#598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo

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At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also do those questions. Now it is time. a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endocrine. So

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I'm very excited about this. We're going to be talking about a whole slew of different topics, a wide spectrum of my personal interests, but not expertise. My guest today is Isabel. Binke, let me spell that for you. Her her Twitter handle at Isabel I S A B E L Last Name B E H N CKE. Isabel is a field primatologist and applied evolutionary ethologist who studies social behavior in animals, that includes us humans, to understand our urgent challenges with each other and the planet. Isabel grew up at the foothills of the Andes Mountains in Chile.

Where she developed a lifelong love for nature and wildness as well as culture and the arts. An explorer scientist, she is the first South American to follow great apes in the wild of Africa. She walked more than three thousand kilometers for us Yanks, that's roughly one thousand eight hundred and sixty four miles, quite a few, in the jungles of Congo for her field research observing the social lives of wild bonobo apes, who, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. Isabel documented how bonobos play freely in nature and has extended this research to show how human apes play at Burning Man, for instance, other festivals, and in everyday life. Isabel has observed how play is at the root of creativity, Social bonding and healthy development, findings that have relevance in education, innovation, complex risk assessment, freedom, and many, many other places. Isabel we'll see how I can screw up these titles and of course degrees, which is always a challenge. Isabel holds a Bachelor's of Science in Zoology and a Masters of Science in Nature Conservation, both from University College London, a master of philosophy in M Phil in human evolution from Cambridge University, and a PhD, although I think it's a Doctor Doctor Phil, that's not Doctor Phil, as in the daytime show host, something like that.

PhD in evolutionary anthropology from Oxford University. She has won several distinctions for her public communication and knowledge integration, which ranges in format from TED, which was also most recently on the grand stage. So congratulations for that. Wired the UN, BBC Where I think she won't. Where it was nominated as having one of the most interesting Interviews of twenty twenty. I think she ranked number three and Nat Geo to rural schools in Patagonia and traveling buses of school children in Cago. She is a senior fellow of the Gruder Institute, a Ted Fellow, and currently advises the Chilean government working on long term strategies and science. Technology, innovation, and knowledge for Chile's president. She can be found in Chile

and New York City. You can find her on Twitter, like I mentioned, at Isabel Benke and on Instagram, Isabel underscore Benke. B E H N C K Yeah. Now we can get into it. Isabel. Nice to see you.

Hello Tim, very nice to see you. So we're going to bounce all over the place. And we've met before, so I am excited to dig into all sorts of different stories. All sorts of background and Cover a lot of things that we have not talked about. So let's start with

Bacco and Giro. Who are Bacco and Giro? Maybe you could paint a picture for us. I love this question. It was August twenty ten. Ambaku and Giro.

Are two males And they were One of them was kicking the other. In the nuts.

Yeah. Where I like to start all my interviews. Gently.

Gently. There was no harm done. Don't do this at home. I should have started saying that. They were so so Some biting? And

Other forms. Of physical Touch. Which may have looked to a non train eye like fighting. But

Back on Giro were not fighting. They were playing. And back when Jiraw in the depths of the jungles in Congo. And they R

They were not Humans. Bud. Bnobo Males. And this observation of these two males playing

was to me really extraordinary because Let me give you some context after the The kicking in the nuts comment. Bonova. Together with Chimpaze our living closest relatives.

We have many other evolutionary relatives, but they're dead, they're extinct. So For us primatologists it's really amazing to be able to observe the naturally occurring behavior of apes in the wild. It's uh difficult for many reasons, but uh but they are still

Some alive, which is great. And I was following this Wild group of bonobos for A long time for many months. And of course they don't usually meet other communities and we can get

Into But Why is it that typically interactions are within a community? And then suddenly the study group You know, they have this way of travelling which

Seems very Very intentional. And you can tell it when you observe it, they suddenly kind of switch onto, Okay, we're going somewhere and they crossed the river Which typically demarcates their territory.

And I was like, Oh God. Where are they going? The these guys are going somewhere, like very intentionally. And they went into the territory of the neighboring community. So I was like wow.

Something's gonna happen here.'Cause It doesn't happen very often and in chimpanzees, when chimpanzees meet other communities. Typically they try not to. because it's aggressive and y you can have neighboring males that patrol the territory and they will kill a male of the other territory. Of the other community, sorry. And um

Sometimes not only kill, but also maim. For instance, they will take out their genitals. It's very, very That's why this pornobo observation I think is poignant Because

There's this joke I cannot. I'll ask you. What's the most vulnerable part of the male anatomy? Well, I think that's a leading question. It's a leading question, yes. I would imagine. Yeah, having having a bonobo pollen.

Hockey my genitals would make me feel very vulnerable. Yes. Right. But that's the point. Really and that I think that's the take home. of this story. It is an extremely vulnerable part of the male anatomy. And it's actually used that

as such in aggressive interactions. So that you actually You said in Playful interactions. Is I think Playing with a line of trust, vulnerability and real

Life risk? That's extremely interesting, I guess at the root. Of what? Play is And so these males were

playing and they were males from different communities. So What kind of trust do you need to build in order to have This kind of interaction between males that don't usually live together or are related.

Yeah, it's a very uh be a very unusual greeting among humans, right? To take a trip to Kansas City and walk up to a stranger and grab him by the balls. Please do not do this at all. Least of all outside home. Yes. So we're gonna come back to Bonobo Land, because we're gonna talk a lot about bonobos, but This Suffice to say, genital play comes up a lot.

And you have matriarchs holding on to males by The genitals walking them around in circles. You have lots and lots of this type of play. And this is not a prescriptive recommendation to anyone out there, but it is interesting. So we're gonna come back to it. I thought I would just rewind for a second because we mentioned a lot of things in your bio. We mentioned applied evolutionary ethologist, for instance. Let's start there. What is An evolutionary ethologist and what is an applied evolutionary ethologist? Ethology is the study of behavior.

I might have as well just used behavioral sciences. But I use Cythology because it's my own particular field of training. People might be familiar with the work of Conrad Lorenz. Mm-hmm.

I'm not. So Oh, okay. So um Western mythology animal behavior comes From a group of people that Where

In Europe studying animal behavior And when they were studying animal behavior they went you know, they are Pressures and adaptations in other animals that are interesting In themselves? But they also help us think

About our own behavior. And so for them it was very important to observe behavior as naturally occurring in habitats where animals live. So of course we can still observe behavior in cages and in zoos and inside homes and that has its own value.

By the As histologists we try to observe behavior as well in the wild. Because when it's interacting with ecology, I think it tells us something very important about the environment in which animals have evolved and what does this tell us about their behavior today. So that's ethology. And then

The word applied I use it in the sense that I was Trained and worked as an ethologist. But almost without Wanting or thinking about it. I can't help but think about the world and the

problems that we have today. So Whenever you think about, say, cooperation, competition Play Aggression. Obviously your mind goes. Okay.

What does this tell us about? war and creativity and innovation and so on. So applied is really trying to cross that bridge between science and society. Mm. Great answer. Very helpful. Thank you. All right. So now would Lorenz I'm thinking I I don't know this particular name.

But would BF Skinner have been a An overlap in terms of timing or would Skinner have come much later? on in terms of looking at I guess classical and operate. conditioning and things like that. Yeah, so that's a great

Question. I think not only in timing but also in terms of approach. So Lorenz Let me tell you an anecdote about Lorenz then we'll go to Skinna. What was the full name of Lorenz?

Conrad. Conrad Lorenz. Conrad Lorenz. Great name. Yeah. He was observing birds.

And um He's most famous for having brought up yeast. So he had these incubators. With Yes.

Eggs. And He discovered in printing, namely that when the Eggs hatched. The first thing that the chicks look at

If it was him. Rather than the female the chicks would imprint on him. So he effectively this is not quite what Etologies we do today, right? But uh we're talking about the origin story. And so

He started walking a basically the chic would follow him and he learned the vocalization, so he learned to communicate with them and go like uh uh uh uh and then they would follow him and he became like the mother geese I love that because of course again, don't do this at home and we wouldn't want to do it. today as scientists but I think there's something about really putting literally yourself in the feet and the wings and the mind of another animal

As much as you Can As the other animal rather than as a human that Help you. Become a better scientist.

And so I think Lorenz had that genius. And he tried to look at the animals. In themselves. Right. And then I guess Skinner. In contrast, it was like we can't understand the inner life of animals. So we're just going to look at observable behavior. Please correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong. But like stick them in a box and then you know shock them and do various things. And we're just going to like clinically take notes on it. So very

Different. Very very different. Very different approach based on very different assumptions. Right. Yes, very different assumptions. Completely understandable because of course Skinner was trying to do science and he was trying to isolate variables and to do controlled experiments, which is You know an essential part of science. So

C Things that we're going to do. today wouldn't be considered proper science either. I think these guys were experimenting in different ways and today we have a conciliance and integration Oh, the experimental side of

of behavior and the naturalistic observations that is kind of exciting. Yeah. Totally. And I wanna give you credit for a great word, conciliance. I just want to define this for people. That is a Fucking great word. Noun, agreement between the approaches to a topic of different academic subjects, especially science and the humanities. Uh there's also a book.

by Eo Wilson called Concilience that people might check out. It's a bit dense, but conciliance is a great word. So thank you for that. Thank you for voting that I love that. Absolutely. And I think the contrast of Conrad and B.F. Skinner is interesting on a whole bunch of levels, and it's something that has fascinated me for a long time. For instance, I watched a documentary. I believe the name was Nim or Project NIM and it spoke to

I wanna say let's just say a field experiment, also with laboratory experiments that was conducted in perhaps the sixties our early seventies and the premise was attempting to raise a baby chimpanzee as a human. Yeah. And

Spoiler alert, it ended up being quite a train wreck, but What they observed, and when I say they, I should be very specific, the let's just call it field adoptive parents of this chimpanzee is that the chimpanzee would exhibit all of these incredible behaviors outside of the lab, but as soon as you brought this particular chip into the lab, they just refused to cooperate or at the very least didn't exhibit these behaviors. So when

I'm having conversations with any number of folks and I love science. I'm very involved with with funding science and they say, Well, do they have Randomized controlled studies related to X in a laboratory. My answer sometimes is You can't really do it, or it's very, very hard.

particularly with in this case maybe an obvious example of of animal behaviors. So let's let's jump from there. Back in time further. Two. Darwin and Humboldt. Now I expect a lot of people listening will recognize Darwin, but they may not recognize Humboldt, so

If we really rewind the clock, can you just give us some of the history, the early history of Evolutionary thinking. 'Cause this is also something I don't know a lot about, but it just came up last week in conversation with someone named Noah Feltman, who's been on the podcast, very smart guy, and he raised a couple of anecdotes that I had never heard. So Take it away.

Origins of evolutionary thinking. If You think about evolution, you will picture an old Darwin, old Charles Darwin with a long beard. Correct. So like the lone genius that had this great idea, which by the way, the philosopher

Daniel Dennett says the best idea ever thought. was evolution. And so let's define what is this like such amazing idea. The simple idea That all life is related. So evolution really It's about how all life is related and how all life evolves.

Yeah. Everything has an origin. And like King Lear said, nothing comes from nothing. So Darwin himself What

The grandson of an this extraordinary Man. It was called Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus Darwin. was a polymath, he was a doctor, he was

uh creative he was a poet. He is one of the biggest influences on the romantic poets on Byron uh So Darwin inherited first of all these

you know, strange influences. And Erasmus Darwin. Used to hold these meetings uh in his home um they were called the the Lunar Society when they were trying to find out Basically about

Life and creativity and you know As polymaths too. Ha. The polymouth happy hour. Well this is a actually is a big point. The Lunar Society was called like that because They would

meet once a month in full moon and of course drinking and food sharing was involved and they had to ride back home and so a full moon would actually be a very practical thing to have Ha ha. Good call. Good call. Yeah. Nothing mystical about it. It's just like no, we're gonna be drunk. We're gonna be drunk off our asses. We need to be able to see the sidewalk. Oh yeah. Reality emperism. Erasmus Darwin had in his Chariot.

E concha ovniae. In Latin, life comes from the sea. Mm. The point what I'm trying to make here

Is that Diwin himself Had ancestors. both intellectual ancestors but also family ancestors that were thinking. about evolution. Often, you know, ideas are in the environment. So that's the family side of Darwin.

Yeah. Equally or if not more important, I think for Darwin was The Influence of Alexander von Humboldt. Yeah.

Von Humboldt is a Prussian aristocrat who was born the same year than Napoleon. I think Seventeen sixty nine. And he died, by the way, in eighteen fifty nine, which is the date that Darwin published The Origin of Species. So there's like a an interesting evolutionary contingency there.

And Fan Humboldt. He was an explorer. A genius, another polymath, scholar And I think above all

Which is the point that I want to link between the other. Darwin and Humboldt and the origins of how we think about nature and how we think about evolution. Neither of them were White kot Scientists or just Scholars that live

within four walls. They were both explorers and they were both adventurists. And they were both naturalists. And this is super important.'Cause I think It's a tradition. of thinking that basically has given us the most important ideas that we have today. On evolution and nature. And let me synthesize those ideas.

Humboldt. Lives Europe. and embarks on this extraordinary trip to South America. And of course I'm not biased, but They were both Let me point that out. Exactly. I'm not biased, but let me tell you. Exactly. But let me tell you how you

We're in South America. So well all over the place but not quite. Humboldt goes to Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador And he climbs Chimborazo and basically he does an an and then route. He never got to Chile, unfortunately. But Darwin spent around three years in Chile, the voyage of the Beagle that we can But uh the five years voyage of the Beagle, three years ish were in Chile, which I think is super important. Basically he spent a lot more time there than in Galapagos.

I need to say that. Quick question. Why did Van Humboldt Choose. That expedited going.

First the new world in a nutshell. The excitement of the new world. First of all he needed to get out of Europe because his mother had very high hopes for him as a civil servant. So When his father died.

He had an inheritance and he Decided. Spend it funding his own Adventure. Mom must have loved that.

Yeah no. Right. She was like socially I don't want to say a snob, but ish. No, she was high society. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like Brahmin. Yeah. Snow. Yeah. No, exactly. So it's like you You're gonna Give me grandchildren that have You know, a certain position.

Right. Yeah. And he's like oh I'm going to Venezuela, Mom. See you when I see it. Exactly. I have my own funds. But I mean it's a longer story and oh If you want to read about this, I would really recommend the most fantastic book I've I didn't uh Few years by Andrea Wolf.

It's called The invention of nature. Mm. And uh there are several books about From Humboldt, but in Andrea Woolf's research.

She brings together the adventure, the naturalist and Also The influences So What I think to me is amazing

Uh uh Scientists is that we all know about Darwin and we can see his image. Immediately you go like Oh yeah, old guy with beard. But Who was Humboldt and why we don't actually know more about him? Humboldt

It was the direct Intellectual father? Of Darwin. Darwin was reading Humboldt's diaries. of his explorations in South America. And when Darwin gets invited

To go on the beagle? He was Actually thinking of Humble and in Patagonia when He's actually he's called he's a

Very bad sailor. He hates being on board, which is another topic. This is the one. He w he would puke and, you know, get seasick and Which I think it was good because then it meant that he had to go in London. That's a different topic. But the point is that he's writing his voyage of the Beagle Diaries and citing uh Were it for you, I would have not taken this voyage.

Which is amazing. How this Kind of lineages. And of influence. So you have on one hand Humboldt that invents in Verte Commas the modern concept of nature because he really invents the concept of ecology, how things are interrelated. So the field of complex systems, the field of

Ecosystems as complex systems I really think takes a lot. From Humboldt because And this is important. See, the British tradition is about taxonomy. An organization in boxes, Lineos.

Yeah. But Whether it was because he was German and also humbled as a young man, had spent time in Jena With G And with the creatives and poets of the early romantics.

And so I think that experience really opened his mind To the future scientists that he would become Wow. Just casually hanging out with Goethe. Man, what an era. I know. I know. Just going out to coffee with Goethe. Oh my God. Yeah. This one does. Yeah, this one does. I wanted to read a letter from Letters of Note, which I recommend to everyone. They have an Instagram, they have a website, they have books, letters of note, which are copies of old letters.

generally older letters from people of note to other people. And there's a there's an excerpt of one letter. From Charles Darwin to Charles. Lyel, I believe it is, L Y E L L from october first, eighteen sixty one. And it reads, But I am poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything. So he didn't always have good days. No I love that letter so much Yes This is incredible So how has When you think about

Let me really make a a large leap here to to a question that might seem strange, but A lot has happened, a lot has been observed, a lot has been studied, a lot has been found since Humbled. In Darwin's day.

As it stands right now, what are some of the most interesting Theories. Or let's just call them theories. Or findings related to Evolutionary.

Biology. And I'd love to know if there are any Newer, let's just say in the last Ten, twenty years. theories related to evolution that uh people might find interesting or surprising. And I'm gonna keep talking for a second just to also buy time.

And part of the reason I'm asking, this is as someone who really has not studied evolutionary biology, I would like to think I have a basic understanding, but that's probably hubris. I've had two different dinners recently in the last Few months. With two incredibly smart people. Who granted? come from religious families. So I want to

Grant that. But both of them have also extremely strong mathematics backgrounds. And in effect, yeah after a couple glasses of wine. They raised a couple of names and they said, Well we're we're not sure If it seems probabilistically

that sort of the original Let's just call it description of evolutionary thinking. per the era of, say, Darwin and so on, can't really account for all that we've observed to date. And I don't know if that's nonsense. I don't know if there could be anything to it.

But I would love to hear any and all thoughts. It doesn't have to relate to that specifically, but certainly it planted a seed And they were like, Well go check out this person who's a credible scientist who agrees with me, but I haven't actually done that homework. So Mm-hmm.

Any thoughts? Of course. I don't know what these mathematicians specifically are referring to, so I would need to You know, as I said, but I would mention

One thing. I think the most exciting revolutionary aspect. Of the last. Let's call it fifty years.

Is uh A sort of integration. Between Darwin And complexity. So, you know, Santa Fe Institute meets Darwin.

Um it's Humble. And let me Explain why. 'Cause Darwin as a naturalist described

The mechanisms by which new species arise, namely natural selection. He also described sexual selection. And then you might I remember a teacher saying, Look at nature, look at any

Structure that seems useless. And then Typically that will be Uh result of sexual selection. Peacock Feather versus

A wings. Anyway, so Darwin described both. Sexual selection, natural selection. Could you actually just take a second to expand on that? So sexual selection is something that doesn't have a utility per se, but it could be A

You I think you said a feather like a a particular I guess a mating dance would be too obvious. Yes. It's selected. Say. Team is funny.

And Tim gets to reproduce because he's funny. So it's right. One can hope, a boy can dream. Sorry, that was an office. That was perfect. That was perfect. We are long lived species. And males have some advantages in that respect. Although technology also brings other possibilities. But it's actually uh now that I think about it, it's uh not such a bad example.'Cause you would say

What advantages would being funny actually bring? You know, you're spending cognitive energy in something, you're being silly, you're spending time and maybe you're distracted. Ibe if you're too distracted, a predator will get you. But If Females like it. Well that trait will get selected. And that works for Feathers.

You know. cleverness. There are many traits that you can go with this looks like expensive and annoying and inordinately colorful, but they are traits that evolve and get selected again and again because mates Choose them. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

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So I pulled you off topic. In part just to explore the sexual selection PSP you're saying. Covered natural selection. Right. Like too slow you get eaten by a saber tooth tiger kind of thing.

Sexual selection. Which would be say the colours of the feathers not for flight purposes, but for say mating purposes. Humor, you give another example. But You were going to explain how Darwin.

Plus complexity is something else. Now in this case I don't actually know what complexity refers to. So I would love to Love to hear more. I don't want to get in trouble with the mathematicians. I think uh

A broad way of describing complexity is How things interact with other things. So is in a way the The study of structure. And That's why complexity combined

With Evolutionary theory it's Important. Because they are not only genetic Yeah.

But Organisms exist within structures. Namely Societies. But also

Ecosystems and these structures impose dynamics of their own. In turn that influence the organisms. On how

This two Domains combined. The two domains being complexity and evolutionary thinking. Which is Going back to your question of what do I think is most interesting as a development.

Today. It's niche construction. The concept of niche construction, are are you familiar with this? I know those two words separately, but I'm not sure what they mean in this context. Okay, great. Fantastic. Fantastic. So Niche construction is basically to construct the niche. Okay. What does that mean? So far, I got ya. I follow. So far. Yes, exactly. Great. So Darwin described how warms

Earthworms. to their environment, but also in the process of living. They modify the environment they're in. So a warm

Travels, creates borrows. It's Defecates in doing so Changes. The organisms that are available changes the frequency of

These organisms also changes the The activity of an organism modifies the environment in which the organism is in. And I mentioned the example of earthworms. Because

It's a very good thing. Basic, simple example. This is most obvious when we think about humans. Every organism on earth passive things that just adapt to their environment, which I think it was the old way of saying things. Like an organism is

A thing that basically has to respond and adapt. And The revolution I think is that in niche construction you go, organisms are also agents of their own change. Because by the process of living Day. modify themselves, each other and their environments. So if you

Think about that. Other animals. Say. humans we not only Modify our environments physically.

But also we are cultural niche constructors. Which means that we live in worlds that are also cultural by creating this world, then you have to adapt to them. If you have to adapt to them, that changes the feedback loop. Own your own existence.

So that's why I Traits that Ten thousand years ago would have not been very useful for survival. Now they might be very useful.

And the other way around. That's why I think that's a longer conversation. But the notion of cultural niche construction I think it's exciting. It combines elements Of

Mathematical complexity theory, although I don't want to get in trouble with the mathematicians, I'm very scared of them. Go talk to the Santa Fe Institute people about this. Yeah, no problem. And what I'll also do, do any names come to mind, researchers, scientists, mathematicians, or otherwise who comment or in have investigated and studied the intersection

Of say Darwinian. Thought with complexity. Do any names come to mind? Where we can certainly do some homework.

The original book on this was published by John Odlin Smee and Kevin Leyland. Two mathematicians and naturally understood. And Today I would point out to David Krakaur

who is the president of the Santa Fe Institute, and I think he himself in his thinking And Just the work he does kind of embodies this Perfect. They have a l a lot of great applied work

Santa Fe Institute, for instance, I would suggest reading what they publish in relation to understanding the pandemic from this point of view. I think this approach is incredibly enlightening. All right, we'll link to all of those in the show notes so people will be able to find everything that we just mentioned, or using the royal we everything that you just mentioned. And you know what you said about niche constructors. modify their environment, which in turn creates this feedback loop, reminds me of the Winston Churchill quote, We shape our tools and then the tools shape us. And it applies all the way from the earthworm to, for instance, large herbivores in Africa. If you look at Uh hippopotami.

And the paths that they create which affect water flow and a million other things. It's just Incredible how interconnected. All of it is. And how many feedback loops exist, so you do need some mathematics.

to begin to try to Evaluate how these many hundreds and thousands and millions of feedback loops might interact in any way that we can comprehend. So I'll check out David Krakow. That's a great lead. How many bonobos Are there?

In the world. At this point, roughly speaking. It's uh very difficult to have an exact number. But They would fill out a small stadium. Um maybe

Hopefully more than ten thousand and probably less than sixty thousand. Got it. How many of you? Just for comparison purposes, how many chimpanzees are there? Is it a multiple of that? Is it roughly the same? Yes. Oh for sure. It's at least one order of magnitude more. No, not two orders of magnitude.

But if you sum the three subspecies I want to say Around a million or less. But actually let me get back to you with the latest county. Bonobos and chimpanzees are contrasted because they seem to have so many differences of

Not just styles, personalities, behavior, their societal structure, right? And I do want to talk about Why is there such a discrepancy in the number? Of Bonobos versus chimpanze. Is it

due to the state of affairs in Congo, is it because They're For whatever reason not. naturally Selected as well.

Could that be a plausible vote in favor of aggression? I don't know. How would you describe the discrepancy? And I'm not fishing for a yes answer to the latter. I'm just saying it's I hadn't thought about this until I prepared for this interview and I was like, Why are there so few bonobos? And I didn't have a good answer to that. I think the word is contingency. Evolutionary contingency. Namely

Probably the Evolutionary event that led to the speciation. Or this two species decision meaning What happens when you have an ancestral population of an ape that was the grandfather of Chimps and Bonobos, something happens and later down the river of time you have two distinct populations, one is Bunabos, one is Chimpanzees.

It was prob this event was probably but we're still discussing about it, the formation, the geographical formation of the River Congo. The River Congo is an enormous river that in order for you guys to picture Don't think of a river, think more of like a moving lake. If anyone has Visual images of the Amazon. The Congo is only second.

Incise. Two the Amazonies. Really the Congo Basin and the Amazonian Basin are Equivalent there. Both of them are the language of our planet. So you have this enormous river

And north of the river Congo you have the distribution of chimpanzees, and south of the river Congo you have Bnobos, which means That Ante Time and both species adapt. And niche construct with

Their environment. Venoble environment is a lot more Wet and Tropical jungle. Then

Chimpaze. Having said this, there's a huge variation in chimpanzee habitat. Chimpas are Probable, but I mean I say this with so many caveats because Buna was

Also have ability to exist in somehow drier environments. But As a gross overgeneralisation Chimps exist.

in a more varied Array. Of landscapes they can be in like Tropical forests but also in um in drier. environments. Which probably you know, it's a chicken and egg thing.

Can they be there because they're better at adapting? Or is it because they were north of the river that they actually adapted that way? What we know is what we find today. And so I think it's contingency. And

You know, sometimes they hunt. Sometimes they don't in depending whether they're in dry environments, they hunt more, depending on the chimpanzees. Yes. Yes, sorry. Chimpaze. And and so I think there both species are incredibly f flexible. But chimpanzees have a wider distribution and perhaps in terms of the dietary adaptations they might be more flexible.

And uh The dietary side just because I'm extending our conversation that we had many months ago. I and I'm just uh curious, so I'm gonna follow my curiosity, so apologies to everyone who's expecting a really well constructed sixty point. Sequential setup.

questions here. But on the dietary side, do Bonobos. Hunt? Has that been observed? Maybe you could speak to chimpanzees because I mean my very, very minimal understanding of chimpanzees is that

You know, not only do they hunt, but they also kinda sport hunt in a way. Or do They go on raids of sorts. Could you just maybe speak to both and contrast and I would just love to know because I've never asked anyone and you're the person to ask if bonobos have ever been observed to hunt. Both species hunt? Chimpanzees hunt more than Bonobos. That's the summary.

And now let's go. Yeah. For years The Artype was that

Chimps were, you know, mean aggressive hunters. And Bonomos were like the nice big and Loving. Or G lovers. Exactly, thank you. Sadly I became coy. I don't know why. You just got so shy all of a sudden. Exactly. Yes. But yes, thank you.

I think that's what's so cool about studying animals and about science that Things are always more complex than have More Variants and Nuance. And as you understand more the animals, particularly when you're dealing with large brain intelligent animals like the of course they're plastic. Of course they change. Of course not all the populations do the same stuff. Of course there's a huge variation according to

Which environments they're in. So Then you can start making predictions and saying, Well, if they're in wet environments, if they're in richer environment How does this drive behaviors like hunting and aggression so on. But That's the domain of socio ecology.

Which is the study of how social behavior changes according to Environmental pressures. So Having said that, I mentioned that because I think It's important to understand that we are also animals subjected to the same pressure. I

Guess what? Our environment changes, we change. So for chimps and bonobos it's the same. We can even even speak of say Western chimpanzees have been said of having a more Bonobos strategy in the sense of females have stronger bones and they can be nicer and handless than eastern chimpanzees That hunt more and there's more events of aggression, et cetera. And geographically, could you just place us where would uh the range of the Western chimpanzees be in the versus the eastern. And I know there's probably not a super clear

Demarcation down the middle, but Geographically, where are we placing those groups? The eastern chimpanzee would be the chimpanzee that most people know because of Jane Gurul. That is. Right.

Is your eastern chim. And I think that's thank you for asking that question because Of course for Jane when she's started studying the gyms and the things she observed including the four year war, Jane Goodle After a while she

So that Shimpa Z. To begin with, they were like a nicer version of us. So I think this is inserted in a broader context of of course we're looking But ourselves by

Looking at these animals. And when she makes this Amazing discovery when she observes them using tools and there's a famous anecdote she writes to Luis Liki who had the idea of uh her going there and saying, look, I know that the definition of human is we're the only animal that uses technology

But I've observed these animals. Name Chimbazes using and creating technology. So We have a problem basically. We either How are we gonna handle the PR on this one, Doctor Leaky. Doctor Leaky, we have a problem, Doctor Leaky. Either we We widen the definition of who can who is allowed to to use technology or we change the meaning of being human, right?

I hope that's in letters of note, by the way. I don't know if it is, but it should be. Um that telegram. Yeah, it might be. It might be. I mean they've they've gathered some incredible letters. And people also I mean can uh hear quite a bit about some of these earlier experiences that Jane Goodall had in my conversation with her. So we we we explore that quite a bit. And they can also find documentaries like Jane.

Online. Which will give you quite a view into this four year war, as you mentioned. I mean just as different tools, obviously different weaponry, but just as horrifying as human war. I mean ongoing protracted war which is not isolated chimps, right? I mean we've we look at

Certainly. ant populations. I mean as is if my memory serves me correctly, I mean they're they're like decade plus long. wars going on. I want to say somewhere in the American Southwest or Near Mexico.

And then we get to the West, you can comment on any of that they'd like. At some point would love to know where the Western ships are. Look. Africa, Central Africa, note

Where The Congo River is, which is on kind of on the upper third bit of DRC, talking very broadly here. And then look west. And so Uh Guinea And Côte d'Ivoire.

And All that area that is north of the river. On the West. Yeah, I'm going into Google Maps and looking at this right now. You know what's interesting, it says Gombe. I'm looking at Gombe. Oh, I guess I got pulled into the wrong place because Gombe's in Tanzania. Yeah, right. But Gombe there's also a Gombe in Nigeria, so people should be aware if they pull it up on a map. Gombe

Is in Tanzania. in the in the the context in which we're using it. Yeah. So if you again look at the map of Africa and if you look at the heart of it, literally the heart of it. Yeah. DRC Democratic Republic of Congo.

To the right of that you'll find Gombe, Tanzania. And eastern Africa. Yeah, exactly. So that boundary and and Lake Tanganyika is in that boundary. So when you actually when you climb the hills of Gombe which are steep and it's hardcore. One reason to study Bunobos is that the Congo Basin is flat. But anyway, when you climb Gombe and like killer bees on the Tanzanian side. When you climb

Gombe and you look down at Tangenika then you can see Congo. Got it. That is kind of the line that I'm trying to draw.

May I just mention real quickly to describe for folks, so I'm looking at a map here. So DRC Democratic Republic of Congo is gonna smack in the middle of Africa. And if you imagine that country, this is gonna sound kinda funny, but As The United States. DRC, Congo is the United States. There's actually a little hook in the south east that kind of looks like Florida. If you were to look at where New England is, right on that border.

Let's just say going into the ocean that would be Uganda and then below that, say around where New York, New Jersey would be of you have Rwanda, Burundi, and then you have Tanzania covering pretty much everything down. to Florida. And there is this gigantic lake, as you mentioned it, which I'm not gonna be able to pronounce properly, that forms the border. Basically, between DRC.

And Tanzania. What was the name of this lake again? Tanganika. Tanganyika, right. Yeah. So that gives you a bit of an image. So the Western chimps, where does that Group begin.

This is going somewhere, folks, so don't don't worry while I'm not getting like totally where's Waldo with geography forever. But Do they start west of that lake? So Lake Kangañica goes. North South it's like

A very long And actually very deep like I think it might actually be one of the deepest lakes in the world. Only after Baikal, I'm not sure. But it West of that you have gorilla populations.

So the Western chimpanzees are north. Again, think of DRC as This Hart of Africa. Mm-hmm. And then the river The Congo River is on the

Upper bit. Right. Yeah. As Conrad the writer. The author of The Heart of Darkness described it because he sailed there. That's the origin of Heart of Darkness, in fact. He described as an

A coiling snake. So Think of the Congo River is this cold, enormous cold snake that kind of 'Cause it's a de

Head. DRC and DRC For context. Is the size Of Western Europe.

Is an enormous, enormous country. So Western chimpanzees are north West. I see. Yep. You see what I mean? Yeah, I do.

So you were talking about your conversation with Jane and the four year war and aggression in chimpanzees. The Person To read and listen and follow About that work, kind of the

who is the modern Jane Goodle in the sense of following Chimpense behaviour and working on aggression. Which is of course and the origins of war. Which for a very obvious reasons is a very topical

Issue today is Richard Rangham. He's a British primatologist who has been at Harvard. directing the Pan Lab for many years. He has many books, he's an incredibly creative. How do you spell Richard's last name? Rangham W R A N

G H. A M Right. And um

His last book is called The Goodness Paradox. Namely why is it that humans are you know, relatively good if we should in invert to commas. Given what we see in Chimpaziz be a lot more aggressive. And so I think All things that Richard covers are about this topic are

Mm incredibly useful and he has been observing Chimpas's well, he worked with Jane. And so I can't recommend him. More thoroughly.

Yeah. That was one And then the second you mentioned war in ants. I think the recommendation there would be and you had also mentioned EO Wilson. E. Wilson Yeah.

Naturalist and naturalist and very famous for Socio biology in nineteen sixty four, namely combining social sciences and natural sciences and creating a bit of stir in the process. But he his favorite student Yeah, he's alive today, the student, because he all died. A couple of months ago. Very recently, yeah. I would invite everyone to

To read the work of Mark Moffitt. Mark Moffitt is also an aunt. Biologist, the favorite student of E. Wilson, I'm Mark an explorer, another person in this tradition of doing theoretical work, thinking about animal and human societies but combining exploration science and theoretical thinking. He published a book called Swarm. It's basically about human societies, and he makes this wonderful point that in many respects the dynamics of ants informed us about our sociality.

Including war, a lot more. Then we can see in other animals. Very cool. Swarm, great name. Great book title.

If you look at the let's just say contrasting behaviors of Western shimps and eastern shimps and then bonobos. Do you think it's primarily a function of Food scarcity versus abundance or something like that. I think that Definitely plays into it.

But I also think That you have the niche construction That Cultural animals?

Have Dynamics. Of their own. That I perhaps put in place in first place.

Because of ecological conditions. But once they get going. They have their own Wait. Lekker culture.

And their own sort of durability also, even if the The initial conditions are not the current conditions. Correct. As you mentioned, I mean you have Genetics as we understand it. I mean, we, I'm giving myself a lot of credit there, but genetics in terms of DNA and the code that gets passed down as we understand it. Environmentally largely unmodified DNA, meaning you have these random mutations that sometimes lead to better fitness and then natural selection, but

We don't have to go down this rabbit hole'cause it's also a rat hole. It gets co opted by a lot of new agey stuff, but epigenetics also. These more acute Effects on progeny in their behavior and so on. Please continue saying that the niche construction. So by cultural weight, could you give an example of that?

The impact of that. Selection pressures That Work. On behaviour

of social animals. So let me give you un example. So when you observe Bonobus Immediately females. They stand out as being very As we would call them empowered. And they seem

To make decisions and to kind of have the upper hand in the sense not that Bonobo males are in any way, and let me make this super clear, Bonobo males are magnificent, strong, amazing males. They're not like spider males who get Eating after procreation. Yeah. No, exactly. They are beautiful, magnificent males. This is not an example of like a war of the sexes where you have okay, females won the war of the sexes, and these guys are like puny little guys on the outskirts of society. No. I can show you pictures, videos, they're Magnificent. And I think also they have fun, they're playful, they're strong

But going back to the the example you asked for, immediately this difference between kind of Gunable females being empowered, they they don't get raped. For instance, so Female choice. Well, female choice exists throughout nature.

But Rape can happen in some societies and some species. In Bonobos we have not observed, right? The Males make like a an invitation to mate, which is kind of a One

Headbutt. It's like tango. Gesture. Sorry. Inside joke, guys. This is this is how males invite women to dance from like across the room. Anyway. This is correct. I but I had not thought about this. Ha

No! I failed as a rheumatologist and a South American. This is like Staring. So the males do this head bobbing thing. As the invitation. As the invitation that the point I want to make is that you can ask Why is this happening in in Bonobo say?

As opposed to other species and the thinking is that the environment, the Wealth in the environment. It played a very important role. In the Development of bonobos because

Let me back track a little bit into Socioecology one oh one. Think What are your main problems if you're a mammal? If you're a female mammal Typically female mammals are constrained by resources.

'Cause being a female mammal is expensive, calorically. You have to travel if you're lactating, if you're carrying babies There's a lot of investment. That female mammals have to do with

Procreation and carrying babies for sometimes a very long time because mammals have large brains which are in turn expensive to maintain And babies can be useless. And they're born before they're

Ready to go. Correct. I mean in order to pass through the birth canal or to be born properly, they're born kinda helpless. That is most extreme in the case of humans. In humans, yeah. In in humans, yes. But I'm broadly speaking. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. I was I was thinking mostly of of kind of higher primates and and humans. To be clear, like when a giraffe drops out, it's gotta be ready to run or it's lion food. So yeah. Yeah, but that's a great point, actually. Just think, observe giraffes or any Large herbivore

The relative Period of Uslessness In an infant between these kind of animals Versus

Us or gorillas, chimps, but Her before. Whether it's a giraffe or a horse. Or uh deer, they get up and they start walking. They're still protected by the mother and of course fed by the mother. But our babies are useless for a very long time.

It's expensive to be a female mammal. Exactly. Thank you. It's expensive to be a female mammal. So female mammals are typically constrained by resources. And so If you have an environment where there aren't enough resources Female mammals, the most basic thing is that They have to be on their own.

Because there isn't enough food. For everyone to gather. Right. So you know, not enough supermarkets can only feed, say, one female and her two babies If there is enough food. Ah, now you can go to a party. I you can hang out with other females.

Right. And this is really important because I think what like the social revolution for Gonobos was that female mammals were able To hang out together. In order to form a bond. You need a very basic thing to happen.

If you are a Prime it that doesn't bond online. You need to be in the same physical space. Because mamma's born through physical interaction. Асо If an environment allows

For females to be in the same place. You can afford that possibility. Not that it will always happen. But we think that in Bonobos, the fact that they were in a relatively wealthy environment, wealthy meaning a forest, a tropical forest with a lot of fruit. And fruit has, you know, high in calories.

then you can be in the same place. And this is where you get into the multiple feedback loops. females in the same place, females hanging out with each other, social proximity, social proximity bonding. Bonding alliances. Alliances We advance our own interests.

What is our interest? Yeah. Female mammals have two problems. Well they have many problems, but one of them is being energetically expensive and the second one It's infanticide. So infanticide exists is relatively

Widespread and so If you think I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna sound like a horrible person without a heart, but if you think of like our genet your genetic investment Taking away love. What a terrible thing to say. For

A female mammal, your child being killed is an awful thing. And so Purely because of the time and energy invested In creating and maintaining this infant. So what I'm trying to get at is that the adaptations for female mammals that have to do with avoiding

Infanticide are important. So In that sense Choosing males that are nice males and not choosing males that will Probably

being fanticidal. It's An important thing. Oh, interesting. Okay, so I have questions. Can may I jump in with a question about this? So when I hear this is probably not a sentence I use very often, but when I hear Infanticide, what I think about is Cases with say

Lions, bears. It's very, very common. in the natural world where a Let's just call it a challenger male will come to a pride. Kill a resident male. And

that male lion will want the female lions to go into Estris. So If they are lactating that won't happen, therefore he will kill. The cubs, and this happens amongst bears, i is my understanding. But you're saying in this case there's also infanticide where the actual biological father will kill

The infants? Not typically. No, no, not typically. I I meant uh sorry, I should have been specific about that. What I wanted to say is that infanticide, as you're pointing out, happens in nature. And

Avoiding infanticide. The only thing that I'm saying is that avoiding infanticide is important for female. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So what I'm trying to get at is that I think you asked about the contribution of a wealthy environment that we know why are Bruneu so nice. Yeah, yeah. Is it because th they have more fruit.

Cultural niche construction, but also You have multiple levels of selection. I think what we see is that Females have been Selecting nice males and nice males get rewarded for being nice. Because females

Choose them. So what you see is that multiple feedback loops. The way of summarizing this better I think was done by the rapper Baba Brinkman when he was trying. Didn't see that going. I don't, but but please continue. Yeah. He's a great lyricist. And um he rapped

The original species. When he was rapping about how sexual selection works and these processes of basically female choice. And he was showing gangsters and your kind of a rap culture being all aggressive and she said Girls, you are selecting traits in males. So in order to create a better world Don't sleep with mean people. Yeah, good advice. Good advice.

I'm mostly saying it as a joke. But uh what I'm trying to illustrate here is that Females. Sexual choice is important and in Bonobos Because

Of what was possible for them to happen given that they were able to form coalitions. Perhaps we see it more clearly. Let me ask a couple of kinda housekeeping questions that may go nowhere. So I apologize to everyone if if this goes nowhere. But if you look at say Bonobo versus

Chimpanzee populations Is there a different gender split? So if you look at a given cohort I don't even know how you would define that. 'Cause it's probably not a single troop. It's probably a little wider than that, but

If you look at Bonobos, is it like fifty fifty Male, female, and chimps roughly the same. Is it sixty forty? Is it eighty twenty? And second question is about body size discrepancy. So between males and females in bonobos is the discrepancy the same as in chimps. And I'm I'm trying to think of other factors aside from food scarcity or abundance that

might contribute to different things. Social dynamics. Both species have the same sex ratio. Around fifty fifty. And in terms of Tim is asking about

Dimorphism. So sexual dimorphism is if you look at males and females If roughly the body size and other traits kind of similar or whether you see big differences. So one example of a like huge dimorphism would be Gorillas. Like the male sil think of a male silver bike, big, enormous guy and females.

Much smaller, or say A stag, a deer, red deer. So as a rule of thumb again grossly over generalizing. Dimorphism indicates

Lack of one of me. So Again, maybe we shouldn't get into this because there are many nuances here. But uh in Chimpanzee and Bonobos, the m male Female size. Females are a little bit smaller. In both species and dimorphism.

Might be a little bit. More in chimpanzees, namely, you don't see this huge body size difference, but there is a body size difference. In human sees Evident as well, in the sense of like most males If you think of averages. Uh

So Heavier. Stronger than females. And obviously they're exempt, but we're talking statistically. Yeah, and so if we come back to what you said about dimorphism, that that is reflective or indicative of a

Lack of monogamy. Is that right? Typically. Could you elaborate on that? Let's think about animals that have most dimorphism.

Again. Let's pick the Stuck. Deer or gorillas. Typically that indicates a a harem.

Social structure in the sense of one male and several females. And That will Of course it's not as simple as that. With time we have learned that

Gorilla social systems are a lot more flexible than we thought. I mean that's a another rule of thumb. It's always more complicated. The truth isn't really simple. No. What's that called?

I'll look it up. Yeah. But it's it's a rule of thumb. But Bnobus and Chimbazis are similar. I think in much more ways than we think they're different. In the past, I think because we

We're coming. Out Of Oh, we still are in a kind of Thinking of the

Evil And And goodness so Chimpazees were like the bad guys and Bonobas were the good guys. And Chimpaze are technological Machiavelli politicians and You know.

male rapist and then Bonobos are the feminist, like peace loving. And again. The life is a lot more complicated. And so I would just really like to stress that We should

Try to get out of this kind of Sharp contrast. Both species have I don't think it's correct to say good guys and bad guys or there are no angels, Burnobles are no angels. There's conflict at every level of organization in nature. And also I think we should be careful about the naturalistic fallacy. Naturalistic fallacy meaning, oh if this happens in nature, it means that. This is okay for us to do the same in human societies, or this ought to be the way.

Sorry, I said a lot there. I don't learn very much when I'm talking, so I prefer you to talk. The Oscar Wilde quote. Although half the quotes on the internet are attributed to Oscar Wilde, but I believe that the quote is the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Yeah, that's the word. Thank you. For people who don't have

The Context when you talk about Heart of Darkness, Congo Can you describe the land in which these bonobos live from a human perspective. What does the Congo look like? What are some basics that we should know about the Congo, just so people have an appreciation for what it means to

Walk more than three thousand kilometers on foot in the jungles of the Congo. Congo is uh historically But you will hear about The two Congo's Congo Brazil and Congo Kinshasa. Wha when we're talking about Congo, we mean Congo Kinshasa meaning DRC Democratic Republic of Congo, what was known before as Zaire. So again Picture Africa.

Literally picture the heart of it, this enormous big central middle. And that is Kango DRC. Congo is the size of Western Europe.

Yeah, as we were talking before. Given that it's so large, there are many biomes but I went to the Tropical jungles. Literally in the heart of Congo, namely

But Hundred miles south of the river. just in the line of the equator, so my GPS would mark zero zero zero zero. About six hundred kilometers, four hundred miles from the nearest Town.

This means that first of all you have logistics that are complicated that are the logistics Well, anyway Tropical. Rainforests. There are dangers that are inherent in tropical rainforests such as Trees fallen. In fact that's one of the most dangerous things. If you're following a group of

Large bodied animals that are arboreal and you are a viped. And these guys are Travelling on the trees. And this is a primary for us, namely there are old and dying and dead trees, many times entire Oh whether or not it's not a little bit more.

Sometimes a tree but a huge branch, sometimes the size of a table would fall. A few inches from you. And so that has caused injury. permanent injury and actually a death in the group of people that There are other obvious dangers like snakes?

There were green members, black members, congo vipers. We couldn't have Antivenom, because for antivenom you need Electricity in order to have a fridge. Refrigeration. So we didn't have

Electricity or any form of public sanitation for that matter. So I think for me I was always thinking you really shouldn't get beaten by a snake. That that's the bottom line. Don't get bitten by a snake. Danger I think With Congo

Or a woman would be physical violence from people. Congo is the rape capital of the world, but the this pertains to the Chronic Conflict. Yeah.

But I was quite far. From that conflict. That conflict happens mostly in the east. Of course it could erupt any time. And it was a concern. But I think I was more in the kind of dangers of the forest, so to say.

Then there's disease, uh tropical disease. You think you can control many things, but I took this book uh called The Oxford Handbook of Tropical. Medicine. I did not read it beforehand and I think if I had would have read it beforehand it

Maybe. It would have been th there's a small degree of ignorance that sometimes It's helpful. No I'm not advocating Actually I should take that back because of course I'm all about knowing and knowledge. Play with the snakes. Play with the snakes. But uh the chapter in this book about Infectious disease in tropical areas in Central Africa is quite Scary.

That's the only thing I'm gonna say about that. So you have I mean certainly in the urbanized or less remote parts of Congo you have warfare You have violence, you have rape, as you mentioned.

Disease. Also, right. I mean uh Sort of urban disease. Birthplace of Ebola and HIV, is that correct? Correct, yes. Yeah.

So you have a lot going on. You talked about the dangers. Some of the remote dangers. You're navigating all of this in the course of doing field work. Just to shift gears for a second, because you mentioned the death by

Why is it that the Japanese, I think University of Kyoto has such A dominant role, it would seem. in Venoba research. How did that happen?

We were talking about Western mythology and Conrad Lorenz. So animal behavior studies in the West Come from that line. Of animal behavior in Europe whose origin is in biology.

Okay. The Japanese have a different Tradition? Inisology?

That for them comes Broadly speaking, from The social sciences. And let me explain. I think this is really interesting Because you see

Two Cultures coming at the same Broadly speaking. Area of study. With different approaches. The book

For more on this is By France Deval. The Dutch Mythologist uh is called the ape and the sushi master.

Ask this question like why? Where and are the Japanese so interested in animal behavior? The Japanese came to animal behavior with the kind of questions we're asking today earlier than the West. Probably for two reasons.

One of them is a contingency, an evolutionary contingency, namely habitat. In Japan? They are primates. You have Japanese monkeys. So People I would invite

Your audience to Google. Japanese monkey hot tub. And what you will see, right? I don't know the proper name of the snow monkeys. Yes. The incredible in the in the hot springs. Japanese macaque, also known as a snow monkey. Yeah. And so The reason I'm mentioning that is because

I like you to imagine What it means for culture. To live in a place Where you have these animals nearby. And so that means that for the Japanese

Primates monkeys were part of their mythology and of their stories. So think of the mythology and the stories that We have in the West. And are intelligent animals, they're mostly say ravens or foxes. Think of like German fairy tales. Who's clear? Oh it's the Raven.

And why? For obvious reasons, because those were the animals that were available in our environment. So we think and interacted with them. We didn't have monkeys. For the West to look at monkeys we had to go to Africa or to Asia. So that's the first reason.

But I think it's evolutionary contingency, namely the Japanese As a culture? Co evolved with primates. In the presence and they were part of the mythology and the story. I think also their religion Shinto, so you know.

more about Shinto than I do, but basically inter relationships. I think that predisposed cognitively the Japanese to be much more prepared to think about continuities and discontinuities between Humans And other primates. So the combination of these two factors made that in the nineteen forties

Already you had a tradition of Japanese primatology. First there was this guy who was looking at And then he started looking at the ball. Uh Other.

Primates behavior, and very famously he discovered The innovation of potato washing. And so this female that you know they were eating potatoes. That had sand and you know, everyone You can only go that's kind of

Annoying, but still food. And she learned to wash them. in the water and her friends and family learned from her. So it became a very well known example of innovation and also who innovates and how innovations spread through social networks. So question for you, where was that potato washing? Do you recall?

Yes, in an island. Oh gosh. I just forgot the name of the Alan. Emo. The the name of the female is Emo and uh I'll get back to you with the name. Emo I am. Emo, that's funny because it means potato. So there's a joke in Japanese

This is not gonna mean anything to anybody, but Hot Tajmo is irona is uh Is a joking way, it kind of sounds like what time is it now? Hotai Mo isa. But it means don't touch the potato I've Just picked but e mold. Is a way of saying potato.

Or I think you can also use it to mean like country bumpkin in Japanese, but that's funny. So emo. Oh that's great. Yeah, so emo monkey Yeah. Washing. I'm just pulling it up really quickly. So I wanna ask you question about this. All right, sweet potato washing revisited fiftieth anniversary of Primate's article. So this is

Something I'm looking at on Springer dot com. Talks about Koshima monkeys, so I'm guessing it's on Koshima. Yeah, so Coshima Uh almost certainly means little island. Coal is Like Ko Chi Gari for those judo people out there. Call Shima, and then Shima is like

You know Hiroshima, wide island, Koshima. So Koshima. Now I had heard I would love to the reason I'm asking specifically Is I wanted to ask you, is it true and it May not be at all, but

Let me back up and say It seems to be true that there's this phenomenon of People in humans in disparate geographical locations. having similar or identical scientific breakthroughs around the same time. Which

is bizarre and raises a lot of questions. Could just all be coincidence, but it seems to happen on a reasonably regular basis when you read these biographies of scientists. It's like it's it's like, you know, nothing happens for Two hundred years and then it's like neck and neck down to the week, right? And I believe something like that also happened with Darwin. Yeah, that win on Wallace. Yes. Yeah, so Wallace kinda beat him to the punch and he wrote a letter to his friend complaining like the other letter. And then his friend was like, Charles, you gotta get your ass on this.

Get after it, and then he pushed forward, and then no one remembers Wallace, right? So it's like nothing, nothing, nothing, and then flash boil all of a sudden. And I remember Someone telling me that this was also true for the sweet potato washing in the sense that I guess in this case emol learns to wash these potatoes and then around the same time

Monkeys of the same species on other nearby islands began Washing sweet potatoes. Do you know if this is even as a story? Something that exists putting aside Maybe they travel from island to island. I mean they must have gotten there somehow to begin with, so Suppose they do, but do you d have you heard this this story at all?

I've heard the On the wakker. Side of that, there are some explanations like morphic resonance. I mean I you know, I don't wanna drag you into the mud here, but What are your thoughts on any of this?

I think If I may remain empirical about it, I think I also thinking as an ecologist, I think it's first of all It it's attention biased. Right, right. Given that I'm trained as someone who looks at nature and I'm astounded at our own blindness of like how many times can I pass through a place without saying something until I go

Oh. What about this? And then I see it everywhere. Yeah. It's like buying a new car and then you see that car everywhere. It's like no no it's not like everyone bought it the same day. You just didn't notice it before. Yeah, amazing. So there's that effect, but that's not all. I think there's also an ecosystem effect.

Namely that inventions Don't quite I mean, this view of like the lone person, whether it's a Japanese macaque female or Darwin alone and like old man in his studio We uh think in ecosystems in environments through interaction with the world.

So we're picking up stuff that it's already it's fruit that is in our forest, so to say. So that other people start picking it it's not Incredibly surprising. Is there anyone you are aware of who is a credible scientist? Who would even entertain the notion of morphic? resonance or is interested in alternative or complimentary

theories for how some of these things Manifest, or is that just universally thought to be bullshit? I know Ruper Childrick personally and I really like him. Yeah. And I think the work his son, Merlin, you probably know he's doing is fantastic on on Fang Jai. And so

He's such a great guy. He's a fascinating character, fascinating character. I've I've never met him, but fascinating guy. Yeah. You should meet him and go Go for a walk with him. He uh was originally a botanist, so he knows everything. Just to go for a walk with him outside is wonderful. So let's leave it there. All right. Go for a walk with with Rupert. All right, on the list. Thank you. Okay, so how did we get on to

Sweet potato washing in the first place. Yeah, you asked why the Japanese have a field side in Congo, which is a great question. Yes, yes, because when I'm looking at, for instance, the network of play interactions in Wamba Bonobos and I'm looking at the names, right, and it's like Natsuko, Yukiko, Nachi, Kyota, Yumi. Right there. Fuku, quitaro. Or in the very beginning we we talked about Jito, I think it was. And that is most certainly A Japanese name. Like Giro Giro Giro Dreams of Sushi.

Same same. Super, super fascinating. I love uh hearing the names of the E one Bunobo group uh pronounced properly. Yeah, they have some good names. Yeah, they've got they've got some good names. Yeah. I will ask about Where you think humans are getting it? wrong or maybe making mistakes when it comes to Sex play.

Gender. I am gonna ask you about that, but I'm planting a seed so that it'll just gestate for a little while. But first Let's talk about Or rather, let me ask you about and I just saw it pop up here, the adaptive joker hypothesis. What is that?

Is the name I give So my theory on play behavior. Basically. I did for my masters and for my PhD I studied play behavior.

And I the question you ask yourself as a a similutionary biologist, as synthologie, is that what's the function of behavior? And so Play has typically And continues to

Very rightly. Developmental scaffolding. Namely something, a behavior that is expensive and risky, but young animals do. In order to

Build up. The Organism. So Play prepares you for the future.

All of that is true. Play fighting in leopards, wordplay in young humans, as a rule of thumb you observe how the young of a certain species play and you can have inferences on what they do as adults and you know plays training for adulthood. So All of that is true. But

If you think of The word scaffolding to me was puzzling. Because it's like developmental scaffolding. So maybe it's because I come from a family of architects, but I keep thinking a scaffold is something that is used to build A building. And then when the building is done.

You remove the scuffle, I the scaffold is useless. It's just aiding you in constructing something. And when the thing, the building is ready, you take the scaffold away. And De Object is the thing.

The building that is ready. And If Play is a scaffold for building.

adult organisms, it means that play should Finish one somatic growth. Finishes. I you turn. Seventeen, eighteen, you stop playing.

I think again this is roughly true in many species. It's not very common that I don't Animals. Play. But if you start looking around again with this,

question of like ask the question and Then tell me which animals play as adults. And so What would come to mind? Let me ask you that question. Which animals play as animals? Yeah, as adults. Yeah. Dolphins would come to mind. Yeah.

Yeah. Although obviously. What was that second one? Humans. Oh I thought you said Cubans. I was like maybe Cubans, yeah, sure. They do like salsa. I mean that kinda looks like that's that's playful. Yeah, great great music. Uh sitting in Austin, Texas, there are actually a lot of amazing Cubans here, which is why maybe that's I talking about the sort of attention bias. Uh

But uh humans Although I I mean N one would need to, I think, perhaps take a second to define play. So if play is not

This I can't remember the exact modifier I use, but the scaffolding. If it is not that. than what is play, right? It seems like something that doesn't serve an obvious Functional purpose.

that entails some degree of positive emotional display. I mean is I don't know if that's me struggling for a definition, but No, y you're correct. We're mixing Two definitions there. So I Want to make a distinction when you ask these questions.

Timbergen, another famous ethologist, defined. The four questions. When you think about a behaviour What? Why?

And from where? So The question I was asking is What's the evolutionary function of the behavior? Which is different from defining it, how does it look today? Okay. So if you want to define it

And when you observe something and you want to study it, you need to define it How does it look today? So you can define it broadly as A behavior that appears cooperative in the sense that it doesn't Look. Forced?

Animals are not doing it. under constraint, duress, or obvious aggression. And there might be a sense of enjoyment and it appears not having an obvious force. Purpose. It has repetitive elements. But these repetitive elements also have variation.

So the element of enjoyment A recombination of elements. Yes. Part of it. So appearing to having fun, but of course n you know, that's easy when you look at humans, but like you look at reptiles and like how do you know the snake is having fun? It's like well

I don't have you know deep exposure to a lot of animals. I would say canids, certainly you see something resembling play in dogs in Fox Well, et cetera. Yeah, wolves, uh certainly. You know, cats, I mean there seems to be some type of tailing off in almost every species I think of in terms of play. I mean maybe you have like old

dudes, you know, like seven year old humans playing chess and Parks and so on, but the types of play. change certainly over time. You know, one of the coolest things I've ever seen Was video captured by a trail camera.

In the US Of a coyote. Playing with It certainly looked like play with a badger. Yes, I remember that.

They hunt together. And it was jumping around, wagging its tail, dropping into kind of this downward dog like play position just as a Domestic dog, domesticated dog would And I don't wanna take us too far off track, but this is directly mapping from some

Northern American. Indian mythologies or what were thought to be mythologies that had Largely never been. Observed by sort of Western

Field biologists, and it was kinda thought to be this nonsensical. mythology and then lo and behold it's actually right there in front of you on camera. It's pretty cool. But I I had never Observed. I don't think I'd observed much in terms of non-combative.

Inter species. Play. In that way. Right. No, that that would be there's one animal there having fun and playing, the other one is not. So those are a few examples that come to mind. What other examples come to mind for you? Is the family of Corvitz, so ravens?

Crows. Are very Playful birds, uh parrots. As well. It's not a coincidence if you look at Brain to body size ratio.

both uh these groups of birds, uh namely pirates and corvids are A kind of equivalent, if you will. Two citations on Great apes. Citations including dolphins.

Yeah, dolphins and whales. So in that these are animals that Don't think of immediate genealogical relationships but think of the niche again. What niche What do these animals have in common? They are highly social, they live in complex societies, they have to deal with complexity, they tend to be long lived. And just if you add the dimension of time, if you're social and are long lived, it means you have to

Deal with uncertainty. Because who's your friend? Will it be your friend Two weeks from now, you haven't seen them with whom to cooperate, with whom not to cooperate. Social life is complex. And so All of this

Groups of animals have these things in common elephants. is another group of animals that also play and they Fall in this broad group of Generally speaking Large brain, intelligent

animals that live for a long time, they very innovative but also extremely social. So you have a relationship between sociality and intelligence and I think the The third element there is that Clay? When It's possible because

Now we get into The socioecology of play. Play is not always possible. Particularly for adults. Many things need to happen for play to make sense.

And it's more important for the young. So the scaffolding is still true. But my question was like why Do you see this behavior in adult animals? where it's risky and expensive in time and energy. And

This brings us to I've been thinking a lot, Tim, about Time budgets and energy budgets. At a personal. Level. I think

Because you are Mr Optimization. Yeah, well Actually time budgets. You're all about Time budgets, namely how you organize your time, right? Okay, can I Actually tell you something what a friend said yesterday was very funny. I follow I mean I'm part of a literary club

I attend a a workshop every every week here in Chile and you know, we are Latin and it's a country of poets and We have I'm coming from That explanation of the the Latin Poetry tradition. And I told them uh we were going to speak today and they said, Oh yeah

I know that guy. I studied him with my son because he has a method for only working one hour a week. And then I said yeah, kinda like the four hour they were mostly referring to the four hour week. And then in a very kind of Latin poet. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I was initially Compelled by this idea of working less, but then I thought he works a lot in order to work less. The paradox. We live in paradox.

But basically yeah, time budget. So actually that led us to a very interesting discussion on the use of time and what is to optimize and not to optimize. Sure. And play behavior I think has several insights in that use of time and use of energy. And at what level do you Put the optimization goal.

I have some thoughts on this in this sense, and I should point out for people who are not aware Most listeners will recognize the name Pablo Neruda. But some may not associate. Neruda with Chile. And so Chile has this incredible literary tradition. But

I would say. Part of why play fascinates me. And then I want to come back to like what worries you about. humans right now. Based on

What could we use l more of what would you encourage people to perhaps think about That could take any number of different forms. Right. So I'd I'd love to hear you speak to that. But I will say that Play is very interesting to me because I think It overlaps with what we might describe as flow states.

Quite a lot. And uh certainly if we include sports in play, although sports can become very violent in some cases. But if we include that, then I find that there is Time is a construct, right? We don't have time to get into that right now, which is is uh Intended pun.

For those interested in getting into the really strange aspects of kind of time space as a user interface, listen to my conversation with Donald Hoffman. not every hour is created equal, right? You can have the experience of passing an hour Sitting in an airport waiting for something and it seems like ten hours. You can have the experience of being stuck in your inbox and doing various types of work and the entire day passes and you can't remember a single thing that you accomplished. And then you can have this time dilation when you play where you you're kind of getting more hours per hour, if that makes any sense. The perception of time.

changes in my experience part of my reason for being so interested in plays you can kind of buy more time. From a perceptual perspective. Completely. I I think the your point of o the overlap with flow states is correct. I think play is broader. Than that, uh flow states are Uh subcategory.

I think they're best understood. Through the lens of play. Perhaps more goal oriented than than play necessarily is not the big if you distinguish between play and games, games are typically more

Goal oriented had clear outcomes. So a contest obviously has an outcome and say if you're just like Played. Fighting with words or dancing, that the reward is the activity itself. It's intrinsic reward. So I I would draw that Distinction.

What can we learn from what you've observed in the natural world? Maybe what you've studied of earlier human civilizations or ways of organizing ways of playing. And why is it important? I know that's a huge question, but I'm just thinking of the people who are listening to this podcast.

And this is you you can speak to me as if you're giving me the advice'cause I would like to hear it too. And if it makes you twitchy to think of it as advice, you can just t describe it as an observer slash Adventure scientist. A lot of people listening to this. Are probably listening to this podcast.

by and large to Certainly learn. From disparate fields. And different types of experts, but also They probably work a fair amount. I would imagine most people who listen to this podcast work a fair amount. And if you were to give them two glasses of wine and ask them if they if they would like more play in their lives, they'd be like, Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then

That's Saturday night, they get back to Monday and that conversation disappears and is long forgotten. Right. So Yeah, what do we do? I would say. As an animal?

And I say this I think hopefully by now you realize that I say this in the best possible way. You are constrained? First by two things. So I want you to think about your Energy budget?

And you're Time budget. For you basically your financial budget. So I think you obviously have covered this extensively on you know how to manage and create and energy budgets. I define energy in the physics way of energy, ability to do work. So for organisms energy available is

Of Metabolic energy for humans I think a good proxy is Financial energy. Financial energy can increase. You can win the notary and you can

Follow team's advice. And earn more money. Right? Us. Good luck, everybody. There you go. So that's a great thing, because thanks to people like team actually that you can increase your energy budget. Fantastic. Your time budget, however, you can't. Time is an incredibly democratising force because you and an earthworm have twenty four hours in the day. So that's a fixed budget. Which means that there's this constant interplay.

You know, tango or martial art if you want, between your energy budget and your time budget. How you buy time or you use time is in interaction with your energy budget. The most obvious thing is that if you increase your energy budget, I you have more money, you can buy your time. Right? So the first observation that I had with Bonobos was that kind of sociocological question. When they have more wealth, i.e., there's more fruit.

What will they invest it in? It's kind of an investment question. Because they could become fatter. For instance, namely Storing. That metabolic energy.

Or they could spend it in grooming. Conversation. So to say. For numbers. It was really interesting to me to see that In terms of investment.

Decision but there was more fruit, they played more. Which tells you several things. The first one is that play is expensive. Not always you can play. That's fine. You know, you first of all you should Have sufficient metabolic energy to eat and travel and feed your kids and so on. Play is in that sense, especially for adults.

It's true that it's a luxury. But here we come into the adaptive joker expensive hypothesis. There's Some things in nature and in human cultures that when you can afford them They create more luxury. investment in education. Living in a city like

Austin Or New York. In places that might be expensive to live, but you are putting yourself in a particular ecosystem that feeds into you the possibility of creating something further. The development of the human brain is another Example. Something that ex is ex very expensive to grow. But if you can afford it, it also affords.

new possibilities. So what I'm trying to say that Is I think that frame of thinking where you're trading off time budgets and energy budgets. Any investor would know this. But at a personal level it has helped me to look at it Much more clearly.

Because your time is fixed. But your income can grow. And so how do you become like an adapted animal? Changing. your time budget accordingly.

Not only to your income, but also to your context. Context is the context stupid, right? Paraphrasing with Clinton, obviously it's the economy stupid, but it's the context. Context is incredibly important in this sense. So I think There are ways that you can describe your context. How much risk is there? How much uncertainty is there? So I think if there's a lot of uncertainty, you can actually develop ways That's what I was trying to study with the adaptive joker hypothesis.

What is a joker in cards? A joker is the Adopts the value of the moment. Right, it's a trump card. But that

Value is given by context. Which Clay is making you very Good at reading context. It's really all about assessing context. So and then it changes.

It grows. It decreases. It becomes more intense, less intense, more aggressive, less aggressive. I think I do. Could you give an example of that? So for example

Ways of playing change form. Like a joker. Shape shifts. P it's a pretend behavior. It's a shape shifting behavior according to what's happening. So Yeah.

Today, after the pandemic. Well Sorry, we're still not after the pandemic, but we're kind of entering that that space. Hopefully it's fingers crossed, challenge. Yes. I think ways of playing that are Increasing in frequency Uh

Obviously face to face play. There's a hunger. For in person. I R L in real life. Events.

You go like well. It's kind of obvious. But it's not obvious, if you will, we have amazing technology. We You know, the w the entirely world has learned to zoom. Why are we actually willing to still travel? Long distances and

pay for plane tickets and suffer ridiculous cues and stuff, like going to Burnhaman.'Cause this kind of play is important. We have this necessity for in real life meetings. Direct. contact for humans is a very important form of play, it's not the only form of play. So that would be a never a very obvious example that I think I might predict.

We will see a lot of demand. Or that. You said earlier, if I may interject, that you've only recently started implementing or applying Some of these learnings related to play into your own life. So how have you

Apply it. these to your own life, or what are some ways that you explore play? The literary workshop is one. So I do this weekly. Uh my teacher is called Mathias Rivas. He's an editor and uh poet

And That kind of intellectual play. Allowing myself to like Oh well I will spend time not only in science stuff, but actually actively pursuing

Artistic Endeavors has been I think really life changing And I had to kind of learn my own lesson. Oh, guess what? Play is important. At so many levels. Literature

has become I mean it was when I was a child. But I had kind of Left it. Thank you

It's useful if you think of the ways you played as a child. There's something very true. There. Some play people talk about this. I Look at your pictures.

What were you drawn? What kind of play did you do? Was it literary play? Was it play with animals? Social play? Play finding? Construction play? People that did Legos? I think there's a deep truth on personal development. That has to do with What are we drawn in a

kind of purest forms of play, so to say. And so to recover that. I think it's like lesson number one. Let me jump back to Bonobos for a second. I had a book recommended to me. I can't remember the book nor the author. I'm a bit embarrassed about that, but it related to

Chimpanzees. And it was the story of a particular I want to say zoologist who had taught This is gonna be very broad strokes. A particular chimpanzee, something like two hundred signs from American Sign Language. And uh that chimpanzee then had offspring and taught the offspring something like seventy or eighty.

Signs. So it was a language, it was a vocabulary. Really, I guess a language more than just vocabulary that was past From this chimp to offspring and it was the story of this. And I found myself wondering Pampanisha?

It might have been. It might have been. I'm blanking on the name. But In this case it was a chimpanzee. But The question that came to mind for me was because I've become very interested in animal communication, not necessarily people who are like horse whisperers and so on, although that is also interesting to me. It's more so animal to animal communication, right? So within a wolf pack, how do they communicate, let's say birds in flight, how do they maintain formation when they're actually

Taking micro sleeps and the way that they rotate through this format. I mean the whole thing is just incredible, but how do they communicate if they communicate. Uh or how do they know? If they don't communicate, for instance, right? A lot of these types of questions. And so I was looking at this book summary and I thought to myself, I wonder if this is a step up for the chimpanzee or a step down. For the chimpanzee.

To have this like surrogate. language. In other words, isn't it an augmentation or is it replacing something that actually has much more subtlety and nuance to it. And so I know this is a big shift of gears, but it could affect how one looks at the play they choose to engage in.

How do bonobos communicate and how nuanced is their communication, right? Is it just like four or five Ten or twelve different kind of screeches and grunts that they get the rough gist across with has that been in any way distilled or Identified. by field biologists.

Thank you. We are learning obviously and we're still learning and a lot more will come. But the first thing that I think is very important to know is that communication is multi modal. So It's comprised of Gestures? Hand gestures, but also body language.

Posture. Proximity. You are sitting Next to whom you are in which location, just the physical location is also a part of communication. It's also vocal. Their utterances they

Utterances have different meanings. and they sometimes can be combined in different ways. I the communication Is Flexible. It's not

Their vocal communication is not Us. Obviously flexible as human languages, we have really taken vocal communication to an Extreme.

But so we have vocal. We have hand gestures, we have Body language and other C's. Smell?

It's also important. So If you take this as a whole, they have different meanings depending how you combine it. The other thing that is important to understand, I think In relation to your question on the chimpanzee example.

Is that It's very difficult for us as humans given that we exist in language. Two Not define. Intelligent communication from a human perspective. I

Given that I do language, how good are you at doing language? Oh. Language spoken word, right? If you're not as good as doing language, it means that your communication is inferior. So You're defining the ability to swim if you're a fish.

According to how you swim. So that is kind of a little bit inevitable perhaps, but I think today we try to think of it from the point of view of the animals in relation to the problems they have to solve. And in relation to the environment they're in. Notice.

Oh. Can they solve puzzles? Because we're so good at solving puzzles. So That's in general terms. And the other thing that I think it's important to think when you think about animal communication

Yeah. Again, their environment Bonobos Live In the jungle. One of the obvious problems when you're in the jungle

Is that There's a lot of trees. So Seeing visual use. Oh.

Sometimes difficult. I learnt if you talk to birders. You are birding in a forest, you start Listening, basically you were By listening to calls, not

Not by visually recognizing. And I realized that I started I shifted Perceptual modes, so to say I was following Clay. And I would get super attuned to It would sound weird, but

Temperature, which is I call it a temperature, but it's really a combination of things. The place. Where you your body knows what's likely to happen. And then Auditor Qs.

Namely laughter. Very distance. Ha ha ha ha ha. And then you follow that and then you see them. The reason I mentioned that is because It gave me a very obvious insight into Bonobo communication, namely they can't always see each other.

Therefore auditory communication is important. Mm. Yeah, I've uh only recently really come to appreciate how discreet different animal calls can be. And uh you know, I hesitate to use the word nuanced because I'm not really sure in this context what that would mean. But for instance,

You can train your ear to identify, say, a wildebeest alarm call for a lion versus a leopard. They sound different. Or a squirrel alarm call for certain types of predators that are stationary versus Same predator when it's moving. Right. So there's even for animals we would consider

Perhaps very much. Again, this is kind of anthropomorphizing and judging them by our capabilities, but Simple. I still have a wide range of ability to

Communicate. And I have to imagine that we've only scratched the surface. I know there's been some very interesting research done with dolphins. But If we could talk about this for hours and hours and hours, which we won't, but

If you had to hazard Some theories. That you think. Are worth Examining.

Say over the next. Five ten. twenty years, maybe we'll have more technology that will assist in this, but as it relates to field biology and animal communication. Do you have any Theories you'd like to

deposit as as worth exploring or Do you think there are any insights that perhaps you've observed? Not insights. Any phenomena that you've observed that you think well, this isn't really something I can I wouldn't go so far as to say. This exists and I've proven it exists, but there is a hypothesis.

Kind of worth disproving here. That That is interesting. Does anything come to mind for you? Many things.

Which are mostly questions. Following Bonobos in the jungle. We try to predict the Daily movements. I just the question, where are they going and why? And we couldn't.

We couldn't not even the most Experience Truckers.'Cause we wanted to know where they were going. For a very practical reason, because that would allow us to sleep for longer and find them. Right.

And We couldn't. And they seemed so The mental maps. In their heads.

The Cognition. How do they know where to forage? It's a very basic question. And A lot of animal behavior people

With a particular species. Answers about this, whether you're talking about migratory birds. Amazing. I mean migratory birds, how do they know? Have you seen the distances that these birds travel? Yeah, it's little guys. I mean it's amazing. Yeah. So

Then the world of citations. Or but Austin and Badson, equal location. Another huge topic, but To stick with Bnobos.

In the jungle. The jungle is In many ways like the sea in the sense of that this particular jungle is flat. You don't have perspective, not like Chilean forest where you're in the mountains. And you can see far. So

From my own perspective, I was like this is just like a sea of green. Obviously, I'm not attuned to the nuances That they are attuned. Also because it's not Tempered? Environment but tropical, the fruiting patterns It's kind of weird.

Some trees fruit once a year, some trees every two years, some trees you go, I don't know. So what I'm trying to say that the environmental uncertainty, the fluctuation In Footing patterns. Is

Two My human entry, I Very large. And they seem to have this map. That

Basically they know. They know where when the Mumbambo tree has ripe fruit. They went like okay, we're shifting across the whole territory. And I'm like, how do they know? These basic questions about travel I I find them fascinating, but maybe that was my own like gig So I haven't worked it out yet.

I'll say but that is actually Compounded Bye. Actually the second part of the answer to your previous question about

For the pandemic I was in Chile. And I discovered not only like this old way of literary Clean. But also started Climbing again and being a lot more.

Spending a lot more time in the mountains. And so that is that opens an entirely new chapter in terms of physical exertion and risk and uh I'm not like a Martial arts guy. I you know, I like to Well, you and I both know

Jason Neimer, the co founder of Acro Yoga. So you you have no excuse not to do Acro. Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm I'm gonna try to get out of it as much as I can. Which is probably I mean, one of the most similar forms of play if we map between sort of bonobos and chimps and humans. Right? I mean that would seem to be I'm not gonna say completely, but copy and pasted From these primates. And uh I mean It definitely seems to scratch some type of itch. I've never

With the exception of maybe some weird injury. Never had an acro yoga session where I'm like, wow. I really wish I hadn't done that session. Like I you always feel better afterwards. Uh, checks so many boxes. So I wanna give him credit. Jason where credit is due since he's the one who who also introduced us.

You know, to come back to that. Travel question. Or how they know where to forage. Yeah, two things come to mind for me. One that is equally mysterious. in some respects, which is a story told in a book called Of Wolves and Men.

By Barry Lopez, which is a spectacular book. And he talks about Traveling with field biologists and at multiple points observing Say Wolfback. That would be

Get up. Point in one direction and just head off. And they would. Trek for This is in deep snow, too. I mean, this is calorically energetically expensive, right? This decision has consequences.

And uh They would travel for multiple days and then intersect perfectly with a migrating caribou herd that happened to be traveling sort of the opposite side of this triangle. And you just have to ask yourself, okay, how does that happen exactly? And there are, you know, maybe it's a seasonal thing. maybe the Caribbean were doing that constantly, so it's really just like intersecting with a highway, although by the story and the description it didn't seem to be the case. I find it very exciting that there are so many open questions, right? Because

It seems like at every point in human history. We more or less thought we had it all figured out. I mean, this is true during like the Alexandrian periods. This is true during the Egyptians, it's true for our hunter gatherers. I mean, by and large, like we had it figured out. Maybe our explanatory model was gods and this and that and the other thing, but one has to assume That's There's one doctor.

Yeah. Fifty of what we know is wrong, we just don't know which fifty percent. The other hypothesis that comes to mind as you're talking about Bonobos and forging behavior and and we don't have to get into this, but people should look it up on Wikipedia at the very least.

Is I believe it's called the drunken monkey hypothesis, and the drunken monkey hypothesis. is a hypothesis that humans are predisposed to Alcoholism and ethanol abuse because

We were rewarded for being highly attuned. From an evolutionary perspective. to fermenting. Fruit. And that that was one

factory cue that we use to locate Food sources. And That that is One partial explanation or maybe complete explanation for why we are so predisposed to alcoholism as humans, which I thought was pretty interesting. I haven't I haven't gone too deeply into it, but it face value seems to make some sense to me.

And I know we have gone a lot longer than planned. Doctor Isabel. So I wanna be respectful of your time and also I think both of us probably need a little bit Speaking of Something calorically expensive. This conversation I think is probably calorically expensive. So we could use some uh some food and blood glucose. But is there anything and we'll do a round two at some point. This has been so much fun and I didn't even get through five percent of the notes I have in front of me. So no shortage of things to discuss. Is there anything that you would like

to mention Before we come to a close for this round one. People can find you online on Twitter at Isabel Benke B E H N C K E. We'll link to that in the show notes. Instagram dot com forward slash Isabel underscore Benke. And we will include all these.

In the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast with links to all the resources mentioned. Anything else that you would like Two Bring up any other comments, complaints, requests to my audience, anything at all before we Bring this to a close.

Thank you, Tim. Um Two things. One, uh the comment on uh on the Instagram and Twitter. It's basically I love feedback. Because I think nature evolves through I'm not very big on Twitter. I think I'm being publishing more in Instagram. Mainly through a form of play,'cause I

discovered for myself that taking pictures is fun. So they're not necessarily great, but uh It's a way of playing. So Anyway, if anyone wants to kind of interact there, that's uh And I welcome the good, the bad and the ugly. So that's fun for me, I love to learn. And then the second point was in relation to your comment about the m drunken monkey hypothesis. I do think it's a partial explanation because

As you will know by now, my bias is to go back to origins and take you a little bit further back in time. The reason why we have Ask yourself why would we have the machinery for being drawn to fermentation in first place. Think about that. I think the answer of that is play.

Because Play is about the machinery. For I kind of Biological excitement.

And intensity seeking. And so the overlap Of Abuse substance abuse, but also Creativity and risk taking. I think a lot of these reward mechanisms are linked and this is an huge topic and it's complicated because we go both on the light side and the dark side

Of things like creativity, which Uh should not be spoken. Lightly, but Let me just leave that. Maybe for the next time.

We'll save that for chapter two. And for people who You bring up a great point, actually, which is I mean many great points, but the assumption that Our ancestors sought out fermented fruit as a food source. Maybe. Off base. because there are tons of animals uh or solely as a food source might be misplaced because if you look at

many different species throughout The animal. Kingdom. You find examples of seeking in depriation. Right. You f Tons, tons all over the place. So

You know, reindeer and Lapland like to have fun too. People can look up that story and the origins of Santa Claus. If you want some uh extra credit reading. But Isabel Benke, so nice to see you. It is uh So lovely to spend time together and to have a chance to explore all these things. You have so many other stories, you have so many other interests. We didn't even get to your photographing of dead animals. Gonna leave that leave that as a c as as a teaser. There are so many So many interesting side alleys to take.

And we will share that with with everyone in uh round two at some point. But thank you so much for taking the time. Lovely. Thank you so much for leading such a wonderful dance. Hasta la próxima. And for everybody listening, thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, be a little kinder. then is necessary and take care. Hasta la próxima, gracias. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week.

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