What Chimpanzees Reveal About How We Connect and Divide with Aaron Sandel

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Same day delivery, it's on prime, available and select areas, terms apply. - This episode is brought to you by Chat GPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about Chat GPT work? It's the new way to use Chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, you have Chat GPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents, like spreadsheets, slides and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode, available on plus and pro plans. - Today on the Curiosity Shop, you're going to meet some interesting characters. You're gonna meet Gus, an awkward teen who's having a tough time finding his way with some of the tougher guys in the group. You're going to meet Christine, who has a new baby named Isabel. And an older daughter named Nadine. You're gonna see Nadine's frustration. Ooh, we're gonna talk about that about having a little baby in the neighborhood now who's getting all the attention. We're also going to talk about Jackson, the 31 year old alpha of the group who is currently being challenged by a new, very aggressive male. Who are these folks? These are members of one of the largest chimpanzee communities in the world. And on the Curiosity Shop this week, we're talking to anthropologists and primatologists, Dr. Aaron Sandal, about what he and his colleagues have learned about alliances, social structures, and the violence that can tear communities apart. - The story of the Angogo chimps is the subject of the Netflix documentary, "Chimp Empire." Today's humans navigate war, polarization, and growing distrust. We'll ask Aaron what we might be able to learn from the chimps in Angogo about how social bonds are built, how they break, and why they're so critical to holding communities together. (upbeat music) - Welcome to the Curiosity Shop. - A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. (upbeat music) - So today, Adam and I are both excited. I'm losing my mind. We have Dr. Aaron Sandal. He's an associate professor in anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. He is co-director of the Angogo chimpanzee project. He received his PhD in anthropology from, I'm gonna have to give this to Adam, the University of Michigan. There you go, I'm gonna tell you. He studies our closest ape relatives to understand social bonds and the emotions that animate them. Since 2012, he has studied wild chimpanzees at Angogo in Uganda. We're excited, he's here. Let's bring them on. First of all, welcome. - Thank you. - And I hope you've cleared your calendar because I am in full, look at it, I can't even take it. I am in full on five-year-old kindergarten or mode. I have questions about questions. - Perfect. I mean, you've been talking about champs and wanting to do an episode on champs before we had a podcast together. - Okay, so let's start with what's on your website. I love this. So on your website, you write, "We are facing crises of loneliness, polarization, and conflict. Why?" Part of the problem is that we don't fully understand the nature and importance of the social bonds that hold communities together. You write, "I study our closest ape relatives to understand social bonds and the emotions that animate them. I have studied chimpanzees in Uganda since 2012, including a rare violent conflict between chimpanzees. I am expanding my research now to mountain gorillas and humans." I love this. You write, "I draw from evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology, and I use a range of tools, including network analyses, machine learning, and interchronology to understand how social bonds are formed, maintained, and sometimes fall apart." Let me ask you this question. I have so many questions. Like I want to know if Abram still leading the pack over there, or if he ever really fully took his role as the alpha. Can we just start there? - Yeah, Abram was in the central group. He should be still the alpha. - Yeah, he took, he fully became the alpha. His chimpanzee was filmed mostly around 2021. And that was right as he was sort of trying to establish himself. I don't want to give spoilers. I mean, there's been a lot of spoilers that we discussed today for those who haven't seen chimpanzee. But yeah, he became the alpha of the central group. And there's not a lot of competition there. So he's been able to hold that position. I had an over-under on Gus coming out and whipping some Abram's ass and taking over because look, I had to call my husband like five times and he's like, get off the chimp empire. - No, I love that. Yeah, Gus, great chimp, didn't have a chance at alpha though. In my opinion, he's sensitive, grooming. He was a great older brother. He was a good younger brother, but yeah, doesn't have the same suite of traits, I think, that would lead someone to become alpha. - Okay, wait a minute, back up, Aaron, because I think I'm the stand-in for the audience today. I have not seen chimpanzee. Who are Abram and Gus? What am I missing? - These are some of the young adults and adolescent male chimps in the, one of the chimpanzee groups at Angogo, which is this population of chimpanzees in the middle of Kibali National Park in Western Uganda. This is a huge chunk of forest, especially for anywhere in Uganda or East Africa. It's this big chunk of forest. It's been really well protected. The Uganda Wildlife Authority has been protecting this chunk of forest and it's been a national park for over 30 years. And the Angogo chimpanzees are in the middle of that park. So they're surrounded on all sides by other forest. They're surrounded by other chimpanzee groups. So we really get to see a lot of their natural behavior as they would interact with each other, but also with chimps from other outside groups. And we will discuss, I think this will come up a lot, is the dynamics among these two groups at Angogo. But chimpanzee follows these two neighboring chimpanzee groups. Abrams was this young adult male who was rising in the dominance hierarchy in the central group, Gus was this adolescent male. He was sort of living his best life in the central group. - I just feel like the documentary and what you're studying explains so much. I gotta ask you this, when you think there are lessons about loneliness and polarization and conflict that we as humans can learn from primates, I think, did you set out to study, did you set out to be a primatologist so you could learn about us from them? Or did you observe, was this a priori kind of thing? Or did you observe them and like, oh man, we've got some lessons we can learn here? - It's a good question. I'm a sort of, on the one hand, a rare case, but sort of common, I think an animal behavior in primatology where this was a lifelong dream to study apes in the wild. Since I was five, I wanted to study gorillas. It was like childhood dream, age five, gotta stuck animal gorilla, got hooked, completely hooked at age five. All my sort of creative energy since age five was going into thinking about wild apes, wow. And so then this, I mean, my classmates, in second grade, they called me gorilla. Even my teacher let me like sign my name on my papers as gorilla, 'cause I was obsessed. And then, so like, fast forward in college, I sort of got more interested in human evolution and ape evolution, but really, at that point, I was interested in gorilla behavior just 'cause I had this lifelong passion for gorillas. And I'd spent time at the zoo throughout high school in Boston, so I developed this interest in gorillas, just for their own sake, just the sort of beauty of the natural world, the complexity of their lives, even in their subtleties. And then, so I was really almost interested in humans in so far as they could help me understand gorillas. - Yeah. - It was like a little flip from the typical biological anthropologists evolutionary sort of framework where we're trying to understand humans. It was flipped for me, but then I got interested in humans too, I thought, I mean, humans are fascinating, obviously, and I got really excited by thinking about humans and our closest relatives, chimps. gorillas, bonobos. And then I really got interested in chimps. I think it was college where I shifted. I got interested in more of these questions of social bonds, cooperation, aggression to some extent, dominance relationships. And then I did that for my PhD studying chimps at IngoGo. And I got on this sort of chimp track and started studying their social relationships. They're sort of asking that initially, I was asking the question, do they have what we can really call friendship? That was the main motivation and how did these relationships develop? And then in studying that, I became more interested in these broader themes of emotions, loneliness, and then conflict. And I would say just the connection to emotions in particular was when thinking more deeply about friendship. Like, how do we define friendship in chimps? We have to figure out how we define it in humans. These are concepts that we borrow from understanding our own lives. And I came to realize really the way to understand a social bond or a friendship is about how we feel in those relationships. It's not necessarily just based on behavior alone. I don't think you could usually figure out or two people friends based on that. It's about their emotions. So then I said, okay, this is sort of fast-forwarding to where I'm at now. I don't make how do we study emotions then in chimps. And then I was like, oh, let me just go to the psychologists and figure out how we study humans. And then I realized that's maybe a complicated question even just for humans. So I've been excited by thinking how do we actually study emotions across species. But it's really this back and forth. I think I'm always still interested in what can I learn about humans from studying chimps? What can I learn about chimps from thinking more about humans? How many questions do you have right now, Brunei? Oh my god. I want you to write an Atlas of the Heart for the chimpanzees. I'm thinking, okay, here's what I'm thinking. Let me get focused. I'm so excited. Okay, you know why we had you on now? This is crazy. We had you on now because huge world cup fans. We watched all of it. And then we interviewed a lot of people about the World Cup. And one of the things that happened with Raj Bennett, with Rebecca Lowe, with John Green the author is we got to this question with the World Cup every time. Can there be a we without a them? And is the strength of the we and the bold sense of belonging and community? Does it require an enemy? And so, you know, like my enemy from this past weekend would be Newcastle where I ended up with a draw as a Liverpool fan. So, this is why I wanted to talk to you. And what I'm really mad about, to be honest with you, is they have plenty of fruit. The Western and the Central have plenty of fruit. This is like authoritarianism to me. Plenty of fruit, plenty of space. They do not need to go all alpha male all the time. It is an inherently broken part of human. I mean, something is wrong. Can I just build on that? So, I have I guess the same puzzle, which is we normally think about conflict emerging from resource scarcity. And two groups fighting over something that they both want. But Sabrina's point, that's not the case here. Why are these chimps at war? Right. These are great questions. The us versus them. And then why did these champions eat groups? Or are they engaged in this lethal conflict that's been going on since 2018, essentially? I think, I mean, this is again where I think chimpanzees can inform some of these questions about human behavior. Okay. And great. I would say, I mean, my sort of hot take, based on analyzing data on chimpanzees, watching chimpanzees, and really studying this conflict, which we should talk about because chimpanzee empire is one of this amazing documentary. It's probably the most accurate wildlife documentary ever made that I've seen because it's just really just telling the true story. It's in some cases, they simplify things because there's no way you could tell in four episodes. Right. It complex to do the story. They make a few you know, simplifications for the viewer, but it's just really following the lives of the chimps. And it's not, but in the documentary, one thing it's important to note, it's talking about the conflict between the western group and the central group, but it doesn't really emphasize that this used to be one group. I mean, in the documentary, they don't feature that prominently. So it's even even more complex dynamic when we see that they're fighting in the western chimps or attacking killing chimps from the central group. So there's an interesting thing there. My hot take is, I don't think you need an enemy to build a community. I don't think you need of them for an ass. And this is something, this is sort of a hypothesis I have from watching the chimpanzees. And we can think unpack that later. But the main thing, I mean, there's, there's the dominance dynamics. Those are all within a group. Like, whether you like Abrams or Jackson, the dominance hierarchy, that's the within group dynamics. And then the between group dynamics, and it's not necessarily clear how these are directly related, because usually, despite competition with inner group, they all come together. They sort of put aside their differences to patrol the borders of their territory, defend it against outsider chimps groups. And even to go on the offensive and go into the outsider group territory. But the main interesting dynamic for me is that the western central groups used to be one community. They were one group for decades and decades. As long as they've been studied since 1995, 93, they're one group. And we only really saw signs of this polarization occurring around 2015. And then they became two separate groups in 2018. Why? Why? Yeah, what happened? Men, boys, male, males. Well, this is where, this is where I think on the one hand, there's definitely something about the dominance hierarchy that's relevant here. Just one thing important to note with chimps, the adult male chimps form a dominance hierarchy. And they tend to be higher ranking than all the adult females. This is something that sort of happens during adolescence. And it's not exactly clear what the point of being an alpha is for a chimp. I mean, in a small group, the alpha male gets sort of priority in mating. He can keep other males away when he wants to mate with a certain female. Female chimps certainly have some choice in who they mate with, but they also are sort of pressured by the adult males often to mate. But the main sort of, it seems, the main reason a chimp would become the alpha is he doesn't have to defer to any other male chimp. And then if you're high ranking, you know, you have to defer to the alpha, you know, the second ranking, you don't have to defer to anyone else. And by defer, this really means if you see another chimp through the course of the day, you'll give a little grunt maybe to indicate your deference or your submission, the pant grunt. And there could be a little, you know, aggression that still occurs, slapping, chasing, but it's mostly these bluffs. And the one I would say that one, I'm sort of an advocate to some extent for the dominance hierarchy because it can potentially reduce aggression because you sort of know where you fall. It's not strictly sort of this negative thing on the one hand. But then the other important thing to note with chimps, the alpha is not the leader. The alpha is not necessarily one who is, you know, rallying the group together or leading the hunts or leading territorial patrols. It's just the fact that in this one domain, he doesn't have to grunt in deference to other males. Okay. Oh my God. I have so many. Okay. So okay. So I really dislike this about humans. I have to say I really dislike this about as human, about humans, and about the chimps. Because here's the story I was making up. And this is coming from someone who studies human emotions. I'm, I'm making up the story that everything's okay until Jackson is like we have to patrol the border. And then he's a shit starter. And he's like everyone comes. Everybody goes with him. And he's putting them at risk. It's like what I see in politics today. You're giving us an enemy and keeping us in fear to maintain your position. Like your manufacturing conflict that doesn't exist. Like take Caroline. Caroline's got this new baby, right? And I thought I was very Christine. Yeah. Yeah. Very offended that she wasn't named for a year. Because they die so often, right? The babies. But Adam, guess what puts the babies in peril often? The men going and fighting. No, just the men just, this doesn't mean swaggering around and doing these displays of like nobody's after them. They're just running through, knocking down limbs and shit and looking tough. And then the baby gets caught in that. So think about this politically right now. a fragile ego leader goes around stomping on things to prove that he's tough and their innocent casualties. Now is that true or not, Aaron? Are my signing too much? No, I love the, these are great hypotheses. Maybe it's worth just trying to give you the sort of really brief overview of what happened. I sort of started talking about this, but then there's so much stuff that is exciting to talk about. So the background, like before Chimp Empire, you had this one group of chimps at IngoGo. And the alpha at the time was Miles. As long as I've worked, like when I started working there in 2012, it was Miles was the alpha. He was the former alpha before Jackson. Miles Jackson sidekick Miles? Yeah, because Miles is huge, really bulky, big adult male. And he sort of, it seems he became the alpha, because he was huge. He was just like, not necessarily as political. Before Miles, the alpha was Bartok, who is this more smaller average size male, but really had these social bonds, these long-term alliances, he was able to attain that status and maintain it because of those relationships. Miles came in. Miles was actually really good at grooming other chimps. He would groom kids. He groomed adults. He was, you know, I think of good alpha in that regard. He wasn't necessarily the best leader, but this was a time in 2009, 10/11, right before I started working there. The IngoGo chimps is when the central and western groups were still one community. It's a huge group. It's the biggest group of chimps known to scientists. 150, 200 chimps, because they have so many males, adult males, especially. They were really successful in territorial interactions. These territorial patrols attacking and killing chimps from other groups, infants, and adults. And they expanded their territory. They expanded largely to the northeast, but they were really good at defending. And even increasing this as the territory, more females came in. You saw an increase in fertility females with the bigger group. Probably we're able to have more kids. The group is growing largely because of females and kids. You have these sort of neighborhoods that that always exist. The central eastern western neighborhoods, but they still are always intermingling. And you have miles as the alpha overall, just like Bartok had been the alpha overall of them before. And then my first two summers there in 2012, 2013, I mean, if you want to talk about vulnerability, you're so hard learning 200 chimps. This was like the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, learning 200 chimps, learning the forest, figuring out a research project, a child's dream, like confronting that, like having to realize the child's dream was the hardest thing that ever happened to me. And there are plenty of times I was thinking about quitting, and I could still be a primatologist, but I feel like I can't study wild chimps. It's boring. It's hard. How am I going to learn 200 chimps? Were you scared too? Not so scared, I probably should have been of, I mean, I was scared of this losing a part of my identity. Yeah. I was grillable. I was this person who blown out birthday candles for 20 years, wishing to become a gorilla scientist. Now here I am studying chimps. So it's like child's dream already not quite there, but it's pretty close, you know, one genius off. But it's hard and boring. And I, and a lot of that, it's because I just don't know all the individuals. I can't recognize them in an instant because to understand, you know, what makes, you know, I think any life interesting, like what makes chimpanzee life interesting is you see the and can recognize them. You can tell what's happening. I mean, these documentaries that have these amazing footage, you know, zoomed in. They're still synthesizing a lot of stuff with the narrative. But when you're actually there with denoculars and the chimps in a tree, like 100 feet up in a big fig tree, it's hard to keep your neck cramed and looking through the leaves and seeing who's doing what? I mean, it's, it's really demoralizing. So while all this is happening, I'm learning, slowly learning the chimps. And Miles is the alpha of the entire community. He's from the central neighborhood. Jackson was born in the western neighborhood. And he, as a young adult, moved to the central neighborhood because I noticed that there were sort of these distinct, I think, almost personalities in the three different neighborhoods. The central neighborhood was your classic, like chimpanzee group you would find in East Africa, like Uganda or Tanzania, where the highest ranking males are all sort of traveling together, following around whatever female is obulating, trying to make with her the adolescent male is sort of on the periphery tagging along. That sort of textbook chimp behavior. In the western neighborhood, it was more like chimps actually in West Africa, where the males and females are actually more cohesive with each other. So there's still like high-ranking males, there's still aggression, but males are grooming females a lot. A lot of times, you know, high-rank, if you're high-ranking, you're more likely to have a kid, but also males and females that spend more time together are more likely to have kids together. So it was like this slightly different, I don't know, dynamic, maybe like the central group was more like football players, and the western group was more like soccer players or something, I'm just trying to think of it. No, I'm totally getting it like total players in the central, and couple e-relationships, so sweet, the one boy, but I'm anti-Western, so I don't know how this is paying out for my narrative, but go ahead. And then in the east, those are more of the freaks in the geeks. Those were males and females were sort of cohesive still, but some of them were really emotionally reactive, like almost a little anxious, they would be quick to get nervous and grimace, but they would give each other these reassuring touches, they were quick to reassure each other, and there were two males in there who were very chill and very sweet, dexter and mulligan, who were like very calm, not reactive, and they would be quick to, you know, give these nervous chants a pat on the back, pat on the back, hand to the mouth, they do, you know, like in old movies, when someone gets nervous and they bite their fist, yeah, yeah, I think that's the vestige of probably our this ape behavior, where you're nervous, and you want someone else to put their hand in your mouth. So what chants will do this? Oh, I saw that. They reassure each other by putting a hand in the other's mouth or putting a hand on their genitals or something like that, and that comes in now. So these are sort of the neighborhoods, and the interesting dynamic is Jackson, who grew up in the West, this young adult male now sort of in his early 20s, he's rising in the hierarchy, this is like 2013, especially 2014, and but he's rising really fast. And then in 2014, it's my third summer, I've like decided despite like the prior summer, I decided to quit field primatology, my PhD advisor sort of called my bluff, and I was like, fine, I'll do it, I'll just go out, I'll study adolescent young adult male social relationships, and I, you know, develop various strategies where I think I could potentially succeed in doing this field work. So I'm like, I'm going to be here for 15 months studying these chimps. Jeez, we get there that summer in 2014, and we realize after a few weeks that five of these older adult male chimps have died. They were in their around age 40, which for a chimp is sort of old for a male. I think that they all died within around a month of each other suggesting some of them at least died from a disease. And these were old males who were really well connected, and I haven't run the social network analysis on this sort of a difficult question to answer, but they were certainly well connected with a lot of the other chimps, some of them even seem like bridges between the eastern and central neighborhood or bridges between the central western neighborhood. So these are disappear, and you don't know at first because chimpanzees, like humans, they're never altogether in the same place at the same time. It's like a village where you're mixing and part like, yeah, you have friends and families spend more time together, but throughout the day, they're intermingling. They can go days or weeks without seeing each other. So as researchers, we're going weeks without seeing some of these chimps, we're like, where's Pinser? Where does Berg? Where is Dolphi? Where's Webster? Where's Mingus? And then after a couple months, we realize they're gone. They're gone forever. They died. And I don't think we realize that first, but this likely had a big impact. I think the neighborhoods became now more distinct. There used to be three neighborhoods that were really well connected by a handful of individual chimps. Those are now gone at the same time that Jackson is shooting up in the dominant hierarchy. And then I go there for a year, finally learn all the chimps and I have this research project that's motivating me. And I've sort of learned the forest, become really competent at recognizing the chimps and knowing what's going on. At the end of that year, Jackson finally takes his chance and gets charges miles and a month later, miles pancreas to him. And that was like the takeover. And it was this day in June in 2015 that that happened. And John Matoni, who's been studying these chimps for that time, who's been 20 years, that was 2015. He saw, he was the only one that saw miles grunt in submission to Jackson. So now Jackson is essentially the alpha. He still has to sort of establish himself over the, you know, subdued weeks and miles has to, you know, retain his high ranking position unless he's going to fall. And it was that afternoon, though, I was with chimps from the western neighborhood. And it was the end of the day, and I was alone with them. We were in the middle of the territory. And they hear other chimps, and it must be chimps from the central neighborhood, miles Jackson, those other chimps. They're just an earshot. And the chimps that I'm with, rather than sort of approaching them and reuniting in typical chimpanzee fashion, they become quiet, they become nervous, they start grimacing, they're embracing each other, touching each other and reassurance, they're acting like they're hearing outsiders. And then when they see the central chimpanzees approach, rather than reunite, they run. And the central chimpanzees then chase them. And this was the first time we'd really seen like avoidance among chimps from the same community. And then they avoided each other for six weeks, and nothing like that had ever been observed before. And I think, you know, knowing then learning at the end of the day that, oh, Jackson had finally got miles to pancrept to him, I think the western chimps must have heard in the vocalization some, you know, heightened tension. And it had been, there's a risk to every reunion, even on a normal day. And I think it was like the western chimps were like, there's too much tension. It's not worth the risk. They ran. And which I can sort of understand, because miles was sort of a hot head for a while afterwards. He was being more aggressive than normal. Jackson was being more aggressive, establishing himself. So it makes sense. But I think they planted the seed of polarization. So I mean, that we can debate then, to what extent the question about the us versus them, do you need them for an us? But the western neighborhood had already sort of been a cohesive unit, I think. They were already pretty cohesive. They had the six weeks of avoidance, after which they all came back together, things seemed to return to normal. I finished my fieldwork for my PhD. But then as I was gone writing up, other researchers were there, but they slowly became more and more polarized. This episode is brought to you by chat GPT. And when you need more than just answers, give chat GPT work access to your apps and files. And it can create real work documents like spreadsheets slides and structured reports. Get started at chat GPT dot com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. This episode is brought to you by Palm Olive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. 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One thing I didn't want on the initial border patrol thing. I didn't want guests to go. I mean, I knew we had to go, but I didn't want him to go. I wanted him to stay safe and I definitely didn't want pork pie to go. And pork pie didn't make he got scared and he went home, right during this border, but like he left. But I had to tell you about the bad guys in the show. Adam, are you laughing at me? Like, I had to wait a long time between one and two because I was distraught. I call my husband crying. And he's like, you can't watch animal documentaries for the Western chimpanzees to sneak into a territory and kill someone in their own territory. Well, that was brutal. It's brutal, but it is a typical part of chimpanzee behavior. It's not so common, but around, I mean, chimpanzees will do these territorial patrols. They'll get a large group of especially adult males, some adult females, and usually a few adolescent females will go to the edge of their territory sometimes, but also often they'll then do these deeper incursions into the outsider's territory. And it's still unclear exactly what's with sort of the chimps are thinking when they're doing these. Sometimes it is they're trying to find a fig tree or certain fruit trees that are near the border and so to feel safe eating there. They need to go deeper make sure there's no other chimps from the outsider group because at the border there may be some trees that are shared by two groups. Other times I think certain individual chimps in particular are motivated to go on territorial patrols. Some are motivated to attack and kill chimps from other groups. And they can even try to rally and how they do this we do not know because chimps, they have vocalizations, they have gestures, they have nothing like human language spoken language. They're somehow coordinating I think all of this through nonverbal really subtle, subtle bodily cues and contexts and things that are sort of the next big questions I think for chimpanzee research, but they will attack and kill I think I mean for me it feels almost like when chimpanzees are doing this like because across chimpanzees they attack and kill chimps from other groups and we've learned this over the last you know 50 years of people sitting chimps but usually they're killing a stranger, a stranger to that. It's adult males because adult males are born in the group they stay in that group their whole lives. So any any adult male chimped that they see that they don't know is from this other group. So it's a stranger and it seems like adult male chimps are sort of xenophobic. They have this fear of strangers and then so when they see one from another group they'll run if they're outnumbered or if they'll go and try to attack and kill them. Yeah, it's brutal but it's a familiar phenomenon I mean from the human perspective too. But with the ingoga chimps these are two groups that used to be one they they're not strangers to each other. There were one group that finally became two groups at the end of 2017. They finally split and then it was in 2018 that we saw the first lethal attack by chimps from the western group against the chimps from the central group. Well and that was I finished my PhD I went back to Uganda for eight months to sort of especially track this polarization and I got there and I realized right away it's like well this has really changed they not only are they socially distinct they've really divided the territory. Now the western chimps stay in the west central chimps stay in the central there is one old male BF who was sort of more a westerner he was with the centralers. He was the last chimps that would go back and forth. I remember following him in this plateau in the middle of the forest so there there's a lot of different fruit trees and he was just traveling there alone. It was the center of the territory now is this borderland and I was expecting you know when is he going to go back to join the westerners and then it was in January 2018 we started seeing more and more territorial patrols against these former group members the central chimps would control the west the western chimps would patrol central and then it was it was 2018 when the westerners killed this young adult male arrow and that was like for me witnessing that it really like shifted my perspective as I go out this split is real they're treating these chimps as outsiders and then I was sort of learning alongside the chimps these shifting dynamics because I think arrow showed up to this part of not realizing that the western chimps would really see him as an outsider and that they would kill him. And the parallels to human conflict or they're sort of they're smacking you right in the face right you have a perceived slight or insult or aggression on the part of you know a former friend or group member and all of a sudden now we're locked in some kind of in group out group dynamic and it almost doesn't matter where it started because each side can point to the other and say they're dangerous they're a threat they did this to us and therefore we need to defend ourselves and then the line starts to blur between like offense and defense like you protect yourself by attacking. How do you make sense of that and how do you think about getting out of it? I think when the conflict started I mean a lot of these questions are hard to answer scientifically but I mean what I'm really interested is that shift like when did the new group identities really emerge and then override prior relationships and But there was always this ambiguity there because the first Chimp that we saw killed Errol, he was 16, he was sort of a loner even within the central group. So when he met the Westerners, it made sense that they would sort of see him more as an outsider. And this was still a time when they accepted BF, they accepted this old male who they had a really close relationship to. And so there's this emergence of in-group out-group dynamic. But there was still like plausible deniability, I think the senior professors didn't want to accept that the group was splitting. I mean, it took us a long time, we wrote this paper that was just published in April in the journal Science, just sort of describing what happened and using this long term data to analyze it, but combined with the more qualitative accounts, it took us so long to write it, partly to this huge team effort we have. All these professors, graduate students, you've gone to the staff, people working there for decades and decades, and then wanting to do in a really clear way, but also scientifically statistically rigorous way. It was this huge effort, but I think it also took so long because it was really hard for the researchers to admit that the split was happening and then even to think about it, and to analyze the data. I mean, I now want to write a book about this, but I think part of my writers' block is like this emotional toll of watching chimps being killed and watching also the killers, which in that regard, I'm actually, I don't really hold it against them, which is an interesting phenomenon in its own writing. But why not? I don't know. I think, I mean, because I saw Errol killed, Errol was a 16-year-old, he'd been the subject of my dissertation. He was one of the 18 young males that I focused on. So I was looking at him, you know, for 15 months, he was one of the main chimps that I was looking at writing down who he was interacting with. He was an orphan, he had a close relationship to his much older brother, Dizzy, who couldn't hear both the smallest chimps in the whole community, and I remember even him before my dissertation, my real dissertation research in 2012, 2013, watching him, he was a little shy, his little loner, adolescent orphan, with these two older brothers, one brother died in 2014, and then his older brother died in 2017, there was a disease outbreak. So it was really sad to watch Errol be killed and die. I was in the moment, I still have this, which is almost troubling, I look at the video footage that I took, and I'm narrating it with this objective voice, rewatching it, it's sad to watch, and it's also almost troubling, I'm curious about my own mental state at the time. I remember, though, that night, like, once the day was over, Errol had died, we got a vet into sort of assess the body and the wounds, and then we buried his body so that we could collect the bones later, because that's an important rare scientific opportunity to have the skeleton of a wild chimps. And then that night, emailing the senior professors to tell them that this had happened, it was really, that was like, you know, I'm sitting on the porch in the dark, in this cabin in the middle of the forest, and that's when, like, the emotion sort of come and I cried and reflecting more on the emotion, because these are chimps that it's weird, we have this one-sided relationship with all of them, or just following them around in the forest, they ignore us, but we learned about their lives, and Errol was certainly someone I knew really well, and yet I don't hold it against the chimps who were attacking him, and I almost have graced for them because I motivated to understand what caught, like, why did the group split? I motivated to understand even the sort of psychology underlying lethal aggression in chimps, and partly, I mean, they're chimps, so I don't have the same, you know, moral standard, of course, that I would have for a human, but it just, to me, it seems like this more, I want a systemic understanding of what's happening, and I don't know what it is, but I do seem to have this sort of grace for the individual chimps. Wow, and it sounds like demonizing them would stand in the way of understanding them. I think it could, yeah, I think it could stand in the way of understanding them and understanding what's going on, and it's like, again, I'm a scientist watching this dynamic unfold, there's something to be said for, you know, objectivity and distance, but I'm also really wanting to understand the phenomenon, and it's like, I can't stop it for many reasons, like, I mean, it wouldn't be safe. These are chimps, like, there's no way to intervene, really, but also there's something to be said out of respect for the chimps to let this unfold, and then just to see how can we understand it? Yeah, I think, like, and there may be a lesson here also for deepening our sort of understanding of conflict and aggression and violence and war and humans. I wonder to what extent we should focus our attention more on sort of the causes and the context and maybe less demonization of the individuals who are perpetrating these horrible things. Of course, with humans, you have to hold people accountable for what they do, but maybe the demonization gets in the way. I mean, I think that's, I think that's probably true. I just, one thing I've learned is, and I probably knew it going into this conversation. I definitely know it now. I would be the absolute worst. I would be the worst at your job of anybody in the whole world, because I would be armed, and if you came against the people that I have named and that I love and that I have, I know their story and their narrative, you know, and it's also, I think, the thing that's hard is like, I was with my family, and I was telling about this, and they're like, not talking about the chimps. And it reminded me of when we would interview people asking them, what is vulnerability? How many hundreds, if not thousands of people, said to us in these interviews? Any animal dying in a film is absolute vulnerability, and the people who do it should go straight to hell. Like just the reaction that we have that, I think if I were one of the senior researchers, it would take me a long time to write that paper too, because I would want something different for them than we have, what we have for us. I would want something pure and better and less susceptible to what makes humans so hard. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And the one thing to note is that in this case, the chimps who are doing the killing are also chimps that, you know, we've known that researchers have named and we know their stories too. So it does create the more, it's a bit more of a complex picture than typical intergroup aggression where you don't know the chimps who might be attacking chimps from your group. And you find, you know, a dead body of a chimps presumably killed by the outside of a group. It's different. I think. But you don't immediately go, you don't immediately go like, you know, here are these chimps that killed this person that I've been studying. And now, in my scientific narrative, they are the bad guys moving forward. A crippling cruelty has taken over the Western group. Like you… Yeah, I empathize with the sentiment and I think some of the, I would bet that if I think a lot of our team feels that way to some extent, I think some of them do, yeah. Really? I think the researchers do feel that way, yeah. And I think, you know, it's like what we talk about at the dinner table, that's where we do more anthropomorphizing, which is still based in our, like, observation. So it's like when professional primatologists are anthropomorphizing, it's grounded in, if not in, like, quantitative data, it's grounded in our experience of watching the chimps and knowing their relationships. And I mean, so much of animal behavior and anthropology is sort of having a vibe about what's happening. And then if you're a good scientist, articulating the vibe. Yes. And like with chimps, it took me so long to learn what are they going to do next? Like what are they possibly thinking and feeling? Most of that still vibe. I mean, it's based on context, where am I in the forest? Oh, they're at this fig tree that they were at a couple of years ago, they usually take this path. They go there, they'll likely patrol. Like, it took me a decade to get to the point where I'm like, okay, I think this is what I'm noticing about them. These are the subtle movements, these are subtle behaviors. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's for me though, I don't know why I just really don't, I don't hold it against the ones who are doing the attacking. And part of it is so much of that dynamic, we see that dynamic unfolding. We see it emerging and then unfolding. And there's sort of a, this positive side to a lot of those dynamics on a territorial patrol. It's an amazing opportunity for bonding and mentorship. like two of the, it's often the insigators of the in the West, Rollins and his younger brother Damian. Damian was this adolescent male whose mother had died in this disease outbreak in 2017, and he and his younger sister, this little juvenile, were sort of adopted by their much older brother Rollins. And it was like they were on patrols together and Damian grew up and he was like really motivated, I think, to go on territorial patrols himself, he had his older brother, a sort of role modelist mentor. And in the West, because of the patroling, I think there's a lot more almost egalitarianism, cross-age and dominance rank, and it does lead to more cohesion. That's again, where you definitely see a gap. Why so often we think you need a them for an us, because that happens for sure. But the West already had this sort of cohesion beforehand, but I think it is bolstered by these territorial patrols. I mean, it's amazing. Sometimes you also will see these long-term bonded individuals going on territorial patrols more often than, you know, with others. And I think it's like if you're with your friend, you're more your braver. And you're able to go on the front lines. There is one time, there's one time that the Western chimps were patroling and they were going pushing in 2021 further and further east. They were, you know, had moved in. This was probably, you know, in the weeks before they killed pork pie. And I was with the Western chimps, and they get to this sort of further east, and they typically went before. They start calling the central chimps, we can hear them, they're calling. And the Western chimps I'm with, they decided to give up, they turn around, but they sort of scatter, and I wasn't sure if someone had gone ahead, so I rushed ahead to other calls, these screams and the chimps were bang on trees, the buttresses, the sort of roots of trees. And I get not very far away. And if these two young adult males, Hayden and Booker from the central group, they are like on the front lines, calling like sort of defending their territory. Most of the central chimps are hundreds of meters behind them, but I think they were like, these are small, low ranking chimps, but they were like, I think emboldened by their bonds with each other. That Booker is Gus's older brother. So it's like this interesting little family there, but yeah, there's beauty and sort of cooperation, and there's empathy. There's so many of the positive dynamics that you see at play, even in the midst of the aggression and violence. - Aaron, at the beginning of this conversation, you mentioned you were curious about, do they have friendships, and how do they form them? Where are you on that? I hear you're talking about, it sounds like chimps are bonding through grooming, it sounds like they're bonding through going on these sort of patrols. Are they friends? How do they become friends? How do you know? - If you're gonna say they're not friends, I need some kind of disclaimer. 'Cause you're gonna break my heart, Aaron. - I was, there's the scientific caution about using terms that are commonly used by us in everyday speech, and that are so defined by, I think, the human experience. And I think friendship is one of them. Primatologists have been debating to what extent you can use that term to describe the relationships of other animals for years. I think that some trims definitely are friends with each other. But I also, I mean, I think it still deserves more sort of a deeper understanding of what we mean by friendship. And for that, we have to think about what we mean by friendship in humans. I don't think we have the best understanding of this yet. And I mean, until recently, and there's been, I think a lot of good work in Adam, I know you've been thinking about this a lot, but there wasn't a great scientific understanding of friendship. So often we would have to go back to Aristotle to sort of even get the framework. And I think, to some extent, there are two important points, I think what I think about chimps. One is there's an important distinction between a friend and an ally. Oh, for sure. So often, with Jackson, it was hard for me to know, are these his friends or are these his allies? Was Miles's friend or is his ally? Was Basie his friend or his ally? Like I think a friend, there's a real emotional connection. You wanna spend time together. You sort of are calm when you're with them or excited when you see them. Whereas an ally is someone who will come to your aid, but it might be for more utilitarian purposes. So it might be that, you know, Miles was an ally to Jackson. I'm not sure. But when circumstances change, maybe it would be easier to break that tie. Yeah, Benay. I mean, Bas, I can tell you, for sure, 100% that Miles was friends with Jackson. And here's my empirical evidence. Because when Abrams was trying to fight his way up and was grooming Miles and Jackson couldn't see, Miles would not groom Abrams back. He let him pick all the bugs off of him and then he just came a look and you're used like, you're not my friend. And then yes, okay. That would be my hypothesis. Yeah, it's a good hypothesis. And I think those looks are actually what's key. Like we can't, I mean, there's from behavior alone, from the these sort of broad measures of behavior. You cannot, I don't think to determine friendship from grooming alone or how much time they spend sitting near each other alone. I think it has to be partly a much more detailed subtler depiction of how like, of almost like facial expressions or these other patterns that are extremely difficult to determine in a chimp. And they're, I mean, I think they're correct me if I'm wrong. I think they're really difficult for humans. Like we don't necessarily have the system at it. Yeah. It's impossible. But we as people are so good at sort of almost unconsciously picking up on this with humans with each other. Yes. I mean, that's where the vibe, these gut feelings vibes. And then if you're really good at, you become a good therapist or a poker champion or a psychic or something. (laughing) I hope not. It's your psychic. Yeah, you're lost. I'm not talking, I don't mean like East Village, like Little Kiosk. I mean, like really like, oh yeah, yeah. My great-grandmother was a sort of faith healer, Sephardic, cobblistic faith healer. So I'm a little-- I do believe in that 100%. Yeah, she was reading like coffee grounds and giving, having meetings about people's numerology and stuff. So they might, I might have a little bias for my, even my blood. But yeah, I think we're really good at picking up on it. And finally, after like a decade of studying chimps, I started picking up on these subtleties. Some of my colleagues like Retina Reddy, who studies these chimps, she like from day one, she was picking up on the subtleties. It took me 10 years. But now I'm like, oh, I think these chimps are friends based on the way they're grooming each other. They're way they're looking at each other. Miles looked at-- Miles looked at him like, I appreciate the grooming. I understand what you're doing. Not only am I not going to participate in this with you, be very clear that I love Jackson. It's possible. Yeah, I mean, if I even remember-- I remember seven years before that happened. This is another just-- this is not-- I mean, relationships, of course, can also change. For chimps, they might-- these friendships or alliances or both typically last around three years. But sometimes they can last a decade. Sometimes they can last over a decade. I think those cases are like for sure friendships. But the other reason I'm hesitant to use the term friend to describe their relationships in chimps is I wonder if friendship doesn't actually fully capture the strength of the relationship. Sometimes it's like, you know, you're just friends. Sometimes like with friendship that we have today, it's like a lower-- it's considered a lower category than other types of bonds upon the part-- a romantic partner, or something, or family bonds. So that's why I'm leaving open the possibility that these are certainly sometimes social bonds that might be even stronger than what we typically call friendship, especially if these relationships might be better understood as a mentor or a mentee relationship. Sometimes we may not call that friendship, but it's this really important bond. So that's what my other hesitance like it was like this whole journey of what are these a scientific study of friendship. I'm like, OK, maybe they do have them, and I'm like, wait, maybe that doesn't even be-- that doesn't fully capture the intensity and the emotional sort of power of some of these relationships. And I will say, like, for the relationships the last a decade, these are-- I mean, there's the strongest bonds for chimps. Number one is mother and their kid. They stay with their mom for the first 10 years of their life through middle early adolescence. They can maintain a relationship even though they spend less time with their entire life. Where these even adult males will-- they don't spend a lot of time together when they are together they'll groom each other. Can I just ask this last question and it'll be my last question about my friends and then shut up at them. How is that true for two reasons? I felt like Christine did Nadine dirty. Like, so listen, Christine has it. You're watching Real Housewives, Chimp Edition. No, listen, no, Christine is the mom. And then she has the baby that they don't name at the beginning of the show, but later you find out it's Isabel. So cute and mischievous. A little too mischievous for my taste because it was a dangerous situation because of the men. I roll. But Nadine was Isabel's older sister and the narrator who I'm sure had to get past the scientist said that Nadine was ignored because now there's a baby in the family and seven-year-old Nadine is being ignored. And then my other question, and I know this has to be the last one, but I cannot believe that they send unprotected female adolescents out of their community on their own. Like, they are shoved out teenage girls shoved onto the streets. Not okay with that. So explain to me how the motherhood bond must end because Nadine was ignored. I felt so bad for her. She's like in human fifth grade. Yeah, it's a great point. I mean, the one thing is when there's a new baby, when there's a new infant, this is true across, I think, mammals that there's more attention on this new infant, less attention on the juvenile. But, and I think it's hard for Nadine. It probably was hard, but she still maintained a close relationship. She's still traveling constantly with Christine. But it is a rough transition. She's not the sole focus of Christine's attention. And I think we see this again, probably with humans. And with chimps, it's interesting because like humans, it's not just where most mammals, soon after weaning, the kid becomes completely independent. Right. In group living animals, including many primates, it's actually usually the females that stay. So they can have an opportunity, the relationship shifts. And actually, surprisingly, we know less about the development of these relationships. This is something I'm working out with one of my PhD students in gorillas and also another PhD student with chimps. How do these relationships sort of shift during this juvenile period after weaning before puberty? It's a really interesting dynamic. What is the mother offspring relationship like? The thing with chimps is, first of all, it's important to note that yeah, at adolescents and chimps and binobos, the females typically leave the group. They leave the area that they've known. They leave the chimps that they've known. But it's unlikely. It doesn't seem that they're kicked out, which is interesting. They seem to go on their own accord. So in around adolescents, late adolescents, maybe around 11, 12, 13, female chimps become more independent of their mother. They spend more time in the entire group. And often they'll join the adult males and a few other adult females on these territorial patrols. Part of it is because they're socializing with the adults in the group. And so the males will go off on a patrol. They're like, all right, let's go. But part of me wonders if they're almost using that opportunity to survey the other groups and the other territories. And to me, I feel like there's a lot of agency in what's going on for these young females. They and they are brave. I mean, talk about vulnerability. They're going out into the unknown. I couldn't believe it. They're alone walking out. And I think part of it might be because that adolescents, you know, fear can become thrill. So I think for some of these females, it's like they're going out into the unknown. And sometimes they stay. Sometimes they stay, but go into a different neighborhood, especially, I didn't go where there's a dig. It's a huge chunk of forest. Sometimes they can go and that's an easier transition. Other times, it's like, wow, and we don't know what goes on because it's hard to follow them. And it can be rough transitioning into a new group. So it's not that it's like an easy life, but it's like a very interesting and impressive thing that happens for these chimps, these female chimps. But if on occasion, an adolescent female stays in her community and she stays in the neighborhood with her mom, then those are the strong spawns in the world. They can just stay with their mom. Sometimes they like stay in the group, but don't have a relationship with her, but sometimes they stay and it's like this lifelong bond. That's what I would say. That's what I would say, but then the other, and that's the strongest bond that exists for chimps. But then one of the other strongest bonds is between adult males. These ones that can last five, 10, 12 years. And for me, those relationships, which they'll be with maternal brothers, will form these strong bonds, but some of the most enduring are just between unrelated adult males. This is why, and these are the males who are hunting together and sharing me and going on border patrols. To me, I think friendship might not even fully capture the nature of these relationships. Like brotherhood. Yeah, it's like brotherhood or it's almost like the closest thing I've seen in the animal kingdom to romantic love. Wow. It's like a pair bond. Like we often think about pair bonds is occurring between a male and a female that are meeting together and often raising offspring together. But if you think about what really is a pair bond, that's about the relationship. Whether they're monogamous or not, it's another question. Whether they are raising an offspring, offspring together is another question. The pair bond is about a really strong social relationship, cooperation, distinct behaviors, preferences for each other. And if you sort of go check off the list of what makes a pair bond, which we often think about, you know, some birds, and you see some primates like Gibbons and, you know, owl monkeys and TT monkeys have this. If you start going through the list of what actually makes a pair bond, I feel like some of these adult male pairs are actually pair bonds. Or as you might add in his best fishing buddy who've been friends for 50 years. You know, I mean, and they're not patrolling territory. I mean, the Gulf Coast, but they have a bond that it's like lasted divorces. And, you know, I mean, they just like, they say things each other like they didn't want to live without each other. Like they're, you know, but they're, they're a few words. But I can see it actually. It'd be, it'd be so much better for human guys to have pair bonds with other men and develop more vulnerability and empathy and those kind of things. And it's just hard to do it around non-violent things sometimes. Okay, I'm super aware of time. Adam, do you have, before we go to, before we go to our lightning round, do you have any? I have like, I have gotten out of three out of my 30 questions, but that's okay. I know where you work. Barely scratched the surface for me too, but I think it's time for lightning. Yeah, I will say that my daughter who's getting her PhD in emotion studies was like, make sure you ask him about the otter gang wars in Singapore. And I was like, I don't think he studies the otter. She's like, but he's got to know about the otter wars because otters her favorite animal and she was so devastated to learn about these gang wars between otters in Singapore. But yeah, it's genetic. She's got a genetic problem like from her mom. All right. One thing that you are deeply curious about right now, what are emotions and can we really scientifically study this across animals? Speaking my love language. Okay, you get to design the weirdest and wildest thing, just single item to put inside of a curiosity shop. What would it be? Oh my god. I would want to be a wearable device that would like a snare, a wire snare that you would catch an animal with, but that has a safety device on it. So it turns into a bracelet and then it has like a GPS and Bluetooth and stuff so you could just put it out and get it on wild animals and then it would track them and maybe non-basically monitor their behavior. I don't know if that we could put that in the curiosity shop. We could. For sociology, curiosity shop for sure. Or if I don't know if that's a thing, I could also be like a, you know, a chute testicle and tickling it from aldehyde that I collected in 2015. That was not my bingo card for today. I have to ask Aaron, one of the things I'm so curious about that I think could be done lightning style is what's the most surprising way that chimps are similar to humans? I think it's in the, I mean there's these big conceptual things like these relationships that seem to hint at things like love and war, but it's also for me the subtlest things, is the gestures, one thing that really stuck with me is the way they will just swipe at their nose. Sometimes it seems to be when they're a little more activated though, swipe at their nose, and this is something humans do all the time. It's like, you know, when someone's a little anxious, nervous, it really feels something. They swipe at their nose. We don't notice it though. No one notices. So I'm like, this is where I can become sort of the psychic. I'm like, chimps are doing it. I see it across primates. Humans are doing it too. It's like the same thing or even just little gestural things, the way you rest your ankle on your knee when you're, you know, sitting down, chimps do this. So much of what we think of as human is not because we're human. Yes, it's important. Part of being human, but it's because we're apes. They am. Okay, and I'm going to leave with this question because I just have to, this is, I am so anti metaglasses. But would it be cool for primatologists that if you looked and you got the read on, let's say, Gus, my guy, Gus, and you're like, in your metaglass. And then when you were wearing them, you would be like, Caroline, Isabel, Sam, Gus, would that be helpful or not helpful? So helpful, especially for training new researchers, so helpful. And that's sort of what we are now, the experience researchers. The one problem, I mean, this is an easy solution. But the one problem is we're staying always like 25, 30 feet away from the chimps to make sure just for our safety, their safety, especially their safety, we can give them a common cold and they would die from that. So that's the biggest priority is like we're wearing face masks. We have hand sanitizer. We're keeping a distance. So we need binoculars, even like when they're on the ground, sometimes you don't want to see binoculars. So if we could have like super magnification video recording glasses, that would be really nice that sort of had this automatic recognition of individuals and behaviors. For the last few years, I was doing a lot more like camcorder footage, or I even just would wear like a lapel mic and dictate everything I'm seeing, because historically with animal behavior, it's like you're writing down in a notebook. I've been looking at my old like writing the rain notebooks from 2012, where I'm like writing down these little notes of what they're doing. But then I switched to an app on my phone where I'm like entering really quickly, what's happening, it automatically records the date and the time GPS location and stuff like that. But yeah, that would be like the meta glass style thing would be so good, but the problem is really just methodological. There's a bunch of vegetation. There's sometimes 150 feet up in a tree. They're running around, but that would be great. I'll work on it for you. Okay, did you see me in your class? Just be cool. Yeah. You be cool, Renee. That's going to be that way. There's no way I can be cool. I don't know. I'm going to ask myself. I expect you in the front row for sure. No doubt. That's where I always say I just have to say I'm so glad you didn't give up on your gorilla dream, Aaron. Yeah, I think the work you're doing is so fascinating. And I think it's so much easier to see the things that we take for granted that are problematic in human interactions. I think you're holding up a mirror and allowing us to look at that and say, wait a minute. That doesn't have to happen. That's beautiful Adam. Yeah. Dream come true. Really just really important and amazing. And I love it so much. I'm still not a fan. I'm so not not some of my fan. I just I think they are us and we are them. And I think that's a little scary. But yeah, the parallels are hard, but yeah, thank you so much. It's great discussing this with you. So fun. Thank you for joining us, Aaron. And it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides and structured reports. A burst pipe, a dead water heater, the AC calling equates. Who do you call? 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Well, there was there's a tough killing in the first in the first episode and I just never got past it. I don't think I would get over that either. It's striking to me how strong your pair of social relationships are with these chimps. Me? Yours. Yeah, I mean, his too, but yours just from watching the doc. We know documentaries are, you know, nature documentaries, especially. I mean, I had we not been doing this podcast. I would never have watched one because I find that kind of stuff really tough to see and really tough to watch and the vulnerability of animals I think is really hard, but I kept saying I can't watch it. I'm going to watch it. I can't watch it. I'm going to watch it for the prep. But then I just got bought in and there were some very serious. It's really hard when you see them and their little ears and their eyes and it's they look like us. And so I just knew them and they have such fun personalities and not not all of them, but I don't know. I left. I would be so bad at this job. Could you imagine anyone worse at this job than me? I could. Yes, I could. No. Because I'm just such about the story and the emotional narrative. And he he seems like it's so funny. He goes right to the edge of that and then science pulls him back. Did you notice that consistently? Yeah. Every time he got attached, he would he would kind of pull back and say, well, that's an interesting hypothesis. Right. I might know. I'm not hypothesizing. This is exactly what happened between these two chimps. I can tell you right now that Miles looked at the sky and said try again. I'm not like, so I think I was really grateful to about the honesty of the struggle that you can start dreaming of doing that kind of research, but that kind of research is tough and isolating and scary. Yeah, it you know, it captured for me what is a challenge for a lot of people of pursuing what they think is a calling career wise. You have this image, especially if you if you fall for it when you're young and it seems like it's going to be Nirvana. And then you get there and it's a job. And you have all these to your point, isolating tasks, medial tasks, the boredom just to to observe and and try to figure out what's going on. And I think a lot of people experience a honeymoon hangover effect there. Yeah. Because I don't think anyone dreams about the preparation, the part of the career that makes it that thing, like, you know, hundreds of hours of, you know, mosquito bites and every chimp looks the same and you can't see them because they're in the canopy. And, you know, I just, I don't think that's what we and certainly if you grow up on media that's promoting some career, that's not what they're showing in the documentary. They probably have a good Julian hours and we see for 40 minutes series, you know. I think it's so easy to, this is true for any job. So easy to fall in love with the purpose of it and have no idea whether the process is a good fit for you or not, which is why it's, it boggles my mind that people don't shadow jobs before they do. The people commit to careers without actually knowing what they're going to be doing day in and day out. I think in our world, I'm so curious about how you do this. When we have people who are thinking about doing a PhD, my first advice to them is go read four articles in our academic journals. And if you're still awake at number four, you have found your calling. Yeah. No. I think it's, I think it's three things. I think it's purpose versus process versus romanticized understanding. So, you know, a lot other people want to be. It was like if you track some of the research around how many people got interested in medicine because of Grey's anatomy. That's such a good example. You know what I mean? Yeah, and so I think just the real behind the scenes, like I don't think a second year medical student is thinking this is exactly, you know, like that moment when Meredith Gray fell in love with McDreamy. You know, it's they're thinking I have 7,000 flash cards and I remember three of them. And I think I have all three of those diseases. Oh, no. Oh, God, for sure. Yeah, having to marry from someone through medical school and residency. Yeah. Yeah, I just think I think it was an interesting conversation on every level, not just the chemps, but his own experience as a researcher and a scientist. And yeah, I think it was beautiful. Me too. You know, what one thing I was I was left thinking about. I just have to I have to ask you about this because I don't know what to make of it. I think one of the things I'm grappling with right now is I've as for as long as I can remember I've thought about what makes us uniquely humanist language. Our ability to communicate with sophisticated words, not just gestures to be able to tell stories. And yet Aaron was talking about all the planning and coordination and even bonding and connection, even thinking right without words. Like how do they do that? Is language as important as I thought it was? I think you'll you'll help me find a more graceful way to say this. I think if language is in the picture, it's critically important. If language doesn't need to be in the picture for communication, but if language is a variable, then it becomes I think about Ludwig Bittgenstein. The limits of my language are the limits of my world. And so I think because in a human species, we do we are kind of socially built around language. I think it's excruciatingly important. But if if can things exist without it? Yes. But I think if it's a variable, then you really need like emotional granularity, a strong vocabulary, I think those things become especially because our research we started it. Maybe 15 years ago asking folks, please make a list of every emotion that you can recognize when you're feeling it. And the main number was three happy sad and pissed off. And so you know, so imagine if you are shoving every experiment, every experience you have as a human being into one of those three buckets. So where is awe? Where is wonder? Where is anguish? Where is despair? Where is joy? Where you know, like you're just it's so crude. The buckets are so crude that it literally does change your lived experience. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really well put. You know, it reminds me of the the research by Paula Nidenthell and colleagues on historical migration patterns and emotional expressiveness and body language and tone to know this work. No, I don't. Oh, I've found this so interesting. And you just you just connected dots for me on this. So basically they look around the world and they want to know why are some cultures more emotionally expressive than others. And I think the the the basic like if you look at their map of emotional expressiveness, like why are the Americas like doing so much with their arms and and their faces and like with their tones and you go to Japan and it's it's much more reserved. Right. And in a couple of their studies, they show that basically how many different languages came together to form the country is a is a clear predictor of how emotionally expressive their region is. In Japan, everyone spoke the same language and so they didn't need the gestures. The body language and in the Americas, okay, even Spanish versus Portuguese. We've got to do more to try to convey what we're expressing. And I the dot you just connected for me was this is exactly what chimps are doing. They don't have the like they don't have the words they don't have the extensive. They don't have the nuance of spoken language. Right, right. And so they've gotten really good at the subtle gestures and the tones that substitute. Yeah, and and you can see like in the documentary, I was so interested to see some of those gestures seemed just kind of from birth with the babies, but some of them you could see were being taught. You know, some of the call some of the gestures were being taught. And so yeah, I think it's it's so interesting to me. I could have I have to watch. Yeah, I think especially now knowing Aaron, I think you would love to watch it. Yeah, I'm like you, I don't want to see some of those events. I will tell you it's it's it's they're very they don't show it. Okay, good. You know, no, no, there's nothing graphic about it at all. I would have never made it. No, yeah. This was a good one. I loved it. Thank you for thank you for have my chimpanzee dream come true here. It was it was long overdue and we didn't even talk about the bridge that he built between us because he did his doctorate at Michigan and he teaches at UT Austin. Huck him. Go Blue. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Burnay Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. And when you need more than just answers, give chat GPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. A burst pipe. A dead water heater. The AC calling it quits. Who do you call? That's homeserve.com/podcast. Savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. Get more from every job with Kubota construction equipment. From SVL compact track loaders to KX compact excavators, Kubota brings proven performance, smart value, and job site reliability to the crews who count on their equipment every day. Built for demanding work and backed by dealer support, Kubota equipment helps crews stay productive through long days, tight timelines, and tough conditions. Get more from every job with Kubota construction equipment.