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  • CARL SAFINA: All right, well, we're

  • going to talk about basically the subtitle of this book.

  • This book came out two days ago, so it's brand new.

  • And we're going to start in a kind of familiar place.

  • Many of us have animals at home, and we've often asked ourselves

  • these questions, right?

  • How many people have asked themselves

  • if their cat or dog really loves them, or just

  • wants food, or whatever, right?

  • That's pretty common.

  • And we think, well, it's impossible to know.

  • But is it really?

  • Is it really impossible to know what's

  • going on in the mind and the heart of our pets?

  • Well, in a way, no and in a way, yes.

  • What's really going on in those minds is the question.

  • Another question is-- it's not showing up very well

  • there-- how are they like us?

  • But I don't like that question so much.

  • It's an inescapable question because they

  • are in many ways like us.

  • But when we say, how are they like us,

  • we put the attention back on us.

  • And us is our favorite story.

  • We like to talk about ourselves.

  • And what we're really supposed to be doing here

  • is asking, how are they like us or not?

  • Who are we here on Earth with is really the point.

  • And what is going on in these minds that

  • are our co-voyagers on planet Earth?

  • Is there any way to get into the mind

  • of an elephant, for instance, or any other kind of creature?

  • Well, I think there are actually several really good ways

  • of seeing in.

  • You can look at their brain and their mind.

  • You can look at their body, at the logic of their behavior,

  • at their evolution.

  • So the first thing is if we're interested in minds

  • is to know where is the mind?

  • In many parts of human history, people

  • have thought the mind is in the heart or the mind

  • is in the soul.

  • The mind is a disembodied spirit that

  • is our eternal presence in the universe, all

  • these different kinds of things.

  • So first of all, where is the mind?

  • And a hint is that if you have a heart surgery,

  • it's not going to damage your mind.

  • But if you have brain surgery and something goes wrong,

  • it's going to damage your mind.

  • Your mind comes from your brain.

  • The mind is in the brain.

  • And we might say, oh, we have no idea if animals

  • are experiencing anything.

  • But we use their experience all the time.

  • For instance, if we want to know if cosmetics

  • are going to sting us, we test them on the eyes of rabbits

  • to see if they sting the rabbit.

  • So if they sting the rabbits, the rabbits

  • are having exactly the same experience

  • of pain, the sensation of stinging, as people have.

  • When dogs are depressed, or if dogs

  • have obsessive-compulsive disorder,

  • they respond to the same drugs in the same way

  • that we give to people-- antidepressant drugs.

  • Why?

  • Because the part of the brain that gets depressed

  • and the chemicals that create depression

  • or obsessive-compulsive disorders are exactly the same.

  • They're not experiencing an analogous problem.

  • They're having the same problem in the brain of a dog.

  • Or even as low as down below vertebrates

  • on the evolutionary timescale, or before vertebrates,

  • something like a crayfish, you can

  • make crayfish develop anxiety by giving them

  • little electrical shocks and making

  • them feel nervous and tense.

  • And so they retreat into their burrows.

  • They stop exploring.

  • They won't eat.

  • You give them the same anti-anxiety drugs

  • that work on people, the crayfish relaxes,

  • comes out of its burrow, and starts exploring again.

  • So these are ways we can manipulate minds

  • with different kinds of tests and drugs

  • to see if they respond the same way ours do.

  • And that's a good way in.

  • Now you can say, well, we can see brains,

  • but we can't see the mind.

  • And that, in a sense, is a fair enough statement.

  • I mean, it's true, right?

  • But I can't see your mind.

  • You can't see my mind.

  • It's always true.

  • But where is our mind from?

  • Where is the human mind from?

  • The human mind is from the minds of non-humans

  • that were here before us.

  • When evolution created-- in a sense-- humanity,

  • humanity evolved from something.

  • We had to use the parts that were already in stock

  • and make a few tweaks.

  • And the parts that were in stock are the highly developed brains

  • of the other mammals from which we evolved.

  • So if you look at a mouse brain, and you look at a human brain,

  • it's a very similar, very recognizable kind of thing.

  • The human brain looks different.

  • It's got lots of convolutions in the forebrain.

  • That's where a lot of thinking happens

  • in humans-- human thinking.

  • If you compare our brain with a chimpanzee brain,

  • you see basically that we are apes,

  • so it's not too surprising that the human brain is basically

  • a very big chimpanzee brain.

  • So it's not logical to think that the human brain only

  • does things that only humans do and nothing that

  • happens in any other brain.

  • It's just completely illogical.

  • We're all very insecure, we human beings.

  • We can soothe our insecurity with the thought

  • that at least we have the biggest brain, right?

  • Except, uh-oh, there's a dolphin brand.

  • It's not only much bigger.

  • It has way more convolutions than ours.

  • It's doing something with all of those neurons

  • and all of those networked connections.

  • We can see the working of the mind

  • in the logic of behaviors of other animals, the fact

  • that their responses and emotions make sense to us.

  • We don't see-- well, we'll go through a few, OK.

  • We say these albatrosses here, they're dancing in courtship.

  • And why do we say they're dancing in courtship?

  • Because that's a very recognizable thing.

  • It happens at the same time that humans dance in courtship.

  • It's something that we do, pre-bonding and pre-mating--

  • same with them.

  • We look at elephants like this.

  • Now, elephants don't do this if they're surrounded

  • by all kinds of dangers.

  • And they don't do this if they're famished.

  • They do this if everything is cool and nice,

  • and they're relaxed.

  • And the parents are still a little bit on guard

  • while they let the babies lie down and not worry

  • about anything.

  • That totally makes sense to us, and it's totally

  • appropriate to the situation.

  • So we can tell by the logic of their behavior, something about

  • what's going on in their minds.

  • They are protective and parental,

  • like we are protective and parental,

  • whether they are humans or elephants or mammals in water.

  • The differences between us are mostly the outer contours

  • and a few internal tweaks.

  • So one analysis is only humans have human skeletons.

  • But it's not true that only humans have skeletons.

  • And only humans have human minds,

  • but it's not true that only humans have minds.

  • When help is needed, help is provided.

  • They're not trying to eat their baby.

  • They're trying to help it to its feet.

  • I love this picture.

  • This is the cover of the book, actually.

  • That's a newborn elephant that has never stood up before.

  • And its mother and two cousins are helping it

  • to its feet for the first time.

  • When animals are very young, they're very curious.

  • They don't know what things like egrets are.

  • They check everything out, because they

  • have to learn what's in their environment.

  • And many animals have to learn just about everything.

  • Baby elephants don't even know that lions are dangerous.

  • They have to be taught by their parents

  • and by example that lions are dangerous, that bees can sting

  • you, and these kinds of things.

  • But when we're young, we do lots and lots of exploring.

  • And as we get a little older, and we

  • know what's going on in our environment,

  • and what we have to do, we tend to be less playful than when

  • we were children.

  • We tend to do less exploring.

  • You can see that in others.

  • And when something goes wrong, or something

  • might be dangerous, you see a very different set

  • of behaviors.

  • And you see them paying attention

  • in very different ways.

  • When it's time to relax and have fun,

  • they relax, and they have fun.

  • Now, no one would look at this and say,

  • I have no idea if the baby is frightened out of its mind,

  • right?

  • It's not what you'd say.

  • You can see that they're just having

  • a nice time in the water.

  • And that not all of their behaviors

  • are driven by the need to survive in the next minute,

  • that there are other things that help us to survive.

  • A lot of these deep motivations like love and like bonding,

  • these things, we don't just do it in the minute it's needed.

  • We develop relationships before these things

  • need to come into play.

  • So the love and bonding of family members

  • is something that provides ongoing benefits in many ways.

  • But we don't think, OK, let's see,

  • I'm going to get ongoing benefits in many ways,

  • so I better love my siblings, and my parents,

  • and my family members.

  • That's just not how our minds are equipped.

  • We just feel these motivations, and then they

  • do what they are supposed to do, what they're evolved to do.

  • Albatrosses have these bonds and maintain these pair bonds

  • in ways that are a bit unusual among birds, actually

  • even a bit unusual among mammals.

  • Because their pair bonds are very, very long-lasting.

  • They can live many decades in the wild.

  • They mate with the same mate every year.

  • And if a mate dies, it usually takes them two or three

  • years to court and re-mate.

  • So you see the deep maintenance of these bonds in them In a way

  • that I find quite touching and really quite beautiful.

  • All right, there are other things that are unexpected,

  • I guess.

  • Only unexpected because our assumption

  • and what we've been taught is that animals

  • have very, very simple minds, and they're not

  • really aware of much.

  • And they just do things without thinking about it,

  • without feeling about it.

  • But it turns out that if you broadcast the recorded

  • conversations of tourists, farmers who farm away

  • from where the elephants live, and pastoralist herders who

  • walk around with spears and get into trouble with elephants

  • around water holes, and fairly frequently hurt the elephants,

  • that the elephants ignore the conversations of the tourists.

  • They ignore the conversations of the farmers.

  • And when they hear the conversations

  • of the herders broadcast out of hidden speakers,

  • they react with alarm.

  • The family bunches up, and they run away.

  • They can actually tell the difference

  • between human languages.

  • And they know which ones are dangerous to them.

  • They react exactly the same way to clothes

  • that are worn by those three different groups, that

  • are placed on trails where elephants can encounter them.

  • And that's been shown with experiments.

  • So let's get a little bit deeper into a question here

  • that is fundamental, which is, can animals think?

  • Well, first of all, the shortest answer is, of course.

  • Because humans are animals.

  • And human thinking is animal thinking.

  • But another thing is, we need much better definitions

  • of these words that we tend to use.

  • So what do you mean by think is the first question that you

  • should ask.

  • What do you mean by grieve?

  • What do you mean by empathy, and all these questions that

  • are discussed with different animals.

  • Thinking is the processing of information

  • that's coming in through the senses in ways

  • that help you make decisions.

  • So a jaguar that is trying to sneak up

  • on a tapir or a peccary, a wild pig, is thinking.

  • He's making calculations.

  • They know that the intended prey will run away

  • if it detects them, and it is trying to sneak up on it.

  • So that's thinking.

  • Somebody who is aiming an arrow at a target is thinking.

  • And somebody who is entertaining a proposal of marriage

  • should be thinking, although perhaps not always.

  • Consciousness is another thing that the definitions

  • are all over the map.

  • And some people think that consciousness means

  • that you can plan years ahead.

  • And consciousness means these complicated things

  • that-- I don't really think that that's what it means.

  • Because if you are given total anesthesia,

  • the difference between conscious and not conscious

  • is induced by the anesthesia.

  • Consciousness means you're experiencing sensations.

  • It's the thing that feels like something.

  • That's what consciousness is.

  • So a motion sensor senses, but it

  • doesn't experience sensations.

  • Dogs playing on the beach experience sensations.

  • That's the difference between an unconscious reaction

  • and consciousness.

  • I think consciousness comes into play in evolution

  • at the level where animals need to make decisions about things.

  • So if you simply cut your leg, that's just a physical thing.

  • And lots of unconscious processes

  • start happening immediately and automatically.

  • The blood starts clotting.

  • The cells begin to heal the cut.

  • The immune system kicks in to prevent infection.

  • So those are physical things if you cut your leg.

  • But if your leg hurts when you cut it,

  • then you know you're conscious.

  • So that's just consciousness.

  • There are, in a sense-- now this is just something

  • that I made up to try to tease out different aspects

  • of consciousness-- these four interrelated

  • processes of consciousness.

  • We detect the world through our senses.

  • We get information in.

  • Then if we think about that information,

  • if we evaluate that information, that is thinking.

  • If we just have an emotional response to the information,

  • that's emotion.

  • If it changes our mood to see something--

  • we may see something that frightens us.

  • We may see something that makes us jealous.

  • And then these moods or these thoughts

  • give us motivations and urges to act.

  • Empathy is often talked about as something

  • that is uniquely human.

  • And when you are trying to write a book about what

  • animals think and feel, you read a lot about humans.

  • And you come across constant claims

  • about what makes us human and what things are uniquely human.

  • And most of them are wrong.

  • One of the things that supposedly makes

  • us uniquely human is empathy.

  • Well, empathy is the ability to feel with your companions

  • and to match their moods.

  • If you get scared, I get scared.

  • You feel and look sad, I get sad or concerned.

  • That's empathy.

  • It means your mind is able to match

  • the mood of your companions.

  • This is not something new that just

  • started when people arrived, and suddenly, here I

  • am, a human being, suddenly, oh, empathy.

  • The oldest form of empathy is something really important

  • and really basic, which is, if you're with companions,

  • and one of them is suddenly startled and frightened,

  • you cannot wait around saying, wow, what got into you?

  • Why did you just run away?

  • Why is that?

  • Because the predator will nail you.

  • So empathy and the mind's ability

  • to match moods instantly with companions

  • is something very, very old.

  • And the oldest kind of empathy is

  • called contagious fear or fear contagion.

  • There are different kinds of empathetic responses.

  • Contagious yawning is the weirdest one,

  • because I don't even know what yawning is.

  • I don't think anybody even knows what yawning is.

  • And yet, it's contagious.

  • It's very strange.

  • And I think you can tease out different kinds of empathy

  • as well.

  • So there's basic empathy-- feeling with another.

  • You match moods.

  • A little bit away from that, and a little distant from that

  • is what I call sympathy.

  • You say, oh, my grandmother died.

  • I don't know your grandmother.

  • It doesn't make me sad to know your grandmother died.

  • But it makes me a little sad to know that that makes you sad.

  • So that's a kind of empathy I call sympathy.

  • And then if you see something happening,

  • and you are moved to act, I call that kind

  • of empathy compassion.

  • It's like sympathy and the urge to help.

  • And the motivation to help and do something

  • is what I call compassion.

  • So you see somebody who's homeless,

  • and you want to buy them a sandwich.

  • Or you want to sign a petition to save the whales,

  • or anything like that, where your mood is affected,

  • and you are urged to act.

  • That I call compassion.

  • Human empathy is far, far from perfect.

  • This thing, we like to exalt ourselves

  • and say, oh, we're the most empathetic.

  • Well, maybe and maybe not all the time.

  • So on the left there is a bunch of dogs bundled up

  • in a cage for a dog-eating festival in China recently.

  • And on the right-- I'm not sure how well you can see that--

  • but that is a man in a cage in Indonesia.

  • He is a Burmese man.

  • He is a slave.

  • This was a picture taken this past March

  • when hundreds of Burmese slaves were found being forced

  • to work on Thai fishing boats.

  • Buy shrimp that has been wild-caught in Thailand,

  • chances are pretty good that slaves have caught it,

  • because human empathy is not really so great all the time.

  • A thing that I find interesting is

  • that people who know essentially nothing about the science

  • of animal behavior know one thing,

  • and that is, you should never use anthropomorphism.

  • Everybody knows this tricky word, anthropomorphism,

  • which is projecting human thoughts and emotions.

  • In the behavioral sciences, doing such a thing,

  • and attributing human thoughts and emotions to animals,

  • has been for a few decades, a total career killer.

  • It's absolutely not allowed in academia.

  • And journalists write about this all the time.

  • And journalists try to be very professional by saying,

  • oh, we can't anthropomorphize the animals.

  • But since their minds and their imperatives

  • are very similar to ours because we came from what they have,

  • I think it's actually a very helpful first step.

  • And then if you know a little bit something about animals,

  • you're not likely to make many mistakes.

  • For instance, these two elephants

  • are consorting, right?

  • That's a male on the right and a female on the left.

  • Actually, the female had a baby just as the book

  • was going to the publisher.

  • And if you saw them, and you were really projecting,

  • you might say, oh, look at them.

  • They're in love.

  • But if you talk to any elephant researcher,

  • it's well-known that elephants actually

  • don't have romantic love.

  • They do find sex very exciting, and that is very obvious.

  • This one in the front has just made it and run back

  • to her family.

  • Her facial glands-- they have glands on their faces,

  • kind of like we have glands in our armpits.

  • And when they get very emotional about anything, when they're

  • happy or frightened, at a heightened emotion,

  • those glands stream.

  • So she's just made it.

  • Her family is reassuring her.

  • And they're sniffing her, and they're checking her out.

  • But there's no pair bond between her and the male.

  • The male provides no parental care.

  • So it is obvious that they do find sex thrilling,

  • but sex for them is not always coupled with romantic love.

  • I don't know if that sounds familiar to any of you,

  • but I'm not going to ask, OK?

  • So the main thing that evolution shows is that life

  • is on one continuum.

  • There are no sharp breaks.

  • Everything that we see in people,

  • we see the beginnings of in other animals.

  • Some things that we see in people, we

  • see other animals that have it far, far better developed.

  • Many other animals have superhuman response times,

  • superhuman strength, superhuman homing abilities,

  • things like that that we just don't have.

  • And we have some things that they don't have.

  • But it's all on a continuum.

  • All the way back to worms, the chemicals

  • that worms make that create mood and motivation

  • are some of the same chemicals that create mood

  • and motivation in human brains.

  • Even plants make some of those chemicals.

  • And it's unclear whether any plants actually

  • have any sensations at all.

  • They don't have a nervous system like animals do,

  • so there's some speculation on that.

  • And many people say no, and some people say, yes, probably.

  • But especially among animals, there are no sharp breaks.

  • So we recognize when an animal looks hungry or thirsty,

  • we say, oh, it's hungry and thirsty or it's tired.

  • And then when they're happy, we say, oh, we

  • have no way of knowing.

  • This is the science of animal behavior.

  • And actually, that is just not scientific.

  • It's really a bias.

  • So denying that they have thoughts and feelings

  • helps us to retell our own favorite story.

  • What is our favorite story, do you think?

  • Who wants to take a guess at this?

  • Yes.

  • AUDIENCE: Animals are here for us to use.

  • CARL SAFINA: That's one of our main stories.

  • It's not our favorite story that I was thinking of.

  • AUDIENCE: We're the endpoint and the goal of evolution.

  • CARL SAFINA: We're the endpoint of evolution,

  • the goal of evolution.

  • And we are absolutely special and absolutely different

  • and better than everything else.

  • And part of the reason we tell ourselves

  • that story is so we can think that all animals are here

  • for us to use, which makes it easier

  • to make decisions about what we're going to do to them.

  • So those two things combined, I think, help reinforce us.

  • It just makes it easier for us to continue to think

  • and believe those things.

  • What about love?

  • Do animals feel love?

  • This is a baby humpback whale, a nursing age humpback

  • whale that washed up in East Hampton a couple of summers

  • ago.

  • And the night that that whale washed up,

  • the lighthouse keeper at Montauk,

  • 15 miles away, said that she heard

  • incredibly mournful sounding whale sounds coming

  • from the ocean all night.

  • And she said, nobody would believe me if I told you that.

  • But I mean, she is the lighthouse keeper

  • at Montauk Point.

  • So I do believe her.

  • It sounded like there was a whale out there

  • looking for its lost baby.

  • So what do we mean by this word love?

  • Here's another definitional problem for us, right?

  • Many of us would say that we love our parents.

  • We would say that we love our children.

  • We also say we love that movie.

  • We love ice cream.

  • We love having a glass of wine before bed.

  • Some people love fighting.

  • So if we use that word, that word that's

  • so important, if we use that word to cover

  • all kinds of things that we like-- I love ice cream-- then

  • it is clear and inescapable that animals love.

  • Animals that care for one another, your pets that

  • have a relationship with you and seek contact and comfort

  • from you, that that is love.

  • It may not be exactly the same kind of love

  • that you feel when you talk about how

  • you love your spouse, or your lover, or your children.

  • But the way you love your spouse is not

  • the same exact way that your spouse loves you, right?

  • So love is not all one thing.

  • And I think we can safely say that animals do often--

  • those animals that really experience

  • these social bonds and these protective bonds-- experience

  • love.

  • Now, this guy here, that elephant on the right, his name

  • is Philo.

  • And he's a 15-year-old juvenile male in Kenya.

  • And that's the last photograph taken of him,

  • because four days later, that was him

  • on the lower right with a bullet hole in his brain.

  • Elephants are maybe the most famous animals with regard

  • to their responsive grief.

  • When an elephant goes down, the family always rushes to it

  • and tries to lift it and aid it.

  • And if an elephant dies, family and friends

  • hang around, often for days, and will revisit the bones,

  • often for years.

  • And when they revisit the bones, they usually

  • touch the parts that they knew best in life--

  • the tusks, if there are any tusks left, the teeth.

  • Because when elephants greet, they usually greet in a trunk

  • to mouth greeting.

  • It's kind of a combination handshake, hug, and kiss

  • that they do with their trunk.

  • Grief is something that I've noticed and read about,

  • not only in elephants, where it's really

  • pretty well-known and well-documented, but in wolves.

  • A researcher told me about a female wolf

  • whose mate had died.

  • And she had pups that were less than a year old.

  • And she immediately left.

  • She left her pups.

  • It was winter.

  • She went on a two-week trip on the highest, bleakest parts

  • of Yellowstone National Park, where

  • there were no tracks of prey.

  • There was nothing she was doing there.

  • She was just wandering, kind of aimlessly.

  • And two weeks later, she came back,

  • and she rejoined those pups.

  • This sounds silly, but it was very interesting to me.

  • I had a pair of ducks, and these ducks were inseparable.

  • We had two ducks and four chickens.

  • They were inseparable.

  • And the drake died.

  • And the female spent weeks wandering around the yard,

  • quacking, and calling, and looking,

  • and calling, and looking.

  • And you could really see that she

  • was taking a lot of time out of her normal routine.

  • It wasn't her normal routine at all.

  • She wasn't eating in the same way.

  • She wasn't going to the same spots

  • and resting in the same way.

  • And a woman named Barbara J. King,

  • who wrote a book on grief, provided

  • I think a very helpful definition of that word, which

  • is that grief happens when a companion is lost,

  • and the individuals who have lost the companion change

  • their routine.

  • They go off their feed.

  • They look around.

  • They're trying to find the companion, that that's grief.

  • And that's pretty much what we do.

  • And our grief takes different forms also.

  • For some of us, we might miss a day or two of work,

  • and then we're kind of back to it.

  • Go to the wake and come back.

  • And others of us, our entire lives

  • are upended and never really the same.

  • It's similar to other families of animals that I've seen,

  • families of wolves, and families of elephants,

  • where if something happens to the adults, they get shot.

  • They die really prematurely.

  • The whole trajectory of the family is changed forever.

  • We don't really tend to know these things

  • because watching animals and knowing them is very, very new.

  • The first people who ever systematically watched

  • wild animal behavior are still alive-- Jane Goodall,

  • and Cynthia Moss, and one or two other people

  • who've been doing that for about 40 years, since the 1960s.

  • That's as far back as we go to understand anything

  • about the family lives of individuals.

  • And they can tell you, I've known

  • that elephant for 40 years.

  • I knew who her mother was.

  • I know what happened to her sisters,

  • I know what she did during the last drought

  • to keep the family alive.

  • It's really incredible, but it's not

  • something that has seeped deep down

  • into general human knowledge.

  • All right, this I mentioned.

  • There's a lot of grief in the world

  • in and around elephants nowadays.

  • That woman is Daphne Sheldrick, and she

  • runs the very famous elephant orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya.

  • Kenya is only one country in Africa,

  • and that's only one orphanage.

  • And they're constantly besieged right now

  • by orphans because there's this war against elephants,

  • really, going on.

  • I mean, it's basically an extermination campaign going on

  • because of how out of control the ivory

  • market has gotten again.

  • But she will tell you, as she told me, that an elephant can

  • actually die of grief.

  • And many of these young elephants

  • who've watched their families in the turmoil of getting

  • demolished, come in very, very traumatized

  • and take many months to settle down,

  • and then years to try to repatriate them

  • in these not very natural artificial families

  • that they are creating back in the wild.

  • I had the extreme good fortune of being

  • allowed to go out with them on these walks every day.

  • They take these little orphan baby elephants,

  • let them out of their pens in the morning.

  • They know the keepers very well.

  • They bond with each other and with the keepers, and they

  • walk around.

  • And in a few minutes, you're in the bush.

  • You can't see them most of the time.

  • You can kind of hear them.

  • If the keeper wants them to go somewhere else,

  • we're going to go down this hill now, they just call.

  • All the babies come out of the bush.

  • They follow them down.

  • And it's really moving to see and feel the capacity

  • that these creatures have.

  • And just because we're just discovering it,

  • doesn't at all mean it's new.

  • It's not at all new.

  • It's many, many millions of years old.

  • And it's the lives that they have

  • and the vivid lives that they lead.

  • And as I mentioned, nowadays, all these elephants literally

  • have a price on their head.

  • It's very, very remarkable that this guy-- his name

  • is Tim-- that he is still alive.

  • Around Roman times, when Europeans first

  • took an interest in ivory, elephants

  • lived everywhere from the Mediterranean

  • to the bottom of the Cape of Good Hope,

  • except for the bleakest parts of the Sahara Desert.

  • The African elephant covered all of Africa.

  • And you can see how its range has shrunken since 1980

  • and is just fracturing into splinters now.

  • That is the geography of an animal

  • that we are driving to total extinction.

  • In another part of my travels for the book,

  • I went to Yellowstone Park to look at wolves.

  • Wolves are really, really incredible animals.

  • They're very, very much like us.

  • They live in family groups with a breeding pair

  • and the youngsters of several different ages,

  • usually one to three years old.

  • And then after that, the youngsters

  • leave and try to find and establish their own packs.

  • These two adults from one of the main

  • packs-- this one was a really, really famous wolf.

  • Lots and lots of people watched her and photographed her.

  • And she was very well-known.

  • They left the park and were almost immediately shot.

  • And their whole family kind of fell apart.

  • The alpha male was left with no mate.

  • That guy on the top right was his brother.

  • Basically, his hunting companions

  • and the ones who held down the territory were gone.

  • He had no mate.

  • Two new males came in.

  • He lost his family, basically.

  • And then this daughter, who was the most precocious one

  • in the pack, got ganged up on by these two

  • sisters, who wanted to be the mates of the two new males.

  • And they forcibly ejected her from her own family

  • permanently and wouldn't let her back in.

  • Now, I knew that wolves live in packs.

  • And I knew that the packs were families-- that I knew.

  • And I knew that, in that way, they were a lot like us.

  • But what I had no idea about was the turmoil

  • that would happen in the family when something happened

  • to the parents-- the coalitions, the vendettas, the politics.

  • It was really all too human.

  • So that one that got run out, she had to eventually leave

  • the park, and she got shot.

  • And this guy, who was the alpha male,

  • the breeding male that lost everything--

  • he lost his family, he lost his mate, he lost his territory,

  • and it was winter, and he was not young-- he, incredibly

  • enough, against all odds, he is still alive.

  • That's him sitting on a rock.

  • He had just been calling to another female

  • that he was trying to draw out of another pack

  • to try to take her as his mate and start a new pack.

  • So anyway, that was him when I was there, and this is him now.

  • And he's still alive, which I think

  • is quite remark-- it makes me feel really good

  • that he survived.

  • We like survival stories.

  • What do you think that is?

  • AUDIENCE: A dog?

  • CARL SAFINA: You think it's a dog.

  • Who thinks it's a dog?

  • Who thinks it's a wolf?

  • All right some dogs, some wolves.

  • OK.

  • Well, it's a full-blooded wolf.

  • And an interesting thing about dogs

  • is that before people understood evolution,

  • but they started applying Latin names to animals,

  • the dogs were called Canis familiaris, the familiar canid.

  • And wolves were Canis lupus.

  • But now we know enough about their genetics

  • to realize that dogs are so minutely differentiated

  • from their wolf ancestors, that their Latin name

  • got changed back to wolf.

  • So the dog's Latin name is now Canis lupus-- wolf--

  • familiaris.

  • So it's a wolf, but it's our wolf.

  • Domestication doesn't mean a tame, wild animal in captivity.

  • It means an animal or a plant genetically changed

  • from its wild type.

  • Almost all animals that are domesticated

  • are domesticated for tameness first.

  • And it turns out, weirdly, that the same genes that

  • make animals tame and tractable also

  • create certain similar physical changes.

  • They create floppy ears, blotchy-colored coats,

  • coats of different textures, curled

  • tails, passive personalities.

  • The same genes, not a suite of different genes.

  • So dogs show a lot of that.

  • Farm animals show a lot of that.

  • Who else shows some of that?

  • AUDIENCE: Foxes.

  • CARL SAFINA: Foxes.

  • OK.

  • Well, that gets to an interesting story,

  • which is that most of this stuff that's

  • known about what's called domestication syndrome

  • is known because of a 40-year experiment with foxes

  • done in Russia, where they selected them only

  • for tameness.

  • The ones that were tame and friendly, they let breed.

  • And the ones that weren't, they basically killed.

  • After a few generations, they got tame foxes

  • that wag their tails, seek their humans,

  • and have floppy ears, blotchy coats, and curly tails.

  • These are hand raised wolves.

  • They act remarkably like dogs.

  • They have not been bred for 10,000 years around people.

  • These are our wolves at home, our two wolves.

  • They're not fighting, they're playing.

  • They're good friends.

  • Other aspects of domestication include a lot of sex

  • outside the breeding season that does not

  • result in offspring, passive behavior, conformity,

  • reduced brain size, and neoteny.

  • Neoteny means you carry juvenile traits way into maturity,

  • right?

  • That's what it means.

  • So, can anybody think of any other animal

  • that does all of this?

  • AUDIENCE: Humans?

  • CARL SAFINA: Humans.

  • Right, humans.

  • Now, why would humans have those traits?

  • If you look at the bottom thing there, farm animals,

  • we brought animals onto farms to live a passive, settled

  • crowded life, and be able to conform and get used to it

  • and do OK there.

  • And we inadvertently had to do exactly the same thing

  • to ourselves.

  • So in the process of domesticating animals,

  • we slightly, at least, domesticated ourselves.

  • We are also like big juveniles, many

  • of us, as you can clearly see by all the themed

  • sections of this building.

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • All right.

  • In the interest of time, and because we stopped late,

  • I think I'm going to stop there.

  • Because I really want to have some discussion and some

  • questions.

  • So I think I said we stopped late.

  • We started late.

  • So I'm going to just stop right there.

  • And anybody have any questions about animals?

  • Animal thinking, animal emotions,

  • objections to anything I said?

  • We can just take it all on.

  • Yes?

  • AUDIENCE: I wanted to know your opinion about studies where

  • scientists assess animal intelligence

  • and give equivalents, like, oh, a dog's

  • equivalent to a three-year-old, like an octopus is

  • equivalent to an eight-year-old.

  • What's your opinion on that?

  • CARL SAFINA: Yeah, what's my opinion of studies

  • that equate the intelligence of animals

  • with humans at certain ages.

  • Well, in a way, they're interesting.

  • And in a way, they're the wrong question.

  • And I came to see that it's the wrong question because I

  • asked Cynthia Moss, who has been studying elephants

  • for 40 years.

  • This, I thought, was the big question.

  • I said, what has watching elephants for 40 years taught

  • you about human nature?

  • And I thought that was a really deep question,

  • and it was going to be so interesting to talk about.

  • And she said, I'm not really interested in that.

  • I'm interested in elephants.

  • I want to learn about elephants.

  • Comparing an elephant or a raven's performance on a puzzle

  • to a human toddler doesn't interest me at all.

  • And I was very taken aback by that.

  • I also felt kind of stupid for asking that question,

  • considering her response.

  • And I thought about that.

  • It took me a few days for me to really do a full mental reset

  • on that question.

  • The problem with comparing a raven

  • to a toddler or the communication

  • ability of a chimpanzee to a small child

  • is not that it tells you nothing,

  • but that it doesn't ask the question that

  • lets you get the full answer.

  • It's always about us.

  • Tell me, what could you learn about the ability of a raven

  • to solve a puzzle by comparing it with a child?

  • You learn, again, that humans are better

  • at solving puzzles than ravens.

  • But you don't really learn a lot about what

  • ravens do in their complicated, vivid lives

  • that they lead among their friends and their rivals

  • in familiar territories, how they seek status, how

  • their status gets deposed over the course of their life, how

  • their life follows the arc of a career.

  • You don't learn any of that about them

  • by comparing them to a three-year-old.

  • So the whole question of what intelligence

  • is, is a very fraught definitional

  • question anyway, because there are just

  • different kinds of capacities.

  • And usually with humans, we think

  • of intelligence, more or less, as the ability

  • to solve novel problems.

  • And many humans have a pretty good ability

  • to solve novel problems.

  • But who was more intelligent, Henry Ford or Pablo Picasso?

  • Does intelligence mean anything at most levels

  • of performance and existence?

  • And many animals do things that we can't do at all.

  • But if we can do anything, we give ourselves

  • an enormous amount of credit.

  • Like we have the ability to learn music,

  • for instance, just to think of one thing off

  • the top of my head.

  • We can learn music, and we can learn how to play instruments

  • that other people have invented for us to play and make music.

  • We just have a musical ability.

  • We don't have such a great homing ability.

  • We can't home for thousands of miles

  • across open ocean just based on our perception

  • of the Earth's magnetic field, and things like that.

  • So fish and birds that can do that, we just discount that.

  • We don't say, oh, my god, they're brilliant at this.

  • They are geniuses compared to us.

  • We never say that.

  • We just say, oh, who cares?

  • Well, we can play an instrument, or we

  • can solve a problem, or something like that.

  • There have been experiments done with ravens,

  • with certain kinds of puzzles, where the ravens can figure it

  • out.

  • And dogs and toddlers are left, in the words of one researcher,

  • "not even realizing there was a puzzle to solve."

  • So to me, it just isn't really all about us,

  • and it's not all about now.

  • And we have to get outside of ourselves.

  • Every time, we're always looking at the world

  • through our eyes, which of course is

  • the normal starting place.

  • But when you look from the inside out,

  • you only can see an inside out world.

  • When you can get outside yourself,

  • like the famous iconic first photograph

  • of Earth from space orbit, you get a different perspective.

  • And what I've really tried to do in my work, in my thinking,

  • and this book is get outside of ourselves

  • and look at humans in perspective,

  • in the whole sweep of life, and the history of life on Earth,

  • and the whole family of living things that are here with us.

  • Because there's a lot at stake.

  • And not only is there a need, I think,

  • to show what is at stake as we take

  • more and more from the rest of the world,

  • but I wanted to show also who is at stake.

  • Yes.

  • AUDIENCE: Do you think animals, like a dog sitting next

  • to a windowsill, can daydream and have thoughts unassociated

  • to what they see?

  • CARL SAFINA: Do I think animals have

  • daydreams and thoughts unassociated from what

  • they're actually seeing?

  • Yeah, sometimes they do.

  • And I see that in my own dogs.

  • Sometimes my dogs might be lying around.

  • And then they'll suddenly get up,

  • and they'll run outside to go and check and see

  • if there are any squirrels at the bird feeder.

  • Because they love chasing swirls around.

  • So things occur to them.

  • Sometimes they get up and they come over.

  • If I'm writing, and the dog is napping nicely,

  • they'll sometimes wake up, especially one of them.

  • She'll wake up, she'll come, and she'll just

  • start hitting me with her paw.

  • And the door is open.

  • So what does she want?

  • She's just thought that she wants me to go out with her.

  • She wants to maybe go for a run.

  • She's trying to get me to engage with her, because these things

  • cross her mind.

  • If she could never think about going for a run

  • unless we were going for a run, she

  • wouldn't be coming and bothering me to go for a run.

  • Well, yeah, we'll just leave it at that.

  • I can tell you other stories, but it's more or less

  • the same point.

  • Yes.

  • AUDIENCE: So outside of humans as animals,

  • did you observe that some of these other animals,

  • the same species, would develop different cultures depending

  • on where they were?

  • CARL SAFINA: Some animals do develop different cultures

  • depending on where they were.

  • A couple of the most notable are killer whales and chimpanzees.

  • Chimpanzees make simple tools.

  • But the tools they make are different

  • in different populations of chimpanzees.

  • So there are some chimpanzees that fish for termites

  • by using twigs and pieces of grass.

  • They stick it in the termite hole,

  • and the termites bite it to try to defend the hole.

  • And then they pull it out, and then they

  • eat the termites, right?

  • Some of the chimpanzees that do that live in

  • places where there are really hard nuts, and there are rocks.

  • But they have never figured out that you

  • can use rocks to crack nuts.

  • But there are other chimpanzees that

  • use rocks to crack nuts all the time

  • and actually use rocks on another rock

  • like an anvil to crack nuts.

  • Those ones that have figured that out have an advantage.

  • They get more calories because they have a whole other food

  • source that's available to them.

  • So they learn it from one another.

  • That's the definition of culture.

  • They're not born that way.

  • They learn from one another.

  • But the other population doesn't have it yet.

  • So when you think about humans, you

  • have to try to think of before globalization of any kind,

  • before ships got all around anyplace.

  • Human cultures were often very, very different

  • from one another.

  • The technologies were often very, very different

  • from one another.

  • So you see the inkling of that in chimpanzees

  • with simple tools.

  • And those chimps have stone and anvils.

  • And some of them have wooden clubs and anvils.

  • That's not terribly dissimilar to the most advanced tools

  • that many people had until recently, not that long ago,

  • where there are many cultures where the most advanced tool

  • was a bow and arrow.

  • They had no machine of any kind.

  • They had nothing that had an internal moving

  • part of any kind.

  • They mostly had digging sticks, and they had pounders,

  • and they had spears, and bows, and arrows.

  • So anyway, that's chimpanzees.

  • And with killer whales, the cultural differences

  • are strange.

  • One is they have vocal cultural differences.

  • But the strange part is that different groups have

  • some of the same calls, some calls specific to their group

  • only.

  • Other groups they socialize with do not

  • pick up on the calls of that other group.

  • It helps to define which group is which.

  • And even though they mingle, and even though they

  • hear each other, they don't copy all of those

  • sounds that clearly those ones in the groups

  • learn from the other ones.

  • And some of the groups mingle.

  • And some of the groups get close to each other and never meet.

  • and never mingle, like ethnic groups

  • that don't like each other for some reason.

  • And it's not explained, but it's a weird thing.

  • And the closest thing to what those killer whales do

  • is humans, where there are different tribes that

  • won't mix even though we're all exactly

  • the same, except for small cultural or language

  • differences.

  • It's mostly where you're born is what it is.

  • And with those killer whales, it's

  • mostly where they're born, what pod they're born into.

  • And they carry that identity, and they won't mix with others.

  • And it's very odd.

  • Any other questions?

  • Richard.

  • AUDIENCE: Yeah.

  • By the way, that's similar to certain jungle birds.

  • And they'll go into these big, mixed flocks.

  • And they will pay attention to warning cries

  • of predators from another species or another group.

  • And but then they will segregate out again,

  • so it's very similar.

  • The question I want to ask you is this.

  • You say you kept wolves.

  • I didn't know that you kept wolves.

  • CARL SAFINA: What?

  • AUDIENCE: Wolves.

  • CARL SAFINA: I didn't keep wolves myself.

  • No, no, I have dogs.

  • AUDIENCE: Oh, OK.

  • Well OK, I have dogs.

  • And one thing that I've read recently

  • is that one of the innate differences-- and I'm

  • asking you if you know whether this is true or not--

  • between dogs and wolves is that dogs will follow a human's

  • gaze looking at something.

  • CARL SAFINA: Yes.

  • And right, and you're going to say, and wolves don't, right?

  • MALE SPEAKER: And wolves don't.

  • CARL SAFINA: That's baloney.

  • MALE SPEAKER: OK.

  • CARL SAFINA: And here's why it's baloney.

  • And here's why a lot of the laboratory studies of animals

  • and animal behavior are too simplistic to capture

  • what's there.

  • Dogs were tested to follow pointing with their owners,

  • the people they knew the best.

  • So you take your dog into a lab.

  • And they say, OK, you stand there, and put the dog there.

  • OK, sit.

  • OK, ready, go.

  • Now, point.

  • OK, so the owner points.

  • The dog looks.

  • Then they take wolves with humans

  • that they don't know it all.

  • They put them behind a chain link fence because, oh, my god,

  • they're wolves.

  • And they point.

  • And a wolf behind a chain link fence surrounded by strangers

  • doesn't look where the other person is pointing.

  • But it turns out that when you take

  • hand raised wolves with familiar people,

  • without a chain link fence between them, and you point,

  • the wolves perform as well or better

  • than the dogs with no training.

  • Because they are incredibly keyed into one

  • another in their social groups.

  • When a wolf goes like that, all the other wolves

  • have to see what's interesting over there.

  • Are we about to hunt?

  • Did they just see something?

  • What's going on?

  • AUDIENCE: Well, the claim was that that they did not do that.

  • CARL SAFINA: The claim is disproven.

  • MALE SPEAKER: Good.

  • CARL SAFINA: Put a big X on that claim.

  • One more question, yes.

  • AUDIENCE: It's actually related to that.

  • You're talking-- there's blurb about your book

  • where you describe these cooperative hunting behaviors,

  • like whales knocking a seal off an ice floe and lions

  • attacking in wings.

  • How does that communication work?

  • Do we know about how they coordinate

  • those kind of things?

  • CARL SAFINA: In some cases, we know.

  • And I would say in most cases we pretty much know.

  • And that is, they're very, very tuned into one another.

  • So you mentioned the killer whales that

  • wash the seals off the ice.

  • What was the other thing that you mentioned?

  • AUDIENCE: The lions.

  • CARL SAFINA: The lions, right.

  • So I actually saw some of the thing with the lions.

  • And I didn't see the behavior develop because they knew

  • exactly what they were doing.

  • But I saw them do it.

  • So what I saw was lions are sleeping.

  • We're watching these lions.

  • We were watching those particular lions

  • because that particular pride had a habit of hunting

  • during daylight, which is unusual.

  • So we went to watch and see if they were going

  • to do something really cool.

  • And they were sleeping, and then they woke up.

  • And when they woke up, they got up

  • and they did a big rally with each other, a big greeting.

  • They're all licking each other's faces,

  • and they're all smushing their faces together and everything.

  • And then they're going to go hunt.

  • Now, first of all, you don't need to lick somebody's face

  • in order to go hunting, right?

  • But they do that.

  • Why do they do that?

  • Because that's a reaffirmation.

  • It's just like we wake up and we say good morning

  • to everybody in our family.

  • It's a reaffirmation.

  • We're here.

  • We know who we are.

  • We're together.

  • This is our group identity.

  • So that thing, reestablished in the course of their day,

  • they then leave the area where they were all

  • lying around sleeping.

  • And they leave together, because that greeting

  • helped coordinate them.

  • OK, we're all up now?

  • OK, let's go.

  • They go to a hill.

  • Obviously, they know exactly what hill

  • they're going to because they just went there.

  • They just go to the hill.

  • And then they walk along the crest of the hill.

  • One of them sits down, and the others keep going.

  • And why did that lion just sit down and the other keep going?

  • A second lion sits down, and the rest keep going.

  • A third lion sits.

  • A fourth lion sits, until there is a picket

  • fence of yellow lions in the yellow grass

  • at the crest of this hill.

  • And one lion walks toward the zebras that

  • are about a quarter mile away.

  • And the plan is-- which they've obviously done before

  • and they knew exactly what they were

  • doing-- we'll all wait here.

  • You go chase the zebras up the hill.

  • The zebras were no fools.

  • They detected the lion that was coming,

  • and they spooked and went farther away.

  • So what I saw was really, really interesting,

  • It wasn't incredibly dramatic because the hunt really

  • didn't engage.

  • As far as the killer whales, they fan out,

  • and they're looking in the pack ice, those ones that

  • wash the seals off.

  • They fan out, and they're looking around the pack ice.

  • They can hear each other a long distance underwater,

  • and they call a lot.

  • They recognize each other's voices,

  • like you recognize people on the telephone.

  • They know who's calling underwater.

  • And they're looking mostly for Weddell seals.

  • It's a certain kind of seal that they particularly like.

  • So if they're not food stressed, they're

  • looking for Weddell seals.

  • One of them finds a Weddell seal.

  • It doesn't immediately try to attack the Weddell seal.

  • It backs off and calls until the rest of the group which

  • might, in that case, be three or four individuals,

  • they all come together.

  • They swim away from the ice.

  • And then on some signal, either vocal or visual behavioral,

  • it's OK, now, and then they all go.

  • And they all pump their tails like this in unison,

  • and that creates a big moving wave right above the tails.

  • And they go right to the ice, and then

  • they just dive under the ice.

  • That wave breaks over the ice.

  • It washes the seal off, and then they get the seal that way.

  • And killer whales, more than any other animal in the world,

  • they share their kills.

  • They share a really high percentage of their kills.

  • So it's a really, really cooperative hunting thing.

  • I mean, wolves share the kills too but in a more passive way.

  • The thing is down, and it's just there,

  • and they all eat from it.

  • But the whales actually pull it apart and bring pieces

  • and give to one another.

  • Because they're in a more fluid environment like that.

  • So I'm happy to stay a few more minutes.

  • I don't want to keep you too much longer,

  • because we did start late.

  • And I want to thank you very, very much for coming out.

  • Obviously, we've got some books in the back.

  • Thank you.

  • [APPLAUSE]

CARL SAFINA: All right, well, we're

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