This is StarTalk. Hey, this is StarTalk All Stars. I'm Natalia Reagan, your host for today. I'm a primatologist, comedian and co-founder of Boaz Network, an anthropology nonprofit.
And I am joined by the hilarious comedic host, Sarah Siskent, hi Sarah. Hey there Natalia. And I'm also a comedian and therefore also the founder of a nonprofit, my own comedy group. Oh, fantastic.
I bet that's going great. Here you are in StarTalk. That's an option on this Saturday morning, right? Isn't that clear?
Well, we want to talk about something that's been very popular in the news lately. Me and her dolls. They are one of our closest relatives or ancient relatives. And everything from their DNA to their sex life to their diet has been talked about recently.
So now we want to cover it. And first and foremost, I just want to say it is with a hard tea. Yes. That is the mature.
That is the mature. Yeah. They're European. No more of this charade.
No. No. No. It's got to be Neanderthal.
He said with a pinky accent. Oh, Neanderthal. Thank you very much. Do you know why it's called Neanderthal?
They were found in the Neander Valley in Europe and they actually pronounced it with a hard tea. Like if my name was Natalia, but if it was not a Thalia, it's not a Thalia. It's not a Thalia. It's not a Thalia.
But they had tea, just a hard tea in Europe. So we're going to carry it over to the US of A. Got it. We're going to say it right.
But we are joined. I'm very excited today because we're joined by a fantastic biological anthropologist, Dr. Todd Dicitel of New York University. He's also a good friend of mine.
Welcome, Dr. Todd. It's a pleasure being here. And mind you, I have no comedic talent.
I beg to differ. We will see about that. This is like the Oscars of anthropology here. It's a sandwich between two employable people.
Free land life. But yeah, just to give a little background and we're going to ask Dr. Todd even more about that. Neanderthals are considered cave people.
And for the longest time, they were sort of assumed to be these sort of like luggy, you know, necklace brutes. And we're finding out more and more about them through their DNA and through analysis of their teeth of what they ate. And we're getting to know Neanderthals. And so we're going to ask Dr.
Todd a lot about their DNA because he's been running NYU's molecular anthropology lab for 25 years. If it was a kid, it could run for Congress. You should just stop being such an underachiever, Todd. It's really embarrassing for all of us right now.
That is so impressive. So Dr. Todd, tell us a little bit about what you do as far as looking at the DNA of Neanderthals. Well, I mean, we're able to extract DNA out of fossils actually to the top of the DNA.
And so we've got a lot of fossils, actually technically subfossils. And over since 1997, we've been able to not only get the DNA from the mitochondrial genome, which was done initially, but beginning in about the year 2010, we've been able to sequence the entire genome of Neanderthals. So we know a lot about them. Not only their relationships were beginning to put together their phenotype, what they looked like.
We know the type of genes they had in their immune systems, the type of diseases they may have been exposed to. As you've said, we've recently learned a lot about their diet. We can see their sort of their demography, how many were there in different periods of time, and when they went extinct, and perhaps why they went extinct. Great.
Can you just give us a time frame of when Neanderthals lived? So Neanderthals are basically thought to have lived from about 400,000 years ago to about 30,000 years ago. I think the most recent skeleton is about 29,000 years ago on the Iberian peninsula. Okay.
And what did the DNA are you seeing? That's most interesting. Of course, we've talked about a lot of people of Eurasian descent have bits and pieces of Neanderthal DNA in their genome. So can we talk a little bit about what that means?
Well, for the first decade, when we only had the mitochondrial DNA, which you inherit solely from your mother, myself and many other people thought that there was absolutely no interbreeding. I even wrote several papers suggesting that. And lo and behold, we were wrong. But that's how science works.
New data came along. We got the whole genomes. And to everybody's surprise, we found a few Neanderthal alleles, bits of the DNA, not just in Europe, where the Neanderthals lived, but all the way into Asia, even down into Australia, Papua New Guinea. So basically, everybody north of the Sahara has a little bit of Neanderthal in them, one or two percent on average.
I'm about right in the middle of that Neanderthal ancestry from the genetic testing I've had done on myself. Yeah, I did 23 of them. I did 23 of them. I did some Neanderthal in these, I guess.
We got that in common. Because your cousins do not have a disadvantage. I'm wondering why I liked you so much. It's the genetic similarity.
But I don't know if I can trust you anymore. You were wrong once in a science paper. That's how you make progress in science. It's admitting you are wrong.
It's admitting you are wrong. I'm not doing it. That's keeping. Believe it or not, science is not static.
That's actually an interesting point with this whole research with paleoanthropology in particular because we're looking for all these pieces and a puzzle that may or not may not be found in our lifetime. It's just building on top of the data collection and also going back and looking at all the data collections. I'm sure you're finding new information out. I mean, we're putting together a puzzle that we don't know how many pieces are in it.
Every piece connections are broken. It's a very complex story. In the last 10 to 20 years, we found many more specimens. We've added DNA to our repertoire.
We're really getting a much fuller picture of what these people were like. Well, I want to get back to the DNA or the Neanderthal and anatomically modern human sex life because this is interesting. We know that they had mixed, meaning they got down with each other. How often do you think it happens?
That is scientific. That is scientific. Yeah. Biologically.
Exactly. Boning. Physically. Yes.
Cardinal pleasure. Yes. Clear. Yes.
You were at home. That is acceptable. Yeah. It's the anal question, right?
For humanity, right? Did we tap it? Did we tap it? Well, clearly, there's evidence that we did.
I actually just wrote an entry into the Encyclopedia of Primatology about primate intermission and topulatory postures that's basically monkey sex decisions. But moving on. I kind of wish Neil were here to say intermission and his Neil was intermissioned. I'm sorry.
We tried. Yeah, forgive us. Was there any interesting benefits to humans meeting with Neanderthals as far as like immunity, gaining immunity, certain diseases or maybe getting certain diseases because of that mixing? So with Neanderthals living in Europe and parts of Asia for several hundred thousand years, they would have adapted to the local environment or climate.
So the pathogens that were present and other things, if they didn't adapt to them, they could have been taken out. So when modern humans entered into Eurasia about sixty thousand years ago from Africa, we had a sort of African tropical immune system. We get into Eurasia and those infants that are born are going to be more immune to the local conditions, to the local diseases and pathogens. So they were more likely to survive.
And that's one of the things we see is we see lots of signals in the immune system of Neanderthal all intergression. Okay, so they're basically kind of helping us adapt to this new, much colder environment. It's a very quick way to adapt rather than having to wait generation after generation to slowly adapt. You can just borrow already adapted genes from this other group living there.
But that kind of been what motivated us to tap that. I mean, when you see Neanderthal, or Neanderthal, excuse me. You let us scare the hands. Thank you.
When you see an Neanderthal, what were our early human ancestors thinking? Oh, that's kind of exotic and new. Why would they go for it? Probably.
But as I like to say in my classes, humans just aren't that picky and ask any sheep in New Zealand. That's fair. Unfortunately, I actually have a kid from New Zealand in my classes semesters. Okay, right.
Well, we will make sure you get a place of Scottish too. So these were, I mean, they clearly looked like us. They were much more robust than us. They were stocky, sort of thick, if you will, very heavily muscled, very, very powerful people.
Their bones are several times thicker than ours. Yeah, they're super cool. If you like those Jim bunnies, then they would have been perfect. I tap that.
I'm just saying. I think two out of three would tap that. Two out of three would be three. Probably.
You would tap that. Maybe not the jingers. Okay. So then like two and a half.
Well, that's an interesting point because I think one of the things that they've come out with recently is that Neanderthals actually had red hair. Some Neanderthals had light colored skin and red hair, similar to what we see in say Northwestern Europe, but it's actually an independent mutation. So the red hair in the Scots is not inherited from the Neanderthals, but some Neanderthals would have had it. I also know that other archaic species that lived at the same time as the Neanderthals did actually had fairly dark colored skin, black hair and brown eyes.
So there would have been 40, 50,000 years ago, like today, a variety of different looking people. Maybe my mind is in the gutter, but I just feel like this sounds like a dating profile. And I just want to know. I don't want to know more.
Well, maybe that needs to happen. I don't know. I just feel like what are their hopes and dreams? Like I just put that in the fossil record.
That one's harder to discern. Okay. We're actually going to cover that in a little bit. We're talking about a little bit about the culture and just what did they have.
That's fair. I'm not going to talk about artistic endeavors. I want to move on just now because we want to talk about the diet because there was some really interesting research done looking at basically the plaque on Neanderthal teeth. So basically them not brushing their teeth is helping us understanding what they ate.
That's why I don't. Don't brush your teeth. Guys, anthropology reasons. Don't do teeth floss.
I'm telling you. So just in the last two or three weeks, a group of researchers was able to actually look at the dental calculus, the gunk in the teeth of some fossils around 40,000 years from Belgium and from Spain. And they found a big difference. So when you have the gunk in your mouth, I can actually tell everything you've eaten in the last several days because little bits of material have DNA in them.
Okay. And this well-preserved samples of dental calculus have not only the bacteria that were in their mouths but actually tiny remnants of the food they ate. The Belgian Neanderthals actually had woolly rhinoceros and other animals from that time period as well as a lot of plants in their mouths. The Spanish Neanderthals though had no meat.
They had mushrooms and moss and other types of fruits and nuts and things. And no evidence of any meat. So it's not clear. Was that a cultural difference?
Was it their local environment? Was more depoporate? But I can imagine these big, heavy guys going after woolly rhinos with stabbing spears. So Neanderthals didn't have arrows.
They didn't have throwing spears. They only had stabbing spears. And yet they were munching down on woolly rhinos. I wouldn't be close in personal.
Sorry. I bet the meditarians were super sanctimonious about it. They're very evangelical. Yeah.
I mean, so us carnivores have been hearing that crap for 40,000 years at least. I take umbrage with that, Todd. I never bring that up except for now. No, but it's interesting.
I do that opportunity when it presents itself, hey, there's a woolly rhino. I'm going to risk my life by getting close enough to this woolly rhino stab it. And you know, but then you also have a nice heavy duty woolly rhino coat to it. That's some swag.
It's like the two questions of human anthropology is, would they tap it and would they eat it? Yeah. It's maybe nice. And the third thing from this same study, it's a little bit more speculative.
But we have living in our mouths, thousands of different kinds of bacteria. And they got these bacteria out of the two different Neanderthal populations. And they actually found a strain of bacteria that's found in anatomically modern humans. And so the speculation is that rather than this being Neanderthal bacteria going all the way back half a million years ago, that sometime in the last 60, 70, whatever, 1000 years ago, Neanderthals and modern humans would have won either been sharing the same food.
So they would have gotten infected or they were swapping spit. I like that idea. That's great. That's fantastic.
It was a bit of a spit day. I really like that. Yeah. So rather than just tapping it, they at least made out for a little while beforehand.
But paleolithic foreplay. Oh my goodness. Neanderthals, sentimental fools. It's really what we're learning from this.
It doesn't sound like a bad life though. They were getting some. They were eating some. They had a pretty great.
And they died to die. Yeah, right. A few of them made it into their 50s. Okay.
Right. So just when I started, you know, this guy held. That's okay. Well, this has been incredibly insightful.
Dr. Todd, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for coming. I enjoyed this.
Yeah. I'm going to look for some Neanderthals on the... Oh, no. Okay.
No, really. I feel like I found some already. Right. But when we come back, we're going to have more on Neanderthal culture.
And it should be fun. Stay tuned. Hey, welcome back to Star Talk All Stars. I'm your host, Natalia Reagan, primatologist.
And I am here with my hilarious co-host, Sarah Siskin. Nice to be back. Yeah. That was a great question.
Oh, yeah. We missed you guys. We missed you so much. And now we're going to be covering Neanderthal DNA.
And we want to talk about their behavior. And they have culture. And with us now is Dr. Will Hart-Kurt Smith of the American Museum of Natural History in CUNY.
And we are so happy to have you here. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So we want to talk about, you know, didn't Neanderthals have culture?
Were they these brutish, you know, necklace fiends that were just, you know, lumbering beasts? No, they weren't. They obviously weren't these brutish fiends at all. And we're beginning to see now sort of glimpses of more complex behaviors with Neanderthals.
It's nothing compared to what we see with modern humans. And I really think it's important to make that point. But we are narrowing the gap and Todd just talked about, you know, the genetic similarities to Neanderthals with the compared modern humans and the fact that it was a little bit English alone. So, Hanky, Hanky, go on.
I like that euphemism. We were using tap that. But this is like so much nicer. Hi, bro.
Hanky, Hanky. I feel like a shame smell. But, you know, we are seeing evidence of cultural behavior. We've known they bear that they're for instance.
That's something that's, you know, there's a reason behind that. They may not just be functional. You know, you might want to get rid of it, but it's just smelly. And it's like bringing in, you know, predators and the like, but there could be other reasons for it with them.
And we're beginning to see other evidence, other pieces of evidence that are quite intriguing, you know, body of dorm, jewelry. Possibly. This is more things about more contentious cave paintings. Yeah.
Those cave paintings though, look very uninspired. I'm not saying they're unoriginal. I feel like they're derivative. I feel like the lighting is not, you know, it's just, yeah.
That's a lot. Yeah. Exactly. Your voice is perfect.
You know, reviewer of paintings. Exactly. Well, it reminds me of history of the world part one, the world's first art critic. I don't know if I'm going to have to have a few more.
That's basically, is that what you would do to that Neanderthal art painting? I believe, yeah. It would be not a full stream, probably half a stream. I'm not that, you know, dismissive.
I understand they showed up, you know, and I value that. No, showing up is half the battle. Exactly. Right.
Where do we go from here? I mean, I'm not sure if I have, the actual cave paintings we are talking about, El Castillo Cave, they are essentially, it's Red Ochre, which we know that they use for at least 250,000 years before that this, you know, that's the record to show them that they either use it, you know, on their bodies or in, you know, grave goods and whatnot, but they have this handprint and it almost looks like, and I joke that it looks like, you know, almost ancient hand turkeys, but they look like, you know, people kind of put their hand in tracing their hand, but there is some controversy or whether or not that was an anatomically modern human that did those paintings or Neanderthal thoughts. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, that's the bottom line. We don't know who made these. We don't know who made people argue that Neanderthal made these as a date, they're 40,000 years old, so they're really old. And we, it's right on the cusp of when modern humans arrive in Europe.
Up to that point, we see only Neanderthals in Europe for a couple hundred thousand years, and it's hard to tell from a handprint whether it was a Neanderthal or not. You know, you really need the bones and, you know, the skulls and perhaps you could extract some DNA and you could probably go out there and try and reconstruct Neanderthal hands, and they're not that different from what you do. It's a real jerk move, really, to just leave the hand in the nail. They're probably like, we're going to, you know, start so many PhD dissertations with this.
I could just see them thinking, this is my signature. No, scythe fool, that handprint's not enough. That's not a real trick. No, they were obviously there to want us and then taunting us they are indeed doing because, you know, we just don't know.
So it's a rather indirect bit of evidence, I think. Yeah, it's passive aggressive is what it is. It's a bullshit. They're all on the mount on it.
They're like, how can we really screw? You know, what other of these new guys come in? Like, how can we, I know what we can do? I know what we can do.
I know what we can do. I know what we can do. Let's like screw them over for millennia. I, the other thing is like, I feel like we could blame them for all this unexplained phenomena throughout history.
And then we could just, like, maybe, yeah. Nazca Lion's Pyramids, obviously made by Neanderthals. Yeah, there you go. Not you, I'm not, please.
Yeah, that's it. We just launched the thousands of pairs of dicks. We're rolling it back. We're rolling it back.
We're rolling it back. The last city of Atlantis, guys. Obviously, Neanderthals. But there are other bits and pieces of interesting.
There's a cave down in Gibraltar that has these repeated inscriptions, you know, sort of lines crossing over each other, almost like somebody doodling. And they'd be done again and again. And they're layers in the cave where we have Neanderthals. And is that art?
I don't know. I mean, we'll define art. Oh, here we go. Exactly.
It's not blown. But it's definitely, it's repeated behavior. It might, you could interpret it as symbolic. But who knows what it was for?
Again, these things are really hard to interpret. But it's probably made by Neanderthal. I mean, until we find a Neanderthal, you know, dead with a paintbrush in its hands. It's going to be kind of hard to absolutely know.
So Neanderthals, if you will, are the Banksy of Apologia? The Antitones, and really studied until recently because they weren't really looking at smaller day animals. And they saw just sort of marks on these towns. I mean, it looked like they actually were part of a necklace.
And now that they're saying it's 130,000 year old Neanderthal, jewelry. Absolutely. And look, if it is jewelry, and you know, certainly to a lot of people, it's convincing evidence that it is that date. There's no modern humans in Europe at that date.
And the only harm is that we know of in that time period in Neanderthals. So it's pretty okay to assume that Neanderthals would have made that. And that extraordinary, that's one of the oldest pieces of evidence for symbolic behavior. So other teams have suggested that Neanderthals were putting feathers in their hair and they were hunting large birds and taking their feathers.
We don't really know if they were doing that. But as I said, there's all these tempting little lines of evidence sort of appearing on the scene that are sort of breaking down this okay man stereotype of Neanderthals. But I do really want to stress that we never see, with modern human sites, we see spectacular art. And we see really, really phenomenal artistic expression quite early on.
And I would like to see more of that with Neanderthal signs. I mean, no, it's Neanderthals making it before sort of making the leap of saying that Neanderthals whereas as sophisticated as modern humans in terms of artistic expression. I love how your question is pretty much like, who are you wearing? But like to Neanderthals.
But it's true. It's amazing to think about these people for that all the time to be like having jewelry. Yeah. No, and I think that's a very great point that you bring up until we actually know it's we have to proceed with caution because you don't want to overstate or over assume.
It's nice that we are coming into an age where we're giving Neanderthals a little bit more credit as we're getting more information. So it's not we're just giving them more credit. But as we find more sites that are older and older and again, I think as dating techniques get better and better and we find in with the ability to sequence ancient DNA, I think it's only going to get better to understand which sites are associated with. Right.
Exactly. There's no gene for art. No, absolutely. Clearly.
There was ice that didn't have it. But this caveman stereotype is really ancient. It goes way back to the ancient Greek Romans. And then sort of arguing that if there was another and it lived before us, it probably didn't have language and it lived in caves and all these sort of things.
So it's a very deep rooted stereotype in the academic world. And they're not here to defend themselves. They're not here to defend themselves. You always tell them Neanderthals.
You're stupid. You're just talking Neanderthals. That guy was just on that day. That guy was just on that day.
That's the only sort of name for hominids that sort of made it over into pop culture. You wouldn't call somebody a stupid Australian. You could. You could.
Nobody would know what you're talking about. Right. No one would know what it means. I wanted to actually talk to you.
We talked about bearing their debt. Were there any grave goods that you know? Not much. Not much.
In the six season, it was argued that Neanderthals might have sort of bear their debt with flowers. It was very convenient. This tradition came out at the same time as a hide-of-flower panel. Not to say.
It was by the flower lot. That's right. Exactly. More conspiracy theories for you guys.
It was rodents lining their nest with flowers after the day as it were. Not a lot in the way of grave goods. And again, you find modern humans bear with really magnificent grave goods quite early on. You find thousands of shell beads and pierce teeth and beautiful stone blades.
Oh, like a necklace? Like a necklace made of teeth of other animals. Oh my goodness. Not Neanderthals.
That's some jewelry. That's intense jewelry. That's a nice time. You got pierce teeth.
They went hard. Oh my gosh. No, no. You don't see a lot in the way of grave goods with Neanderthals.
You don't see a lot in Neanderthals. You do see some Neanderthals buried in other places they just found randomly scattered. Well, maybe those guys were jerks. Well, exactly.
They weren't enough. They weren't enough enough. Yeah. I leave them out.
He was a jerk. I wanted to talk a little bit about the tool industry. They had obviously a misterion tool. In your opinion, were they anything to write home about?
I couldn't make a misterion tool. I mean, the skillsets that go into making these tools are at a high level. They're really beautifully made. The misterion tools are interesting.
I hastened on. I am not an expert on misterion tools. But misterion tools are quite varied. There's a number of different types of tools that they're making, most likely for different purposes.
It's a very successful industry. It lasts for a long time. The Neanderthals are making these tools for an extremely long time. They're very successful species.
They're living for a couple hundred thousand years. That's longer than we've been around. Yeah. We're not doing so well.
We're not doing that. We're not doing that. It may still remain the record. We'll see.
But it speaks to a problem solving and a cognitive level. That's a waste period too. The question is, does it match up to modern humans? With modern humans, you start to see a new level of tools.
You see sphear throwers. These things are called adult battles, which give you extra momentum accuracy. You see tiny, tiny little stone tools called microlifts. It's very, very sophisticated and hard to make.
You see bow and arrow technologies and the like. This speaks to another level of understanding of some material culture and technology and relating your technology to the tasks that you're trying to perform. I would argue that Neanderthals, whilst very sophisticated with their stone tool culture, don't quite match up to modern humans. Quickly, just sort of be a hypothesis of why you think Neanderthals are no longer amongst us.
I know. There's a question which is so hard. Look, they die out. There it is.
You can spin a lot of yarns about why that happened. I suspect that they would outcompete it. I suspect that there's a combination of modern humans arriving in Europe in combination with the beginnings of the last major ice age, probably the combination of the two. It's just enough to drive them into extinction.
Beyond that, we don't know. We know that Neanderthals into breeding with humans happen. Yes, we do. But at the same time, at the very last Neanderthals that we see in the record have very extreme Neanderthal features.
They're very different to modern humans. They're very distinct. And suddenly they're just gone. That's very interesting.
There was something like a soap opera. It seems like we started screwing around with Neanderthals and then they disappeared. I think there's a lot of this. This is a fishy.
I don't want to get very serious for a moment. I mean, it's very possible that modern humans were involved in a more direct way. But until we find, you know, a leg bone with a modern human aeroblade. We have to be very careful about that.
Because it's very productive to go to the dark side. Yeah, we'll pull then. Exactly. With a red hand.
It's a red hand. We don't know. I suspect they would probably just outcompete it. Outcompete it.
With all the ways. It's sad to think about it. Yeah, no, it's it is. But it's kind of an eater-be-eaten world.
Didn't they want the last recorded Neanderthals on the tip of Spain? Like almost as if they were like a push. You just pushed there aren't some of the very last ones I found in the more remote areas of Spain and something front. Yeah.
To be that image of just being alone. Like they're alone. Like hard as vegans. It was a big dark indie movie about it.
Yeah. The last Neanderthals. Yeah. I always wanted to do a world where N and I think they might be doing it where there's a.
World where N and N are about. It's not being Neanderthals. Exactly. But thank you so much Dr.
Wilhart Kirksmith for being here. Thanks for having me. And next up we're going to have Cosmic Queries. So Sarah I want to hear the Queries.
Oh they're good. They're good. Oh they're good. Oh they're good.
Oh they're good. Oh they're good. Oh they're good. Oh they're good.
Oh they're good. Oh they're good. They're highly highly. They're highly.
They're highly. They're highly. They're highly. They're highly.
They're highly. Hey and welcome back to Star Talk All Stars. I'm your host Natalia Reagan and I'm here with my hilarious co-host Sarah Siskind. Thanks for having me back.
Between the commercial breaks. I'm really awful stuff went down. I'm glad you guys weren't here listening to that. Yeah.
That was pretty fantastic. Yeah. There you go. So let's see first one and I'm going to do my best with all the name pronunciations on these.
I know it's hard to believe but I am fallible. Oh you make mistakes. You heard it here first. Get out of town.
Exactly. So the first one comes from Abhinandan, N.M. from Facebook Live and his question, or her question, is how come humans are so weak when compared to other closely related species? That's a great question.
Well first of all I would think I'm assuming and I don't want to assume too much you're probably thinking of chimpanzees or binobos or gorillas or apes because we're part of the Great Apes family. A lot of people don't know that. Humans are apes first and foremost. We're great apes.
Some of us are greater than others. Loud and proud. Yeah. Loud and proud.
And actually what's different in our morphology versus other Great Apes is we are bottom heavy as far as we have long limbs. Our legs are long hind limbs. Our legs are the strong part of our body where our arms have sort of gotten weaker over time because of lack of use. A lot of the primates, other Great Apes, spend a lot of their time in trees.
They're arboreal versus humans which we are mostly terrestrial. We are on the ground. And so we have evolved to have these really strong hind limbs so we can walk upright. And so not only do gorillas, chimps and aragatans and givens which are the lesser apes, they're size not because they're any less than the other apes.
I don't want to offend our givens. They're not even listeners out there. They're the givens. Stay with me guys.
They're a powerful lobby. You guys are fantastic. The job in givens. We get a lot of money from the others.
Yeah. But they actually use their arms quite a bit. And there's actually been some studies because I'm looking at chimps and their muscle fibers are actually packed more densely and tighter. So I know I did do a show a few years ago and talk about chimp strength and how they actually don't know their own strength because when they actually do something like when they touch something it has far greater impact than if we touch something.
They're like Lenny from a mice and mice. Yeah, they don't mean to hurt. Yeah. Exactly.
And I don't mean to talk about that. So they're actually the muscle morphology but also just the way they are built affects their strength. Yeah, we don't keep leg day. Yeah.
Do not arm wrestle a chimp. Oh, and just advice to listeners. Google shaved gorilla. They are cut.
It is like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, that sounds like I'm like.
I know. It's fascinating. I'm trying to like roll this back now. Yeah.
But it's fascinating because you don't see their muscle definition for sometimes and then when they're shaved for whatever zoo reason or just I don't know. They lose their, I mean like chimps. I've seen chimps. The chimp at the L.A.Zoo which I frequent quite a bit and that has lost most of its fur.
And boy he ripped. Yeah. He's shredded. Oh my God.
It's crazy. What's like the P90X? They make P90X look just like nothing. They're like P9000X.
I don't know the scale of whatever. Pan. Pan nine. Yeah.
P90X. Pan is their genus. Angie Suave from Facebook Live. Rico Suave.
I know. What a great name. That's great. I love that.
I've got a name envy. Here's her question. What do you think of the aquatic ape theory? Oh, right.
Can you explain what it is and why it is or isn't valid? Now I can only assume that the aquatic ape theory is that apes are made out of water. Actually, and Neanderthals built this law city of Atlantis, which we already discovered. Actually the aquatic ape theory is a theory of why humans became bipedal over time and also lost our apes lost their hair.
So the idea is that apes were waiting in water. There's a few ideas. So the apes were waiting in water and they had to stand upright and therefore that over time meant they were walking on two legs. And because they were in water like dolphins, you know, dolphins are mammals and don't have a lot of hair.
They almost get this like dolphin like skin like we have right now, this sort of hairless skin. And on top of that there was another idea that even breasts female, human female boobs are different. And they don't have fat surrounding our mammary gland. They get milk, they lactate, but they don't have fat surrounding their mammary glands at all times.
And so the fat acted as like water wings. So the baby could grab ahold of it. Like these buoyant little... I know.
It's the most creative theory that's made up by a middle school boy. Exactly. No, no, no. I mean, I don't want to make fun of it, but it generally is not well respected as far as being an actual valid theory of how we became bipedal or lost our hair because they're finding out that, you know, not a lot of primates go into them.
You'll see some apes actually waiting in water. There's photos of you Google or ring and water. You'll see Urgrile in water. You can see pictures of gorillas and ring-at-tans actually in water and standing upright because you have to if you're on all four, turn it around.
But it's not something that they do naturally a lot of times because they're predators in the water. I'm looking for tips because I'm tired of shaving my legs. Oh, yeah. I just stand in the water.
Oh my God. I've had all the laser hair removal. Oh, I like it still doesn't work. It probably doesn't work.
Right? Like, you know, it saves time. Not tubbing. Just sitting in the hot tub.
This became a lifestyle podcast. You know, beauty tips from primates to us. So I hope that helped, yeah. It's not necessarily the most well received theory at this point.
Okay. That's just a fictional concept, if nothing else. It sounds cool. Kind of, yeah.
Okay. So that is the answer to your question, Angie. So, I just wanted to say it again. All right.
So the next one comes from Antonio Rodriguez on Facebook Live. So his question is just how well can apes communicate between themselves? Are they able to transmit elaborate or abstract thoughts? That's a really great question.
Well, we know they can communicate with one another because they are able to live in cooperative groups in terms of how complicated this sort of communication is or speech, you know, that there's been a lot of studies in recent years trying to understand, you know, communication. And if it is similar to human speech, there's obviously, like for instance, in chimpanzees, you'll see different, and with gorillas, those are the biggest examples that you're going to see a lot of videos on. You can see the different sort of vocalizations they make and what they mean to other members of their group, you know, like a pant hoot or, you know, you see gorillas that, you know, when they do the chess beating, they'll make this kind of like funky little pocket sound. Okay.
So they're not exactly deconstructing, Miltonian sonnets. No, but you know, one of my favorite examples actually of communication is actually between multiple species of primates. There's a group of monkeys called Gwenins that live in Africa and they actually live in different levels of canopy in the trees. So like, you know, maybe one picture of Gwenin lives here, species of Gwenin, one goes down here and one lives closer to the bottom, goes to the ground.
And when they see particular predators, they'll have different alarm calls for different predators in all those, right, all those different Gwenins know what each vocalization means and therefore they will either, if it's, you know, something that's coming from the ground, like say a big cat, they'll go up, if it's something like a raptor, a bird, they'll go down. So it's a way of communicating, you know, not just within their own species, but between other species. Yeah, but between species, but also what type of species could be hurting them. So, I mean, as far as, you know, intense communication language, we don't quite know.
Yeah, no heart to heart. I mean, but then, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's not, I guess that's a different way of language, but I mean, like things like grooming and, you know, I mean, and there's tactile ways of communication. I remember that it's not the same as what we do. There is the study of like the monkeys exposed to unfairness when like other monkeys paid more than they were.
Oh, it's the greatest versus cucumbers. Oh gosh, I've been recommending a lot of like videos, but it is fantastic. You see this monkey see that another monkey got paid with grapes instead of cucumbers for the same task and he just like throws his cucumber at the experimenter. And it's his shit.
Like it's the equivalent of just like flipping the table. It's just this like rage quit and the monkeys show such a human like I just, I related so hard. I've been there man. I've been there.
Oh man, but it's not fair. I did the same task. I know. Oh my goodness.
No, but that's true. I mean, you know, there's things of altruism and jealousy and understanding fairness do exist and non-human primates, but we are learning things, you know, over time with more and more studies, you know, unfortunately science doesn't happen overnight. Yeah. All right.
So the next question is from Chatur Verdulla Chandra Cough on Facebook Live. And her question is do primates commit crimes? Well, what is a crime? What is a crime?
Oh, crime is a passion. We're talking about robbing banks. I have not seen a monkey rather than the day is young. You know what science takes a long time as a wise woman once I know.
But I think I have this question because, you know, crimes are like, there's obviously the law, but there's also this like social definition of a crime, you know, like there's incest, for example, which is that a crime like do monkeys ostracize other monkeys? There's not, I mean, there are natural ways of preventing. They found preventing incest. But as far as like, I don't know of any particular anecdotal stories about incest, but I do know things about like murder killing members of your own group.
Yeah. And on top of that also like, those monogamous primates, when I say monogamous, I use very large air quotes, like Gibbons are supposed to be monogamous, but they also sneak extra pair copulations, which is a little side gnocchi. They have side bitches with the other one's not looking. Side bitches, side bitches, side bitches with the other one's not looking, but do they get busted or caught?
Generally, they're pretty good at not getting caught. But as far as when primates like say do something big, like kill another primate. Sometimes there is retaliation depending on which group, if it's a group where there is, you know, it's an in-group fighting. And like say, for instance, a dominant male gets taken over and either is killed or if it's from another group, there might be retaliatory action against one group because chips actually do, kind of circle a perimeter and attack those that are out, you know, that are walking by themselves or attacking other groups.