Extended Classic – 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 your host of Playing With Science. That's correct. A new spinoff 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. 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 Queries 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 in 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. They- 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- Poo baptism. 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. And don't 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. So now, 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. Is it kale leaves? They're a falovore. It's somebody's leaves, what we call kale. Right? No, I am. 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 is a good physics word. Yeah, it is a good fission word. My duty to call it. Yes, exactly. I like this. As opposed to fusion. 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. 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 a 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. And does that? 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? Do chimps like, so orangutans and all those as well? 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, what was it? Any Which Way But Up. And But Loose, and the whole series. 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. Ooh, ooh, that's a burn. Yeah, no. I mean, yeah, he has the flanges, because the male orangs have the flanges. Correct. Like the big giant jowls, the jolly cheeks. Yeah, these are actually the pads right here. Those are like the big ones. You call them flanges? Flanges, they're nice, hey, baby, nice flanges. It's their face. Yeah, their face. And you know what that comes from. The mama orangutan is going, such a good boy. What a good boy. Well, an interesting- The Greek, right? They've got to do it equally, or else you're just going to have like one giant weird flange. So do we have the full list? No, we don't. Well, actually, of the great apes, it's humans, gorillas. We didn't get gorillas. Chimps, bonobos. And then 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, they're not part of the family. And I'd eaten something out on a porch. Right. In the game park. Uh-huh. And I would turn around and come back. Baboons stole my bacon. Ha ha! Right off my plate. See? Waited for me to not look. Waited for you. Waited for me to not look. If you look at that monkey, that's an ape. Ha ha ha ha. They're smart. Very crafty. Yeah, very crafty. And 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- Probably tastes like shrimp because they eat them. They eat a lot of shrimp. That's why they're so pink. 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 demeaned in size. So 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. Okay, let's hear. Sometimes they don't and I'm sad. Let's go. Wait, wait, so does this make them horny or something? 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 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... 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 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. It's just you on spring break. Yeah, right? It's just this little monkey making it's loud, and they have these 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. Yeah. 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, if they basically had this fairly high-pitched voice, it would have been very nasally and very high-pitched. Mike Tyson. I don't want to get punched, so he said it, not me. That's why they went extinct. Absolutely, that's a fact, yeah. 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-pitched with a list. With a list, right, that's the Neanderthal. That's the Neanderthal. So Chuck, you got questions on this topic, on primates. On primatology. Right, came in through the internet from Facebook and other sources. Absolutely. So 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 mean. That's. But I don't know very 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. Okay, 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, et cetera, has changed how they interact with each other and with us? 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. I have a rebuttal today. 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, okay? But right now, all humans all over the world can make babies, and they are. And 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 and millions of years. The roach, I don't think has changed for much. Extinct, by the way, they thought it was great. 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, 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 and Australia. So if we're not stranding ourselves, unless we put a colony on Mars, why would we think that one day we're gonna be something different? Well, it's not that we're gonna 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 perhaps different, 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, we're going to see different expressions, whether it's in the way we look or the way we actually are genetically. But we'll all have that together. Yeah, we're not necessarily becoming a new species and I'm not saying that chimps will become a new species as their. Let's get back to them. So now we're mess, we're in their environment, we're spreading, 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. Oh, sorry, 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 birds. Is that the big dividing lines, yeah? 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. 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. I mean, we can live in the Arctic and survive off. We do. Yeah, and do. But the more specialized your diet, the more you are in danger. The more susceptible you are. Especially when it comes to interaction like 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 just go to Whole Foods. They can go to, right, exactly. They can go hit the farm. Well, that's the thing is. Farmer's market in the forest. But that happens. Primates will actually forage on other 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. Oh, that's cold. It is cold. Oh, yeah, 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 they'll look over later on and there's the orangutans sort of, you're not really necessarily hammering anything or doing anything. Oh, okay, 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. How old I am. 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, okay? And guess who the scientists were? They were the chimpanzees. Yeah, the ones closest to the humans. 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 splittin, yeah. Because I think, I mean, 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, you know, 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, you know, pointed and, you know, particular, but- 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. Brooklyn orangutan. Oh God, it's him again. Guys, another bit of trouble. We gotta 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. Welcome to StarTalk, Neil Tyson here, sometimes with a deGrasse. It's deGrasse Greener. DeGrasse is greener. Neil on deGrasse. Nice, always good to have you as co-host. 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? This is Cosmic Queries. 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. Well, actually, spider monkeys are pretty, I think, fantastic. Not only do they- Okay, so, then here it is. 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. I certainly don't know. I certainly know what hypertrophic means. What is this other word you said? Should I get a map? Someone need a map. So these are spider monkeys? These are spider monkeys. 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 what 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 hypertrophic means bigger. Yeah, well, it's extending from the body, yes. Extending from the body. By the way, what is the purpose of a hypertrophic clitoris, a dangling clitoris? That's the thing. 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, 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 shabby itself. I actually have seen some copulations in the field. And by the way, spider monkeys have very long copulations compared to others. StarTalk for hours. Welcome to monkey porn. I know they have very long copula- because 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. 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. It's a clitoris, and actually hyenas give birth through their clitoris. 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 the screen. It is a female hyena who is gestating right now. She's pregnant, and she has a hypertrophic clitoris. And the clitoris doubles as the birth canal. So when men say, oh, I could never have a child, because how could you imagine giving birth through a urethra? Meet the hyena. That can't feel great. Maybe it does. You're right. Maybe it's like, whoa. Maybe that's nature's reward for them. So just give us some arguments here. I'm going to give you some arguments. All right, well, let's move on. Let's go to Jukko Vananen. Vananen. 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. 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 atmospheres of these planets by analyzing the light of the host star as it passes through that atmosphere. Then you can say, does it have oxygen, is there methane, is there any of this other stuff? What we don't know, we can't look at the surface yet, but we are in search of biomarkers. 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 byproduct of farms. Or Mexican food. Beans. It is a primary ingredient of flatulence. 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? And 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. The same way bees pollinate flowers, they carry the fruit and actually... They eat the whole fruit, including the seeds. You can't digest the seeds. Right, so that comes out. And they poop it out. So this is the plant's diabolical plan to spread their seeds. It's amazing. There was one theory that I read years ago about how... You can imagine the plant scientists saying, okay, we're going to produce this fruit. 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 can resist the digestive things. Then they'll poop it over here, poop it over there, and we can spread. These are like... So I hosted a Bigfoot show years ago called Bigfoot Bounty, and we had the contestants going out looking for biomaterials that could be Bigfoot's poop, basically. There was one turd that I found. I'll never forget this turd. That is a sentence I had never thought I would hear in my life. That was a sentence. It was one of these never-before-spoken sentences. 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 a candy confection thing, but it was a turd. I did not... Stop there. We don't need that. I was going to say, 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'd need more than the atmosphere. We would need some other geographic data. Yeah. Well, also, environmental DNA is very interesting. They'll leave behind... 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... Right, right, right. So your DNA signature is outside of yourself. Yeah. In some way or another. Environmental DNA. 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. That's an animal hybrid. If there are primate hybrids, what is the hybrid? Who's been hybridizing? Who's been hybridizing them? Baboons, actually, back to baboons. They do hybridize and they are able to produce offspring. With other baboons. No, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a centaur. They're different species. Like a minotaur. That would be so weird. Like a baboon minotaur. Like some kind of chimera, man. You guys want one. Like a chupacabra. Like a baboon chupacabra. You know what's funny? The centaur is half horse, half man. 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, they'll think that through. I know. It's very top heavy, too. You 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. Okay, so are the great apes close enough to one another genetically that they can cross-breed? I think that's what they're talking about, yeah. 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, the olive 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, 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. How about chimps and bonobos? Well, that's the thing. Chips and 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 overlap. Bonobos are only in DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Chimps are in multiple places throughout Africa, DRC, they're in the Republic of Congo, and just various places throughout, in Western Asia. 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? We said DRC, I said, wow. They're wine makers, the Novos. That's also probably why they're making love all the time. 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... Dude. What are you juicing? They're CrossFit chimps. They're literally juicing. They're juicing their fruits. Yeah, they are. Yeah, you gotta do what you gotta do. All right, so that's it. Give me one more. One last question. We have to be quick. All right, so... Okay, that's too much there. 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, wait, wait, wait, wait. 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. And then they can do all the human work and then we can go to the Bahamas. Oh, I think there's an ethical question there. That is probably not a good idea. I don't know, 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 like taking 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? 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. In fact, 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, you know, 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. Well, palm oil plantations are basically a big cause of deforestation in for whatever was there before. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So it's not the palm oil itself is not a bad thing. It's just the way it's kind of down. We cut down a bunch of trees so that we can actually raise palm oil. Yeah. I love me some coconut. I'm not getting on my coconut. I go way back. Coconut. We got to 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! 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 Rim 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, 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. Wow. I mean, we are so species-centric in so many ways. Wasn't that good, that's Carl Sagan. I try to talk to cats, man, but I don't know if they get me. 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. It just looks up and then just goes back down. There you have it. 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. 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 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, man. And if I start making babies with other six fingered matable 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'd just be the, yeah, the fastest, fastest finger. Yes, exactly. I play the sitar better than anybody you've ever seen. 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? That's so funny. Give me your banana. Give me that banana. Give me that 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- Which is cheaper than diamonds. I was gonna say. Bingoes. These guys got it good. These guys got it good, man. I wish I could come home, 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. Oh my God, 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 gang war. Oh my God, you don't wear blue in this part of the forest. We're right there. I'm just trying. I'm a fan of the West Side Story, the movie. I just can't... I'm a bunch of chimps. Did you hear that? Boy, boy, crazy chimp boy. You've got the monkeys in the trees as a chorus. No, but they do, so they are violent. 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. 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 coming at 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. Ape, yep. That's terrible. 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 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 smaity, they're so lame, oh my God. So any other very unusual primate rituals? I'm trying to think of actual 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. You're talking about a baboon butt. 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 of 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're that time. 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 ovulation and others don't. 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 any. There's no 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, and there's even freeloading monkeys, monkeys that take too much and don't give back, that other monkeys will kind of spurn and ostracize. Next one, go. All right, Petros in Zuzulaz 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. 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. 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? Hey, I might. We gotta bring that to a halt here. Natalia Reagan, thank you for being on StarTalk. And Chuck, always good to have you. Always good to be here, man. And when you're not with me, you're with Gary O'Reilly. Well, it's not really like that. It's not like that. You're playing with science with Gary O'Reilly. Just call me sometime, okay? You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Stay tuned. More up next. Hi, and welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm your host, Natalia Reagan, and you're experiencing an extension. And joining me now is co-host Chuck Nice, my hilarious comedian friend. Yes, I'm actually still Patrick Melton. Yeah, right. No one knows it. Change, Patrick. No one knows it. I don't know what it is, but something's a little different. Well, what it is, is my credit rating went down. Well, we're gonna talk about what makes us human. And we've been talking about that, but we're gonna talk about something a little bit different now. We're gonna talk about cloning, cloning primates, because with the whole cloning going on in the news, there's been talk about human cloning, but let's talk about actual primate cloning. We have a biological anthropologist, Dr. Ryan Raaum from Lehman College here to weigh in on the subject. And most recently, there's been some cloning done in China of macaques. Oh, thank you for having me. Yes, indeed. So, published just this year, looking at crab-eating macaques, why they're eating those crabs, who knows? Why we need more of them, who knows? But they've successfully cloned two live, viable crab-eating macaques. It's not efficient. They had 40 embryos, 20 pregnancies, two live births. Oh my goodness. But it's a step towards human cloning. I gotta tell you something. Those are pretty much house casino odds. Right? Yeah, no, I don't like those odds. Yeah, so only two survived of all this whole process. Mind you, that's much better, right? So Dolly was 275 to one. Oh, wow. Here we're like 40 to two. That was 1997. It's called progress, I'm gonna say. I find it funny that of all things that Scotland cloned, they cloned the one thing that they have an access of, cheap. I never understood that. I never quite understand that. Dolly was special. She was special. Dolly was, no, can we all just have a moment of silence for Dolly? Anyways. Moving on, but cloning of primates, it's controversial because obviously, we're much more related to them. Getting close to home, right? Yeah, right? It's a little funky, a little like, you know, so. So wait, let me ask you as a primatologist, Natalia, how close are macaques to homo sapiens? Oh, I mean, our closest genetic relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos. We share about 98%, 98.7% of DNA. I don't know, what is macaques? Don't know the exact percentage amount, but. It's still pretty high. There's like, yeah, we diverged far back beyond, you know, the common ancestor we have with chimpanzees about six, seven million years ago. Right. 25. 25, yeah, like, yeah, because New World Monkey is about 20, yeah, so. 25, 30-ish. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so not, we're not super, super close, but at the same time, they are primates, and that is a little, that's close to home. Close to home. Hitting close to home. But. Do we learn anything, Ryan, from when we clone a primate? Do we learn anything about cloning us, and is that the purpose of cloning the primate to get closer to cloning us? I mean, I think with some of the main purposes there are, you know, macaques are a big biomedical research animal. Ah. And that if you can introduce some genetic changes in a macaque that predisposes it to heart disease or diabetes or something, then you could perpetuate that. Right, then you can cure it. That group, or you. I'm gonna clone you so that you get heart disease right away. Then I'm gonna cure you of your heart disease. And this sounds very cruel. We do that all the time. I mean, that's like super common with mice, right? There are all these lines of mice that are, they're not cloned, but they're so, they just inbreed them incredibly until they're genetically homogenous. And then make a change and they just all get cancer. We give them cancer, right? That's a horrible gift to give someone. There's a lot of things, we've cured cancer in mice like 100 times, but mice are really distant from humans. So you try and take the thing that you've cured cancer in mice, you take it to humans, it doesn't work. I mean, there's even arguments in terms of animal welfare and medical research that because even chimpanzees are distant enough where some of the same things don't affect us the same way. I mean, they get certain illnesses that we don't. I mean, there is zoonosis, which is the transmission of disease from one species to another, but sometimes it doesn't always work that way. And macaques are even further removed from humans. So it seems like a lot of work and a lot of pain and suffering that we're inflicting on individuals that I personally don't feel comfortable with it. Putting that to the side, I mean, the motivation for a lot of the macaque stuff is biomedical and because, okay, yes, they're distant, but nobody's particularly comfortable with doing this stuff to chimpanzees. Right. No, and I- And mice are super distant. Right. So macaques happen to be the happy medium. I know. It kind of sucks to be a macaque right now. Interesting thing about macaques is they're the second most widely distributed primate in the world. So they're, and that's another thing. You would think like, we don't eat any more. Macaques are everywhere, but that's the thing is they, they are like humans in the fact that they are, they are generalists. They can kind of almost thrive in any environment. They're the ones that you see. Remember in the hot tubs, we talked about the Japanese snow macaques. You love those guys. I do. You've got the temple monkeys. You've got, you know, I mean, macaques, you've got the Barbary macaques on Gibraltar. So there's macaques all over the world. They can, and they're the kind of animal that will eat. They're like humans, like little trash compactors. They'll just eat anything. So they are similar to us in that regard. You know, they're not like a specialist where they only eat leaves or fruit or insects. Exactly. And as far as like cloning, in terms of human cloning, like different mammals have slightly different sort of reproductive, you know, their eggs develop at different rates and there's different sort of, sort of slightly different processes there that affect the technical details of cloning. So, you know, the way that you would clone a mouse or a sheep is technically a little bit different than the way you would clone a primate. And probably the process for the macaque would be closer to if you were gonna try and clone a human, you'd probably actually be learning something from cloning the macaque. Speaking of which, I wanna jump into a little, something a little more controversial, bringing back Neanderthals, because we actually do have. Shared DNA. Well, we have DNA signatures within us from Neanderthals. Yeah, I mean, there's many that have, you know, anywhere, you know, minuscule amounts, I think about 4%. You know, so, and we have the ancient DNA, viable ancient DNA, that's why we've been able to sequence the genome of Neanderthals. But just there is talk about wanting to bring them back, but there's a lot of ethical, of course, dilemmas with bringing Neanderthals back. Well, they're, we have a problem with chimpanzees, but you want to bring back a Neanderthal, which by the way, we used to kind of, you know, I mean, there's- It gets funky. There's scientific evidence that, you know, Neanderthals, we, you know, that's what I'm saying. I feel like I should, you know, I need to clone my husband. I need to, like, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna make myself a Neanderthal and just, you know, Oog and I are gonna settle down. We're gonna have some nice hybrids and it's gonna be fantastic and you can laugh while you want, but we're doing it. I'm doing it. No, but there are some real ethical dilemmas about just, you know, because again, is it, why are we doing it? Is it so we can have like a freak show or where are they going to live? Are they gonna be considered humans? Are we gonna give them rights? Cause they are- Well, first of all, are Neanderthals humans? That's a good question. I mean, you know, by the, you know, by the material. Which is one of the, which is one of the major criteria that people use for, you know, delimiting a species. A species, species, yeah. Considered- So, I mean, there's, they're definitely on that sort of line where you argue about it. I mean, and we've done StarTalk episodes about this, about just, you know, whether Neanderthals were these sort of brutish, oafish, kind of, you know, just sort of cavemen that had no artistic value or didn't communicate or couldn't. Worst looking versions of Robert Pattinson. Right, they're, oh, with man buns. I don't know if you've seen the recreations, the all the man dolls. Yeah, right, that's, yeah. And they also, you know, they didn't have the mental eminence, they don't have a chin. This is unique to humans, so it'd be a bunch of chinless dudes and ladies, which I could get used to. Listen, I know a couple people without a chin, so. I do too, absolutely, and that's okay. What would we learn if we were able to bring back a Neanderthal? I mean, what would be the big takeaway? I mean, there's lots of arguments about, say, Neanderthals, do they have language? Right. Or are they capable of language? I'm not sure. Which, by the way, I'm not sure the other sort of moral complexities of cloning Neanderthals would have, but if you could actually do it, you could kind of solve that problem. If they were not capable of language, I could understand why the human man had to make out with a Neanderthal woman. Hey, oh, wait a minute. She doesn't say much, but she's pretty cute. Yeah, listen. I have a chin, but whatevs. These are jokes, Natalia, that don't really mean it. I know. And my wife, if you're... Although there is suggestions that it went the other way. Really? Because if it was human males and Neanderthal females, there seems like there should be a reasonable chance of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA. That's right. Humans, because there's that part of your genome or part of your DNA that comes from the maternal line. That's right, that's a mitochondrial. We don't have any of that. This is why I wanna clone my husband. Oh, gotcha. So it's possibly, I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be exclusively that, but it kind of suggests that at least it was even, if not biased the other way. Right, okay. And the interesting thing is, obviously, the behavior is gonna be different because they're going to be living in the 21st century. I mean, they could be playing on their iPhone and adapting to our way of being. Because soft tissue doesn't preserve, we don't know exactly how advanced they were, sophisticated they were. We might find out they might be the next Mozart or Francis Ford Coppola or just doing their thing. I don't know, I mean, who knows? So I'm not advocating for it, but it would be interesting. All right, how about this then, Ryan? Is there enough, since we do have DNA signatures within us that are Neanderthal, is there enough DNA within us to selectively breed out so that we can just have a Neanderthal? Yes, I mean, so populations outside Africa have about 2%, but it's actually not distributed randomly across the genome, right? There are parts of your genome where there's just no Neanderthal in anybody. Oh. Because, you know, for whatever reason, it seems like the gene variants or whatnot that Neanderthals had there just don't work very well. In human populations. And there are parts of the genome where basically the variants that everybody has or many people have are the Neanderthal variant. So if you go across the genome, it's okay, none, none, a little bit, a little bit, none, a bunch, a little bit, a little bit, none. So it's not just evenly across. It's not evenly across. So within modern humans, there's parts of the Neanderthal that we have, but there's big chunks that just don't exist in modern humans. Interesting. Well, thank you so much for being here, Dr. Ryan Raaum, talking about cloning and Neanderthals and extinct things, bring them back. Thank you so much. This has been StarTalk All-Stars Extension with Chuck Nice. Nice? Yes, better known as... Patrick Milton. Well, with a lower credit. You said it now. I did. Thank you. And stay curious and keep looking up and don't clone yourself.