346 | Erica Cartmill on How Human and Animal Minds Think and Play

How we use electricity is changing, and when we use it matters, between 5 and 7pm demand

is at its highest, but small changes can help support the electricity network.

Things like running the washing machine outside those peak hours helps, or charging your

EV at night, or when it's windy or sunny, makes the most of renewable energy.

Making small, simple changes to how you use electricity is simply a matter of time.

Learn more at ESPNetworks.ie for its flash flexibility, ESPNetworks energizing your

everything.

Simplify your everyday with the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra's powerful Galaxy AI on

Vodafone's 5G network.

Preorder now for 0 euro up front and double your storage for a limited time only when you

switch to our unlimited bill pay plan.

Vodafone, together we can.

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, subject to availability.

New bill pay costumers only on our 24 month and limited 65 euro plan.

Offerance 11th of March 2026, each April the price of your plan will increase by 350 per

month.

For full terms, see Vodafone.ie slash terms.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast.

I'm your host Sean Carroll.

One of the topics that we've talked about frequently on the podcast is the nature of intelligence,

especially of course because we're thinking these days about artificial intelligence,

is that a good label, at what point are AI programs counting as intelligence.

But even when you put that aside, just thinking about human intelligence and other intelligences

in the natural world, there are certainly senses in which human beings as a species are

different than other species, where the only species that has podcasts and invented calculus

and things like that.

But is that a single fundamental difference between human beings and other species, or

is it an accumulation of many things, or is it just something that we got there first

in some sense?

And aspects of humanity have been suggested as the origin of our differences, tool use,

language use, maybe even how we speak in the shape of our throats and esophagus, sheer

brain power, number of neurons, social organization.

But none of it seems to be quite the thing that tells the difference.

So obviously one attack, one strategy to think about this question is to better understand

animals and what they can do, how they are similar to human beings, how they are different

than human beings, etc.

And not just an intelligence, because intelligence is not just one thing.

There's different ways to be intelligent, different skills you can have, and also there

are other aspects of social life that are related to intelligence, but not exactly the

same thing.

Today's guest, Erica Cartmil, is an anthropologist, cognitive scientist, and also animal

behavior scientist, an interdisciplinary person.

And she studies different aspects of animal behavior and intelligence.

In particular, the idea of animals playing with each other, animals teasing each other,

animals having a sense of humor.

This might seem like a kind of simple and trivial thing at first, but when you think about

it, the idea of telling a joke as we do for human beings is a pretty sophisticated idea.

It's a social construct in some ways, because when you tell a joke, you're setting things

up, which gives people your listeners, your audience, expectations, and then you subvert

the expectations at the end.

So that's actually a kind of a subtle move for an intelligent creature to make.

Certainly dogs and cats and things like that play with us, you know, they play fetcher

whatever, but do they invent games?

Do they play with each other in ways that have roles like picture and catcher that you

could then switch sides and things like that?

Does it evolve out of aggression?

Is it the same as aggression?

Is it different?

Do they do it just for fun or is there some down-to-earth practical reason for touching

balls and things like that?

So these are all fascinating questions, and unsurprisingly, the scientists who've studied

them have discovered a lot of fascinating things.

And as always, from my perspective, when I have these kinds of conversations, I'm both

struck by how similar we are to different species in various ways and how different,

you know, human beings put things together in a certain way while sharing many, many

of the same traits with individual other species.

But we still don't know about human beings and other animals, so let's go.

Erica Gartmill, welcome to the MiceKate podcast.

Thanks so much for having me, Sean.

It's great to be here.

So one of the questions that comes immediately to mind, and I'm going to apologize from

the start because this is one of those, do you think I'm right to kinds of questions?

But in reading your stuff and in talking to other people, comparing the intelligence

and the capacities of other species to humans, one thing, I mean, it might have been natural

to think that there is a linear progression of intelligence, and other species just not

as intelligent as us, and, you know, you can relate them to, oh, they're at a two-year-old

human level of intelligence or something like that.

But what I'm actually getting from your stuff and others is there's just some ways in

which they're more intelligent than us, some ways in which they're vastly less.

It's just like a lot of different capacities that don't necessarily march in lockstep

with each other.

Yes, you're right, moving on.

Oh, good.

Just kidding.

No, I think that's exactly right.

You know, they used to be this kind of model of, you know, intelligence, but also just

kind of evolution, the Skala Natura.

I know you know about that, right, where you think where it's sort of the idea was humans

were on top, and other animals could be arranged kind of working up towards the perfection

that was human beings.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think what science has done over the last, well, really many decades

has tried to really break that apart and say it's not a linear progression towards humans.

Humans are equally as evolved as every other species, and so the things that humans have

evolved to be good at are, you know, helping humans fit into these social and ecological

niches that we have, but the same is true of every other species.

And so you wouldn't expect humans to, you know, be able to fly or echolocate or see in

the dark as well as some other species.

And so why do we think about cognitive capacities as still being the sort of linear progression?

And I think the way I like to think about it or talk about it is I think that what humans

have is a unique constellation of abilities.

Some of those abilities are more developed than other species.

Some are less developed, but what we really have is this unique configuration, this unique

constellation that pulls them together in a way that really helps them build on each other

and gives us something that is really powerful and allows us to do all of the things we do

as a species.

But it just makes it so hard to have like a nice, tidy narrative about our security

this way.

It is, it is difficult, it's true.

And it's also, you know, it makes it, I guess, more work for you folks who are studying

this thing because there's not one magic thing that makes humans different.

It's, you know, we're one among many and we're all different in different ways.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's tricky, right?

Because so one of the things I started out studying language and, you know, that was

really always the like bulwark of humanity, right?

Humans have language, other animals don't have language.

But when you really start breaking down, well, what do we mean by language?

Is it syntax?

Is it, you know, reference?

Is it compositionality that, you know, the ability to put together small units into bigger

units that have different meanings?

All of these, each of these things, when you look at a very specific feature of language,

you can find at least one other species that has that ability.

But what, but what we can't find or, you know, and I don't think we will find is another

species that has all of those abilities.

And so I think that's what I really mean when I say humans have a unique constellation

is that we put together all of the pieces in a way that give us something that, you

know, might in fact be qualitatively different.

Although it isn't, it isn't just, you know, a sort of single switch that gets flipped

on and says, oh, we have language, other animals don't.

It's that, you know, other animals have pieces.

They have, you know, they might have one thing better than we do.

They might have little pieces, you know, partial pieces of other things.

But, you know, we, we kind of have this, you know, all the pieces fit together into this

puzzle for us.

I would love it if you could explain this example that you actually showed in a talk that

I saw you give on YouTube, I didn't see the whole thing.

But it was at CHIMP doing a task where there were numbers flashed on the screen and then

it was supposed to remember the order they were in.

And that the CHIMPANZ was better at this than human beings were and it was kind of embarrassing

for the human beings.

Could you explain this experiment?

Yeah.

So this is actually an experiment done in Kyoto, the private institute there where CHIMPANZ

ate her name as I and she was really the first one who was trained to do this where she's

trained to sequence numbers.

And so the numbers, so this is something where you have to train her slowly over time.

But the eventual version of a task is the numbers, one through nine flash up on the screen.

She sees them and then as soon as she, her, her task is to press the numbers in order.

And as soon as she presses the first one, they all disappear.

They get masked and so she can't see where they are.

And so you kind of have to look very quickly, you know, form a mental image of where they

are and the order in which you need to touch them.

And then, you know, very quickly, you have to keep that in your, in what's called your

working memory, sort of your short-term memory that, you know, allows you to continue the

task that you're in the middle of.

Now, I proved to be very, very good at this task, much better than untrained adults, human

adults.

And so we actually run this task as something that's up on the computer screens in the

chimpanzee exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo.

Chris Martin is the, the research director of the zoo there who had worked with chimpanzee

eye on some of these studies, installed these for the zoo visitors.

And it's very humbling for them to go and, and try it themselves because, you know, they

see it and they're like, oh, cool.

I'm going to try this and they see a chip doing it and they're like, oh, I can beat the

chimp.

And a human has never beaten, beaten eye, however, if you take very young children and you

kind of give them, it doesn't even have to be very young children.

But if you, if you take someone and you slowly train them up, you can get to the point

where you become an expert at this.

So really what we're doing is kind of an unfair comparison because we're taking eye

on a chimpanzee expert and, you know, sort of having her compete against human novices.

But one thing that, that I know this is a little bit off topic, but I actually think

it's really interesting and important from a cognitive perspective is that numerosity,

the ability to kind of learn, understand and manipulate numbers is something that seems

to differ quite a bit or in particular ways between humans and other great apes.

So one of the very interesting things with chimpanzees is that they can learn to recognize

and to sequence numbers, you know, one through nine.

And I think the video I showed and I know I can now go up into the teens.

But teaching her a new number is just as difficult as teaching her the last number.

So learning three is just as hard as learning two.

Learning five is just as hard as learning four.

And that's very different from what happens with humans.

So in human children, there's this period of sort of slow, laborious development between

one, between learning one, the number one, the number two and the number three.

But then once they learn four or maybe five, and they suddenly get it and they realize

that each new number is exactly one number higher than the number before it.

It's called, it's called learning the cardinal sequence, the cardinal number principle.

And so that's something where understanding that underlying pattern and being able

to apply it to new examples, new numbers is something that humans, you know, at some

point, kind of figure out and have this aha moment.

And that chimpanzees don't seem to learn that underlying pattern in the same way, even

though if they're trained on each of these different numbers, they can become incredibly

proficient at recognizing and sequencing them.

And chimpanzees do simple arithmetic, can they add?

Well, it's interesting.

I mean, this is not my particular area of expertise I haven't done these experiments myself.

My understanding is that a number of different species can, and what I say, you know, species

I'm including, you know, mostly mammals, but sometimes also birds.

And also pre-linguistic human children.

I know they're not a different species, but you know, when we're talking about the kinds

of tasks you run with animals, we often run very similar tasks with, they're not because

they're nonverbal tasks, and we have to run very similar tasks with young kids.

So the tasks that measure, I say, addition and subtraction are not, you know, the number

four plus the number five equals the number nine, right, because they're not manipulating

symbols in that way, but it would be showing a quantity four, going, you know, say you

have four balls, and they go behind a screen, and then you have five balls, and they go

behind the same screen, and then the screen is raised up.

Now what you want to show in, say, you know, a baby watching this, or a orangutan watching

this is when the screen goes up, if there are only three balls behind the screen, it should

be surprising, right, because that's a violation of the additive principle.

And so that is, in fact, what you often see with a species that have been tested.

Now there are some other things, again, math is not really my area of expertise, but there

are, you know, some other differences where, you know, the kind of how far apart the numbers

are before animals will recognize them seems to matter, so like it's difficult without

being able to explicitly count, say recognizing seven versus eight is very difficult, because

you have what's called a large approximate number system, and that's true both for young

human children and for other species.

Professors aren't always the most stylish people in the world, I have to admit, you want

to look casual and not like you're trying too hard, but also to let your own personality

come through in your clothes.

One brand that really helps with that is Raganbone, their Raganbone infuse line offers

denim in a range of fits tailored for any style and occasion, from slim and straight to athletic

and relaxed.

I have a new Raganbone infused jacket in gray denim, and right out of the box it felt

broken in and comfortable, no residual stiffness to struggle with, it's a high quality, carefully

crafted garment.

With both jeans and jackets, Raganbone infused garments both look good and are made to last,

they're not cookie cutter, there's enough variety in the choices that you can tailor

them to your individual style.

Raganbone is perfected everything from buttery soft tees and elevated essentials to jackets

and knits that pull your whole look together, it's premium wardrobe staples made to last

and made to live in, so it's time to upgrade your denim with Raganbone, for limited time

hour listeners get 20% off their entire order with code Mindscape at rag-bone.com.

That's 20% off at rag-bone.com with promo code Mindscape.

When they ask where you heard about them, please support our show and let them know we send

you.

Fast-growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands

of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers.

They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees,

flowering trees, shrubs, and house plants, all grown with care and guarantee to arrive

healthy.

Whatever you're looking for, fast-growing trees helps you find options that actually

work for your climate, your space, your lifestyle.

Fast-growing trees makes it easy to get your dream yard, just click, order, grow, and get

healthy thriving plants delivered to your door.

They're alive and thrive guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy, plus

get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape,

use the right plants and learn how to care for them every step of the way.

Our plucky little dogwood tree has gone through a harsh winter, but it looks like it's ready

to bloom for the spring.

So right now, fast-growing trees has great deals on spring planting essentials up to half

off on select plants.

Listeners to Mindscape get 20% off their first purchase when using the code Mindscape

at checkout.

That's 20% off better plants and better growing at fastgrowingtrees.com using code Mindscape

at checkout.

Fast-growingtrees.com code Mindscape now is the perfect time to plant, so let's grow

together.

Use Mindscape to save today, offers valid for a limited time, terms and conditions may

apply.

But there's this, if I'm understanding correctly, yeah, so like other great apes can understand

quantities and maybe even addition of quantities, but there is some level of abstraction that

they're not quite reaching with what you and I would think of as addition, and I guess

the successor operation from one number to another.

Yeah, I think that's fair.

It might be that some great apes who have been symbol trained can do simple arithmetic

with manipulating symbols, but that's not as far as I know that is, you know, that would

be a real exception.

Yeah, okay.

And how do we understand the explanations for these differences in terms of like what

evolution is asking of us?

Can we tell stories, I don't know how testable the stories would be, about why chimps

are good at some things and less good at others?

Yeah, so I mean, it's difficult because of course in some ways it is just, you know,

storytelling, right?

We can make, we can generate lots of hypotheses about why humans are good at particular things.

There are lots of hypotheses about why, you know, why humans have language, why we have

particular forms of language, ultimately it's very difficult to test those, right?

Is it, we can ask things like, well, is the structure of human language linked to our

ability to see hierarchy in the steps of producing a tool, right?

Okay.

So there are a lot of theories about say, you know, tool production or material culture

and the fact that it has, you know, nested hierarchies of you have to do this before

you do this, but you have to keep the end goal in mind in order to structure the intermediate

goals and that's very similar to structuring a sentence.

So there are interesting theories about sort of dating the evolution of fully structured

human language.

And I say that, you know, maybe connect it to the emergence of certain kinds of stone tools.

So we know that like apes can make tools, but they can't make the, you know, the very

complex to call a shulian stone tools where it's not just flaking off a single edge, but

it's flaking a shape to make a kind of prototype base shape and then making secondary flakes

to give it, you know, a sharp edge on one side or not on the other or, you know, kind of

modifications on top of modifications.

And it's that kind of, you know, future thinking and planning that some people think is, is

a marker that species that could do that also probably could structure complete sentences.

But you know, at the end of the day, all we can really do is say, can other species of

great apes that are alive today understand and appreciate structural differences in, you

know, human sentences.

So there are studies with trying to teach great apes language and asking, do they understand

the difference between the dog chase the cat and the cat chase the dog.

And you know, you can also ask, do they understand, you know, how to plan for future events

and how to order different sort of intermediate steps and things.

And so I think, you know, that's really where a lot of the work on comparative cognition,

looking at, looking across different ape species and saying, you know, well, not just

what do these species do in the wild today, but what are their underlying cognitive abilities?

If they're put in the right, and I don't mean right, in that there's, you know, one correct

situation, but if they're put in, you know, a similar situation given access to the same

kinds of substrates and motivations, can they, you know, complete a task in the same way?

And they understand particular sequences or orders, you know, is there, is there structure

to the way they think?

Yeah.

And among, I presume I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask you, because you're

the actual expert, among the different kinds of great apes, the gorillas, the chimpanzees,

the orangutans, the bonobos, are they, they're like, again, unequal capacities there.

Some of them are better than others, but worse at other tasks, do we, how much do we know

about that?

Yeah, I think, you know, just like, I was saying, with comparing humans to other species,

comparing across the great apes, you know, I think really yields a, a picture of, of different

areas of excellence, if you will.

So, you know, I think it used to be the case that people would think that chimpanzees and

bonobos, who are the most closely related to humans, maybe were the most sophisticated

cognitively.

What they are is very good at particular kinds of cognitive tasks.

They are the most social of the great apes, so they live in large, multi-male, multi-female

groups, as humans do.

And they, you know, just like us, they're interested in gossip, they are really, you know,

they're very interested in paying attention closely to who's doing what with whom when.

And so, any things that have to do with paying attention to others' motivations, paying attention

to, you know, what information others may be keeping from you, these are things where

chimpanzees and bonobos really excel, because those are things that, you know, are important

in the, you know, their natural environments.

Now, orangutans, which is the species I started out studying, they spend a lot of time

the vast majority of their time in a semi-solitary state.

So males in the wild will are solitary, they have large home ranges, they range around,

they look for females to mate with, but they don't spend social time with others outside

of courting a female.

Females will have an infant, and then, you know, who grows into a juvenile, and they

will have, you know, one baby at a time, who they travel around with and spend all, and

they spend all their time together.

And that is true for 10 to 12 years.

And so they have, you know, it's a mother infant pair, travels around, and then when the

mother has a new infant, the older offspring, you know, is displaced, and kind of goes

off to find their own way in life.

They go to college, if you will, and, and so, yeah, and, and so that kind of, you know,

but sometimes people call like Machiavellian intelligence, you know, thinking about like

who's, you know, who's plotting against me, who do I need to make friends with in order

to overthrow the king, you know, things like that, those types of intelligence are not

areas where orangutans, you know, really need to use those skills in their, in their

natural environment.

They, I mean, they are social.

They do, you know, they can, you know, pay attention to what another's goals are.

I mean, they're not, they're not completely solitary individuals, so I don't mean to give

that impression, but they're not as intensely obsessed with others as bonobos and, and chimpanzees

are.

What orangutans really seem to excel is in material culture, material manipulation.

So they are very good at figuring out manual tasks, and they also says I've worked mostly

with orangutans and now with bonobos and chimpanzees, and they have, they also have very

different, different sort of levels of, of energy and very different kind of personality

types.

So if you give them a problem to solve, and orangutan will sit there and they'll steer

at it for a long time, and they'll kind of, you know, they might chew on something, they're

just kind of looking at it, they might move a little bit, look at it from the side, but

they're kind of just sitting there, and then eventually they will get up and go over,

and they might solve it in the first try.

They might not, but, you know, they're, they're really kind of, they give it some space,

and then they give it a shot.

And chimpanzees and bonobos, you present them with something, and they immediately want

to get their hands on it.

They're like, what's this?

I'm going to go over here.

I'm going to poke it.

I'm going to shake it.

I'm going to bang it up and down.

Look at me.

Those, I think, are really differences in that kind of like underlying motivation that

can lead to different conclusions about cognition, but really have more to do with kind of an

orientation towards the world, you know, then they do, and maybe an orientation that's

driven by your social world, you know, if you, if you're a chimpanzee or a bonobo and

you have an opportunity to, you know, try to get a piece of food.

If you're not there immediately, you know, you might not get as someone's going to get

to it before you, right?

And if you think about, I don't know if you remember this like old, you know, Campbell's

soup commercial where they pass the bowl down the, the table, and it's like from the

like older kid to the middle kid to the younger middle kid to the, and it's like it gets

all the way to the, you know, youngest one.

He's like, wait, there's chicken in here.

You know, it's like now with chicken noodle soup, now with more chicken.

And, you know, it's that kind of like if you live in a big social world where you're

not the one who gets to eat first, you better get in there when the getting's good.

And so, you know, I think some of these things about the, the social and physical environments

that species have, have, you know, been adapted to live in can really sort of change the

way that they, you know, the way they're inclined to engage with, with the tasks that we

do scientists give them.

As a physicist, I got to think that the orangutans are just theorists and the Vincent Bonneboz

are experimenters, right?

They're in there.

They want to knock things around and see what the data are going to tell them.

Yeah.

No, it's that, that's very fair.

The other thing that I saw in the same video that was told about before that it really

struck me.

You, you had, I didn't see the whole thing, so I'm not quite sure how it developed.

But there was a question about whether chimpanzees can recognize what it means when a human

being points at a certain kind of box.

And someone asks, well, do chimpanzees themselves ever point like that to indicate things and

your answer was something like, no, because chimpanzees have a resource like food, they want

to keep it for themselves.

They don't ever want to tell anyone else where it is.

Yeah.

I mean, and that is more or less what, you know, what people have found.

So, you know, I think for a long time, scientists argued that humans were the only species

that pointed and particularly the only ape that pointed because, you know, most of the

comparisons about language or between humans and other apes, although, of course, there

are very interesting other kinds of models like in birds and, and cetaceans, you know, dolphins

and, and whales.

But the point in question, I think, is, is a very interesting one that changes depending

on the environment that the, that the ape is in.

And so, when, when apes are in, in human care, in situations where, you know, they, they

are prevented from reaching things themselves due to physical barriers that the humans put

up, like say in a zoo, they, they can pretty easily learn to indicate to someone,

a thing that is out of their reach that they would like, and the human will give it to

them.

Now, is that pointing, it certainly looks like it, right?

You can extend an arm towards a thing.

There was a lot of, you know, nitty-gritty discussion about, well, are they pointing with

an index finger?

Or they just, is it a modified reach?

Are they maybe just reaching to get it?

But sometimes the thing is really far away or, you know, so I'm, I'm not convinced that

they're just reaching.

So, in fact, they're pointing.

And actually, if you look across human societies, humans point in all kinds of different ways.

So, you know, they're, it's not just that we use this extended index finger.

We all, you know, there are places where you point with two fingers or a whole hand.

Actually, people get trained in, in Disney parks to not point with a finger, with a single

finger because it's considered rude in some cultures.

It's also, you know, some societies are people point with their chin by stretching their

chin towards something or inclining their head.

And if you think about it, you might do the same thing if say you were carrying something

and someone asked for you for directions and you might, you know, incline your head and

say, oh, yeah, it's over that way.

But is there also a feeling that humans are more sort of cooperatives, less trusting in

their ways of dealing with the world?

Like we, we sort of rely on other people to cooperate with us to find things in ways

that, I don't know, either chimpanzees or any other great apes or sort of more self-reliant.

Absolutely, I think, you know, human society, I mean, it's for all of our, you know, not

great traits as a species.

And as much as, you know, we have liars and cheaters and, you know, things like that

that appear in news stories and, right, humans are fundamentally a cooperative species.

We share information with others that doesn't benefit us.

Is it disadvantages us, right?

If someone says, you know, hey, what's going on or like what, you know, what are you standing

in line for?

Like why would you tell them?

You know, this might be something where I just want this myself, right?

Or someone asks you, where's the best noodle place in, you know, in Pekipsi and, you know,

why would you tell them?

Because you want more noodles for yourself, right?

But these are things where, you know, we will stop and help people we're not related

to.

We will share information freely.

And that information is rarely a lie.

I mean, it is obviously sometimes people are very capable of lying.

But if you look at the average person and the average interaction, people are very trusting.

And, you know, and I think that that's one of the, the real hallmarks of our species is

that, you know, we, in fact, that's one of the things that makes language work is, you

know, the ability of both the person who's speaking and the person who's listening

to trust that the other one is, you know, communicating in good faith, right?

If you tell me something, I don't immediately, you know, not every time anyway, I don't

immediately say, uh, prove it, right?

Because we're, if in order to talk about things that, you know, that, that we talk about,

that can't be, that aren't in just in the here and now, you have to believe the other

individual.

And so this entire enterprise of, I mean, you know, podcasting, for example, that is not

something that I think any other species could do.

That doesn't mean that they couldn't, that they can't communicate at a distance, right?

So chimpanzees make long calls, orangutans make, you know, orangutans make long calls,

lots of species make alarm calls, birds have, you know, these territorial displays, anything

that's broadcast, right?

It's out there for others to listen to, but it, um, it oftentimes is linked to the, you

know, the specific information about the time and place and the, um, and the speaker, you

know, the signaler, right?

So if, um, if a bird is giving a territorial display, you're, and you hear it, um, you

know something about, you know, who they are, where they are, these are actually really,

and this is a little bit off topic, but it's actually one of my absolute favorite, um,

studies that I always teach in animal cognition, um, where, uh, song sparrows, um, were, uh,

so song sparrows have, um, very discreet territories and one of the, I think, neatest experiments

that shows that animals, um, encode information, not just about sort of, um, the type of call,

but who is making the call and where they're making the call from is that if you take, um,

if you take a call made by, uh, say, the neighbor on the right hand side, right, like a right

hand to a territory.

So you think about, you know, you live in a house and you have a neighbor on the right and

neighbor on the left.

So you take, um, a call from the neighbor on the right and you play it back, but from the

left, the birds will respond, the bird in the middle will respond very strongly because

it's like, wait, Fred's in the wrong place.

Okay.

Um, and they'll respond, you know, as, basically as if Fred's a stranger, but if you play

Fred's call back from where it's supposed to be, they don't respond or they don't respond

as strongly because that's what they're used to hearing and I think it's really interesting

that, you know, it's not just that animals are recognizing, oh, this is an alarm, um,

or, you know, this is a food call, but they're, they're processing information and comparing

it to their memory of who is, is providing that information and where is that information

coming from.

And yeah, so I think that, that's, I think that animal communication is, is both different

from human language, but also more often, more complex than we think it is.

Shaving is something that most of us do and many of us don't really enjoy.

What if there was a razor that was designed as the solution to an engineering question

rather than as a marketing strategy?

Most modern razors feature pivoting heads with multiple blades.

These give the illusion of flexibility, which sounds good, but what you're actually doing

is giving up on precision.

Since you can't precisely control what the blade is doing, you end up using more pressure

than you really should and that's what leads to irritated skin.

The tugging sensation you feel with a traditional razor, that's caused by tiny movements that

are beyond your control, those lead to more friction and more irritation.

Henson shaving takes a different approach, with razors designed by aerospace machinists.

By experimenting, the engineers at Henson discovered that a fully supported blade provides

more precise shaving than a pivoting one, since you control the cutting angle.

The fixed geometry puts your shave into your hands where it belongs.

I know that since I've been using the Henson razor, it's remarkable how little pressure

you actually need to get a good shave.

If you want to try it for yourself, Henson is offering 100 blades free with the purchase

of a razor.

Just head to hensonshaving.com slash mindscape or use code mindscape at checkout.

That's h-e-n-s-o-n shaving.com slash mindscape.

Do you know what real power is?

It's knowing you're on the same rate for energy all day, every day with a smart all day plan

from board gash energy, save up to 880 euro on dual fuel, plus get a 200 euro welcome bonus.

Switch today at boardgashenergy.ie, boardgashenergy, know your power.

Estimation in the bill of 2006 engine 29 euro, new customer's only 30% is going to

have smart all day electricity, units rates and 29% of gas units rates, C boardgashenergy.ie

for full season season.

Project Hail Mary is an extraordinary cinematic experience.

You're a great scientist Dr. Grace, the world is counting on you.

Starring Ryan Goslick.

So I met an alien to world, one impossible mission.

Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Project Hail Mary.

Seat first, March 14th and 15th and Seat Patrick's Day, in cinema's March 19th, Iffko

12a.

The Philly Cheese stack is back of McDonald's and it's still intensely cheesy.

Imagine the cheesiest thing ever, now covered in cheese, at 2B Fatty's, cheddar cheese

sauce, crispy onions, and even more cheese.

The Philly Cheese stack, did we mention it's cheesy?

Available until the 16th of March, 2026 from 11am, fees applied to delivery orders, price

and participation may vary subject to availability.

Well, it leads right into where I wanted to go next, which is the idea of roles as it understood

the concept in animal societies, if you can even call them societies, presumably there's

definitely cases where there's two animals and one is sort of dominant over the other,

but to what extent do different species have well-defined niches that individuals play?

Obviously, insects have biological differences.

One is a queen, one is a worker, but just culturally, how obvious is that notion in primates,

for example?

Yeah, so it differs a lot between species.

More broadly across the animal kingdom, I think you have some animals that live in colonies,

like say, mere cats, or chimney swifts, or, you know, again, these sort of animals that

live in a group where you have multiple generations in the same group.

In some of those species, there will be a single breeding pair, and so in that way, you

know, everyone else is kind of helping, right?

And so in that way, it's sort of similar to a U-social insect, like a honeybee, and that

there's one, you know, quote, unquote, queen.

They're not as physiologically different as the queen bee is, but the dominant female

will suppress reproduction in the younger or subordinate females, and so you do, I

think, have some of these structures when it comes to mating structure.

In non-human primates, I think, I mean, you certainly have social hierarchies, again,

depending on the species.

I don't want to sort of over-generalize too much, but, you know, you, some species have

very strict dominance hierarchies in either the males or the females, or both.

So in some species, you can have a hierarchy where it's mixed genders, and females can

be mixed in there with males.

You have somewhere, it's all the males, but there's a strict order of males, and then

all the females below all the males.

You can have, you know, sort of distinct rights and responsibilities, if you will, that

are afforded to the dominant individual.

And so it's not just, say, mating privileges, right?

So some species you might have, you know, the dominant male is, like, allowed to mate with

all of the females, whereas the subordinate males are only allowed to mate with other

females if the dominant male sort of allows them.

And I don't mean, you know, gives him a written pass, like a whole pass, but, you know, sort

of, like, observes the male courting another female and doesn't attack him, right?

And so you can have alliances that are formed, and it's like, well, if I'm the dominant

male, I can mate with all the females, and maybe I let a couple of my good friends mate

with a few of the females, but maybe not my favorite female.

So you do have these kind of, again, very complicated social rules.

What you don't have is you don't have a division of labor where, you know, some are collecting

fruits and some are weaving baskets and some are collecting water.

You, you know, you do have some division in terms of hunting.

So once in primate species like chimpanzees that hunt, you will have some individuals

that, which is usually the males, but a few females as well, who will go on hunts together

and they will hunt usually for monkeys, but other species too.

And they will, tends to be the same individuals that will go on hunting parties.

And then they come back and they will share the meat with, uh, favored individuals.

So they'll share it with their friends, males will share it with females that they're

courting.

And so, you know, meat is a very, uh, you know, sort of precious resource, it's high calorie

content.

And so it's something that, you know, is used a little bit like a currency in, um, in

species that, that hunt and then food share.

So I can imagine if I'm, uh, a chimper, whatever, knowing my place in the hierarchy, I mean,

how much do primates know about the relative hierarchy of other members of their group?

Yeah, quite a bit.

Um, there's some really beautiful experiments, um, done.

I think originally by, um, Robert, Robert, say, farth and Dorothy Cheney at the University

of Pennsylvania, um, but some others have since then, where you can, um, simulate hierarchy

reversals by playing back, uh, you know, simulated, um, calls.

So you can play, you know, so let's say you have a fight where one, you were one individual

is giving like aggression, um, calls and one individual is scream it, you know, having

sort of victim screams.

And then maybe afterwards, uh, does some submissive vocalizations to sort of show, you know,

yes, you're in charge.

I, I yield, um, and, right, uncle, uncle, uh, and so, um, in, so what you can do is if

you record those, you can then cut them up.

So you have, you know, um, you have a call from, from, you know, individual A, who is

maybe an aggressive call, a call from individual B, a call from individual C. And maybe those

are, that's the order A, B and C.

Right.

So A is the dominant B is in the middle and C is lower down.

Now, if you take, um, if you take those calls and you splice them together to create a,

um, a simulated fight where say C is attacking and beats A, then, and then play that recording

back, um, to other individuals in the group, they will be very surprised.

So one, they will look longer at the speaker.

And then two, they will show more aggression to A afterwards, because this is sort of

a moment where they say, wait a second, A is vulnerable.

And so this is, maybe this is my chance to improve my spot in the hierarchy.

And so they're really paying attention to, you know, not just to their relationships

with others, but to others' relationships to, you know, each other, um, because those

are the kinds of things that you need to know if you want to get ahead, right?

Um, if you want to have mating opportunities, it's really important, any of your male,

it's really important that you make friends with other males who are going to be in power

if not now than in the future.

If you're a female and you want to make sure that your, um, you know, your offspring are

protected, and they're not subject to, say, infanticide, if, you know, a new male comes

into power, you need to have strong relationships, not just with other females who could, you

know, come to your aid and help protect your infant, but with other males who, in the future,

may one day take over, right?

And so it's, it's very, uh, strategic, you know, it's, it definitely needs like an HBO

show.

It sounds like it makes me wonder, do animals have a sense of humor?

Well, it's certainly something that, that I have been fascinated with for a long time,

um, and something that, you know, I've been, I've been exploring, um, really over the

last five years, I've been, um, trying to figure out whether, well, particularly

great apes, um, have, yeah, have a sense of humor, um, have a sort of understanding of, of

surprise, um, or, you know, sort of these subversive moments. And I think, you know, this kind of

comes out of, of the things that they pay attention to in their natural interactions, um,

yeah, we've actually been, been working on an entire research line looking at humor, um,

but really through the lens of what I call playful teasing.

Okay.

So, um, teasing is something that had, that I think is a fascinating opportunity to, to

look at the social minds of animals, because it's this great area.

It's sort of right in between aggression and play.

Um, and so a lot of times people, when, you know, I think when people talk about teasing and

the way teasing has been studied in the past in animals, anyway, it has really been thought

about as a form of aggression, right?

I'm, I'm pestering someone.

I'm bothering them.

I'm, you know, doing something to try to improve my stance in the group, but sort of

about like low level form of aggression.

But if you look at humans, we use, we use teasing all the time in positive ways, as well

as negative ways.

And so I think also when people talk about teasing in humans, it has, you know, has a pretty

bad rap because it gets, um, it gets, you know, thought about as a precursor to bullying.

What, and obviously sometimes it is, you know, I don't mean to say all teasing is positive.

But some forms of teasing, I think, are actually very loving.

I think they build relationships.

I think they're critical in, um, you know, in developing this sort of complex, um,

understanding of your, um, you know, how far another individual will go for you.

Is there, so, I mean, so the short answer is yes.

You think that animals do have a sense of humor or is that pushing it?

Is that anthropomorphizing too much?

Yeah.

I, I, I mean, I certainly think that they, well, it's also hard when you just say animal

shown.

You're allowed to narrow it down.

You're allowed to change any question I ask and the question you want to answer.

Because I, I will tell you, I think some animals have a sense of humor.

I think some animals probably don't.

So for example, right now I, so I, um, doing wild, some wildlife rehabilitation

and I have a possum, um, who is an unreleasable, uh, he's an educational animal.

And, um, he, you know, was, uh, like has a disability that means he can't be released.

And he is a fascinating animal.

And I love possums.

I could talk about them all day, but, um, he does not, I do not think that he has a sense

of humor is very good at what he does.

He kind of like pack man's around eating things and, you know, like he'll cuddle.

He's very sweet, but I do not think there's a whole lot going on in upstairs, um, not

to put animals on a ladder, you know, again, but I, I think that is not, uh, an ability

that I think needed to evolve for his species to survive.

Whereas we also have a cat and a dog.

I know you have two cats and I, um, I certainly think that, that cats and dogs have, uh, a sense

of humor in a way.

Um, I certainly think that they have things that they know they're not supposed to do,

that they enjoy doing because it gets a reaction.

And I think that that pushing the boundaries, um, and, you know, having these moments

of something unexpected or, um, a violation of a social norm, um, or an explicit rule.

I think those are the things that are really at the, at the heart of humor.

Well, that, that, I'm glad you put it that way.

It's very helpful because, uh, my current cats actually don't do this, but I used to own

a cat who did the traditional cat behavior of, you know, uh, sitting on a table or a, uh,

cabinet and knocking something off, but she would do it in a very specific way.

And I, I swear I'm not hallucinating.

She would move the thing toward the edge and then she would stop and look at you.

Like, are you going to stop me and like, no, okay, you want to move it closer?

Stop and look at you and then eventually push it off and I, as a human being,

I want to interpret that exactly the way that you just licensed me to do that.

She was clearly demanding attention, annoying me, um, purposefully.

And that could be interpreted as a kind of a sense of humor, even maybe kind of a, a mean

spirited one.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, I think it's a very valid question of, you know, what, I mean, is all

humor at its heart being spirited?

Yeah, exactly.

But I mean, certainly when I started this project, um, I, I had, I thought that my husband

and his brother were very mean to each other.

And I was just like, I'm an only child.

I grew up in a family that did not tease, um, or, you know, didn't kind of tease to a great

extent.

And, um, my husband is one of five boys and there was a lot of teasing in that family.

Not going to escape it, yeah.

And, yeah, and I think like, you know, I, when I saw him and his younger brother get together

and it was just, you know, how can I get under your skin until it really irritates you?

And I have, I have to say like doing this, uh, conducting this, this line of research in

great apes has made me develop a much greater appreciation for, like, the love that they have

between them.

Right.

Um, I'm still not sure I'm going to fully participate in that level of how can I, you

know, irritate you, but, um, but I, you know, I do think that, that it's fundamentally

built on, on respect and trust, um, you know, coming back to this,

example, you gave about your cat with the, you know, I'm going to look at you and just

push it a little closer, oh, oh, maybe I'll wait, oh, I'm going to push it a little more.

Oh, are you coming close?

Uh, no.

Right.

Um, so there's a, um, I think one of the things that started this whole project was,

um, a, uh, we, we're looking for three different, um, behaviors that a,

um, psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, Vessu Reddy, um, had identified

in human infants.

So she called them not humor, um, per se, but she called them clowning behaviors.

So they were sort of nonverbal forms of humor.

And these behaviors were offer and withdrawal.

So, um, you know, here would you like this thing, haha, just kidding, um, disrupting others

activities.

So you're doing something and I come and jump in the middle of it or, you know, make

it impossible for you to do the thing you're doing.

And then the one with my favorite all time, uh, label, which is provocative non-compliance.

Haha.

And I think that cats are masters of provocative non-compliance, but you think about, you

know, and so does that mean they have a sense of humor?

I mean, I would like to leave the door open for that, but not have a strong conclusion.

I mean, I think that I would say it suggests that they have an appreciation for violating

others' rules in that way.

But I think it needs systematic exploration in, you know, a sort of scientifically objective

way, where we're saying, well, will they do it when someone is out of the room?

You know, they do it in the same way.

Are they really looking at your response?

Are they trying to get a particular kind of response?

So if you, um, you know, put yourself in the sort of, uh, role of an experiment or

for a moment, and you said, well, when they do that, I'm going to turn and walk out

of the room.

Is that something where they're suddenly not going to be interested, right?

Are they doing it in order to get a response from you?

Um, I love the connection with violating expectations.

It's almost, I mean, maybe this is, uh, pushing too far, but I'm a theorist by, uh, inclination.

So you can imagine that this kind of behavior grows into telling jokes, which I presume

that, anyway, cats don't do.

Maybe chimpanzees do.

Yeah.

I mean, and I do think that this violation of expectation is really at the heart of, of

what a joke is, right?

I mean, I think, of course, we can push jokes, you know, as humans, we push them to the

extreme and we tell these long and complicated jokes and, you know, but I think fundamentally

a joke is, you know, setting up an expectation and then violating it in some way.

And um, that was actually the thing that, that initiated this entire project for me was

when I was, so my, I completed my dissertation studying, um, gestural communication in orangutans.

So I went to zoos in the UK and Europe and I was looking at how orangutans used gestured

to communicate with each other.

And during that study, I had this, um, I witnessed this interaction that I had no idea how

to study from a gestural perspective, but I just thought it was fascinating and it kind

of stayed with me.

And I came back to it, um, you know, more years later than I would care to admit without

giving away my age, um, when I had the opportunity to apply for a grant, um, in this space.

And, uh, and so in this interaction, there was an infant orangutan who was hanging from

a rope over her mother and she had a, a stick in her hand, I think it was a piece of bamboo.

And she reached down and sort of offered it towards her mother, her mother reached her,

her mother was lying on the ground on her back and mother reached up and started to grab

reach for the stick and then the infant pulled it back out of her reach and the mother put

her hand down.

And then, right.

And I was like, oh, all right.

And then the infant did it again and the mother reached and the infant pulled it back and

then the infant did it again.

And I just thought, oh, this is a cute little sort of game and the mother is like tolerating

the infant.

No.

But then what I thought was really, uh, was, was even more interesting was that at some

point the infant dropped the stick and seemed to get tired of the game.

And then the mother picked it up and started doing it back to the infant.

And so, you know, to me, that moment, that role reversal, really demonstrated that it

wasn't sort of an idiosyncratic routine that developed between that infant and that mother.

It was, you know, it was a game.

It had a structure.

It had different roles that could be played.

It obviously wasn't really violating an expectation because, you know, if you sort of

understand what's going to happen, you know that they're going to pull it back.

I mean, the mother wasn't reaching for it really fast to try to get it.

You know, she was playing along.

But, you know, within each of those offer and withdrawals, it has this structure of

a very basic joke, right?

I mean, it has this set up, the offer.

And then this, you know, punchline, if you will, this violation, which is the withdrawal.

And, you know, once I started to think about it as kind of a, you know, very simple joke,

it made me want to look to see where else apes might have, you know, might sort of create

these moments of expectation violation for each other.

It seemed to be something that they both were enjoying doing.

They were both doing voluntarily.

Right.

And, you know, and it seemed likely that this was a behavior that you might see more broadly

if only you sort of knew what to look for.

It reminds me of a recent podcast that did with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

I don't know if you know her, but she's a philosopher and novelist.

And she has a book out on mattering.

What it means to matter and why we care about mattering so much.

And she defines it, what it means to matter is not to just want attention,

but to feel that you are deserving of attention.

And certainly it seems to me, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but some of these games,

some of these proto jokes are about asking for attention and being rewarded by like,

oh, yes, I am worthy of it.

I mean, maybe there's a benefit to being teased as well as to being the teaser.

Absolutely.

I've been thinking a lot about the kind of, you know, the function of these teasing behaviors,

because, you know, I think it's interesting just to document them, of course,

and say, do apes do these?

And we know what do they look like and when do they occur and who's doing them?

But ultimately, we want to know why are they doing them?

Is this something that, you know, that has a benefit to, you know,

developing a place in a social world?

Is it something that helps you understand others' minds more?

Is it something that helps you develop social relationships?

And so one of the things that we've been thinking about is that they might, in fact,

be serving these kind of, you know, playful teasing, sort of, proto jokes, if you will.

You know, might be serving both to build relationships, but also to test those relationships,

you know, because I think they have this, this element of how far can I push you?

Or how far am I willing to be pushed?

And those are things that are not transferable across individuals, right?

I, you know, I can call, like, a good friend of mine a bitch, but I can't call my,

I can I say that on the podcast?

You can say that with people said far worse things.

Okay, um, right, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to say that to my boss.

And, and so I think that those are things that, you know, can, can serve to

strengthen a relationship. You think about, sort of, you know, early dating, right?

A lot of flirtation is teasing. A lot of it is how, you know, oh, I, like, have a little,

sort of nudge, a little poke, a little, like, see how you take it, testing the waters.

Do you laugh it off? You know, is this, like, do we have that kind of relationship?

And if you do, then you can go a little bit farther, right?

And, and I think that's true of, of friendships, it's true of romantic relationships,

it's true of family relationships. Um, and, and those, those kinds of, um, you know,

I think the way that teasing can serve as, you know, a sort of test of relationship strength

is, is seeing how much the other individual sort of values the relationship over their

momentary annoyance, right? It's like, ugh, fine, but I love you. So I'm not going to be annoyed,

right? And, you know, especially when you look at, like, parents and infants or parents and young

children, um, you know, they put up with all kinds of things that they wouldn't from say, you

know, you just look at, like, anyone on a grocery line, if a young child is doing something to a

parent, the parent is going to put up with a lot more than they would if, like, the unrelated,

stranger adult behind them did the same thing, right? Because it's, because it's a, I think,

an honest signal of how much they value that relationship. And one of the things that, um,

you know, young children do and also animals do is sort of scope out, uh, I talked to

Judea Pearl on the podcast once, you know, make a causal map of the physical world. Like, if I

poke this, what happens? And I guess what you're suggesting is teasing and play, play a,

an allegous role in the social world. You're sort of seeing where you are, what the relationships

are, uh, how you can interact with different members of the social group in different contexts.

Absolutely. And I think that one thing that is interesting about this sort of social hypothesis

testing is that it isn't static. It's not that, you know, once you learn the sort of the rules,

they, you now know them, right? So, I mean, I think there's a certain extent to which, like, once

you learn the physical properties of, you know, an object, you know them, you don't have to keep

testing them. Um, I don't think the truth, same as true of social relationships, because those

change in a way that physical properties don't, um, you know, you, your relationship with your friend

or your sibling, you know, today might be quite different than it was yesterday. Um, it might be

different because they're in a different mood. It might be different because you pushed them too far

yesterday. It might be different because, you know, something changed about their environment.

And so learning how to predict, um, their responses to your actions is very critical in, um, you know,

in anticipating, uh, the sort of, in anticip, in an accurately anticipating and evaluating the

relationship that you have with them. Um, you know, I remember, you know, anytime, sort of like

being a graduate student, right? And, and, you know, there would be days when you would go into your

advisor and, uh, and, you know, they'd be in a great mood. And they're like, yeah, this is a great

idea. Let's go with it. And other days where they were like, this is a horrible idea, like back to

the drawing board. And, you know, you would rely on the graduate students who had meetings before you

to tell you whether this was like a day, a good day to pitch a new idea or not a good day.

Um, so I, you know, I do think that, that, that the social relationships, um, matter, but that they,

this is a landscape that continues to change over time. And so you want to not just learn about,

you know, this sort of baseline state, but you want to improve your ability to predict. And I think

that's one of the things that teasing is doing is it's giving a sort of low stakes, um,

you know, environment for practicing the attribution of others, um, others reactions to you.

So I guess there's teasing and, and joking and so forth, but is it accurate to put

game playing at a slightly higher level of abstraction? I mean, we have, you know, we human

beings have games with very complicated rules and roles and things like that. Anything analogous to

that in different parts of the animal kingdom? I mean, I don't think there's anything say analogous

to chess. Um, but I certainly think there are things analogous to tag and to hide and seek and to

sort of, you know, some children's games. Um, there, I think there's an appreciation for,

you know, for turn taking, um, that can occur with, you know, things like chase, you know, I mean,

dogs all the time, one, you know, I chase you. Now it's your turn to chase me. And it isn't,

you know, it isn't just that I turn around and it isn't just that like one dog chases, you know,

A chases B and then at some point A gets tired, turns around and runs the other direction.

A will turn around, run a little ways, look back at B and if he doesn't follow them, A will go

forward, you know, will play ball, will bark, will nudge them and it's sort of a like reminder,

hey, you're supposed to be doing something. We're playing a game here. Right. And so I do think that

there are these, you know, simple role reversals, um, in social games that animals have. Um, you know,

I, I think it's also possible that there can be non-social games. Um, and that's one thing that,

uh, you know, trying to look at a little bit, we're started a new project. So I'm launching a

a canine cognition lab at IU and our first study, uh, is we're doing a, a project looking at dogs

collecting behavior. Okay. And so we're interested as a collaboration with a developmental psychologist

Martin Zetterstein, who has looked at this in children and like sort of looking at children's

collections of objects and, you know, how those differ around the world, change it for time and

things like that. And, you know, he's found that that children basically everywhere, uh, collect

at least one thing. And I'm really interested in, um, in whether any dogs exhibit similar behavior.

And so one of the things we're asking in that is, you know, uh, do dogs who are interested in a

particular type of object? Do they manipulate them or say order them or store them in any way,

that has like internal structure to it? So do they put them all in one place? Do they rearrange

them? Do they, you know, put all the purple ones together? Um, and so I, I do think that it might

be possible that there are a lot of things that we could consider games. If we looked at them,

you know, they could consider essentially private games, you know, things that are about

setting arbitrary goals and, uh, you know, trying to achieve them. I, the, the one example I have,

um, you know, that's sort of a self-driven game, uh, from my dog Bonnie. So she has this little

stone turtle that she is obsessed with. She actually has 11 stone turtles, but there's one in

particular. She, I, they came from a garden store. We used to have them on our garden and she

just, like, loved to find them in the garden. And so there's one, um, sorry. There's one,

whose name is Darius, by the way, because every time we find him, I go, Darius.

So there we go. It's really cheesy, but she likes it. Um, so, uh, in this game, I will, like,

roll the turtle up in towels and she has to like dig through and find them, right? And she loves

this and she will play it for hours and just like, go completely. It will bring her out of like

any bad mood or if she's stressed out about having gone to the vet or whatever. But what I think

is really, really interesting. And one of the things that, that leads me to think that animals,

at least some animals, again, might sort of play games by themselves is that she will bury it

for herself. So if I have kind of like, I've gotten tired or I'm on a Zoom call or, you know, whatever,

she'll take it and she'll put it, you know, on a towel and she'll put another towel on top of it

and she'll like, smoosh it all up and then she'll kind of sit there for a minute and then she'll

try to find it again. And, you know, I really think that she is doing, you know, something very

similar to what, you know, young children are doing when they're playing, you know, I think as much

as you can call a game something like, I'm going to see how long I can stand on one leg or how many

times I can spin around before I fall down, right? We call these things game like play in children.

They don't have, you know, structured documented rules, but it's about setting

goals for yourself that don't have any sort of, you know, they don't have any immediate benefit

other than it feels good to achieve them. It feels good to achieve them. Yeah, like I guess that's

where I was interested in going next. What is the, I don't want to use the word motivation because

maybe that's already being too anthropocentric. Is it simply that they do it for the joy of it?

Is it an instinct that is kicking in? Is there some tangible benefit?

To teasing or to any kind of game? To teasing, to playing. Yeah. To give me the answer that is

most interesting. So I do think that, I mean, I think it feels good. You know, one of the,

so one of the things that we're trying to do actually in a different project that kind of ties

in together is I'm working with a philosopher, Colin Allen, and a number of other

animal experimentalists and ethylogists at different, different institutions around the world

to look at joy in animals. And we're actually trying to figure out, we're looking across

three different, very different, very distinct species, distinctly related species. We're looking at

Kia parrots, looking at dolphins, and we're looking at great apes. And in this study, what we're

trying to do is to develop better biometric measures of positive emotion to try to look at when

animals experience positive emotion. Do they communicate it to other individuals? And how does

perceiving those communications impact things like memory, attention, and prosociality?

And so with apes, we've been looking at laughter. So apes, you know, so human, first of all,

humans are also great apes. So I've been saying apes just to mean non-human apes. But yeah,

just making sure everyone gets it. But so apes laugh, just like humans do. Their laughter

sounds a little bit different. And at sort of the risk of making a fool out of myself, I will try

to demonstrate. So, so we're I think human laughter, you know, is quite musical, chimpanzees,

ambinobo laughter is a little less musical. So it still has this this rhythmic panting element,

but it has less sort of less melodic quality. So it's a little more like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

right. Yeah. And it happens a lot during tickling. So infant, it happens a lot with infants,

it happens during play, adults will tickle infants, infants will laugh, ambinobo, I'm sorry,

and gorillas and orangutans will also laugh, but their laughter again is like even less musical

and more breathy. But all of the species laugh, they laugh in very similar environments. And so what

we've been doing is trying to use laughter and using it as an auditory stimulus for a whole set of

experiments to say, how does hearing another's laughter impact the way you, you know, think about

the future, the way you interact with others, the way you remember things, the way you perceive

facial expressions, you know, things like that. And generally what we found in this line of

experiments is that, you know, it seems to improve, it seems to impact them both physiologically and

cognitively. Okay. We've done some things with thermal imaging where we're looking to see which,

you know, basically is a an external measure where you can use a thermal camera to look at changes

in blood flow by measuring the skin temperature. And so what we're looking for in great apes is that

we're looking for a dip in nasal temperature. So we look for the nose to get cold as an indication

of emotional arousal. So you're getting more excited. And when you're excited, the blood gets drawn

into your core. So your things in your periphery get colder. It's sort of a fight or flight reflex.

And that can happen when you're feeling excited and happy. It can also happen when you're feeling

excited and angry. So we want to pair that with other behavioral measures to say, well, how do we

know the animal isn't just scared or, you know, isn't pissed off? They don't hear this laughter and

they're like, well, that's awesome. I hate that guy. Yeah. And so, you know, so we're pairing it with

things like we did what's called a cognitive bias test, which was developed originally for use

in animal welfare as a way of trying to say, do animals become more optimistic or more pessimistic

following changes into their enclosure? And so we applied this to great apes. And so in this

test, what you do is you first train them on to, we call them anchor stimuli. So in this case,

it was actually a black box and a white box. And the black box was always rewarded and the white

box was never rewarded. And so what they did in this study was they pressed a button and then we

showed them at the other side of their enclosure a box. So they press a button and then another

person holds up a box. And then the A passed a decide, do I want to get up, expend energy to walk

over and see if there's food in the box? And so they learn, you know, it took some time, but they

learn that they should always go for the black boxes and never go for the white boxes. And then

after it, once they get that down and they're, you know, demonstrating, you know, with very high

precision, go for the black, skip the white, because they can, they can just press the button and

get a new box to skip, right? And so they're like, skip, skip, skip, oh, this one, skip, skip, skip,

ah, that one. And so in the actual test, what we do is we throw in a few gray boxes. They've

never seen them before and they're somewhere in between the black and the white. And what we're

interested in is using that as a measure of optimism. So do they treat those intermediate boxes

more like the positive one or more like the neutral one or the negative one? And what we found is

that grayed apes, well, specifically binobos, when they hear, when they've listened to laughter,

they're more likely to approach the gray boxes than when they've listened to a control sound.

So I think that's, you know, one behavioral piece of evidence that I think suggests that

listening to laughter leads to them expecting more positive things.

Yeah. And there's no actual connection, right, between the laughter and whether or not there is

something good in the gray box or not. Absolutely. Right. So it's simply, it's kind of, you know,

a laugh track, they listen to it for a while. Right. It's not providing any useful information.

We're interested in whether it's essentially inducing them, like putting them into a better mood.

And if they're, you know, in a better mood, we, we think that they should expect more positive

things than if they're in a, you know, not, I don't want to say negative mood because we're not,

we're not trying to put them in a bad mood. We're just not, we're, you know, playing a very

neutral kind of environmental water sound. In humans, playing and humor are very closely associated

with imagination and pretending. That sounds like something that would be hard to study in

great apes, but is there anything that we can say about how, how much the quality of imagination

is present when they're doing these things? Yeah. So one of the things that I think people

have been very interested in for a long time is play signaling. The, you know, communicative

signals that, that different species use to say, hey, now I'm playing. This is something that's

been looked at a lot in dogs and in wolves. You know, the play bow and dogs is the sort of

classical play signal. And what's really interesting about that is it, you know, it seems to be

something that's, you know, very species typical. It's not learned. It's something that, you know,

even young puppies will do. But it's, it's not so much the production of it. It's the interpretation.

So when a dog sees another dog play bow, they're, you know, they are less likely to

respond to that other dogs, you know, pouncing and biting things in an aggressive manner.

Okay. And so, you know, I think that this is, is an example of a kind of

behavior that could be creating this frame, right, where it's saying, hey, the thing that I'm about

to do shouldn't be taken seriously. Now, is that pretense? Is that imagination? I mean, not to

the extent of, you know, a four-year-old saying, you know, this spoon is a scepter and I'm a princess.

But it is still marking something as different from the, the quotidian, right, different

from the, the way this behavior would normally be interpreted. And I think that that's also

happening in teasing, you know, and that a lot of teasing is, I'm, I'm doing something,

but, you know, I'm, it shouldn't be sort of blown out of proportion, right? It shouldn't be,

like, if I steal something from you and I'm teasing, it shouldn't be taken as seriously as if I

steal something from you outside of a teasing interaction. Right. And yeah, it's useful social

knowledge for everyone to agree on that, on that protocol, right? Exactly. And so, you know, I,

it's different. I mean, I, I think it's really difficult. I mean, a fascinating area and I love,

you know, thinking about these things. And, you know, from a theoretical standpoint, I mean,

I think that's where really where philosophy can, can play a big role is in saying, well, what,

you know, what would be the burden of proof, right? What would, how could, you know, in a non-verbal way,

how can we differentiate these things? Because that's the difficulty in looking at

non-human animals is that, you know, you can't ask them, well, you know, what did Fred mean when,

you know, when he did this behavior? Why did you respond differently to Fred than you did

to Larry when they came over and tried to bite you? And, you know, in humans, even young children,

you can say, oh, well, I know Fred was just playing. You can't do that in animals. And so,

we need to come up with creative ways of looking either at their spontaneous behaviors to see,

well, how does the social situation, the social dynamics and the, the actions in the interaction

differ, as well as developing, you know, biometric markers of emotion where we're looking at things,

ideally, you know, things that you can measure externally in free-ranging animals, who, you know,

are naturally interacting. So things like, like looking at skin temperature, or looking at, you

know, pilo erection, like the hair standing on end and things like that. So you can, you know,

there's some things where you can see behaviorally and externally that are, you know, direct

responses to internal physiological processes. And I don't think there's going to be a single answer.

I mean, I do think that these are complicated questions that really rely on bringing sort of

a multi-method approach, bringing together, you know, experiments where we're asking questions about,

you know, what happens when you're presented with this kind of stimulus,

together with observations of natural behavior, together with, you know, studies of social

preference, you know, do you prefer to interact with an individual who you've seen teasing someone

else or not? One of the things that I think, you know, we haven't looked at yet, but I, you know,

just thinking of kind of commonalities in humor and sort of the, you know, origins of human humor.

One of the things that should be more funny is bringing down those in power, right? It's

punching all the hierarchy. And I wouldn't be surprised if we saw that same thing in apes, you know,

if you saw, like, if you say, watch the video where, you know, a dominant male,

you know, like, slipped and fell in the mud versus or fell off a branch or something as opposed to

subordinate, you know, or juvenile. And I think, you know, or you watch, you know, a juvenile

teasing and adult male versus adult male teasing a juvenile. And I think that it should be

more interesting and potentially funnier to see, you know, the mighty brought low.

I like that as an aspiration. I'm not sure empirically whether or not human beings we even

pass that test. We, we often kind of like to punch down sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean,

I think that's one of the things where we would, you know, we thinking about the comparative

approach. I mean, the intuitions that, you know, we have about, oh, here's what humor is

like in humans. We obviously have to ask those questions in humans as well to make sure that, you

know, we're not simply building on our, you know, our assumptions based on our own past experience.

So speaking of the comparative approach, this leads us to sort of the last thing to, I wanted to

ask. And it's the thing I often ask last these days in the podcast, which is something to do with AI.

I mean, you're studying comparatively humans and other kinds of animals. So those are the

data points we possibly have about natural intelligence here on Earth. And now we're faced with

the prospect of a different kind of intelligence that we make artificially. Maybe it's not there yet

in terms of self-awareness or whatever, but is there anything that we're learning or suggesting

or big questions we need to start asking that relate artificial intelligence to these natural

ones that you're studying? Yeah, I mean, I think this is the, you know, potentially to date myself

the $64,000 question. I was like, I really feel like there should be. I should raise that now.

So as someone who, you know, has built a career out of studying communication and comparative

cognition, the AI question is a fascinating but also irritating one. And I say irritating, you know,

sort of tongue in cheek. But I think it's because, you know, especially LLMs. So, I mean, AI

obviously can mean many, many different things. But for a lot of people, when it comes to, you know,

asking questions about, you know, what does AI understand? What can it do? Can it pass X or Y

psychological test? We're really talking about LLMs, you know, things like touch. At the moment, right.

Right. At the moment. And what is very, I think that we are really in a critical moment where

it could go one of two ways. For a long time, language was seen as this, you know, defining line

between humans and other animals. And even, you know, even today that I think there are some kinds

of questions that some scientists are, you know, not happy with people asking in a nonverbal way.

So there's still debate about whether animals have things like episodic memory. Can they

remember themselves in the past, sort of from a first person or a first animal perspective?

And the way you ask questions about that in humans is through self-report. And there are, you know,

behavioral tasks where you can ask whether animals can use, you know, their memory of something

in the past, a plan for the future. Some people argue that demonstrates episodic memory,

other people argue it doesn't. And so, you know, these arguments, I think are important ones,

but, you know, are really difficult to resolve, given that you can't ask most animals verbally.

You can ask an LLM, and they will give you a response that, yeah, they will give you an answer,

and it will often be the same answer that a human would give you. But they also have access to

all, essentially, all of human language, you know, all of the sort of documented data points and

responses and, you know, next turns, next word predictions of human history, you know, the

current internet. And I think the big question is, does an LLM understand anything? And this is

actually something that we've done some work on, where, you know, we're advocating for applying

more sort of guidelines and methods from animal communication or animal cognition to the study

of AI and LLM specifically, because I think a lot of times, because of the methods that we use to

study cognition and intelligence in humans, when we can ask you, you know, when we get verbal

report from humans, we assume that that tells us something about what's going on inside.

I don't think the same should be true for an LLM. So we can't just, you know, take them at their

word. And what we need to do is to develop, you know, much more sort of thoughtful, systematic

ways of probing their levels of understanding by, you know, manipulating the way you ask questions

by changing the modality or the situation that you're posing to them. And I think that this is

an area where comparative cognition researchers, people working in animal behavior and animal

cognition and also developmental psychologists have a lot of experience. You know, this is,

because you can't just ask, you know, a one-year-old or a two-year-old, hey, why did you think this,

right? Or why did you do this? You can't ask, you know, a magpie or a chimpanzee, why did you do this?

You can ask an LLM and it will give you an answer, but the question is, does that answer actually

map on to why they did that? And, you know, coming back around to trusting language, you know,

this is a question even with human adults, the way that, you know, if you ask someone, hey,

why did you give that answer? What the reason we think we did something might not actually be the

reason we did it. And so even with human adults, you have to be, you know, some, I don't want to

say skeptical, but you have to be somewhat careful in, you know, just taking verbal self-report

as the final word on the matter. So I think with many of these things where we're trying to understand

what's going on under the hood, so to speak, we really need to bring together, we really need to

bring a multitude of approaches to bear on these questions. Do you think that they're doing that?

Do you think that the LLM people are reaching out to psychologists and anthropologists and

philosophers to get more insight on these things as much as they should?

I think some of them are. I don't think any of them are as much as they should.

You know, I think this is really an area where I think we will see more collaboration and more

development in the years to come. When, you know, I think when people really, you know, sort of

hit walls and want to understand, hey, what's, you know, why, why are we getting this error? Why are they

not doing the thing that we expected they would do because we thought they were doing the first

thing the way humans do it? And so, you know, I think it's going to take kind of, I don't think

these are going to be problems that you can engineer your way out of just in terms of improving

the algorithm. I think they're things that where you really have to try to find ways of assessing

what the, you know, what the LLM is telling you about how it's doing the thing.

Yeah, questions that we cannot engineer our way out of. Those are some of my favorite things.

So, I want to thank you for being the podcast, but also like you, you're the kind of scientist

who has websites and resources and things that listeners can go poke at. So, what should our

listeners know that would be fun for them? Thanks so much for asking, Sean. So, one of the things

that I would love to get people to check out is that we're actually asking people to give us

their own, to share their own experiences with animals teasing. And so, this could be, you know,

your dog or your cat. It could be, you know, you watch two crows over a field. It could be something

you saw at the zoo. It doesn't have to be, you know, collecting any kind of animal experiences of

teasing that you might have experienced. And so, the website there is observinganimals.org.

And we'll have this, we actually have several different sort of public science studies up there,

but there's one on teasing. And so, if anyone, you know, listens to this and has reflections about

animals that they've seen teasing, we would love to hear about them. And then, you know, more

broadly, if people are interested in the work, you know, that we're doing IU or, you know,

that my lab is doing, we're starting a new center at new research center at IU. It's just called

the center for possible minds. So, that's possiblemines.org. We can just check out the center for

possible minds. And, yeah, we'd love to have folks reach out if they're interested in getting

involved with any of the things that we're doing there. This is a new initiative launched by

myself and Jacob Foster. And we also run the diverse intelligences summer institute. Again,

you can find out more information through our center website. So, yeah, thanks so much for asking

and for having me on. It's been a real delight having a chance to talk to you about about some of

this work and, and to think about it together. You're going to be indenated with so many stories of

people thinking the pets have done cute things. That's, that's an endless supply of those. So,

Erica Carpnell, thanks very much for being on the Mindscape podcast. Thanks again, Sean.

Pachee Wi-Fi Getting in the Wave Your Day

Relax. Sky's full fiber broadband is 99.9% reliable. And only 30 euro a month for 12 months.

Make your broadband one less thing to worry about. Start sky broadband to find out more.

Availability subject location. New customers only include sky broadband ultra fast 500 megabit.

12 month minimum term applies. Terms apply.

Get this. The International Financial Services Apprenticeship is as good as it gets.

It gets you a full-time job in a financial institution. It gets you well paid.

It gets you a qualification in financial services. It doesn't get better than that.

Applications are closing soon, so get on to it now.