Cosmic Queries: Primatology

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. You're a personal astrophysicist. And today is Cosmic Queries, primate edition. And we've got an anthropologist who specializes in primate behavior right in studio with us, with Natalia Reagan. Hello, how are you? Natalia, she's like your brand new, one of our StarTalk All-Stars. I'm very excited. Welcome, welcome to the club. Welcome to the club, Chuck Nice. Hey. It was good to have you as my co-host. Of course. Donning an Einstein T-shirt. Indeed. Very nice. And lately, you're a host of Playing With Science. That's correct. A new spin-off of StarTalk. A new spin-off of StarTalk. And you know why we spun this off? I'll tell you. Because we did StarTalk on all manner of topics, and some of them would be sports. And the sports ones had their own following. That's right. And we said, let's feed them. Let's feed those sports stars. Feed them. That's right. Just give them all they want. Me and Gary O'Reilly, who is a former footballer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a Brit footballer. Brit footballer, as they say. Or as my daughter calls it, feet ball. Feet ball, good. Because football is an American sport, so she calls it feet ball. And we get into all manner of science as it relates to sports. It's really cool. And I wanted to rename football, because hardly anyone puts their foot on it. Isn't that funny? Yeah, yeah, so they should call it arm ball. Arm ball, well, because yes, you catch it, you run with it. You catch it, you run with it, it's arm ball. There you go. Exactly. I thought this through. So this is Cosmic Quarry's primate edition. So Natalia, you've hung out with primates? I have. On human primates, presumably also human primates. Human primates as well, they're, you know, I tolerate them. I actually studied spider monkeys. I studied a critically endangered subspecies of spider monkey called the Azuaro spider monkey in Panama. I did, my main focus was conservation, so I actually was doing a census. The same year that we had our census in 2010, I was in Panama counting spider monkeys. And did you find that the spider monkeys were cooperative and filling out their census forms? They were not. They were very ornery. Like I had to chase these guys down. They threw fruit at me. Better than other things they could throw at you. No. Everybody asks, everybody asks, do they throw their poop? And I'm like, why would they poop in their hand and throw it? And all they have to do is just gently position their butt or bottom right over your head and just, that's what we call getting baptized. Oh, no way. When you get baptized in primatology, it's either poop or pee. So wait a minute, you mean there they, like here we have birds that do that on your shoulder. There you have monkeys? Yeah, yeah. I'm never going. Yeah, it's, you got spiders and you got howlers. And the funny thing is the diet, you know, whatever you eat affects what kind, whatever comes out. They eat a lot of fruit? Yes, yeah, we talked about how spider monkeys are frugivores, that's their preferred food, is fruit. And howler monkeys are falovores, meaning they eat leaves. They eat leaves. And their poop stinks. I'm just telling you. You can smell them. What kind of a vor are they? A falovore. They eat leaves. Falovore. Falovore. Falovore, yeah. Okay. And what if they're from Brooklyn and they eat a lot of kale? Are they a hipster vor? I was gonna say, like, yeah, they're just a hipster. I don't think there's- Is it kale leaves? They're a falovore. It's somebody's leaves, what we call kale. Right? No, I- And so you worked among them. Did you become one with them? I wish, man. Are you the Jane Goodall of spider monkeys? The funny thing is, god, I wish. No, I know some great spider monkey researchers that probably should take that particular role, but spider monkeys are called the chimpanzees of the New World because their social behavior is a lot like chimps, as far as they have big groups and they fission off into smaller groups. And as far as- Or fission. Fission. The physics word. Fission, fission. That is a good fission word. My duty to call it. Yes, exactly. I like this. Uh-huh. As opposed to fusions. Yeah, exactly. They fuse together in a sleeping tree at the end of the night and then they fission off to go eat and find food elsewhere. Kind of like how chimps do. They'll have a big group and they'll go off into smaller groups. Isn't it true, people don't want to believe this, but I think it's true, I read it on the internet. Oh, no. No, that chimps and humans are more genetically, chimps and humans are more genetically alike than either chimps or humans are genetically related to the monkeys. Well, it's the common ancestor. Our common ancestor was more recent between chimps and humans and as far as the genetic time. You have to go farther back in time to get the common ancestor between the common ancestor we had with chimps and all the rest of the monkeys. All the other monkeys. Running around primates with tails. Old world monkeys and apparently some new world monkeys. Yeah, new world monkeys and those are the only ones, by the way. Is that all the great apes? The chimps, like so orangutans and all those as well? Let's make the list, the great ape list, who is it? Great apes. There's chimps, there's bonobos, there's orangutans, which are those sexy ginger redheads in the Southeast Asia. You know what orangutans look like. I know, I'm just saying. There's a whole movie series with orangutan. Exactly. What's his face? Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood, what was it? It was called. Any which way, but up. So that's why we know orangutan. And according to Bill Maher, we have one as president. Oh man, I wouldn't, I don't know. I feel like that's really giving orangutans a bad rap. Oh, that's a burn. Yeah, no. I mean, yeah, he has the flanges, cause the male orangs have the flanges. Correct. But not all males have the jolly cheeks. This is a wider cheek. Yeah, these are actually the pads right here. Those are like the big. You call them flanges? They're like flanges, they're nice, hey baby, nice flanges. Their face. And you know what that comes from. The mama orangutan is going, such a good boy. Well, an interesting. The Greek, right? They gotta do it equally, or else you're just gonna have like one giant weird flange. So do we have the full list? No, we don't. Well, actually those of the great apes, it's humans, humans, gorillas, we didn't get gorillas, chimps, bonobos. And then, and the rings are the southeast. And how about the baboons? Baboons are monkeys. Oh, look at that. What? I thought they don't have tails though, do they? Well, some, I mean, they have a little bit of a tail. Not, I mean, like there's stump-tailed macaques, which don't have tails, but they are monkeys. They are macaques. Yeah, so those are, they're not part of the, yeah. They're not part of the family. And I'd eaten something out on a porch, in the game park, and I would turn around and come back, baboons stole my bacon, right off my plate. See? Waiting for me to not look. Waiting for you. Waiting for me to not look. Smart. If it's a monkey, that's an ape. They are smart. Very crafty. Yeah, very crafty. And they, there's actually great footage, if you Google it, of a baboon taking down a flamingo. They actually will hunt and kill and eat flamingos, and it looks like a- It probably tastes like shrimp because they eat them. They eat a lot of shrimp. That's why they're so pink. That's the color. Yeah, and then there's the lesser apes. Oh, by the way, I was gonna throw in that. So great apes and lesser apes. I know, it's because they're demeaning in size. What are the lesser apes? Gibbons. Gibbons. Gibbons, well, gibbons, and then also there's sea amungs, which are part of that group, but they're a little bit different. They have the throat sack, they are extremely loud. So howler monkeys, which I was kind of showing you that call before we started filming. Well, don't just share it with us. Now that you brought it up, you have to do it. I studied spider monkeys, but there are also a lot of howler monkeys where I worked. Howler monkey. Howler, so they howl, but you'll hear. It's not so much of a howl. It sounds more of like somebody clearing their throat in the morning. So you know how to call a howler monkey. I call a howler monkey. Sometimes they call back. Let's hear. Sometimes they don't and I'm sad. Let's go. Okay. Wait, wait, so does this make them horny or something? Are you, have you checked the book on that sound? You know, I don't know what you're doing to them? Translation guide, the Google Translate's not that great. But no, it's, that's how they wake up in the morning, and they'll just kind of let one group know, like, hey, guys, we're here. Oh, so it's a wake up thing, it's not a... Well, it's not just, well, they do it in the morning. It's their morning show. So if you travel to Central America or South America, any area, or, you know, southern Mexico, where they have heller monkeys, a lot of people hear them in the morning, like 5 a.m. and they're like, what the hell is that? Like, what is that? They think it's a jaguar. They think they're, like, getting attacked by something. Yeah, right? It's just this little monkey making it loud, and they have these, you know, great throat sacks, and they're the fall of war. So what they do is they let people, or let people, they let the other heller monkeys know, hey, guys, we're over here, just so you know. And they kind of communicate that way. So I've read, correct me if I'm wrong, that we speak, we have the power to create language because of a genetic defect in whatever it is that makes apes make sounds. That's what I read that recently. I actually do not know that. I'm gonna have to look that up. Yeah, I don't know, because that actually, I mean. A genetic mutation, it's a single mutation. One single mutation. That enabled us to speak. Separates us and allows us to speak. Right. That's awesome. It allows us to then communicate more complex ideas, figure out how to put it in a book, so now you don't have to know everything in order to move civilization forward. Absolutely. You can stand on the shoulders of those who came before you. Well, there's been, you know, looking at speech, if Neanderthals actually were able to talk, and there's a great special where they actually, they think that they might have been able to, but because of the way their, the vocal cords or just the morphology of their throat was, they basically had this fairly high-pitched voice, even very nasally and very high-pitched. Mike Tyson. Yeah, I mean. I don't want to get punched, so he said it, not me. That's why they went extinct. Absolutely, that's exactly it. It didn't intimidate anybody. It's great, it's great. I'm so glad that we got together like this. It's awesome. Oh, God. It's awesome. Yeah, it's a high pitch with a list. It's a list. That's the Neanderthal. That's the Neanderthal. Chuck, you got questions on this topic, on primates. On primatology. We came in through the internet from Facebook and other sources. Absolutely. Bring it on. Okay, so here we go. I'll defer every one because I don't know Jack about, you know, I mean, other than humans being apes ourselves. Right. You know more than the average bear. I don't know how many bears that know a lot about primates, so maybe that wasn't a good strategy. You know more than the average primate. There you go. So what do you got, Chuck? Let's start off with Jared Kellogg coming to us from Facebook and Jared says this. Are primates still evolving? Are there findings that show human intervention, whether habitat change, food change, etc. has changed how they interact with each other and with us? Nice question. Great question. Well, first of all, everything's still evolving. Nothing has stopped. We're still evolving. Humans are. And as far as monkeys and apes, yes, I mean, in fact, we talk about... Well, I have a rebuttal to that. Should I wait or should I put it in right now? You can put it in right now. Right now. So my rebuttal to that. So I agree that evolution is always a force at work, but that doesn't mean you're speciating. And here's my point. You can split a species, strand both branches from one another. Now they can move independently. You come back in a million years, they're different. I get that. I get that. Yeah. But right now, all humans, all over the world, can make babies, and they are. Now if we're all making babies, then we are not stranding any one branch of ourselves. And if we're all making babies at all times, doesn't that ossify who and what we are in the tree of life? Because we have the coelacanth that hasn't changed for, how long? Millions. Millions of years. Which I don't think has changed. Which they thought was extinct, by the way. Big old fish. We got one at the Museum of Natural History in a cabinet. You see the cartilaginous bony remains after somebody, I don't know, they ate it, or ate the flesh. My point is that you think of speciation when you isolate branches. This is how you get the exotic animals in Australia. Madagascar in Australia. So, if we're not stranding ourselves, unless we put a colony on Mars, why would we think that one day we're going to be something different? Well, it's not that we're going to be something different, it's just evolution does not necessarily mean we're becoming a new species. It's just the way that we are exchanging genes is causing, you know, perhaps different, you know, it's the genotype metamorphosis is expressed in the phenotype sometimes differently. And as we are populations and as we're becoming this very globalized world and populations are mixing with other populations that didn't in the past, you know, we're going to see, you know, different expressions, you know, whether it's, you know, in the way we look or the way we actually are genetically. Okay, but we'll all have that together. Yeah, it's not, we're not necessarily becoming a new species. And I'm not saying that chimps will become a new species as their, you know. Let's get back to them. So now we're mess, we're in their environment, you know, we're spreading. Yeah, have they, do they have to adapt? Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, and that's kind of the idea that sort of adapt or die out, you know. And that's like, we talked about briefly, I think last time was macaques, for instance. There's a species of monkey called macaques, which are really interesting because as far as a primate goes, they're the second most widely distributed primate in the world, second to us, to humans. And what they're able to do is eat anything. They're like humans. Yeah. We're like human little... We're not the big dividing lines. Being able to... And in fact, there was a really great study coming out at NYU, a grad student, Alex Decayson, I hope I'm saying her last name right, but James Hyam and another researcher basically found that what you eat is actually what is affecting brain size. It's not necessarily a primate's social skills. And so diet has a lot to do with not only... So as a matter of fact, there was not one, of course, when we started using fire and then roasting meat and then getting bigger sources of protein that caused our brains to become larger. Yeah, but not just meat, because if you think about it, brains take a lot of calories to function. And so it's not just about eating protein, but also even eating carbohydrates, so being able to cook tubers and roots and things like that. So the actual ability to eat... Just to keep eating. Yeah, eating things that are high... Just keep eating in front of you and to thrive anywhere. Humans are amazing. We can live in the Arctic and survive off... And do. And do. But the more specialized your diet, the more you are in danger. More susceptible you are. Especially when it comes to interaction with your environment. Say, for instance, spider monkeys, the ones that I study with deforestation, there's not a lot of fruit available. So it's problematic for them. They can go to... Right, exactly. They can go hit the farm. Well, that's the thing. Farmer's market in the forest. Right. But that happens. Primates will actually forage on people's property and eat their food at farms and farmers will get mad and will attack and kill them because they see them as a threat to their livelihood. So we're threatening their livelihood. When really we came in and took over their territory. Whoa, that's cold. It is cold. That ain't right. No. And you see it with orangutans. In fact, farmers have killed orangutans in the past because of just them foraging for crops. Because they're hungry. I mean, you would do it, too. We've got to eat. And orangutans are like highly intelligent creatures. Oh, yeah. I mean, they're great apes, so like us, and they're really good at imitation. So they'll see somebody like using a hammer and nail and you look over later on and there's the orang just sort of, you're not really necessarily hammering anything or doing anything. When you say imitations, I thought they were like, you know, doing, I thought they were doing impressions like, here's my Jay Leno. I would pay good money to see that. So when I was a kid, I'm old enough to have seen Planet of the Apes in first run theaters. I did not see Planet of the Apes again until like 40 years later. Right. Oh my gosh, that's a deep movie. Yeah, it is. Oh my gosh. And in it, with the best ending in the world, in it, in it, the different lines of primates have different roles in the society. Yes. So the orangutans, if I remember correctly, they were the diplomats. And the big thinkers. And the big thinkers. And the gorillas were the security guards. And guess who the scientists were? They were the chimpanzees. Yeah, the ones closest to the humans. So I didn't, they were just all apes when I saw the movie. The Planet of the Apes. And so they actually did some thinking, some dividing and splitting. Even in the most recent one, I remember watching it and because- Planet of the Apes movies, yes. And they had the same sort of, the different groups of great apes, but I almost wish they could take it a step further. And I know I'm just being a little too pointed and particular. What would that step be? Well, that step would be because they have different social groups. So like orangutans don't usually live in social groups. They live, you know, it's a single mom with her infants and then a single dad. And they both are kind of like solitary. But of course, that doesn't make for a very good movie. If they're like, where are the orangutans? But if they're clever screenwriters, they could possibly build that in. Once you have a variation in something, do something with it. Yeah. A loner orangutan, you talking to me? Yeah, right. I don't see anybody else here. You must be talking to me. The Brooklyn orangutan. Oh, God. It's him again. That's another good trouble. We've got to take a break. We'll come back and we'll get a bunch more questions in on primates as the topic with our special guest Natalia Reagan, anthropologist and primate expert when we return. Back on StarTalk, Neil Tyson here, sometimes with a deGrasse. It's deGrasse Greener. Yeah, deGrasse is greener, Neil on deGrasse, brother. Nice, always good to have you as co-host. Always a pleasure. Natalia Reagan, I keep calling you Reagan, it's Reagan. Natalia Reagan. Okay, I'll answer to anything. You'll answer to it. So, you're an anthropologist, and you've worked in the field, specializing in spider monkeys, but we assume you have some osmotic knowledge of other members of the primate community. The primate world, yes. The primate universe. The primate-iverse. So, what do you have, Chuck? All right, let's jump right back into it. Cosmic Queries, so we have your questions here. Let's get right into it. John Clemens wants to know this. He's asking you specifically, Natalia, do you have a favorite primate? Oh gosh, I feel like I would be a total jerk if I didn't say spider monkeys. Just because you studied them? They're pretty, here, I'm gonna say a couple cool things. It's a lame reason. That is a lame reason. We can't let you off the hook on that. Just because you wrote papers on it. Right. Well, actually, spider monkeys are pretty, I think, fantastic. Not only do they- Okay, so, then here it is. Yep. What distinguishes them to make them high on your list from all the other primates? Well, okay, so I love the fact that, again, we talked about the frugivore thing, that spider monkeys eat primarily fruit. The ones that I studied in Panama were so tenacious. As far as the deforestation problem in Panama, it's bad. And I saw spider monkeys, groups, living in what should be a corridor between two huge fragments, living in just the corridor. So they were able to scrap together a living, and by living, I mean food, and still had infants on their back and on their front. I won and I too. Those are the different stages of infancy. And so they were still able to make it in this really degraded- So they reorganized their civilization to still survive in spite of what humans are doing. Yes, and they also, so like one of the cool- So they're working on nuclear weapons? A spider monkey with the codes. With the codes, the launch codes. Oh god. And they have the prehensile tail, so all they had to do is just kind of like, boop. Prehensile means it can grip. It could actually prehensile, and only New World monkeys, by the way, have that. And not all of them, only a few do. But also, this is an interesting fact, spider monkeys. Be the judge of that. I think you'll like it. Female spider monkeys have the hypertrophic clitoris. I know what one of those words is, the other one, I don't know what the word is. Yes, I certainly don't know. I certainly know what hypertrophic means. What is this other word you said? Should I get a map? Does someone need a map? Well. So what is, so these are spider monkeys. These are spider monkeys, and females. Female spider monkeys. Yes, they have, it basically looks like almost an index finger hanging down. It's a dangler. It's a pseudo penis, and it looks like it would be. The first time I ever saw a female spider monkey, I thought, oh, those are some male spider monkeys, to which I was told, no. So these were, so hypertrophic means bigger. Yeah, well, it's extending from the body, yes. That's it, yeah. By the way, what is the purpose of a, of a hypertrophic clitoris, a dangling clitoris? You know, that's the thing, is there's not, there's different ideas of what that could be, but there's no actual accepted theory about why there is the hypertrophic clitoris. One of them is that it makes it easy to identify females from a far distance, because it really does. I mean, it helps us researchers, I know, from, if I have binoculars, I see the dangler. So what does the male penis do then? The male penis actually, I mean, it's actually not too, not too shabby itself. I actually have seen some copulations in the field. And by the way, spider monkeys have very long copulations compared to other. For StarTalk. Yes, I was gonna say. Yes. Welcome to monkey porn. Monkey porn. No, they have very long copula, cause I actually had to write an entry in the primatological encyclopedia that's coming out on intromission pattern and copulatory posture, which is basically monkey sex positions for the lay person. But I had to talk about how long spider monkeys will engage. And it's usually on the upwards of like 20 minutes. Really? Yeah, they can be for a very long time. Well, I have to, oh wow, look at that. That right there is a hyena, a pseudo penis. That's a female. That's a female hyena right there. That's a clitoris. And actually hyenas give birth through their clitoris. So for those of you who do not have the benefit of startalkallaccess.com, right now we are looking at a picture that is up on a screen. It is a female hyena who is gestating right now. She's pregnant and she has a hypertrophic clitoris. Clitoris, yeah. And the clitoris doubles as the birth canal. Yeah, I mean that, so when men say, like, oh, I could never have a child because how could you imagine giving birth to a urethra? Meet the hyena. That can't feel great. Maybe, yeah, you're right, you know, maybe, yeah, right? Maybe it's like, whoa. Maybe that's nature's reward for them. I'm just saying, hey, all right. Okay, so just give us some arguments here. I'm gonna give you some arguments. All right, well, let's move on. Let's go to Jukko Vananen, okay, from Helsinki, Finland. What's your guess? Are there primates in the Trappist One system? That's to you, Neil. And I think he just wants, he's just trying to find a way to get to ask you about Trappist One. That's. So the Trappist One is a star system. It has seven recently discovered Earth-like planets, three of which are orbiting in the Goldilocks zone, where there's not too hot, not too cold, you can sustain liquid water. That's about all we know right now. These planets do cross the surface, cross between us and our sight line to the host star. There's a cottage industry ready to blossom, where we will study the ingredients of the atmosphere of these planets by analyzing the light of the host star as it passes through that atmosphere. And so then you can say, well, does it have oxygen? Is there methane? Is there any of this other stuff? So what we don't know, we can't look at the surface yet, but we are in search of biomarkers. So what we would do to answer that question, take it seriously is we would ask you, Natalia, is there any effect that primates have on their atmosphere so that when we study the chemical composition of the atmosphere, we can say, it's got primates. That would be the question. Because if it has methane, for example, maybe there's a farming industry because methane is a by-product of farms. Or Mexican food. Mm, beans. It is a primary ingredient of flatulence. Maybe does it have termites? Maybe it's not uniquely implicating them, but it could be suggestive of it. So from what you know, do primates have any special impact on their atmosphere? Their environment. Well, what they do, I mean, it's not so much, I think, the atmosphere as far as air. But, so for instance, we talked about spider monkeys eating fruit or other monkeys eating fruit. That is a way, they are actually distributors of those seeds. So they- The same way bees pollinate flowers, they carry the fruit and actually, they eat the whole fruit, including the seeds, but you can't digest the seeds. Right, so that comes out. And they poop it out. And that, so this is the plant's diabolical plan to spread their seeds. Yeah, well- It's amazing. There was one theory that I read years ago about how- Wait, wait, you can imagine the plant scientists saying, okay, we're gonna produce this fruit, now how do we get it? Let's put it through the entire digestive system of a bear. But we have to make the casing strong enough so it didn't resist the digestive things. Then they'll poop it over here, poop it over there, and we can spread. Yeah, these are like- No, I actually, so I hosted a Bigfoot show years ago called Bigfoot Bounty, and we found, and we'd had the contestants going out looking for biomaterials that could be Bigfoot's poop, basically. And there was one turd that I found, I'll never forget this turd. That is a sentence I'd never thought I would hear in my life. That was a sentence. It was one of these never-before-spoken sentence. There was one turd I never thought I'd find in my life. That was StarTalk history right there. It was a beautiful turd. It was purple, and I just looked at it, and it was clearly a bear turd, but it was all just blackberries. It was just like, it was just all seed. It almost looked like it was like a candy confection thing, but it was a turd. I did not. Stop there, we don't need that. Please, whatever you do, don't ruin candy for me. I have very few things left in my life. Yeah, sorry about that. But as far, yeah, so seed distribution and obviously. What we'd have to do is we would need more than the atmosphere. We would need some other geographic data. Yeah, well also, environmental DNA is very interesting. They'll leave behind, or if something, say for instance, bites or stings them, well, not bite, stings, but more bites like a blood-sucking insect, we could dissect their blood meal and find if there are primates living in the area. Jurassic Park, I saw that. No, that's amber. This is actually, no, no, you can do ecological surveys now like that. I'm not kidding. So this is their DNA remnants from various things that happen. Well, it's just blood that's in the, like say if a mosquito bites a. That's what I'm saying, right, right, right. Okay, so your DNA signature is outside of yourself. Yeah. In some way or another. All right, that was very cool. What else you got, Chuck? All right, here we go. Let's talk about Antonio Rodriguez, who wants to know this. Are there primate hybrids? Yes. Ooh. Very good question. It is a very good question. That's an anime hybrid. If there are primate hybrids, who's been hybridizing? Who's been hybridizing? Baboons, actually, back to baboons. They do hybridize and they are able to produce offspring. With? With other baboons. No, that's not what we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about a centaur. They're different species. Oh, oh, God. Like a minotaur. No, that would be, oh, that would be so weird. Like a baboon minotaur, like some kind of chimera, man. That's, I want, like a chupacabra, like a baboon chupacabra. You know what's funny? The centaur, it's half horse, half man, okay? And the minotaur, this is just weird. It's half man, half bull, but the rear, it's a human butt. Yes. That's just weird. It's all human up to the waist. So it's got a human butt. It's so weird. That's just, don't think that through. I know. It's very top heavy too. Like I would just fall over all the time. It's kind of difficult to walk around as a minotaur. Okay, so no, but we're talking about blending genes, of course. So are the great apes close enough to one another genetically that they can cross breed? I think that's what the question is. No, no, no, and that's the thing. So baboons are able, there's multiple species of baboon that are able to do that. Okay, but we still call them all baboons. Well, yeah, but they're different species of baboons. So there's, you know, all of baboons, there's homodryas, there's gelato baboons, which are fantastic. That's not interesting. I know. I get it. As far as like, of a chimp and a gorilla, oh god. Like what we want is a chimp-oon. Chimp-oon, or chimp-arilla. Chimp-arilla, that's even better. No, that having, I mean, I'm sure they could mate, a lot of things can mate with each other, but I don't think they'd actually produce viable offspring, no. We haven't seen that. Now, how about chimps and bonobos? Well, that's the thing. Yeah, chimps and bonobos, or bonobos, probably could. They haven't seen any, I think, hybrids coming out of them. Geographically, where do we find them? Well, that's the thing, is they do have some overlaid. Bonobos are only in DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Chimps are in multiple places throughout Africa, DRC, they're in Republic of Congo, and just various places throughout, in Western. DRC, by the way, is a very famous wine, just so you know. Is it really? Domaine de la Romany-Conti. There's too many syllables for Americans, we just call it DRC. Wow, is it produced? Okay, nice, well. We said DRC, I said, wow, it's good wine. They're winemakers, bonobos. That's also probably why they're making love all the time. Yeah, there you go, see? By females, they want their wine, and they want their sweet love. But as far as them mixing with chimps, I don't know of any studies that have come out, but there was a species of, well, it was a chimp, a group of chimps in an area of DRC that they were so large that they thought they could be a hybrid of gorillas and chimps. It turns out they're just chimps, but at the time, yeah, a good friend of mine actually studied them. They're chimps with gym memberships. They were just like, just... What are you, juicing? They're crossfit chimps. They're literally juicing. They're juicing their fruits. Yeah, they are. It's, yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do. Give me one more. You got one last question. We have to be quick. You got time for one more? Yeah. Okay, that's too much there. That's too much. That one was funny. Natalia's looking over your shoulders. Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. As humans, are we progressing? No, let's forget that one. Wait, wait, what? Okay, okay, as humans, are we, Chris Schneider, as humans, are we progressing forward or are we idling with all the technology that is so easily available? In other words, are we going to evolve because of our technology? Like, will that turn us into different humans and thereby further separating us from our primate presence? Here's what we can do. We can turn ourselves into super humans and then turn chimps into humans. They can do all the human work and we can go to the Bahamas. Oh, I think there's an ethical question there. That is probably not a good idea. No. I was just falling there. I don't know. Although, yeah, I don't know. I mean, chimps are really aggressive. I don't know if I want them to take out my trash. Well, is there any attempt to, in the spirit of that question, is there any attempt to modify their DNA to make them more capable of surviving their environment in one way or another? Yeah. Not that I know of, no. I mean, like modifying their DNA, no. I mean, even like the new gene editing we have in humans, like CRISPR, and there's a new one that I read about recently that's even, you could actually inject a living person with edited genes that are supposed to take effect. It worked on lab rats, but that's run into a lot of ethical questions. But as far as trying to change living primates to better adapt, no. It's just mostly trying to change human behavior so they can live longer, you know. Hopefully push, for instance, like in orangutans with deforestation, we're trying to get people not to use palm oil because that's a big problem there. So things like that. We're trying to amend our behavior rather than expecting them to just sort of like change your diet, become a new species. What's wrong with palm oil? Well, palm oil plantations are basically a big cause of deforestation in- For whatever was there before. Yes, exactly. So it's not, the palm oil itself is not a bad thing. It's just the way it's being produced. We cut it down, we cut down a bunch of trees so that we can actually raise palm oil. But I'd love me some coconut. I'm not getting on my coconut. Oh yeah, no, no. Coconut go way back. We gotta take a break. You've been listening to, and some of you may have even been watching this episode of StarTalk Cosmic Queries Primate Edition with anthropologist Natalia Reagan when we come back. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, Primate Edition. Yes, humans are primates, just in case you didn't know. You're animals. Yes. And even if you didn't know we were animals, your mama told you, at least once in your life. You're some kind of animal? Exactly. As a matter of fact, yeah. Well, yes, I am. Is that what they say, what the parents, what the teachers say to kids who don't yet know they're gonna be professional comedians? They'll say something in class, and the teacher's like, what are you, a comedian? I wish I could go back to every single time that happened to me. I kid you not, Neil. I actually dream of being able to get into a time machine. Chuck, the first thing, if I invent a time machine, we'll get that squared out. Please. Then we'll solve world problems. And believe me, it would go just like this. What are you, some kind of comedian? Just wait, bitch! Oh, sorry, I couldn't. Fast forward. Natalia Reagan, so you're here to help us answer questions on primates. It came through our social media network, so give me more. Okay, here we go. Don Rimm from Facebook says this. Judging from the study of Coco the gorilla, do you believe that primates and other animals are capable of higher learning? Good question. It is a good question. So not just Coco, there's multiple examples of non-human primates that were. Coco was a gorilla, there's also some chimpanzee ones too. Washoe, yeah, there's been a lot. What was the name of that one? Washoe. Washoe, yeah, that's right. Washoe the chimps. Yeah, so as far as cognitive abilities, there's a lot that non-human primates can do. And there's been studies, not just having to do sign language and things of that sort, but actually being able to understand and remember patterns. They found that chimps were actually better doing some of those pattern memory tests than actual humans were. So, there are a lot of abilities that I think non-human primates have in terms of cognition, but we also have to remember that measuring cognition in animals is not just about being able to do algebra or calculus. It's about social intelligence and being able to communicate in ways that works for them, because it's not about adapting and surviving in our world. It's about adapting and surviving in their world. Maybe if they had a need for algebra, they would actually understand and develop an understanding about it, but they don't have a need for it. That would be scary. I don't want no ape doing better on my math test than I am. It's still better on their SATs than me. So do you know Carl Sagan's famous quote, I think it was in reference to dolphins, but it could easily be applied to chimps. It was, we have found some dolphins that have managed to make gestures that make it clear that they understand what we're talking about, but we have yet to find any human that can speak dolphin. Right? Wow. I mean, we are so species-centric in so many ways. Was it that good? I try to talk to cats, man, but I don't know if they get me. You know, like I try to understand what they're saying. Oh, they get you. They're just ignoring you. That's a cat, right? Did you see the XKCD comic about that? No. Okay, so, I gotta laugh first before I even say it. Okay, so, this guy comes home, right, and there's a cat sitting on the edge of the couch, right, and obviously just came home from his day. And the caption is, if cats could talk, okay? So he comes in and says, hi, kitty witty, how are you? And the cat looks up and just goes back to what it was doing, doesn't say a thing, if cats could talk. That's a perfect, the best comic ever. If cats could talk, that's perfect. Yeah, it just looks up and then just goes back down. Look right back down, there you have it. No, no, no, I 100% agree. So give me some cosmic queries. All right, here we go. Evolution is at a cellular level. This is from Michelle Tapia. DNA writes our shape, adding it here and there can change you. Okay, thanks so much. Michelle, that was the end of it. She was just like, there you go. That's what, is that really what evolution is though? I'll ask the question. Is that indeed what evolution is? Change on a cellular level. Yeah, well, I mean, it's the passing down of different genetic material, and it does, it starts at a cellular level. But it also, it doesn't necessarily manifest itself immediately, the genes are passed down and might actually be seen generations from now that had been in your family for generations, but it's also not goal driven. Wait, but if I'm born with six fingers, that sixth finger is not just a cell, that's a whole thing in my body. And now I got the sixth finger gene. It's a weird mutation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and if I start making babies with other six fingered, mateable partners, we can start a new base 12 arithmetic system. That's right, and you'll be the most awesome piano players in the world. Oh my gosh, stand up bass, you just be like, yeah, the fastest fingers. Yes, exactly. I play the sitar better than anybody you've ever seen. I'm a six fingered man. All right, here we go. Why do apes retain or perpetuate? The kindred instinct, no signs of actual hate or feud against each other, and us humans appear to have lost this identity, but is that true about other apes? I wouldn't say that. I think ape, apes and- Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, chimps will kill one another, so. But is there ape, are there ape muggings? Give me your banana. Hey man, I don't want no trouble. I don't want no trouble, man. I just want the banana, just the rest of what's in your wallet. Your money's no good here, give me your food. Well, that's the funny thing is, like for them, currency is food. Like I actually, I've done a video on this about how, you know, chimps will give gifts of fruit in hopes of getting a little extra side nookie just because that's what, that is- Fruit for nookie. Well, it's kind of like buying your sweetheart a necklace or something like that. It's an exchange. It's an exchange. But anyways, back to the question- Fruit is cheaper than diamonds. I was gonna say. Bingoes. These guys got it good. If only- These guys got it good, man. Hey baby, here's an orange. I wish I could. Hey, how you doing? Here's an orange. You know what? Here's a few grapes on me. Just to make it even sweeter. If only life were that simple, man. Oh gosh. But yeah, as far as altruism and kindness, there is that in the animal world. We see that in multiple species, not just in primates, human and non-human, but there is aggression. Chimpanzees are known for a lot of in-group fighting. They'll have alpha male. They gang war too. Yeah, they do. They gang war. But the thing is, we don't like to get lost in the- Oh my God, you don't wear blue in this part of the forest. Don't wear red there. I'm just trying. You know, I'm a fan of the West Side Story, the movie. I just can't- Boy, boy, crazy chimp boy. You're a cool boy. You've got the monkeys in the trees as a chorus. No, but they do, so they are violent. Yeah, no, so they'll have coalitions where they actually, they'll circle their territory and if they see a chimp from a nearby group that shouldn't be there, they will attack and they will kill and sometimes they will do things like eat that particular chimp. Yeah, it could be pretty bloody, but- Eat them, this is like, yeah, this is, I will eat your heart and get your strength that you had. I don't know who my favorite primate is, but I'm quickly finding out who my least favorite is. But also we have to remember, even though they can be very aggressive, so are humans in some ways, but we are way more cooperative as our chimps than aggressive, I think. On balance. Yeah, I mean, because otherwise they would just, they'd all be dead. We'd be killing each other all the time. Yeah, exactly. Cooperation is a big part of who we are in other primates. You can go a whole year and not want to kill anyone. I don't know if that's possible right now. All right, let's get this one in before our lightning round because Guy Zachary Aaron Klossner wants to know this. Can you explain some of the Stranger Mating Dominance rituals that various primates do? I'm thinking about silverbacks as well as baboons. What's about some of these rituals? Top three primate mating rituals. Way to break it down. Top three primate mating rituals. Mating rituals. I don't know if there's so much of a ritual, but there's just the way they go about it. Orangutans, one of the things that people don't know is it's males or solitary females forage usually alone with whatever infant they have. And it can get a little rough. If a female's not interested in a male, males will do, well, force copulation. And so that, yeah, which is, I mean, it happens. Ape rape. Yep. That's terrible, too. Or just rape. That would be their combined. Is that what they, oh, God. It is. It's force copulation. So this happens. It does happen. And yeah, so to romanticize- Does that mean the male is stronger than the female? Yes, and so there's sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism means that there's a size difference between males and females on average between- You can go either way. In a species. Yeah, exactly, like black widows. I mean, have you ever seen a male black widow? Probably not because they're so small. They're itty bitty. They're so lame, oh my God. So any other very unusual primate rituals? I'm trying to think of actual, I mean, funny rituals. So now what about the, okay, is this the baboon? Or whose butt gets inflamed and red? So yeah, in fact, a friend of mine. Yeah, I know baboons. And my friend is actually right now on her way to Zambia to do research, Megan Petersdorf, and she actually will be, she's at New York University, but she will be looking at sexual swellings of baboons. And she's, my friend Todd DeCetel, also at NYU, they developed a laser system so they can actually measure the size of her swollen vulva. Yeah, to measure the size of the swollen vulva. And it's a single signal to the opposite sex that they are ready to get down. That is a scientific term, you can tell your friends and family. But yeah, chimps have the same sexual swellings, bonobos as well, will get these sexual swellings when they. Is that because they're in heat? Yeah, well, they don't have heat quite like. Humans were not ever, it's not a heat thing. No, well, we have concealed ovulation, which is a whole nother, that's a whole nother show. Which is very interesting, and there's different theories of why we have. You can't, unless you really know your partner or you can huff it on them, you can smell like, oh, something's up. You don't really know when a woman's ovulating. Okay, what anybody, there's not a man alive. What the damn research says. Not a man alive who is like, honey, it's, you know, I would say let's make love, but I'm pretty sure you're ovulating. No, we do not know. There's people that do the whole, you know, the rhythm method and they know this kind of stuff. But I'm intrigued that among primates, counting us with this group, that we have concealed, we have concealed ovulation and others don't. Right. And that is because the other primates do not have child custody cases. Well, it's interesting in a lot of those primate species that have the sexual swellings, they do live in large groups. So if, for instance, somebody does give birth and you don't know who, was it Steve, Jim, Bob, who knows? The village or basically they take care of their own infant. They're cool with it. They're cool, like it's okay. They don't necessarily, it's a village to raise. There's no, you know, Jerry Springer. Unlike us, no guy wants to answer the door. Hey, what's up? Hey, man, Jim, here to pick up your wife and kids. We gotta go to the lightning round. Let's go to the lightning round. All right, here we go. Mubeen Ahmed wants to know this. Can monkeys be lunatics? Yes. Next question. Monkeys can act a little crazy. Oh, yeah. And go off the ranch. Yes, they can be, there are those outliers that the, there's even freeloading monkeys, monkeys that take too much and don't give back that other monkeys will kind of spurn and off the side. Next one, go. All right, Petros in Zeus Zulas wants to know this. How can all homo sapiens be nearly genetically identical to each other when not all homo sapiens interbreeded with Neanderthal? Just to put it clear, as I remember it, there are, Europe especially, but there are branches of the human species that have more Neanderthal than others. Yes, so if you only have Afro, if you're only of African descent and have no Neanderthal, but they also have a new, there's Denisovans, which are a group that lived in Asia that basically are found in populations in Asia and Melanesia, and then there's also a new unknown DNA that they don't know, they don't have fossil evidence for that also are mixed with humans, but they're found in Australia and. What does it mean for us to be close to one another, but some have Neanderthal and others don't? Don't. What basically it means is there's a founder population in Africa, there's more genetic diversity between those living within or that are from Africa, and then those that have spread out. Okay, so we are different on the level that these differences manifest, but we can all still interbreed. Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a small difference. It was a very small sample of humans that had mixed with Neanderthals. It was not a lot. It was not like it wasn't happening every, as Todd, I had a Neanderthal show this weekend. He brought up the fact that they think it was only several hundreds, not like thousands of thousands of instances of a mixture. So it's not a ton of DNA that got into our system. So for some people, you get to say, stop being a Neanderthal, because they got actually some of that in them. Right. But the Neanderthals weren't all that bad. Oh, we have a Neanderthal sympathizer. I mean, they weren't like you and- If you love them so much, why don't you marry one? We gotta bring that to a halt here. Natalia Reagan, thank you for being on StarTalk. And Chuck. Hey. Always good to have you. Always good to be here, man. And when you're not with me, you're with Gary O'Reilly, okay? Well, it's not really like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. You're playing with science with Gary O'Reilly. Just call me some time, okay? I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always bidding you to keep looking up.