Whale’s Tale

This past week I found myself listening to the Radio Lab podcast from April 02, 2010 (they seem to be making the podcast available incredibly early). A friend introduced me to Radio Lab last summer, and it has become a staple in my podcast playlist. The thing that they do so well is to take full advantage of the intimacy of radio, really getting inside your head and using sound to create images. All while exploring somewhat forgotten or overlooked pieces of where science and culture meet. Topics range from placebos to sperm to laughter. You should real take a look my two favourites are the one about Orson Welles ‘War of the Worlds’  and the other about ‘parasites’. You can download from itunes or their website and don’t forget that if you like it you can support it to.

This particular Radio Lab episode was called “Animal Minds”, where they deal with the problem of whether or not we can know what animals are thinking, assuming they have thoughts at all. The show proceeded to discuss what has been a major pet peeve of mine for as long as I can remember. It goes something like this “people are rationale thinkers, and animals are not.” Often this view will be used to explain how humans are superior to the rest of the animal kingdom. I personally have never understood the need to be superior, certainly it comes with no prize. Besides its pretty lame to win a contest where you get to change the rules until you win.

Throughout the show they drop a few unbelievable and compelling stories about  animals demonstrating their capacity to think. This is then tempered with the musing of animal psychologists and writers who warn against the temptation to anthropomorphise the complex social gestures of dogs, whales and primates. For instance one Dr. Horowitz had shown that dogs act guilty when their owners say “NO!”, regardless of whether they did anything or not. Instead she says that its an act of submission, which is a well known dog behaviour. Of course she fails to connect that same behaviour in people, as one commenter on the show’s blog questions – “if you were to yell the same way at a small child, even if they had done nothing wrong, would they not also act submissive and look as if they were guilty?” I would take it one step further and say that the same is done with bosses and employees or parents and there forty year old children. Submission is common trait, dog or person, even if it has different meanings and even different consequences in our two social orders. More to the point how could you distinguish guilt and submission.

The show really tried to separate humans and other animals in an interesting way. This starts with the rather heart warming tale of a humpback whale trapped in a series of crab traps, only to be freed by the hours long toil of a group of divers. This school bus sized whale returns to the divers and proceeds to gaze into each of the eyes for a minute, from one to the next.

Was this a sign of gratitude?

One blog commenter says that “key social memes” such as gratitude would converge. Meaning that social groups are successful if they can show gratitude or simply, to say thank you ensures that your children will pass on. The assumption being that such a politeness communicates to others around you that helping you is worth while. This is one of the ways to cooperate. Of course communicating to another species that you are grateful probably require you to dumb down your message. Potentially a whale thank you is an elaborate process, but she figured that se would just nudge the person and stare into his eyes, perhaps she was expecting some reciprocated action from the divers. Of course we will never really know because are communication with them is for the moment limited.

I think with dogs and other pets we can imagine that communication does occur, even if a little slowly. Raising a social animal gives them experiences with us, we and them begin to anticipate signs and corresponding actions. But ultimately dogs who have an evolved sense of family/pack will work to communicate with the ones in there pack. Which now a days is the common family (1.7 dogs per household).

Tags: animal psychology, gratitude, podcast, Radio Lab, thought, whale