii for a long time.

So they hired from within when they selected this president. And he and I happened to be at Mauna Kea at the same time and caught the same flight home. So we did have a great conversation. And he, I think, is very sincere in his belief. And I think he is also equally sincere in wanting to make the university a Hawaiian place of learning. I think there are many more dialogues that need to happen about the first. future of Mauna Kea, period, at this point. And my hope is that he begins to listen to people that not only just agree with his perspective, but vehemently disagree with it. And I think that effort is

being made, but I think Rosie is right. I think there have been activities in the last couple of weeks that have been so aggressive and so deeply hurtful to the Hawaiian community that I think it will take some sort of prolonged stand down before people feel comfortable coming to the table again. Let me see if I can get a quick phone call into Gwen in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hi, Gwen, quickly, please. Hi. I just want to say as a student of Hula in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and having just read Sarah Vowell's history of the colonization by Massachusetts native of Hawaii in the 1820s,

that I was just horrified to hear about the decimation of populations by people from, from Massachusetts bringing Christianity and then sailors and bringing disease to Hawaii and the number of native people who were who died in this. And I just feel like the history is too long and too horrible. And we just, we do a performance, we do a dance to Monicaia and it's incredibly moving. I would love to see the mountains. I'm going to have to go, we got the gist of what you're trying to say. Thanks for your call. So where, let me ask you, Trish, where do you see this all ending up?

Well, my hope, I genuinely believe it would take some sort of miracle for that project to proceed. You literally have thousands of people blocking the road, and they're there for the long call. You have people moving in, basically. But again, there's a larger issue of the management of the mountain that Rosie talked about earlier, and that that really has not been done well. and there are needs for dialogues that they have just avoided having. And I think any time, you know, science needs to be engaged at all times with the community. That's what we're trying to do here.

Rosie Aligado, Associate Professor of Oceanography University of Hawaii, and Tricia Kahulani Watson, Vice President of the nonprofit, Alina Mamona. Mamona State, thank you for taking time to be this today. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. If you've ever watched the baby learn how to talk, You know that it's a messy process because, first, the baby has to hear you talk. Then there's that babbling, right?

All that random sound as the baby starts to figure out how to use its muscles to make the sounds that it's hearing from adults. And then finally, the baby starts to figure it out, and you get those first exciting words. And then before you know it, your baby is all grown up defending his territory and wooing mates. Oh, wait, wait, did I say human? I should have said all of this is how songbirds, like the zebra finch you just heard, learn to produce the complicated patterns of notes they must memorize if they want any chance of reproductive success in adulthood. But in labs that study these birds, researchers are also thinking about the parallels between

bird learning and human speech. Bird song is one of the closest analogs in nature to how we talk, it turns out, and studying how birds learn in infancy may open windows into our brains. Here with more to talk about that, my guest, Dr. John Sakata, Associate Professor of Biology and McGill University in Montreal. Good to have you. Hi, all right. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming down.

So how close is birdsong to human speech? We think there are a lot of parallels between birdsong and human speech, and you've outlined a lot of them in your description. Just thinking of the process by which birds have... to learn how to produce their own vocalizations, their own species, typical vocalizations, is really similar to how children have to figure out how to produce these speech sounds to communicate with others in their environment. So they go through this, it's fundamentally the same across the species that learn how to, their own vocalizations. So it first involves

learning the sounds of the sound that you use to communicate, and then involves learning how to produce those sounds. So figuring out the motor patterns or the, the, the, the or commands to produce those particular sounds. Now, that first phase is sort of this memorizing the sounds of the adults around them, and then memorizing a song that they ultimately want to sing. That's sort of their target song. And then they go through this, like you said, they babble, and they start practicing, and they figure things out.

Sometimes they get things wrong. Sometimes they get things right. And when they get things right, the brains is like, aha, that's great. You did some good. Keep doing that. And eventually they grew up singing their own songs. Is this unique to birds? this kind of learning?

Do other animals do this? Well, other, they're a handful of other birds. So there's songbirds. So within the large clade of birds, there are songbirds. There are about 4,000 to 5,000 songbirds that learn their own songs. They're also hummingbirds that learn their own songs. And also parrots, so that they're fairly well known for being vocal learners. But outside of birds, there are a number of mammals.

For example, humans being one of the main ones that we think about. Bats also are vocal learners? Bats, yes. Wow. And so this is relatively, people have become to appreciate that more and more in the last couple decades. Cetations like dolphins and whales are also vocal learners, and there's some new evidence that elephants can imitate human sounds. So there's vocal learning in elephants. So there's a pretty neat sort of group of vertebrates that can learn their vocalizations.

And it's not as extensively studied in those other systems, but it's really well studied in birds. and we know that that whole process of sensory learning and then focal practice and sensory motor learning. But I think it's going to be fleshed out, my bet, is it's ultimately going to be the same thing in bats and in elephants. Interesting. I want to bring back that bird we heard before when I did the introduction.

Let's hear it again. Zebra Finch. Yes. Okay, so what is the zebra finch telling us? All right. It's saying, this is me. I'm singing, and it does this all the time. So what is it doing?

We don't know. We're trying to figure that out. But it sings a lot. And it sings when it's by itself. It sings when it's courting a female. And it really is, the song that it produces when it's cording a female is really one of the most important things that females use to pick who to mate with. And so the bird has to do this really well. So he spends a bunch of time what we think when he's singing by himself is that we actually think he might be practicing just to make sure he's, you know, keeping up his vocal skills.

And then when he sees a female, he's in his ultimate, his best performance, and he shows off his sort of his vocal skills, if you will. So you have a labful of these birds? We do have a lab phone. What a noisy place. Well, we have the, it would be lovely to have them just flying around. But we do have them in the sound attenuating chambers so we can have the recordings of them in an acoustically clean environment, just like you have here in the studio.

But we do have them also flying around as well. So you're trying to figure out what's going on in their brains? when they're doing the songs. That's what you're trying to do. Both the learning of the song and the production of the song as well. So we think that songbirds are really interesting. I mean, there are a lot of animals that communicate with each other with sounds. But songbirds, I think, are really interesting and I think special because they're not born with this ability to produce their own species songs, but because they have to learn them.

And so studying that learning process, I think, is what really makes songbirds an interesting and important model system to study with regard to brain mechanisms. So do they have a center in their brain, like we might have? They have many centers. For these songs. Yes, there's a series of brain areas that are connected to each other that have parallels in the human brain. So, for example, there's an area called, there's a part of the brain, a series of interconnected brain areas called the basal ganglia. And people think about that a lot in humans with regard to movement. And when things go rye and Parkinson's disease, you often have some things that go wrong in the basal ganglia.

in the basal ganglia itself, sorry. But what's neat about songbirds is they also have this basal ganglia, and within the basal ganglia, they have this specialized portion called Area X. It's a very attractive name. Area X. I like the way you say it. It's a TV show coming up about birds. Exactly.

So that area is specialized for a song learning, and if you mess with activity in that brain area during development, birds don't learn their songs particularly well. And so we think that there are parts of the... the human basal ganglia that are important for vocal learning as well, and that are similar to this area X you see in birds. You know, in people, we say that people learn things better earlier in life. Is that the same thing with the birds learning their songs, or did they learn it their whole lives?

There are species differences in how long they can, for how old they can keep learning their songs for. So the zebra fringes that we study, they only learn their songs during the first month or two of their lives. and so it's a really restricted window of development and these zebra finches sing one song their whole life so this one or two months of development is really important for them to learn

and crystallize their songs. But there are other species like mockingbirds and European starlings that are what we call open-ended learners that can learn song throughout their lifetime. And so we are really interested in trying to figure out what is different in the brains of these two different types of birds. Because they're imitating other birds, right?

It's amazing. Yeah, they can even even imitate non-avian sounds, right? So, car alarms, for example, being a classic example of mockingbirds can do, right? And how do they do that? I mean, so we don't know. But we're trying to figure it out. So your lab is investigating whether song learning

also is influenced by social interact. What do you mean by that? So, you know, we as humans, babies, children can learn from watching videos and learn how to say particular things. But it's not particularly robust learning. And we, people learn much better if we're allowed to socially interact with an adult or with a peer. And that leads to more robust and efficient learning.

And the same thing happens in songbirds. When you have a juvenile bird that's being tutored by an adult, another adult, that bird learns the song of that adult bird much better versus in comparison to a juvenile that's housed individually and just hears song being played back passively out of a speaker. So we compare these song learning under social situations or social contexts and song learning in response to passive exposure to song. And we see, again, more robust learning when juveniles allow to socially interact with adults. Is bird's song a language? Are the birds talking to one another?

So as songbird researchers, we try to be really careful about what we say bird song song is analysis. And so for the most part, we say that Birdsong is analogous to speech and not to language per se. So wait, what's the difference? I mean, speech, language. Yeah, so when we talk about it as a scientist, when we talk about it, we think of speech as sort of the motor, really just the how do you produce the sounds that are, that comprise language, right? And when we talk about language, we think of the semantic content, the syntax, sort of the meaning that's within language itself that we're trying to communicate. And we, you know, birds do communicate particular things with their vocalizations, but the the repertoire of meanings of things that they communicate is much more restricted than that

what we see in human language, right? So we think that, you know, they can't convey an infinite number of things about the environment, as far as we can tell. And so we think that, you know, what's the most parallel between birdsong and human speech is sort of the production aspect of it. So you're saying that birds are not taking different little songs and putting them together, like we would take different words as we speak? Some birds do so, but not to the same extent as humans do.

There's this thing called combinatorial syntax, and some birds do put different calls together to form different meanings. It's a really neat field. I'm pushing back on this yet. If that sounds like speech, it sounds to me. It sounds a little bit like language. A little bit. There are people who study this and think about the linguistic principles in bird songs.

I think there are certainly phenomena that birds do that are akin to language, but I think we wouldn't argue that's the same scope of human language in terms of. And birds that can imitate human speech, are they doing something different? We don't know. We don't know. We don't know a lot about those kind of birds. They're really interesting. I mean, the ability to mimic human speech probably has something to do with things in the periphery.

So what can their muscles do, the beak and the tongue, and can they ultimately produce those sounds? But it's probably not just that, too. There's probably some differences in the brain of these birds that can imitate human speech and birds that can't do that. But ultimately, I think, my guess, is that they're using the same circuits for the same brain areas for learning human speech or how to produce human speech

as learning how to produce another bird song in these mimics. And the birds that you study. I'm thinking about, like, parrots imitating people. No, that's fantastic. We don't know anything about how parents do that. And zebra finches can't do that. They can sing their own species song, but they can't say hello to us. It would be nice if we have a whole colony full of birds saying hello to us in the morning, but we don't have that.

It might get tiresome after a while. It might, yeah. So what can we learn about humans? Have you studied the brains of these birds? What is it going to tell you about us? Well, I think there's been a lot of research into trying to find these parallels between bird brains and human brains. And we have, I think there's a lot of evidence to say that a lot of these areas that we see in songbirds that are important for song learning are really similar to these areas that we find important for speech learning in acquisition in humans. So if we study these processes in songbirds, maybe we can get some insight into the processes that are involved in speech acquisition in humans.

Furthermore, we can study, you know, there are individuals with deficits in, have communication disorders, so deficits in learning how to speak and how to produce language. And there are a number of genes that have been implicated in these communicative disorders. And one thing we can do is those same genes are expressed in, a lot of those same genes are expressed in songbirds. And we can actually ask, to what extent do these individual dreams, if you introduce a variant into, songbird brain, can that also lead to deficits in communication in the songbird? So you can help really look for the genetic substrates underlying communication disorders by using songbirds as an animal model system.

Am I Refleader? This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Do you find that birds are actually smarter than we give them credit for? I think they're smart at doing all the stuff that they're meant to do, and I think we just have to come up with the right tests. But I think they surprise us a lot. Yeah. Were you surprised by their singing ability?

Anything surprised you? No. I mean, I think the amount that they sing is pretty amazing. We have some studies where we gave them these random sets of sequences, and we found that they, what happens is that they, oh, sorry. They pull, when you give them these random sounds of their zebra friends, they pull out sequences that are really typical of the sequences you see in the wild. So we think that the brain is biased to learn these species typical sequences that you see. So you're given this random garbage of sounds, well, random sequences on, and they pull out things that their species would use for communication.

Interesting. Thank you very much. John Sakata, Associate Professor of Biology at McGillian University in Montreal. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. We're celebrating birdsong and other brainy bird tricks this month with our sci-fi book club reading of the book, The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman and here with a couple of updates on what the club's been doing, sci-fi producer, book and bird nerd, Christy Taylor. Hey, Ira.

Okay, welcome back. What's the report from the book club trenches? Well, we've been reading for a couple weeks now, and we've been having some great on-air conversations about smart birds with our listeners on Facebook, about what kinds of intelligence we can measure in birds, including these great tricks of navigation, problem-solving, and, of course, the communication that we just talked about with Dr. Sakata. And then, of course, other neat tricks like this one, Ken in Lawrence, Kansas told us about on the SciFri Vox Pop app.

A friend in Hayes, Kansas, who watched a Western kingbird put cigarette butts in the nest for the young ones because it supposedly repels ticks, mites, and other pests, which I think is a learned behavior. Obviously, it's not a genetic programming. And I think that's very smart. That's Ken in Kansas on our new Science Friday Vox Pop app. which lets people chime in on different Science Friday questions using their phone microphone. And we have two questions like that right now for our book club readers.

So you can join on in and find the Science Friday Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps. And Ira, our listeners have been sharing stories about all kinds of smart bird behavior they've been seeing. Cardinals begging them to refill the bird feeder. Crows cracking nuts on the sidewalk. Megan in San Jose saw a crow dipping stale French fries in water to soften them up. That's pretty spot. You know, I love how smart crows are because I've seen them a lot, and we've been learning about the New Caledonian crows,

amazing puzzle-solving abilities, just reading in the book how they make tools, but also how they use tools, and they use tools to get another tool, and they'll eventually get them the food that they need. Yeah, and they also seem to have cultural differences and how they make these tools, depending on where they live.

They, like, pass this down through families. I'm also personally getting really excited about Bowerbirds. They make these really beautiful, elaborate nests, Each species seems to have a different sense of aesthetics, favorite colors, tricks with perspective that they do to lure their females, and maybe even a sense of artistry, which is a fun debate we can have next week. Well, is it too late for newcomers to join in the book club? Absolutely not. You can still pick up the genius of birds by a Jennifer Ackerman and start reading. Find our discussion group on Facebook and go looking for birds near you with our eye naturalist challenge.

Take a photo on your phone, send it in, and you will be contributing valuable citizen science data. That's all on Science Friday.com slash book club. There you go. Christy Taylor, Science Friday producer and Wrangler for our book club. And our vert conversation continues when we're in San Antonio next Saturday, August 10th at the Tobin Center, talking about conserving local bird species. Plus, we'll be talking about bats and diseases so deadly. You need a special biohazard suit to deal with them.

So if you're in Texas, join us on Saturday, August 10th. Find out more on our website at ScienceFriety.com slash San Ani. Antonio. And Charles Barkwitz is our director, our senior producer, Christopher and Taliazza. Our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, Katie Feather, and we had production help from Lucy Wong and our intern, Camille Peterson. And thanks to Lauren Young for helping put together our telescope segment. And if you haven't checked it out, download our Science Friday Vox Pop app. You can submit questions and comments for upcoming shows in your voice, right in your voice. We might play the recording on the air, Science Friday Vox Pop app.

York. I'm Ira Flato.