Animal, heal thyself
Many Minds
What happens to animals when they get sick? If they’re pets or livestock, we probably call the vet. And the vet may give them drugs or perform a procedure. But what about wild animals? Do they just languish in misery? Well, not so much. It turns out that animals—from bees to butterflies, porcupines to primates—medicate themselves. They seek out bitter plants, they treat wounds, they amputate limbs, they eat clay—the list goes on. This all raises an obvious question: How do they know to do this? How do they know what they know about healing and medicine? It also invites a related...
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The rise of machine culture
Many Minds
The machines are coming. Scratch that—they're already here: AIs that propose new combinations of ideas; chatbots that help us summarize texts or write code; algorithms that tell us who to friend or follow, what to watch or read. For a while the reach of intelligent machines may have seemed somewhat limited. But not anymore—or, at least, not for much longer. The presence of AI is growing, accelerating, and, for better or worse, human culture may never be the same. My guest today is . Iyad directs the at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Iyad is a...
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How should we think about IQ?
Many Minds
IQ is, to say the least, a fraught concept. Psychologists have studied IQ—or g for “general cognitive ability”—maybe more than any other psychological construct. And they’ve learned some interesting things about it. That it's remarkably stable over the lifespan. That it really is general: people who ace one test of intellectual ability tend to ace others. And that IQs have risen markedly over the last century. At the same time, IQ seems to be met with increasing squeamishness, if not outright disdain, in many circles. It's often seen as crude, misguided, reductive—maybe a whole lot...
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Rethinking the "wood wide web"
Many Minds
Forests have always been magical places. But in the last couple decades, they seem to have gotten a little more magical. We've learned that trees are connected to each other through a vast underground network—an internet of roots and fungi often called the "wood wide web". We've learned that, through this network, trees share resources with each other. And we've learned that so-called mother trees look out for their own offspring, preferentially sharing resources with them. There's no question that this is all utterly fascinating. But what if it's also partly a fantasy? My guest today is ....
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Electric ecology
Many Minds
There's a bit of a buzz out there, right now, but maybe you haven’t noticed. It's in the water, it's in the air. It's electricity—and it's all around us, all the time, including in some places you might not have expected to find it. We humans, after all, are not super tuned in to this layer of reality. But many other creatures are—and scientists are starting to take note. My guest today is . Sam is a sensory ecologist at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, and one of a handful of scientists uncovering some shocking things about the role of electricity in the natural world. Here, Sam...
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The nature of nurture
Many Minds
The idea of a "maternal instinct"—the notion that mothers are wired for nurturing and care—is a familiar one in our culture. And it has a flipside, a corollary—what you might call “paternal aloofness.” It's the idea that men just aren't meant to care for babies, that we have more, you know, manly things to do. But when you actually look at the biology of caretaking, the truth is more complicated and much more interesting. My guest today is . She is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis and the author of the new book, . In it, she examines...
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The space of (possibly) sentient beings
Many Minds
We may not know what it's like to be a bat, but we're pretty confident that it's like something—that bats (and other mammals) are sentient creatures. They feel pleasure and pain, cold and warmth, agitation and comfort. But when it comes to other creatures, the case is less clear. Is a crab sentient? What about a termite, or a tree? The honest answer is we just don't know—and yet, despite that uncertainty, practical questions arise. How should we treat these beings? What do we owe them? My guest today is . Jonathan is a Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and the...
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From the archive: Cities, cells, and the neuroscience of navigation
Many Minds
Hi friends, we're still on a brief summer break. We'll have a new episode for you later in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! ---- [originally aired September 21, 2022] If your podcast listening habits are anything like mine, you might be out for a walk right now. Maybe you’re wandering the neighborhood, just blocks from home, or maybe you’re further afield. In either case, I’m guessing you’re finding your way without too much trouble—you’re letting some intuitive sense steer you, track how far you’ve gone, tell you where to go next. This inner navigator...
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From the archive: What does ChatGPT really know?
Many Minds
Hi friends, we're on a brief summer break at the moment. We'll have a new episode for you in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! ---- [originally aired January 25, 2023] By now you’ve probably heard about the new chatbot called . There’s no question it’s something of a marvel. It distills complex information into clear prose; it offers instructions and suggestions; it reasons its way through problems. With the right prompting, it can even mimic famous writers. And it does all this with an air of cool competence, of intelligence. But, if you're like me,...
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From the archive: Medieval monks on memory, meditation, and mind-wandering
Many Minds
Hi friends, we're on a brief summer break at the moment. We'll have a new episode for you in August. In the meanwhile, enjoy this pick from our archives! _____ [originally aired May 17, 2023] You know the feeling. You're trying to read or write or think through a project, maybe even just respond to an email, when your attention starts to drift. You may not even notice it until you've already picked up your phone or jumped tabs, until your mind has already wandered way off-piste. This problem of distraction has become a bit of a modern-day obsession. We now fret about how to stay focused, how...
info_outlineIf you want to have a rich social life, you're going to need to know who's who. You'll need to distinguish friend from foe, sister from stranger. And you're going to need to hold those distinctions in your head— for at least a little while. This is true not just for humans but—we have to assume—for other social species as well. But which species? And for how long can other creatures hold on to these kinds of social memories?
My guests today are Dr. Laura Lewis and Dr. Chris Krupenye. Laura is a biological anthropologist and postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley; Chris is a comparative psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins. Along with a larger team, Laura and Chris recently authored a paper on memory for familiar faces in chimpanzees and bonobos. In it, they show that our closest cousins remember their groupmates for decades.
Here, we chat about the paper and the backstory behind it. We consider the anecdotes about long-term memory in great apes—and how Laura and Chris decided to go beyond those anecdotes. We talk about the evidence for complex social memory across the animal kingdom. We discuss the use of eye-tracking with primates and its advantages over earlier methods. We also talk about why long-term social memory might have evolved. Along the way, we touch on dolphins, ravens, and lemurs; voices, gaits, and names; the different gradations of recognition; and how memory serves as a critical foundation for social life more generally.
Alright friends, without further ado, here's my conversation with Laura Lewis and Chris Krupenye. Enjoy!
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Notes and links
4:30 – Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye worked together in the lab of Dr. Brian Hare, a former guest on the podcast.
8:30 – The video of Mama and the primatologist Jan van Hooff.
12:00 – For research on the remarkably long social memories of dolphins, see here.
14:00 – For research on long-term voice recognition in bonobos, see here.
19:30 – Another collaborator on the paper we’re discussing was Dr. Fumihiro Kano, affiliated with the Kumamoto Sanctuary.
29:30 – For more on the use of eye-tracking with primates, see a recent review paper by Dr. Lewis and Dr. Krupenye.
34:00 – For the previous study by Dr. Lewis, Dr. Krupenye, and colleagues about how bonobos and chimpanzees attend to current groupmates, see here.
41:00 – A popular article reviewing bonobo social behavior.
54:30 – A research paper on individual recognition by scent in chimpanzees.
55:30 – A research paper on individual recognition by butt in chimpanzees.
Recommendations
‘Long-term memory for affiliates in ravens’
‘Decades-long social memory in bottlenose dolphins’
‘Enduring voice recognition in bonobos’
Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.
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