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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to the second episode of Ologies. You made it.
Speaker 2: Before we move on to this week's episode, let's look
Speaker 2: back at last week's episode. I have to tell you
Speaker 2: guys something. Let's sit down, Hell, let's have a heart
Speaker 2: to heart. So thank you so much. If you listen
Speaker 2: to Volcanology, I hope you liked it. There was a
Speaker 2: little bit of a tective with the first episode, and
Speaker 2: whoever subscribed and woke up early and listened to it,
Speaker 2: a few thousand of you got totally the wrong episode.
Speaker 2: You got an older, not totally edited version of Volcanology
Speaker 2: that had no format, none of my narration, no sound effects,
Speaker 2: some weird jump cuts, and you might have no idea.
Speaker 2: So as you know, I've been working on this project
Speaker 2: for like ten years. I edited the first episode of
Speaker 2: Volcanology for a couple months and just somehow Universe felt
Speaker 2: like kicking people in the dick, and somehow the network
Speaker 2: uploaded the wrong file. But the good news is the
Speaker 2: right episode went up and that day, and so a
Speaker 2: ton of people got the right episode. But if you
Speaker 2: listen to it and you thought this is pretty good,
Speaker 2: I guess if you didn't hear any narration like what
Speaker 2: we had in the earthquake kit can growing up as
Speaker 2: a kid, or how to pronounce an Icelandic volcano, or
Speaker 2: how I feel about volcano romances? Boy, howdy, did it
Speaker 2: ruffle my feathers. You might want to delete and redownload
Speaker 2: to get the real version. Let's just put a good
Speaker 2: spin on it. Let's call it bonus content. So enjoy.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everyone who's listened and subscribed. Let's just
Speaker 2: move on. Let's move on to episode two. Okay, so
Speaker 2: you know when you're in let's say you're in a
Speaker 2: big city and you're watching people bustle by, and people
Speaker 2: are wearing suits and carrying briefcases and coffee, and they're
Speaker 2: walking around in high heels, and you realize everyone, all
Speaker 2: of us, we're all just a bunch of smooth naked
Speaker 2: apes in underpants. We're just a bunch of primates. Does
Speaker 2: that ever freak you out? It freaks me out a lot.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the etymology of primatology though. Primatology comes
Speaker 2: from the Latin for prima of first rank or chief
Speaker 2: of the highest order, so of course it's primates naming primates,
Speaker 2: So of course we named ourselves that. We're such dis
Speaker 2: This episode about primatology is a dang ding dang soaproper.
Speaker 2: It is full of torrid chimpanzee affairs and backstabbing six
Speaker 2: year olds on birth control. There's first steps, there's quitting
Speaker 2: the entertainment business, not collecting. There's lobster costumes, and really
Speaker 2: an unraveling of our own feelings by projecting them onto
Speaker 2: other primate species, At least for me. This primatologist was
Speaker 2: a friend of a friend, and it's a certain amount
Speaker 2: of wrangling. Let me tell you to get her on
Speaker 2: the podcast, because she's busy as hell, and she's got
Speaker 2: a kid, she's got another one on the way. We
Speaker 2: had an email chain, thirty four emails back to back
Speaker 2: to back, and I finally just kind of air quotes
Speaker 2: happened to pop by the zoo and just say hi.
Speaker 2: We met up while she was holding a small monkey,
Speaker 2: and I just tried to act casual and not starstruck,
Speaker 2: and finally met her and proved to her I wasn't
Speaker 2: like a weird neck beard cat fishing her for some
Speaker 2: irl FaceTime. So we arranged a time I went to
Speaker 2: her lovely home. We sat at her kitchen table to
Speaker 2: talk about ape genitals for about an hour. So please
Speaker 2: prepare to learn more than you ever thought you might
Speaker 2: ever learn about monkeys and apes and yourself. Who is
Speaker 2: an ape? Never forget you're an ape wearing underpants. Probably
Speaker 2: I don't know your business. I sincerely truly dig this
Speaker 2: person so much. I got nervous being around her because
Speaker 2: she's so cool. So please enjoy professional primatologist Kate Gilmour.
Speaker 3: Your levels are good, Yeah, your levels are good. Herely
Speaker 3: loud and fast talker. That's great, And I go on
Speaker 3: really long, so you can.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'll interrupt you.
Speaker 3: You totally fine, because I'll interrupt you.
Speaker 2: To Kate's official job is lead keeper of the Great
Speaker 2: Apes and Old World Monkeys at the Los Angeles Zoo.
Speaker 2: I think I got that right.
Speaker 3: Usually do the chimpanzees, but I'm the lead keeper over
Speaker 3: the Great apes and Old World monkeys. That's gorillas, a ranguetan,
Speaker 3: and a wholestal of really cool gibbons and other primates.
Speaker 2: What's an Old World monkey exactly?
Speaker 3: Those are primates and monkeys that come from Africa. So
Speaker 3: New World monkeys would be South American monkeys. Old World
Speaker 3: are Africa. I never, they're older and a cool thing.
Speaker 3: How you can tell the difference is that South American
Speaker 3: New World monkeys they have prehensile tails, so they they
Speaker 3: can actually use them to hang and curl and things
Speaker 3: like that. The older monkeys they're just more used for
Speaker 3: balance and things like that.
Speaker 2: Really boom, We're like thirty seconds in and we're already smarter.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you what's your best Like
Speaker 2: you're at a cocktail party and someone's like, si, kay,
Speaker 2: what do you do? And you're like, I'm a primatologist,
Speaker 2: Like what what?
Speaker 3: It normally stops the conversation, Yeah, because people aren't stoked
Speaker 3: about that. Now they are stoked because they go, wait
Speaker 3: what and you go, yeah, that's true. So it's like
Speaker 3: it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2: I'm a fun date, right, I.
Speaker 3: Get a lot of questions and somewhere around the conversation
Speaker 3: they go, I'm so sorry I'm doing this, Like, I
Speaker 3: just have so many questions, and I said, you are not.
Speaker 3: It's fine, Like, I'm very used to it. I don't
Speaker 3: mind it. If you're going to be zoo keeper, you're
Speaker 3: going to be super passionate about your job and the
Speaker 3: animals you work with, so we love talking about them.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's the easiest thing in the world
Speaker 3: to do, so questions. We get a lot of our Well,
Speaker 3: how do you tell the difference between EAPs and monkeys? Okay,
Speaker 3: monkeys have tails. That's it, stop, full stop. Really, that's
Speaker 3: what you need to know. It's not that hard.
Speaker 2: So I'll never forget this fact and I will never
Speaker 2: stop looking at primate books because of it.
Speaker 3: To be fair, most of my barbecues and cocktail parties
Speaker 3: are with adults because you know, I'm good at talking
Speaker 3: to You have to be able to talk to four
Speaker 3: year olds about this stuff, and like college people and
Speaker 3: adults about this stuff, so you have to really tailor
Speaker 3: what you're going to say. But when I talk to
Speaker 3: most adults at barbecues and whatnot, they always ask about sex,
Speaker 3: and like, well, I I heard that bonobos have sex
Speaker 3: all the time, right, Okay, here we go again, and
Speaker 3: so they want to know the difference. So like bonobos
Speaker 3: and chimpanzees. And so the fact that I always put
Speaker 3: out that always makes them like, you know, do a
Speaker 3: spit take, is that you can tell what kind of
Speaker 3: social society a primate has by looking at their testicle size.
Speaker 2: Tell me everything, I tell you everything.
Speaker 3: You got it. Okay. So if you have, like in
Speaker 3: a chimpanzee society, they have lots of males and lots
Speaker 3: of females all living together, so there's a lot of
Speaker 3: sexual competition. So the males have to breed with all
Speaker 3: the females, and none of the males know which babies
Speaker 3: are theirs. Wow. That helps the community because then the
Speaker 3: males all have to kind of help watch over the
Speaker 3: babies because it could be theirs, it could not be.
Speaker 3: They don't know. But that means that they constantly have
Speaker 3: to be breeding all the females. Oh. So that means
Speaker 3: they have sex like ten times a day, oh man,
Speaker 3: and then each one has to be successful, so they
Speaker 3: have something like a six or two to six billion
Speaker 3: sperm count per day. In order to do that, they
Speaker 3: have to have extremely large testicles. Oh my, God, they
Speaker 3: have monster arts, they have monster gards. So but then
Speaker 3: you're like, okay, but like, what about a gorilla. Gorillas
Speaker 3: are huge, They're like among the largest grade apes. Well,
Speaker 3: a gorilla society, you have one male and a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of ladies, So he's not competing with anybody most
Speaker 3: of the time. He doesn't have to prove anything. He
Speaker 3: doesn't have to breathe them ten times a day because
Speaker 3: they know that they're his, and he knows that they're there,
Speaker 3: so his balls are daman no way.
Speaker 2: So to have big balls means that you're kind of
Speaker 2: a cock. Yes, I wanted to see how humans compared,
Speaker 2: and I now have like six tabs open on my
Speaker 2: computer about sperm. It seems like the average for human
Speaker 2: is probably around two hundred million a day, but it
Speaker 2: varies a bunch human to human. Now, chimps and banobos
Speaker 2: they need more AMMO because they don't have as much
Speaker 2: standing or rank, so they more AMMO than humans. Gorillas
Speaker 2: and orangutans are like, not dog, I'm good, I don't
Speaker 2: need that big of balls because I know whose kids
Speaker 2: hes are. So next time you see someone with like
Speaker 2: a pair of truck nuts on their vehicle, just pull over.
Speaker 2: Let them know. Those things should be marbles. If you
Speaker 2: really want to show what an outpha you are, you're
Speaker 2: doing it all wrong. Also, why did you put testicles
Speaker 2: on your car? That's weird. Can you imagine if your
Speaker 2: mom hung a synthetic vagina off of her exhaust pipe
Speaker 2: just to show how fertile and maternal she was, that's weird. Okay,
Speaker 2: back to gorillas. So with the gorillas, they have these
Speaker 2: tiny sacks ceeny tiny because they're like all the ladies
Speaker 2: are mine.
Speaker 3: All they need to have sex like once every few
Speaker 3: days maybe, so you just don't eat a lot.
Speaker 2: What happens to the to the beta and gamma males
Speaker 2: then for.
Speaker 3: Gorillas, Yeah, well it's usually one male and the females.
Speaker 3: And so when like an offspring male gets old enough
Speaker 3: to kind of be a little bit competitive with dad,
Speaker 3: they leave and then they form these bachelor groups. See
Speaker 3: if these groups of males, young males that walk around
Speaker 3: hang out, get big and strong, practice being really tough,
Speaker 3: and then when they think they're ready to take over,
Speaker 3: they'll go find another group and try to kick that
Speaker 3: silver back out. So then you have an old man
Speaker 3: get booted and then the new young stud comes in
Speaker 3: and takes over all of his ladies.
Speaker 2: Oh ouch.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But for chimpanzees, which all live together, you have
Speaker 3: the alpha bait and all the other males there. All
Speaker 3: of them can breed. It's just that the alpha males
Speaker 3: will probably get more and get the best ladies. But
Speaker 3: there are lots of different breeding strategies, so all of
Speaker 3: them have very large testicles so that they can because
Speaker 3: even the ones that are super low ranking can do
Speaker 3: sneak breeding.
Speaker 2: What does a sneak breed?
Speaker 3: A sneak breed is when a male will kind of
Speaker 3: like catch an eye of a lady and it's like
Speaker 3: it's exactly what you think it is. He goes and
Speaker 3: then she'll kind of nod her head and they'll go
Speaker 3: behind a tree and do it.
Speaker 2: Why behind a tree so that no one male.
Speaker 3: Doesn't see him?
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So if he's the ranking he could get his butt
Speaker 3: kicked for taking a nice lady.
Speaker 2: Do you think that the female is like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go bone this guy behind a tree. Don't you think
Speaker 2: she embarrassed at all like that? She's no, no, she's not.
Speaker 2: Now they're just doing it behind the back of the alpha.
Speaker 3: And then I mean we can tell like in our group.
Speaker 3: So at the lazoo, we have eighteen chimpanzees. It's one
Speaker 3: of the largest multi malee multi female groups in a
Speaker 3: zoos setting in the country, actually the largest at eighteen.
Speaker 3: So and we watch them a lot. That's part of
Speaker 3: our job is to observe and get to know this
Speaker 3: group extremely well.
Speaker 2: I mean eighteen that's like Bachelor and Paradise numbers. That's
Speaker 2: like a whole.
Speaker 3: Seven males and eleven females. And we have four generations
Speaker 3: ranging in age from two and a half years to
Speaker 3: fifty years old. So we really have been able to
Speaker 3: recreate a group that you would see in the wild,
Speaker 3: which is awesome, but because we watched them so long
Speaker 3: each day and over so many years and like generations,
Speaker 3: so that we know that there are males that have
Speaker 3: certain females that they always find very sexy, and there
Speaker 3: are females that you know, some males are kind of
Speaker 3: in the friend zone. They might get lucky occasionally, but
Speaker 3: for the most part they're buds. But then other males
Speaker 3: that I mean, anytime they can they'll just go ahead.
Speaker 3: And so we have a like we have a late
Speaker 3: teen male who's not quite an adult but is certainly
Speaker 3: starting to make his mark. So I've been working with
Speaker 3: him for six years, and so six years ago he
Speaker 3: would always sneak breed. He always had a sneak breed
Speaker 3: and now he's doing it right in front of the
Speaker 3: alpha kind of watching him, Like, what do you think
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 2: Now, Bud, if you like drama, you will love Schipansies.
Speaker 2: Does the alpha kicks?
Speaker 3: Asked? Yes?
Speaker 2: And then so what happens if they get to a
Speaker 2: point where like there's serious fighting, teeth blood, what do
Speaker 2: you do?
Speaker 3: So that's a good question. Another thing that people are
Speaker 3: kind of confused by or they kind of like hear
Speaker 3: things through pop culture of like so like they're gonna
Speaker 3: kill you, right, is a question we get, like, well,
Speaker 3: what happens if you go into the exhibit, Well, they'll
Speaker 3: kill you because they're very territorial, they're very strong, and
Speaker 3: they're very aggressive by nature. They also have very wonderful
Speaker 3: sides to them. I mean we see most of that
Speaker 3: almost all the time, but they do have a very
Speaker 3: dark side, much more so than the other great apes.
Speaker 3: So fighting is very normal for them. It's very common
Speaker 3: in the wild orange activity. It's what they do is
Speaker 3: how they release a whole lot of their energy. And
Speaker 3: but you if you sit and you watch a fight
Speaker 3: and you just wait, they make up really really fast.
Speaker 2: They do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the community, it's the community is thicker than anything.
Speaker 3: And they'll they'll defend each other to the death if
Speaker 3: they need to against outside chimpanzee groups or outside forces
Speaker 3: of fredation or what have you. But within the group,
Speaker 3: they piss each other off all the time.
Speaker 2: How do you know when they've made up, Like do
Speaker 2: they do a certain hug or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so they really communicate through vocalizing, facial expressions,
Speaker 3: and body positioning, so reconciling, you can do a if
Speaker 3: someone's kind of apologizing, they would put their wrist in
Speaker 3: the other chimpanzee's mouth. It's a very trusting thing of
Speaker 3: like are we good? Are we good? We're good? Because
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm trusting you to put my body part
Speaker 3: near in your mouth and you're not going to bite me,
Speaker 3: so like I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: Are we goodikes?
Speaker 3: And then they'll do that and then they're like and
Speaker 3: we're cool, and then they'll groom. So grooming is like
Speaker 3: they EQUI like brushing someone's hair or massaging them. It
Speaker 3: kind of reinforces social bonds. In the wild, it's also
Speaker 3: used to like clean them of bugs and dead skin
Speaker 3: cells and stuff like that, but captive chimps should be
Speaker 3: a lot cleaner than that. So for our guys, it's
Speaker 3: mostly social bonding. But we normally find that when males
Speaker 3: and again, you know, chimpanzees are aggressive and they're violent
Speaker 3: and pretty unpredictable and lovely too, right, they do have
Speaker 3: that side. Usually when the males go after the females,
Speaker 3: they use their hands and feet. There's a lot of punching, hitting,
Speaker 3: jumping on and again, chimpanzees are built to withstand this.
Speaker 3: I say, chimpannaine easy. They are easy. They are very tough.
Speaker 3: They are built for this. And so people get upset
Speaker 3: seeing that because they are so human like, they kind
Speaker 3: of just turn them into humans and they are like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, you have to do something, and that
Speaker 3: they're not humans, they're chimpanzees. They're completely different, and this
Speaker 3: is what they are built to do. So the males
Speaker 3: will usually use hands and feet to just kind of
Speaker 3: beat on the females. The females have no problem using
Speaker 3: teeth and nails, and we'll just bite anyone if they're
Speaker 3: really upset too, So it's not just the males doing it.
Speaker 3: The females are really nasty.
Speaker 2: Takeaway, do not fuck with the chimp.
Speaker 3: Occasionally we run. We like to have all our chimpanzees
Speaker 3: running in one big group because that is much more
Speaker 3: natural for different medical reasons or social issues. Over the
Speaker 3: last few years, occasionally we do have multiple groups, and
Speaker 3: one time we're experimenting which is sick of an all
Speaker 3: male and all female group. The boys got along fine,
Speaker 3: there was no problems. They were chilling out, relaxing, I mean,
Speaker 3: the calmest we have seen them in years. The females
Speaker 3: lasted two days before they started turning on each other. Really,
Speaker 3: it was complete mean girls. No, yeah, it's like real housewives, awful, awful,
Speaker 3: We're like, what are they doing?
Speaker 2: I was very disheartened and curious about this, so I
Speaker 2: ended up doing some research and I came across this
Speaker 2: paper titled female competition in Chimpanzees. What I learned is
Speaker 2: that females disperse from their family when they come of age,
Speaker 2: and then they go into groups of non relatives, and
Speaker 2: so they have to compete for food with unrelated females,
Speaker 2: and so competition, I suppose becomes more ingrained. But also
Speaker 2: I wanted to find out what that said about us
Speaker 2: as humans, because we can't learn about animals without projecting
Speaker 2: them onto our own behavior. So the paper said enhance
Speaker 2: cognitive ability may have led to the evolution of indirect
Speaker 2: competitive strategies, where human females could avoid physical injury but
Speaker 2: nevertheless harm their rivals, such as through gossip and social exclusion.
Speaker 2: So next time someone calls you bitch or doesn't invite
Speaker 2: you to their bachelorette party, maybe it's because they consider
Speaker 2: you competition for their resources. I don't know. Next time
Speaker 2: you're feeling bitchy towards someone, ask yourself, am I worried
Speaker 2: that somehow this will lead me to have less food
Speaker 2: or shelter. I don't know who knows. But if you're
Speaker 2: gonna project and go down weird avenues where we become
Speaker 2: introspective about human behavior, let's just all agree that insecurity
Speaker 2: is one of the roots of evil. This is true
Speaker 2: for females and males. Okay, Onward, By the way, this
Speaker 2: is the opinions of the podcast or Alley Ward, and
Speaker 2: not necessarily the primatology community in whole. Let's get back
Speaker 2: to how they decide on which male they throw in
Speaker 2: with a group of personnigity ladies.
Speaker 3: And so we just like they need some testosterone, like
Speaker 3: they just do. It's not very feminist to say. But
Speaker 3: the female chimpanzees they need males. So we can just
Speaker 3: move one, like the lowest ranking male we have, move
Speaker 3: them over to the female group, and the females are good.
Speaker 2: No way did you get how did you determine, like
Speaker 2: who's the biggest loser chimpanzee that we can throw in
Speaker 2: with the ladies.
Speaker 3: We know it's pretty obviously now you tell access to
Speaker 3: mates and access to food and like the best sleeping places.
Speaker 3: So if you have like a male sitting somewhere and
Speaker 3: you throw him something really yummy, like an apple or
Speaker 3: a pair, and a female walks by, and he doesn't
Speaker 3: even pick up the food, He looks the other way
Speaker 3: and pretends he never saw it, so the female can
Speaker 3: come get it. Well that's pretty sad, but he knows
Speaker 3: that if he picks up the fruit, she's going to
Speaker 3: go after him. And if a female goes after a male,
Speaker 3: you know he's really low ranking because in chimpanzee society,
Speaker 3: the males outrank the females.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, so wait, access to females food and
Speaker 2: sleeping places. So if a dude is a buster, like,
Speaker 2: he won't have a girlfriend, he'll have maybe a shitty
Speaker 2: place to sleep, he only eat Wendy's or something. Do
Speaker 2: you do that a lot? Do you apply lessons with
Speaker 2: primates to humans too much? And you're like, okay, this
Speaker 2: is there needs to be a line here.
Speaker 3: I think an important thing for us is And it's
Speaker 3: hard sometimes it's like, you know, I look at one
Speaker 3: of my chimpanzees and I see Yoshi, I see Pandora,
Speaker 3: I see Sean, I see Ben, and you have to
Speaker 3: remember that no, no, no, no, no, they're like chimpanzee first. Right.
Speaker 3: It's kind of the same with people and dogs. You
Speaker 3: know they're a dog first, but you see them as fluffy, right,
Speaker 3: Rover I was like, no, no, no, but what their needs
Speaker 3: are is dog first, right, So we know that, but
Speaker 3: you know, patrons do not. They just see them as
Speaker 3: things that kind of look like people and should be
Speaker 3: treated as such. So some of the things that they
Speaker 3: see they don't quite understand.
Speaker 2: Who gets to name these chimps, well, it depends.
Speaker 3: Usually it's the keepers that name them, but they a
Speaker 3: lot of them are adopted through donors.
Speaker 2: So in the past five years of Los Angeles Zoo
Speaker 2: has had five babies born, which is very adorable, and
Speaker 2: they decided to name four of them in Swahili, which
Speaker 2: is the predominant culture where chimpanzees come from. And they
Speaker 2: also have some with American names, like there's ben Ben
Speaker 2: the chimp, and I read a little bit about Ben Ben.
Speaker 2: Ben's fathered quite a few chimpanzee babies, hasn't he.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's had four. So yeah. So going back to
Speaker 3: like the breeding of our chimpanzees. So chimpanzees, you know,
Speaker 3: they breed all the time. It's really fun. We don't
Speaker 3: stop them from that. We couldn't even if we wanted to.
Speaker 3: So all the females are on birth control. So just
Speaker 3: like the pill, Yeah, they take the pill, So we
Speaker 3: pop out a pill every day for them and their
Speaker 3: little pill packs.
Speaker 2: Are they veterinary great?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, they're just our pills.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They take all the same medications that we do
Speaker 3: because they're their physiology is so incredibly close. We shared
Speaker 3: ninety nine percent of our DNA with them, I know,
Speaker 3: which is super crazy, right, so.
Speaker 2: You can you pop out like an orthotricyclin and you're like,
Speaker 2: here you go. Do you put it in their food
Speaker 2: or yeah?
Speaker 3: We crush it up and put it in juice for
Speaker 3: them every morning. And you know, we have some that
Speaker 3: are on like blood pressure medicine for the older ones.
Speaker 3: The ones that are being watched for heart issues because
Speaker 3: of their age will get you know, like a baby aspirin,
Speaker 3: just like a person would. You know, if they're sick,
Speaker 3: they can get antibiotics. We do cultures to make sure
Speaker 3: that we were giving them the right ones.
Speaker 2: No adderall or BIAGRAA or anything.
Speaker 3: They do not need that, yeah either that, Nope, they're good.
Speaker 3: Not not many behavior modification drugs, just more medical ones.
Speaker 2: Do you do you learn a lot about human behavior
Speaker 2: from watching primate behavior? Like do you figure out what
Speaker 2: makes you grumpy? Like?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Like what?
Speaker 3: Well? I was like the people also want to know,
Speaker 3: you know, why why do I have my job? Like
Speaker 3: what do I find so interesting about them? Because you know,
Speaker 3: you can be a zoos keeper and work with pigs
Speaker 3: or gia rafts or you know, yellow like mountain frogs
Speaker 3: and Not everyone's a primate keeper. Not everyone's a chimpanzee keeper.
Speaker 3: We are kind of a few and far between to
Speaker 3: be found who are like super passionate about chimpanzees because
Speaker 3: they are They're tough, they're very very difficult to take
Speaker 3: care of, very challenging, and so in order to stick
Speaker 3: it out and do it, you have to really really
Speaker 3: adore them and love them for who they are, and
Speaker 3: that also means accepting their good sides and their and
Speaker 3: their dark sides. One of the reasons I really like
Speaker 3: them is that they everything they feel. They feel at
Speaker 3: a ten. You know, they're happy at a ten, they're
Speaker 3: upset at a ten, they're sad at a ten, they're
Speaker 3: loving at a ten. I can't They have no filters,
Speaker 3: they cannot do that. They don't understand how to do that.
Speaker 3: So if someone's pissed off at someone else, they let
Speaker 3: them have it and then like once like we're cool, sit, groom,
Speaker 3: we're good. We just cover everything up. But the emotions
Speaker 3: are all the same, and so absolutely do you.
Speaker 2: Have you changed your behavior since becoming a zoo keeper.
Speaker 3: Actually, I decided to breastfeed my son after watching them
Speaker 3: do it because I had gone through three pregnancies and
Speaker 3: births with them, and for my own reasons, I hadn't
Speaker 3: been planning on breastfeeding. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 3: they are closest relatives, and they seem to figure it out. Okay,
Speaker 3: so maybe I should give it a shot. So, you know,
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I have talked to one other primatologist and not interviewed
Speaker 2: her for the podcast, but just was chatting with her,
Speaker 2: and I asked her if there's anything about primates has
Speaker 2: changed her own behavior, and she said, literally the same thing. Really,
Speaker 2: she said she decided she breast bet her kid until
Speaker 2: he was like six or something. She was like, I
Speaker 2: looked at all eyes, yeah, big, yeah. I was like,
Speaker 2: that's a long time. But she was like, you know,
Speaker 2: she was very like maybe it was five. I think
Speaker 2: it was like five or six. But she was like
Speaker 2: watching watching these apes and seeing how that developed bond
Speaker 2: between between you know, the ape and the child, the
Speaker 2: mother and the child. But it's interesting that that is
Speaker 2: the same thing that you took away from it.
Speaker 3: It's a natural biology. So I was like, I'll give
Speaker 3: it a shot.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I only made it three months. So for anyone like
Speaker 3: breastfeeding advocates out there, you know, do whatever. I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, would you say that your children are raised in captivity?
Speaker 2: I guess they kind of would be. Yeah, I suppose.
Speaker 2: So what made you love primates so much? Why did
Speaker 2: you become a zoo keeper?
Speaker 3: Why do I like? I don't know. It was really
Speaker 3: no Growing up. I was a science kid, but I
Speaker 3: changed a lot so it would be like palaeontology first,
Speaker 3: and then I did Yeah, there was definitely a whole
Speaker 3: astronomy thing in space. And then around fourth grade I
Speaker 3: was a very early reader as well. In fourth grade,
Speaker 3: my mom got me the book Gorillas in the myst
Speaker 3: from the library and I just dog eared that thing
Speaker 3: and I was like, gorillas are amazing. And then after that,
Speaker 3: around seventh grade, I know, I wrote a paper about
Speaker 3: being a microbiologist, and then eighth grade it was marine biology.
Speaker 3: I was very scattershot but private. I just kind of
Speaker 3: always thought they were cool. You don't have a lot
Speaker 3: of connection or experience with them, so it wasn't something
Speaker 3: that I was around all the time. I mean I
Speaker 3: would go visit the zoo and they were always my favorites.
Speaker 3: I went to the Bronx Zoo was my zoo growing up,
Speaker 3: and so they were always my favorites.
Speaker 2: Kate says that she got off track a little bit
Speaker 2: in college because she found what she was really really
Speaker 2: good at naturally was writing and reading and editing and
Speaker 2: doing more communications journalism kind of stuff. So in college
Speaker 2: she was doing that.
Speaker 3: But then all my extracurricular and extra credit things were
Speaker 3: like still paleontology and like invertebrate biology and environmental law,
Speaker 3: and I looked like as a senior, and I was like,
Speaker 3: what am I doing?
Speaker 2: Like this?
Speaker 3: This is not normal. It was too late to switch,
Speaker 3: so I finished that degree and then went back to
Speaker 3: get another bachelor's in zoology. So like, this is clearly
Speaker 3: what I should be doing. It's not something I'm naturally
Speaker 3: great at. I have to work at it, but it's
Speaker 3: what makes me really happy zoology.
Speaker 2: What does it mean to work hard at zoology?
Speaker 3: You have to do a lot of science classes, including
Speaker 3: like stats and vertebrate biology. You learn all about trila
Speaker 3: bites up to the higher form chimpanzees and whales and
Speaker 3: dolphins and things like that. You also have to have
Speaker 3: no ego because you need to gain a lot of experience,
Speaker 3: and that starts out very humbling. I mean my first job,
Speaker 3: and again I started a little bit later. I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure about my path early on. My first job was
Speaker 3: dressing up like a lobster outside of the New England
Speaker 3: Aquarium as a twenty year old. Yeah, but I did it.
Speaker 3: I did it so I would get that internship credit
Speaker 3: as an education in turn to teach kids about marine life.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what was it hot in there?
Speaker 3: When my antenna were really long?
Speaker 2: We would people come and hug you? Or would they scream?
Speaker 3: Who doesn't want to wave hide of a lobster on
Speaker 3: the street? Well, okay, I'm slowly as like like a
Speaker 3: sanction lobster, like, as long as you're somewhere you're supposed
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 2: By the way. I was desperate to see a photo
Speaker 2: of a person in a lobster costume, so I went
Speaker 2: to the New England Aquariums Instagram and I did a
Speaker 2: deep dive, which I'm right now I'm realizing that is
Speaker 2: an egregious pun. I'm sorry to deal with it. I
Speaker 2: didn't find pictures of anyone in a lobster costume, sadly,
Speaker 2: but I did find one of a human being wearing
Speaker 2: a plush hammerhead shark get up kind of like a
Speaker 2: mascot of the sea. It was glorious. If you like
Speaker 2: looking at fish, get hip to the New England Aquariums
Speaker 2: Instagram because it's very relaxing to look at So that
Speaker 2: was your first internship.
Speaker 3: At the New England Aquarium and then I did several
Speaker 3: different I had to, you know, learn to live out
Speaker 3: of my car and pack up because in the zoo world,
Speaker 3: again you need to education. You needed experience at a
Speaker 3: job for the summer, camping out on the planes, and
Speaker 3: it sounded very fancy because we were doing neonatal prey
Speaker 3: identification of plovers, which basically means setting up bug traps
Speaker 3: and picking through bugs to see what bugs live on
Speaker 3: the planes.
Speaker 2: Really, but of plovers, that's a kind of bird. So
Speaker 2: how did how do how do the bugs and the birds?
Speaker 2: What were you exactly? Like, what data were you gather?
Speaker 3: I know what the baby birds eating, okay, because it
Speaker 3: was someone's grid project and I was the grunt worker
Speaker 3: on there. So it's like I will look through this
Speaker 3: vial of two hundred and twenty two gnats and lets
Speaker 3: you know how many of them are this kind and
Speaker 3: how many of them are this kind? And I had
Speaker 3: a little id charts, so I can't because I'm not
Speaker 3: an entomologist.
Speaker 2: So she went from nats to primates.
Speaker 3: There were chickens in between. Okay, there were fancy chickens, fancy,
Speaker 3: very endangered at waters prairie chickens in Texas. Again, you
Speaker 3: start small.
Speaker 2: Okay, when you landed at the La Zoo, did you
Speaker 2: have a choice between gorillas and chimpanzees.
Speaker 3: So when you are starting out in the zoo world,
Speaker 3: and again it depends on what animals you like, but
Speaker 3: you can't really be picky. It's there's not a lot
Speaker 3: of zoo jobs out there, and there's a lot of
Speaker 3: people that want to do it. And and again it's
Speaker 3: not it's not high paying, it's not glory work. So
Speaker 3: the people who are doing it really want to be
Speaker 3: doing it so they don't get discouraged very easily. So
Speaker 3: you have all kinds of stories of people volunteering for five, six,
Speaker 3: seven years before they get a part time job, before
Speaker 3: they get a full time job. People who work in
Speaker 3: the education departments and the dosins you see, and even
Speaker 3: probably some of like the service staff you see at
Speaker 3: zoos want to be zookeepers. It's just once you're a
Speaker 3: zoo keeper. You don't tend to leave because you attained it.
Speaker 3: It's a hard job, but you want to stay there.
Speaker 2: Plus you've got a whole posse that you're friends with.
Speaker 2: You've got like eighteen chimpanzee friends. You can't just leave. Well,
Speaker 2: what is a typical day like for you? Run me
Speaker 2: through like fast forward. Do you first come in and
Speaker 2: do feedings? Do you get there at five in the morning?
Speaker 2: What's it doing?
Speaker 3: So our days are pretty we are eight to five,
Speaker 3: but most zookeepers will work weekends and holidays, so that's awesome.
Speaker 3: Work long enough, maybe they'll give you a Sunday off
Speaker 3: or like a Saturday off. I'm now up to having
Speaker 3: a Sunday Monday off, which is super cool. Our days,
Speaker 3: especially with chimpanzees, they can be different, but for the
Speaker 3: most part, a regular day would be coming in. First thing,
Speaker 3: you do your am check, make sure everyone's okay every night,
Speaker 3: make sure there were no fights, treat any new wounds
Speaker 3: that there might be. We do medical care in the
Speaker 3: morning so all of their meds get given out, kind
Speaker 3: of checks everyone. Then we clean the main exhibit and
Speaker 3: that can take anywhere from half an hour to two
Speaker 3: and a half hours, depending on how many days they've
Speaker 3: been out there or what's been going on, or if
Speaker 3: we gave them something super fun to play with them,
Speaker 3: they ripped it into a bajillion pieces. We have to
Speaker 3: clean all of that up. So we set up the
Speaker 3: exhibit and then we open the door and help that
Speaker 3: they go out. Chimpanzees are very smart, so a good
Speaker 3: way to keep them happy in captivities to give them
Speaker 3: as much choice as possible. So if they want to
Speaker 3: go out, great, If they don't, fine, they can do
Speaker 3: whatever they want. We work them in a fission fusion
Speaker 3: management style so that mimics the wild, so they can
Speaker 3: decide who they want to be with them where they
Speaker 3: want to go.
Speaker 2: So a fission fusion society, I just look this up,
Speaker 2: is one where a group changes its size or the
Speaker 2: composition depending on the time. So you might have a
Speaker 2: bunch of animals all sleeping together and that would be fusion,
Speaker 2: or they might split off, which would be fission. So
Speaker 2: they might go into groups smaller groups depending on the
Speaker 2: day at a forage, or one might sit in a
Speaker 2: corner and look at their phone during a party.
Speaker 3: So we'll have whole family groups decide that they want
Speaker 3: to splinter off and not not join the others for
Speaker 3: the day, and that's fine, we'll just put them back
Speaker 3: together night. Well, let's say they all decide to go out,
Speaker 3: which most of the time they do. Like again, they
Speaker 3: are a big family, even though they piss each other off,
Speaker 3: their big families, so most of the time they go out.
Speaker 3: Then we spend the next four hours cleaning the areas
Speaker 3: where they just work. So we have a three story
Speaker 3: building and a whole secondary enclosure that we clean. We
Speaker 3: do some educational talks, and then we spend most of
Speaker 3: the afternoon getting ready for dinner. So it's making behavioral enrichment,
Speaker 3: which we give them two to three times a day
Speaker 3: to keep their minds and bodies nice and.
Speaker 2: Active, like fidget spinners or weights or what.
Speaker 3: They would just smash those. Yeah, that is not enough
Speaker 3: for a chimpanzee. Nope.
Speaker 2: Or because this is Los Angeles, they'll have the crew
Speaker 2: from Planet of the Apes come in to record chimpanzee
Speaker 2: vocalizations or to watch how they move. These kinds of
Speaker 2: things probably don't happen in other parts of the country,
Speaker 2: but it's La.
Speaker 3: Richmond dinner. Notice how we haven't sat down much during
Speaker 3: that we do get a lunch in there sometimes occasionally
Speaker 3: in the middle of the day.
Speaker 2: How many steps a day do you walk? Do you
Speaker 2: have like a fit bit?
Speaker 3: I had a fit bit and it was about a
Speaker 3: regular day was about twenty two thousand damn. And I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, well that's not even like before I
Speaker 3: get home and run after my toddlers. So I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna wear this anymore. I think I'm good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're good. That's ten miles a day plus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy. We are moving moving.
Speaker 2: Do you have to keep a log like today Yoshi
Speaker 2: and Donna really went at it. Oh yeah you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're called I called them in my like kdrs,
Speaker 3: like keep her daily records, daily reports, and so we
Speaker 3: have a copy of the building so any keeper coming
Speaker 3: in can see what's been going on, and we keep
Speaker 3: them for the last decade.
Speaker 2: And that's all hot, hot gossip.
Speaker 3: It's all hot gossip. It can be boring stuff like hey,
Speaker 3: we have we caught like three rats today. This is
Speaker 3: where they're living, so we're gonna keep catching those. Or
Speaker 3: it can be something where you know, some chimpanzees started
Speaker 3: on a medication with this one finished a medication or
Speaker 3: its behavioral like today Glenn and Sean we're fighting and
Speaker 3: that doesn't normally happen between the alpha betos. That that's
Speaker 3: kind of interesting. We'll keep an eye on that. Or
Speaker 3: someone is swelling, wouldn't shift and the boys just sat
Speaker 3: with them all day.
Speaker 2: I was like swelling, what uh oh, okay? That comes.
Speaker 3: We need to you know, track swellings and cycles. Like
Speaker 3: we have a five year old female now that we're
Speaker 3: keeping a really close eye on to see when she
Speaker 3: has her first sexual swelling because when she does, we
Speaker 3: need to start talking about birth control for her at five.
Speaker 3: It's well, we're gonna we're starting to look at five,
Speaker 3: probably by six will need to put on birth control.
Speaker 2: Is that normal or just kids grown up too fast
Speaker 2: as days? It's being careful, okay, so.
Speaker 3: It's pretty normal. In captivity, the animals do tend to
Speaker 3: breed a little bit earlier because they have our better
Speaker 3: access to nutrition and very good healthcare. In a AZA
Speaker 3: accredited zoo.
Speaker 2: What is an AZA accredited zoo? I had no idea.
Speaker 2: So the AZA is the Association of zoos and aquariums,
Speaker 2: and in response to some shady animal exhibits, a group
Speaker 2: of animal husbandry and wildlife experts began doing essentially inspections.
Speaker 2: So according to their site, it's not easy to get.
Speaker 2: Only ten percent of the roughly twenty eight hundred USDA
Speaker 2: licensed animal exhibitors in the country are AZA accredited. It's
Speaker 2: a pretty prestigious thing. So in an AZA accredited zoo,
Speaker 2: healthcare pretty good, very good healthcare.
Speaker 3: In a AZA accredited zoom saying really good healthcare, no code.
Speaker 3: So overall they're healthier, they develop a little bit faster,
Speaker 3: so they typically wouldn't have a baby until twelve, but
Speaker 3: in captivity that can happen a much earlier.
Speaker 2: And what's your lifespan?
Speaker 3: About mid forties, mid fifties, okay, And in the wild
Speaker 3: in captivity it's basically the same, but it's kind of
Speaker 3: it's not black and white, because the infant mortality in
Speaker 3: the wild is so high that it's kind of like,
Speaker 3: if a wild chimpanzee gets age twelve, they really should
Speaker 3: live to be about fifty, but not as many do.
Speaker 3: And in AZA zoos and sanctuaries you have very very
Speaker 3: low infant mortality rate because again we can we can
Speaker 3: intervene if you have a baby not eating, for instance,
Speaker 3: and our chimpanzees are not going to die of malnutrition
Speaker 3: because we weigh them and keep close tabs on their health.
Speaker 3: And if someone's who's low ranking is not getting their
Speaker 3: a proper allotment, then we do supplemental feedings for them
Speaker 3: to make sure that they are.
Speaker 2: There's also no leopards in you're in.
Speaker 3: There are no lefferts, no, no lions, no hunting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: big benefit poachers.
Speaker 2: Not so much in the zoo.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I was listening back to this and I realized, I
Speaker 2: don't really know how I feel about zoos. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you know how you feel about zeus. Zoos
Speaker 2: seem great for the apes or are they I don't know.
Speaker 2: And I think when I was doing this interview, I
Speaker 2: was having such a lovely time talking I didn't even
Speaker 2: take it in that direction, which was a littlely responsible.
Speaker 2: So I sent Kate a thirty to fifth email and
Speaker 2: I asked her what does she say to people who
Speaker 2: don't know how they feel about zoos? What does she
Speaker 2: say to people who who don't like zeus? What's the deal?
Speaker 2: And she wrote me back a really great, concise, informative thing.
Speaker 2: I'll read it to you real quick. Just because I
Speaker 2: think it's really good to get straight from a primatologist
Speaker 2: zoo keeper's mouth. By mouth, I mean fingers and email.
Speaker 2: So here's what she said. So, most people are opposed
Speaker 2: to zoos because they believe that animals belong in the
Speaker 2: wild instead. However, there isn't much wild left, she said.
Speaker 2: Most of our wild populations of endangered species around the
Speaker 2: world are living in managed areas that are susceptible to
Speaker 2: corruption and illegal poaching and timber removal, also the illegal
Speaker 2: pet and bush meat trade. So she said, animals in captivity,
Speaker 2: in accredited zoos and sanctuaries are born in captivity and
Speaker 2: they act as ambassadors of their species. They teach millions
Speaker 2: of people about their wild counterparts and how to help them.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of information about zoos that's very
Speaker 2: outdated and incorrect. So if you're not sure, visit your
Speaker 2: local zoo and learn. Talk to the education staff, talk
Speaker 2: to the dosins, the animal keepers, and learn about the
Speaker 2: care which can be exquisite, she says, and the work
Speaker 2: that they do on behalf of the species to conserve
Speaker 2: and protect and advocate for it and for the biodiversity
Speaker 2: of the planet. I thought that was interesting. But let's
Speaker 2: as apes talk about apes talking. What did do chimpanzees
Speaker 2: grunt like kind of grunt more?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do pant hoots like they're they're like hello,
Speaker 3: kind of would be like.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They also tickle like like they laugh when you
Speaker 3: when they get tickled. We don't really tickle the adults,
Speaker 3: but the adults would tickle each other and the babies
Speaker 3: and they laugh. Oh yeah, that's It's like so creepy.
Speaker 3: It's awesome.
Speaker 2: Wait, did you call them pant hoots? Because I want
Speaker 2: that to be like my DJ name. Now that's the poots.
Speaker 3: Jane Goodall does like the most amazing pant hoot I've
Speaker 3: ever heard of human being doom.
Speaker 2: Hello, Is she a hero of yours?
Speaker 3: Yes? Yeah, event a couple of times she's like the dopest, right,
Speaker 3: She's the dopest And I got to meet her a
Speaker 3: couple times over my career, which is incredibly lucky. And
Speaker 3: she can command a room talking in a whisper, and
Speaker 3: I've never seen anyone be able to do that.
Speaker 2: Does that come in handy when when you're in the
Speaker 2: midst with gorillas? I would imagine so right being able
Speaker 2: to she did chimps, not gorilla. She did chimps. Gorillas? Yeah,
Speaker 2: why did I never know that?
Speaker 3: Jane Goodl is chimpanzees. Diane Fosse was gorillas.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Oh that's okay.
Speaker 3: So Galdicas was orangutans. Those are the Leaky Trio, the
Speaker 3: three women that Lewis Leaky gave incredible opportunities to.
Speaker 2: Okay, this just sent me down a labyrinth learning about
Speaker 2: the Leaky Trio, which is in hindsight, very unfortunate branding.
Speaker 2: But they're also called the Trimates. These were three women
Speaker 2: commissioned by anthropologist named Lewis Leaky in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: to study primates, and Jane Goodall was hired as his secretary,
Speaker 2: but then he sent her to study chimpanzees. She became
Speaker 2: Jane Goodall and barro Tegaldicus been born Baro Ta Galdicas,
Speaker 2: Baro Ta Aldacus, Galdicus, Barote Galdicus. My gosh, Barote Galdicas. Okay,
Speaker 2: I think it's Barute Goldcas. She was hired to study orangutans,
Speaker 2: which it is almost impossible not to say orangutangs. And
Speaker 2: I've had to edit out so many times I've accidentally
Speaker 2: said a rangutang, it's o rangutan. It's so hard anyway. Now,
Speaker 2: Diane Fosse, who studied Gorillaz, was hired after she traveled
Speaker 2: to Africa in nineteen sixty three. She just wanted an adventure.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna just shamelessly quote Wikipedia here because it's
Speaker 2: one of my favorite sentences in the English language. She
Speaker 2: came to Leaky's attention by spraining her ankle, falling into
Speaker 2: the excavation, and vomiting on a giraffe fossil. This whole
Speaker 2: situation sounds like a really good Jennifer Aniston movie and
Speaker 2: I love it. Also, why do you think some of
Speaker 2: the best parmatologists our ladies, Oh? Or do you think
Speaker 2: it's just chance? I think it's like a coin flip.
Speaker 3: There have been a lot of theories and books written
Speaker 3: on that. I think you know in those those are
Speaker 3: the sixties that those women started. They I can really
Speaker 3: only speak to Jane Goodall because she's the one I
Speaker 3: know the most. But you know, she didn't have the
Speaker 3: science background, she didn't have all these preconceived notions of
Speaker 3: what she should be doing. So she just came in
Speaker 3: and figured it out with very low energy and not
Speaker 3: a lot of assumptions and kind of was very open
Speaker 3: minded rather than being trained. And this is how you
Speaker 3: do things which would not work for chimpanzees. You can't
Speaker 3: come at a chimpanzee. You have to just be and
Speaker 3: see if they kind of accept you, and then once
Speaker 3: they kind of do, you can work to get closer
Speaker 3: to them. So I think, and i've most of the
Speaker 3: people who work with chimpanzees are females, but that's also
Speaker 3: because in the zoo world it seems to be a
Speaker 3: little bit more female oriented. But there are certain species
Speaker 3: that men seem to gravit hate more towards, like elephants
Speaker 3: really and like hoof stock, like giraffes.
Speaker 2: And things like that.
Speaker 3: But primates, I don't know, I'm very biased. I'm a
Speaker 3: female primatologist, but primates are very very difficult and you
Speaker 3: have to have an incredible amount of patients, which we
Speaker 3: don't all have all the time every day. But you
Speaker 3: need to be very very patient and understanding and open minded,
Speaker 3: and they're going to thwart you any chance they can.
Speaker 3: That's what they do. And we always say around the
Speaker 3: Chimp building of like the chimps win every day, the
Speaker 3: chimps win and you just have to let it go
Speaker 3: and do your best to work with them and give
Speaker 3: them what they need. But they might not need what
Speaker 3: you want them to have, and that's okay. And I
Speaker 3: think women tend tend to be a little bit more
Speaker 3: relaxed and less controlling, right, a little more nurturing, a
Speaker 3: little bit more naturing overall than not. We've had several
Speaker 3: males on the staff and the chimps thought they were great.
Speaker 3: So that's not a qualifier for anyone out there. It's
Speaker 3: just we've had women with big, loud energy personalities that
Speaker 3: the apes are kind of like, eh, well, it took
Speaker 3: her a lot longer to get integrated, whereas we've had
Speaker 3: men come in on their first day and the gym's like,
Speaker 3: you're cool.
Speaker 2: So I think it's energy, that makes sense. So the
Speaker 2: more chill you are, the better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they feed off of energy.
Speaker 2: So does that make Does do you think that that
Speaker 2: has helped you to modulate your own?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Has has that chilled you out at all?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay no, But it just.
Speaker 3: Means you put on a total facade, like if I like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's hard because you know, we all
Speaker 3: have personal lives. Zoo keepers obviously everyone does, and it's
Speaker 3: hard sometimes you cannot bring that into work. Like if
Speaker 3: I'm upset, we're stressed out of something at home in
Speaker 3: my personal life, the animals will sense that and will
Speaker 3: immediately do the opposite of everything you want them to do,
Speaker 3: which will make you more upset, make you more frustrated.
Speaker 3: Like it's not good and those people do not do
Speaker 3: well working with animals. You just you have to to
Speaker 3: cart mentalize and stop. My phone's in my pocket, but
Speaker 3: I have it on buzz and I'm not going to
Speaker 3: check it because I've got to deal with this in
Speaker 3: front of me. And like they have all their own
Speaker 3: problems too, and so I have to be super focused.
Speaker 3: And that's hard when you have stuff going.
Speaker 2: On, I bet. But is there something about it that
Speaker 2: makes you so happy that you maybe shift mood just
Speaker 2: because you like being there? Oh yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean some days are really hard. There are some days
Speaker 3: when you know we don't have enough staff. There are
Speaker 3: days when we're there when we're tired. There are days
Speaker 3: when we're hurt. There are days when we're sick and
Speaker 3: we shouldn't be at work, but the animals need us.
Speaker 3: So we just make it work, and every single day
Speaker 3: something happens that makes it worth going. I love my job.
Speaker 2: I have questions that people want me to ask you. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is kind of like a kind of like a
Speaker 2: rapid fire around.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll do my best.
Speaker 2: Just answer it.
Speaker 3: Can I say I don't know or that's insane?
Speaker 2: Yes, you can say I don't know. Do you like
Speaker 2: dumb questions in general? Like I always feel like ask
Speaker 2: smart people dumb questions because chance are other people them
Speaker 2: ros must have that questionably. Also, just in general, every
Speaker 2: once in a while, you might hear a thumping noise.
Speaker 2: There's no one sneaking up on you in your home
Speaker 2: or on your commute. Right now, Kate's dog was just
Speaker 2: in the corner and thumping its butt around. So if
Speaker 2: you hear a little noise, I'm so sorry. In post,
Speaker 2: you can't remove an adorable dog's butt. Okay, you ready
Speaker 2: for some questions, Yeah, go for it. But before we
Speaker 2: take questions from you, our beloved listeners, we're going to
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Speaker 2: Okay, your questions. Shannon wants to know do monkeys have
Speaker 2: fingerprints like humans too?
Speaker 3: Yes? You do? Really fingernails too?
Speaker 2: Really? How do they bite them off?
Speaker 3: They stay pretty short just by their natural being and
Speaker 3: crawling around and stuff, But they are pretty short.
Speaker 2: Some of them.
Speaker 3: We call them like witch nails or like coconails, like,
Speaker 3: we really want to trim that, but we don't because
Speaker 3: they can take care of themselves. They groom themselves and
Speaker 3: they groom each other. Give them a mirror, they'll pick
Speaker 3: their teeth, and they'll like kind of pluck their facial
Speaker 3: hair and things.
Speaker 2: Isn't that a big thing in philosophy and psychology that
Speaker 2: if you can recognize your own reflection, does that make you.
Speaker 3: Really really smart?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Is that common with apes?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, interesting, Okay, I vaguely remembered that this was
Speaker 2: a thing, so I looked it up and it's called
Speaker 2: the MSR, or mirror self Recognition Test, So maybe you've
Speaker 2: heard of it, that idea that if you can recognize
Speaker 2: yourself in a mirror, it means something about your consciousness. Okay.
Speaker 2: Researchers essentially test to see if an animal understands that
Speaker 2: its reflection is itself or another animal, kind of like
Speaker 2: when your college roommate us stoned and stared at the
Speaker 2: mirror forever. Not a lot of animals pass it. It
Speaker 2: said that dogs don't, but great apes like chimpanzees, possibly
Speaker 2: guerrillas pass, killer whales, dolphins, a bird or two have
Speaker 2: passed it's essentially a way to test via laboratory if
Speaker 2: you are clinically woke. It's also been said to have flaws.
Speaker 2: It's not considered law. I don't think they've done any
Speaker 2: studies where they make animals take selfies. But if they do,
Speaker 2: please ship me in a pod out into space and
Speaker 2: leave me there. That was not a rapid fire question,
Speaker 2: So sorry. JR. Wants to know what's to deal with
Speaker 2: Billy apes.
Speaker 3: Billy apes have you heard of them? They're a form
Speaker 3: of William apes.
Speaker 1: I don't know what.
Speaker 2: I have no idea, Bili. We'll look that up, and
Speaker 2: I have no idea. No, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 2: know what that is. I don't know. Maybe that maybe
Speaker 2: it's just sor of William Apes.
Speaker 3: My neighbor, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know William's my father called Billy. All Right,
Speaker 2: if this question seemed mysterious, just wait till you find
Speaker 2: out what the Billy ape is. Okay. It's from the
Speaker 2: jungles of Billy in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's
Speaker 2: also called the Bondo mystery ape. I just spent number
Speaker 2: one forty five minutes watching videos trying to figure out
Speaker 2: if those jungles are called billy or if it's pronounced
Speaker 2: like bill at or something, And maybe that's why it
Speaker 2: didn't click when we were first discussing it. But something
Speaker 2: I found out, Yes it's billy, and the mystery apes
Speaker 2: are apparently very large chimps that have gorilla like habits
Speaker 2: of ground nesting. Also, NBC sent a reporter to go
Speaker 2: capture footage, and I watched this like five minute segment
Speaker 2: of this reporter flying in camping, rolling up his pants,
Speaker 2: wading through a small stream, and then leaving with nothing,
Speaker 2: no footage. They didn't see any of these mystery apes.
Speaker 2: So chimpin ain't easy, but bondo mystery aping even harder. Okay,
Speaker 2: Mike wants to know why are apes still around if
Speaker 2: humans evolve from them, and this is a question that
Speaker 2: he feels like people who don't believe in evolution asks.
Speaker 3: Okay, apes did not evolve into humans. Humans did not
Speaker 3: evolve from apes. There was a common as ancestor million
Speaker 3: years ago the smaller primates shot off. Okay, so goodbye monkeys,
Speaker 3: off they go fifteen million years Then you have this
Speaker 3: other creature. Fifteen million years ago, the orangutans split off.
Speaker 3: Good Bye, I ranguetans next around eight million years ago.
Speaker 3: Goodbye gorillas. Off they go five to six million years ago,
Speaker 3: Off go the chimps. What was left became humans? Got it?
Speaker 2: Got it perfect? Yeah, okay, thank you. Apparently that question
Speaker 2: is asked.
Speaker 3: By super common right, like why aren't there a little
Speaker 3: hybrids around?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Although a study was just done or they just found
Speaker 3: out that in Kenya there does seem to be a
Speaker 3: about a million year window where humans or a form
Speaker 3: an early form of a human was around at the
Speaker 3: same time as a chimpanzee. Really, I didn't think so before.
Speaker 3: There's not a lot of chimpanzee fossils out there because
Speaker 3: of the nature of their rainforest habitat, they don't really
Speaker 3: fossilize real well, well.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. And then in the New World
Speaker 2: monkeys did they just split off?
Speaker 3: Like yeah, that's like the twenty million like off they went?
Speaker 2: Okay, good, all right. So I look this up because
Speaker 2: I thought maybe this was Pangaea related. But it turns
Speaker 2: out that Pangaea, that big land mass that was a
Speaker 2: cluster of all of our continents, actually drifted apart two
Speaker 2: hundred million years ago. So I was off by a
Speaker 2: lot of millions of years. So how did these New
Speaker 2: World monkeys come over from the Old World? Well, they
Speaker 2: think either by a land bridge or by a big
Speaker 2: floating raft of vegetation that came over, which I can't
Speaker 2: not think of a bunch of monkeys on a big
Speaker 2: mat of palm fronds just kicked back, cruising across the
Speaker 2: ocean loving it. And I have a feeling that it
Speaker 2: was much more accidental, and it sucked way more than that.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry monkeys. Christian wants to know he's heard that
Speaker 2: sign language is total bs. Do you have opinions on.
Speaker 3: That in general? They're pertaining to a two eights, just
Speaker 3: in general, because I would say I'm pro sign language, right.
Speaker 2: Sign language is a bunch of horse No, but Coco.
Speaker 2: She really signing Coco, by the way, a Western Lowland gorilla.
Speaker 2: She was born in nineteen seventy one the San Francisco Zoo.
Speaker 2: She was taught sign language by her keeper at a
Speaker 2: very early age, and her life has been a subject
Speaker 2: to a lot of controversy and plenty of documentaries.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, that is a big topic. Okay, I would
Speaker 3: say yes, because she can't as far as I'm aware.
Speaker 3: And again, not a Coco expert, But as far as
Speaker 3: I'm aware, she can form her own words and she
Speaker 3: starts conversations, which is a big difference. Then if I
Speaker 3: just say do you want milk? And you say milk
Speaker 3: and I say, look, you can speak like, that's not
Speaker 3: a conversation. So as far as I know, yes, However,
Speaker 3: not many places teach their ape sign language, Like for
Speaker 3: our institution, for example, we want our chimpanzees to act
Speaker 3: as ambassadors of their wild counterparts. We want people to
Speaker 3: come to a zoo and be able to see what
Speaker 3: a wild chimpanzee should behave like. That's why we have
Speaker 3: a large exhibit it with a large generation and many
Speaker 3: cool individuals that are acting the way wild chimpanzee should sign.
Speaker 3: Language is not a part of that. So it's just
Speaker 3: a different philosophy.
Speaker 2: Okay, so good to know.
Speaker 3: But yes, in some cases it would be my thing. Yes,
Speaker 3: she's actually signing.
Speaker 2: I do love that story where she blamed ripping a
Speaker 2: sink out of the wall on a kitten. Do you
Speaker 2: hear that? It's like my favorite story.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah that, I mean that that's like a
Speaker 3: whole other branch of what I do. It's very interesting,
Speaker 3: but that's like very research and finding out their capabilities.
Speaker 3: That's not studying the natural behavior of this species. And
Speaker 3: so like you know, like like I call my chimps
Speaker 3: chimp chimps because like all of our chimp chimps were
Speaker 3: raised by chimps and have always lived with chimps. You
Speaker 3: can take a chimp, remove it from its mom within
Speaker 3: a couple of days, raise it as an entertainment chimp,
Speaker 3: put it in a show, put it on TV. That's
Speaker 3: not a chimp chimp. That chimp does not know how
Speaker 3: to be a chimpanzee. It looks like a chimpanzee, but
Speaker 3: it doesn't act like one. And so when they get
Speaker 3: too big to handle it around age eight or nine,
Speaker 3: and they realize they're far too dangerous to handle anymore,
Speaker 3: and an entertainment company has to decide what to do
Speaker 3: with it, well, a lot of times they end up
Speaker 3: living alone, which is torture for such a social animal.
Speaker 3: So luckily we have a lot of sanctuaries opening up
Speaker 3: now that can take chimpanzees with a lot of basically
Speaker 3: are special needs and issues and kind of rehab them
Speaker 3: and get them in with other chimpanzees because they have
Speaker 3: a lot of time, and sanctuaries are wonderful places for
Speaker 3: animals that don't have any other options. But you know,
Speaker 3: they're full of chimps that were denied the ability to
Speaker 3: be who they were supposed to be.
Speaker 2: So do they turn into like diaper pariahs, like semi
Speaker 2: hybrid humans.
Speaker 3: Oh it's bad, yeah, yeah, because they like are a
Speaker 3: totally different culture, Like they're not chimp chimps. They're just
Speaker 3: not like so you can have zoo and you can
Speaker 3: have like, let's say there's a lab chimp that doesn't
Speaker 3: have a home. You can't just put it into a
Speaker 3: group of chimp chimps. Oh, they don't speak the same language,
Speaker 3: or the chimp chimps would be like, I don't know
Speaker 3: what you are, but you are not acting appropriately, so
Speaker 3: we're just gonna kill you. But that doesn't work. You
Speaker 3: can probably find that lab chimp a home with some
Speaker 3: other lab chimps that also might be kind of similar
Speaker 3: in some ways.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, like introducing an entertainment chimp and like
Speaker 2: suspenders and pants and he's definitely not a like Wroscraft's service,
Speaker 2: Like that's not gonna fly. No, it is not so
Speaker 2: well Carlos wants to know. Can a chimp raised in
Speaker 2: captivity use a toilet?
Speaker 3: I believe some have. Really Again, that's not natural behavior, right,
Speaker 3: you could. I mean they're pretty food motivated. I imagine
Speaker 3: you could. Okay, Chimpanzees are not naturally latrine animals, so.
Speaker 2: They tend to just kind of go wherever.
Speaker 3: It takes me four hours to clean them.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that they're not just like that's potty corner
Speaker 2: over there.
Speaker 3: I would love it right now if like we can't
Speaker 3: clean an area for several days for like we just
Speaker 3: have someone that won't leave for whatever, Like they recognize
Speaker 3: it gets gross and like won't sit in certain areas
Speaker 3: and be like ew, Like you know it's they recognize
Speaker 3: it gets gross, but you know they don't have to
Speaker 3: clean it. I do.
Speaker 2: John wants to know. This is John Purcell, friend of yours,
Speaker 2: friend of mine. He asks, why are chimps so mean
Speaker 2: and bonobo's so loving? Is that is that an appropriate question?
Speaker 3: No, John, it is not. Because chimpanzees, yes, can be
Speaker 3: violent and aggressive, they could also be extraordinarily loving. Bonobos
Speaker 3: are extraordinarily loving and can also be really nasty and
Speaker 3: aggressive chimpanzee's overall are a little bit more so and
Speaker 3: just how they evolved. They do have different societies as well.
Speaker 3: The bonobos are matriarchal societies. They have an alpha female,
Speaker 3: so the ladies run the roost there, and in chimpanzee
Speaker 3: society it's patriarchals. You have an alpha male running the roost.
Speaker 2: Is that is the matriarchal structure lend itself well to
Speaker 2: just the unending orgies that bonobos are known for.
Speaker 3: I would say yes really because but again they fight
Speaker 3: just like chimpanzees, just not as frequently, but they certainly do.
Speaker 2: That seems more like a burning man situation. Yes, just
Speaker 2: everyone just fluid as fuck, you know, like what is
Speaker 2: even happening bonobos? I feel like, are the people seem
Speaker 2: to like a tribute or people seem to put some
Speaker 2: kind of hope on bonobos that like humans can just
Speaker 2: be that just like them? Yeah, but bonobos are can
Speaker 2: they can they afford to be kind of hyper sexual
Speaker 2: because it's matriarchal?
Speaker 3: Probably?
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know. Lorenzo wants to know why do
Speaker 2: I still have back hair? But tall square jot guys
Speaker 2: don't waxing? Okay, Reggie wants to know what's the smallest
Speaker 2: primate that can learn a language of sorts? Would you
Speaker 2: would you argue that prime that primates have a language
Speaker 2: because they communicate absolutely?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure what kind of language he's
Speaker 3: talking about. But even so, there's great apes which everyone's
Speaker 3: heard of, the gorillas and ranguetans, bonobos and chimpanzees. There's
Speaker 3: also lesser apes called gibbons, and so they have found
Speaker 3: and they are more from like Indonesia and the Far East,
Speaker 3: if you will, And they've found that there can be
Speaker 3: all these different species of gibbons, but when analyzing their vocalizations,
Speaker 3: there will be regional accents across species lines.
Speaker 2: Stop it you serious? So some of them sound like Canadian.
Speaker 3: Now, like that is all whole other branch of science
Speaker 3: that I don't know about syntax and vocalizations. But I
Speaker 3: read that study and it was super impressive.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, regional dialects. That's blowing my mind.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, Chimpanzees even have like specific calls for snakes,
Speaker 3: so like the whole community knows that, like there's a
Speaker 3: snake get away because their snakes are kind of dangerous.
Speaker 2: Do they Is it a shrill, like a like a
Speaker 2: small girl screaming.
Speaker 3: No, it's it. It's like a bark. I've only heard
Speaker 3: it once, but I immediately was like, I think that's
Speaker 3: the snake bark and it totally was. It was like
Speaker 3: a tiny garter snake. Because they don't know. But if
Speaker 3: we hear them make that call, we pull them off
Speaker 3: e xib and find the snake because it could be
Speaker 3: it could be a rettle snake.
Speaker 2: In southern California. That's interesting that the snake fears are
Speaker 2: so ingrained.
Speaker 3: Ooh, do you want to know their fun story? Yeah,
Speaker 3: another cocktail effect. There was a study done in wild
Speaker 3: chimpanzees where they had all they there was a path
Speaker 3: that the chimpanzees walked along really frequently and it was
Speaker 3: really narrow, so it had to be single file. And
Speaker 3: they put a fake snake, like a fake dangerous snake
Speaker 3: in like right off the path, and this chimp that
Speaker 3: had friends following them would bark to tell them the
Speaker 3: snake was there. The chimps, they had chimps, they weren't
Speaker 3: so closees wouldn't tell them. What sneaky.
Speaker 2: That's some sabotage right there.
Speaker 3: They're sneaky. We had a female who loves to start trouble.
Speaker 3: She just she just finds it fun as far as
Speaker 3: we can tell. She just gets a kick out of it.
Speaker 3: And she was really, really pregnant, so she couldn't do
Speaker 3: it anymore. And she'd sit and she'd wait for the
Speaker 3: lowest dranking female to walk by, and she'd shove her
Speaker 3: into one of the males and try to start a
Speaker 3: fight that way, and the female would just run away
Speaker 3: like I I didn't do I didn't do it. I
Speaker 3: didn't know I didn't know it. And then the pregnant
Speaker 3: one would just sit there and just stare drama the girls,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, do you sometimes just sit and watch?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, all the time. They're fascinating.
Speaker 2: They have put cameras up to see what happens in
Speaker 2: the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: We thought they went to sleep at like five point
Speaker 3: thirty and kind of woll up around six, but they don't.
Speaker 3: They are up up all night. And Ben always gets
Speaker 3: up around four in the morning and runs around thumping
Speaker 3: his big old feet around and waking everyone up, and
Speaker 3: they all start yelling at him. Oh my god, I'm
Speaker 3: not RESTful. I wonder you see them sleeping during the day.
Speaker 2: This is the best. This is the best reality show ever.
Speaker 2: Now I want to meet Ben. I want to be like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, is that.
Speaker 3: Him when you're stucking me anyway?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I'm like popping by the zoo. Hey,
Speaker 2: Kathy wants to know if you have thoughts on primates
Speaker 2: having a bona fide culture. A lah friend to Wall
Speaker 2: and I don't know who friend to Wall.
Speaker 3: Is fronts to Wall. He's a very big primate researcher.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: They absolutely have cultures even within if you're comparing like
Speaker 3: different wild chimpanzees in different countries or different communities will
Speaker 3: hunt differently or behave slightly differently. Zoo groups will have
Speaker 3: their own cultures as well, just things they've learned within
Speaker 3: this zoo. And so it's kind of interesting, Like if
Speaker 3: you don't move chimpanzees a ton, but if you do,
Speaker 3: one will move and like teach things to a new community,
Speaker 3: which is kind of cool. So they definitely have their
Speaker 3: own ways to do things. I mean, there's certain cultures
Speaker 3: in the wild that will make spears to stab bush
Speaker 3: babies in trees. Not every chimp can do that. That's
Speaker 3: something that was learned within that one community because they
Speaker 3: live with these small prosimians called bushbabies.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say, what's the hell's of bush babies.
Speaker 3: It's like a mouse monkey with really big eyes. It's
Speaker 3: like something that the five year old would drow. Oh,
Speaker 3: but they're super cool and they live in trees and
Speaker 3: they come out at night.
Speaker 2: I think, do they want to eat them? Yes, they
Speaker 2: do raw.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe they try them out in the sun or something.
Speaker 3: Oh no, they just rip them to pieces. Okay.
Speaker 2: When I first heard the term bush babies, I could
Speaker 2: not think of a family portrait of George W. Bush
Speaker 2: and his grandchildren, which was upsetting. I looked it up.
Speaker 2: These things honestly do look like living cartoons. They're also
Speaker 2: called galagos or naga pies, which means little night monkey,
Speaker 2: and they're related to lemurs and Loris's so they have
Speaker 2: those huge, like hubcap eyes. And if you're having a
Speaker 2: bad day, Google image search them immediately. They do not
Speaker 2: look real. In fact, in the Google images, I came
Speaker 2: across a picture of a stuffed animal, and that stuffed animal,
Speaker 2: by comparison, sucked it like, wasn't even half as cute
Speaker 2: as a real bush baby galago naga pie. Oh, they're
Speaker 2: so cute. I don't want to think about them being
Speaker 2: in peril. Okay, back to tool.
Speaker 3: Use and yeah, and I mean there's some chimp communities
Speaker 3: that will do termite will use tools to do termite fishing,
Speaker 3: and others that use different tools for ant fishing, and
Speaker 3: different communities that will use like anvioles and small small
Speaker 3: hand rocks to break nuts and things. So they all
Speaker 3: do it slightly differently, which means it's learned within that
Speaker 3: community and it's passed again. They're peer learners from generation
Speaker 3: to generation.
Speaker 2: So they'll be like, this is how you make a
Speaker 2: spirit of kill a bush baby? Yes, and eat bush babies? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean there's a lot of studies going
Speaker 3: on right now where they will watch these like cool
Speaker 3: resource sites like a termite mound or an ant mound
Speaker 3: or whatever, and then watch them like make the tools
Speaker 3: and then leave the tools and then so they can
Speaker 3: use them like the next week, so like they have
Speaker 3: four sat to be like next week when I come back,
Speaker 3: when the ants have been replenished, my tools are still here.
Speaker 3: And that the mom will sometimes and it's usually the
Speaker 3: moms teaching teaching little ones. They'll make an extra tool
Speaker 3: for them or just hand in their tool when they're done.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of like direct learning. I mean
Speaker 3: I got to watch one of our moms like directly
Speaker 3: teaching her kid to walk, which was super cool because
Speaker 3: she'd put her down and she'd cry, and then she'd
Speaker 3: move four feet away and then beck into her and
Speaker 3: be like, come on, you can do it. You could
Speaker 3: do it. And I watched it for like an hour.
Speaker 3: It was amazing.
Speaker 2: Did you get emotional?
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: Did you cry a little bit?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Did everyone like whip out their cameras like soup keepers?
Speaker 3: Photos are hilarious. I mean, it's like a two thousand
Speaker 3: pictures of our animals.
Speaker 2: We love them.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are are passions.
Speaker 2: So okay, topical warning, there will be some discussion about
Speaker 2: poop right now. This question got asked multiple times, okay,
Speaker 2: once by Ivan, Why I do monkeys fling their poo
Speaker 2: when they're agitated?
Speaker 3: Okay? Well one, not all monkeys do that, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: so that is also a learned behavior. All right, So
Speaker 3: there are some communities that they all fling their poo
Speaker 3: and some that they do not. They do not have
Speaker 3: the I don't know what the word is, deterrence of
Speaker 3: fecal matter that we do like that is something that
Speaker 3: humans are like, ooh, that's disgusting gross. Chimpanzees don't and
Speaker 3: other primates don't have that. It's something that comes out. Hey,
Speaker 3: that's interesting, and it's there and.
Speaker 2: It gets a little bit grosser right now for about
Speaker 2: ten twenty seconds.
Speaker 3: Maybe if I ate something really yummy yesterday and it's
Speaker 3: in there, maybe I kind of want to eat it again,
Speaker 3: to see it, to like taste it again. So they
Speaker 3: don't think of it as.
Speaker 2: Gross.
Speaker 3: It just is. It is gross to us. And as
Speaker 3: a keeper, I'm like, no, don't do it, but it's
Speaker 3: what you do. But ew, it's really gross and it's
Speaker 3: something to throw. I mean, our chimpanzees don't. We don't
Speaker 3: really have an issue in our zoo with it. But
Speaker 3: they'll throw rocks that they find, they throw, pine cones,
Speaker 3: they throw. If we give them coconut shells, they'll throw
Speaker 3: coconut shells. And they do it when they're upset because
Speaker 3: it's they need to again. They show when they are
Speaker 3: upset and if they can't reach somebody else they will
Speaker 3: throw something to make sure that they know. So we
Speaker 3: have like one male who loves to throw objects at
Speaker 3: one particular female, so he waits for her to walk
Speaker 3: below him and he'll nail her in the back with something.
Speaker 3: Does he like her or hatter does not love her
Speaker 3: very much? Okay, but they're on different sides. So even
Speaker 3: though we have one community, we have two kind of
Speaker 3: dueling groups. Whereas like the alpha male will come from
Speaker 3: each group and it's been going back and forth for years.
Speaker 3: So she has aligned herself with the other political party
Speaker 3: than the one that's currently in power, and he knows that.
Speaker 3: So he just likes to get a riser. And she
Speaker 3: screams a lot. So if you make her scream, then
Speaker 3: it also makes you look super scary that you cause
Speaker 3: such a reaction.
Speaker 2: That is so conniving. This is such a soap opera.
Speaker 3: It's Game of thrones.
Speaker 2: Really, this is amazing. It is, I mean, does it?
Speaker 2: It must? It just must make you reflect on personality
Speaker 2: so much, why certain people have certain personalities like just.
Speaker 3: How and ours are Every chimpanze, every primate is going
Speaker 3: to be incredibly different. You just have to watch long
Speaker 3: enough and you will see them come out and they
Speaker 3: are not hidden. They don't hide anything.
Speaker 2: What's your least favorite thing about your job or the
Speaker 2: worst day on the.
Speaker 3: Job you've ever had, That would be a tie between.
Speaker 3: We do have some medical things that pop up that
Speaker 3: are heartbreaking because they are our loves, they are our passions,
Speaker 3: and they're going to have medical issues just like we would,
Speaker 3: and it's difficult because they can't talk to us, so
Speaker 3: it's trying to figure out what has happened, what's going on,
Speaker 3: what's the best thing to do in this case. So
Speaker 3: medical stuff is tough, especially end of life stuff in
Speaker 3: a zoo, because a lot of keepers have worked with
Speaker 3: their animals for ten plus years and our job is
Speaker 3: to care for them until their end. And that's the
Speaker 3: same thing as owning a pet and making those difficult decisions.
Speaker 3: But you know, most people have one or two dogs
Speaker 3: and a couple of cats. When you have forty animals
Speaker 3: in your care, that comes up more often and that's
Speaker 3: really hard. So that stuff kind of sucks, but it's
Speaker 3: part of the job and you have to be super
Speaker 3: objective about it as well, and that's also hard when
Speaker 3: you have patrons not understanding you know, well that animal
Speaker 3: looks really bad, and you're like, while that animal has
Speaker 3: lived five years past his end of life, but he's
Speaker 3: still eating and he's happy, and like we're doing our
Speaker 3: best we can.
Speaker 2: And when do they look ratchet? Like do they have
Speaker 2: like an eye missing or something, or like when when
Speaker 2: would a patron say, like that chip looks terrible?
Speaker 3: I mean some some of the chimp wounds look pretty bad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not gonna lie. They they really do injure each other,
Speaker 3: but they heal at a rate I mean incredible. There again,
Speaker 3: they're not people, so people will see a wound on
Speaker 3: a chimpanzee think, oh my god, what if my kid
Speaker 3: had that wound? Why are they not in a hospital
Speaker 3: in a sedated coma, And it's like they will heal
Speaker 3: from that, like without ever eating stitches. Like you gotta
Speaker 3: just trust what we're doing. And so that's where it
Speaker 3: kind of there's a disconnect between like people assuming that
Speaker 3: the zoo keepers don't care and are just letting animals speed.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know what, you don't know that the
Speaker 3: animal that looks bad over there is currently undergoing chemo
Speaker 3: because we're doing everything we can to make sure that
Speaker 3: he's comfortable or this one's technically in hospice care right now,
Speaker 3: so yes, we know she's limping, but like we assure you,
Speaker 3: she's getting vet checks every single day. We're monitoring things closely.
Speaker 3: We like the people who will then say something and
Speaker 3: want to talk about it, because once we explain it,
Speaker 3: they typically understand it's just a lack of knowledge. So
Speaker 3: I was like, come hang out, talk to staff. We
Speaker 3: always have education and people in Dosin's upfront like talk
Speaker 3: to them learn. I mean, that's that's a big reason
Speaker 3: why people go to zoos.
Speaker 2: Did you were you surprised that Harambe became such a
Speaker 2: weird internet meme? If you touched anything that had the Internet,
Speaker 2: you might have been familiar with the Harambe meme. This
Speaker 2: is after a silver backed gorilla was shot and killed
Speaker 2: at the Cincinnati Zoo after a toddler fell into his enclosure.
Speaker 2: This sparked a lot of debate and outrage and then
Speaker 2: a bunch of really weird Twitter memes and Internet memes.
Speaker 2: If you want to go down that hole, go to
Speaker 2: Know Your Meme dot com, which does an excellent job
Speaker 2: of explaining the inside jokes on the Internet that you
Speaker 2: don't get. But back to the actual incident. How did
Speaker 2: Kate feel about having to see a primate killed to
Speaker 2: protect a human. That's just tragic and sad all around.
Speaker 2: So my short answer is, look, I see it as
Speaker 2: a zoo keeper.
Speaker 3: I've seen it as someone who has worked with silver
Speaker 3: back gorillas, and as someone with someone who has at
Speaker 3: that age was a three year old toddler. It's a
Speaker 3: tragic accident because I could see every single side, including
Speaker 3: like the ones who like zoos and the ones who
Speaker 3: don't like it's this tragic accident. It happened. It's horrible,
Speaker 3: and in my opinion, the zoo did one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of the right thing. There's nothing else you can do.
Speaker 3: You can't go to a zoo knowing that the zoo
Speaker 3: takes human life as anything other than the top priority.
Speaker 3: It's you can't do that, and it's something that they
Speaker 3: had to do, and I appreciate that people were concerned about.
Speaker 3: Like the tranquilizer dart, which again is just in TV.
Speaker 3: You shoot usually it's like a character like on Friends.
Speaker 3: I shoot you in the button, then you fall down.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work like that. I have been there when
Speaker 3: a silver bacuerrilla was tranquilized and it made him worse.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it made him enraged. And it took another
Speaker 3: half hour for him to go down. You cannot do
Speaker 3: that with a toddler. And even if he was trying
Speaker 3: to protect which in the beginning, honestly, he just looked confused.
Speaker 3: He looked scared. His lips were pursed, were kind of
Speaker 3: puffed out a little bit, which means like they're not sure,
Speaker 3: but they're very, very upset. He could have killed that
Speaker 3: kid just by accident. They had to do that, and
Speaker 3: it was super tragic. And I kept thinking about the
Speaker 3: keepers behind the door who knew that if they didn't
Speaker 3: get hit in, he was dead. They knew that, yeah,
Speaker 3: and they did everything they could and they couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: And so that's just horrible. It's just tragic.
Speaker 2: How much of your job is spent on like safety guidelines,
Speaker 2: most a lot of it.
Speaker 3: Patron safety is never like when we talk about like, okay,
Speaker 3: what if we have an animal escape, the first thing
Speaker 3: is patron safety, like what can we do to assure
Speaker 3: that no patrons get hurt? Second is animal safety? And
Speaker 3: our safety is in there too, but we know what
Speaker 3: to do, but like that's not my my top concerns like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna walk myself in the building and just pretend
Speaker 3: this goes away. No, that is not our that is
Speaker 3: not what we're trained to do. So it's patron safety first.
Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite day on the job? Is
Speaker 2: there a day that like it sparkles when you think
Speaker 2: about it, as cheesy as it is, and I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna take it back like a unicorn?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is that what you means?
Speaker 3: Can we really lay it on there? A unicorn sprinkly day?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, hmmm. I will regret asking this question. The
Speaker 2: answer will forever haunt me.
Speaker 3: You know, birthdays are kind of awesome.
Speaker 2: You're like, what's the problem? Ally, what's why do you
Speaker 2: have a problem with birthdays? I really really thought that
Speaker 2: she meant like a birthday party, and I immediately pictured
Speaker 2: a chimp in a hat tooting a party horn with
Speaker 2: maybe a partially demolished Costco sheet cake nearby. That's not
Speaker 2: the kind of birthdays she meant. She meant birth space days.
Speaker 3: Especially when we've been you know, you know, chimpanzees have
Speaker 3: an eight month gestation period and we monitor their pregnancies
Speaker 3: with ultra sounds, so like we're kind of with them
Speaker 3: and we're doing the epts in the beginning and are
Speaker 3: doing our little dances when we learn that they're pregnant.
Speaker 2: Which they take a regular petas do like they do.
Speaker 3: Everything we do. Gosh, it's weird. It's super exciting. We
Speaker 3: can get the positive.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So the birthdays are fun. Sometimes it's at night, but
Speaker 3: there have been a couple during the day when, like you,
Speaker 3: they're in labor all day and you're there for the
Speaker 3: birth and that's really exciting. It's kind of gross too, actually,
Speaker 3: because so unlike us.
Speaker 2: Listen, this is about to get uh, it's not gonna
Speaker 2: get gross. It's about to get fucking revolting for about
Speaker 2: forty five seconds. So if you capital see can't capital
Speaker 2: d deal, which trust me I understand, hit the fast
Speaker 2: forward button. Forty five seconds fast forward. I'm not judging you.
Speaker 2: But if you're down for a very brief trip down
Speaker 2: the willy Wonka tunnel that is the miracle of life,
Speaker 2: gurd your loins. Dive headfirst into these great ape birth factoids.
Speaker 3: They will so the as soon as like the baby
Speaker 3: pops out and the placenta pops out, the close females
Speaker 3: will just eat the placenta. Oh boy, so like the
Speaker 3: mom will go pick up the baby, and the other
Speaker 3: females just like lap of the rest of that stuff up,
Speaker 3: which is great. They clean for me. That's the one
Speaker 3: time they clean for me. I know, it's pretty gross.
Speaker 2: Why do they do that?
Speaker 3: I don't know, so, like is it well, we think
Speaker 3: it came out. We think they already ate it. It's
Speaker 3: probably very nutritious. You know, it's very big now to
Speaker 3: do pills and things. I know that, but like they
Speaker 3: just eat it all.
Speaker 2: That's gonna take me a while the stuff thinking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's still warm and everything.
Speaker 3: Oh, it might even be quivering. It might even be quivering,
Speaker 3: might be.
Speaker 2: If you were listening closely, you can hear that. Even
Speaker 2: her dog was shuddering in the background.
Speaker 3: Well, my birthdays are great. I mean they're because all
Speaker 3: of ours are planned and we've been excited and expecting them,
Speaker 3: and as long as everything goes well, it's really exciting
Speaker 3: and it's really nerve racking until you hear the baby nurse.
Speaker 3: And as soon as you hear the baby, I would
Speaker 3: say probably baby nursing is the greatest, the greatest days.
Speaker 3: Then we're good, cool, mom and baby are good. We're
Speaker 3: not gonna have to intervene here. We don't want to
Speaker 3: have to do that.
Speaker 2: You don't want to have to breast pomp, sure, I don't.
Speaker 3: I'll do it. It's my job, right, It's not my
Speaker 3: normal part of my job, but we will go to
Speaker 3: any extreme length. We have to to keep our animals
Speaker 3: healthy and happy. I mean, that's that's our job.
Speaker 2: So we'll do it. But it's not always pleasant. And
Speaker 2: so where can people find you? You're You're at the
Speaker 2: La Zoo. So anyone sees a cool a cool looking chick,
Speaker 2: like super pretty, super pretty girl, it's like wind in
Speaker 2: our hair always.
Speaker 3: I always look fresh as a daisy. The marks on
Speaker 3: my outfit are not poo but all they're totally just
Speaker 3: like dirt. So yeah, I'm usually at the chimpanzees of
Speaker 3: Mohali Mountain And if a zoo keeper is not around
Speaker 3: or accessible, our education staff is excellent and they are
Speaker 3: spread out all over the zoo. Most of them have
Speaker 3: knowledge about the animals all.
Speaker 2: Over the zoo.
Speaker 3: So like, seek someone out if you have a question
Speaker 3: or a common or concern, Like really, most of the time,
Speaker 3: we have a very logical answer for things and if
Speaker 3: we don't, we can always get the information to you
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 2: So as always find smart people, ask them questions. Yes,
Speaker 2: we're normally pretty nice. And as a footnote, if you
Speaker 2: are curious about how you could make an impact or
Speaker 2: how you could contribute to great ape conservation, a couple
Speaker 2: of ways. Number one, don't use companies that use greade
Speaker 2: apes in their products or advertising or animal shows. Don't
Speaker 2: pay to take a selfie with a chimpanzee. Don't purchase
Speaker 2: a birthday card that involves a chimpanzee wearing sunglasses on it.
Speaker 2: You can also learn about the situations that chimpanzees are
Speaker 2: seeing in the wild by going to your local zoo,
Speaker 2: or you can like the Facebook pages for the Jin
Speaker 2: Goodall Institute or the World Widlife Fund. Another thing you
Speaker 2: can do that I never even thought of, but check
Speaker 2: for palm kernel oil in the ingredients of things you
Speaker 2: eat when things you use. It's in a ton of
Speaker 2: Halloween candy, for example. And by buying things that have
Speaker 2: palm kernel oil, you are helping to contribute to the
Speaker 2: deforestation of habitats for orangutang. So check that out. Thank
Speaker 2: you guys so much for listening. If you want to
Speaker 2: keep up to date or tell friends about this, you
Speaker 2: can use the handles on Twitter, Ologies, pod and Instagram. Ologies.
Speaker 2: I'm also on there as Ali Ward. Also, if you
Speaker 2: feel like purchasing any ologies merch that now exists, which
Speaker 2: is a crazy, weird dream come true that anyone would
Speaker 2: want to buy a shirt about this, we now have
Speaker 2: a page ologiesmerch dot com. And thank you huge thank
Speaker 2: you to Shannon Eltis who is Urban Farm Foods PDX
Speaker 2: on Facebook. She's an awesome chef in Portland. And her
Speaker 2: sister Bonnie Dutch b o n I Dutch, who is
Speaker 2: an artist. She has an Etsy page. Do you look
Speaker 2: her up? Both of them who are helping me with merch,
Speaker 2: They're being amazing. I can't even deal with it. So anyway,
Speaker 2: those are the footnotes. Please stay tuned next episode Paleontology.
Speaker 2: In fact, one of our one of our specimens may
Speaker 2: be the largest dinosaur from North America. That's huge, literally yeah.
Speaker 4: Pacodermatology, homology, ordo zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, pathology, anthology.
Speaker 2: Seriologyology.
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