watch now! detail...
narrator:what are they thinking? man:oh, look at that face! narrator:is there any way to get insidethe animal mind? man:what i really want to know iswhat is it like to be an animal, what are the problemsthey have to solve, and how do they think,and are they like us or are they like somethingtotally different? narrator:they have some amazingabilities. is it instinct, trainingor something else?
cutting-edge animal sciencereveals new answers. we put different speciesto the test in search of the rootsof animal intelligence. who are the bestproblem solvers? who wins the battleof the super senses? in this episode,what makes an animal smart? woman:up until a million years ago, the brainiest specieswere dolphins and whales. narrator:what can we learn from theirlanguage, relationships,
even emotions? man:if you start givingone of them grapes, then the one who gets cucumberbecomes very upset. narrator:are they more like usthan we ever thought possible? man:we're not the only speciesthat has soap operas going on every day in their lives. (monkeys screeching) narrator:"inside animal minds:who's the smartest?" right now on nova.
(dog whining) narrator:which animals are the smartest? and how did they get this way? (whistle blows) narrator:dolphins have long been hailed as the cleverest creaturesin the sea. there's no doubtthey're quick learners. and in captivity, they can be trainedto perform stunning tricks.
not only can they followhand signals... but they can even learnthe meaning of written symbols. (cheering) why would a mammal that spendsmost of its time underwater and has flippersinstead of hands have these kinds of skills? throughout the animal kingdom,you can find creatures with extraordinary talents: elephants with impressivememories,
birds that solvecomplicated puzzles and tool-making chimpanzees. they inhabitutterly different worlds and come in a wide varietyof shapes and sizes. but is it possiblethat these animals could all get their smartsin similar ways? because whether they walk,swim or fly, the cleverest animals on earth,including us humans, seem to have one thingin common:
we live in groups. so could social livingbe the key to creating the mostpowerful minds? around the world, animal researchersare trying to find out. and this is oneof their favorite subjects. everyone knows that dolphinscan put on incredible shows. but their greatest performancestake place far from the crowds because here in the wild,
these animals executethe most amazing tricks when they work as a team. in these shallow watersoff the coast of florida, dolphins band together to getthe better of fast-moving fish. here's how their trickery works. one dolphin swims in a circle. it whips up a wallof muddy water, corralling any fish inside. three other dolphins waitjust outside the ring of mud.
as the fish try to leap outof the muddy ring and escape, they jump right into the openmouths of the waiting dolphins. soon, a dolphin swings aroundagain to create another corral. they seem in perfect synch, as if they've plannedevery move together. but what's really going on? are they strategizing andcommunicating with each other the way we would? or are they simplydrawn together on the hunt
by pure instinct? one big reason to suspect that something more complexis going on is this: the dolphin brain. when you look at the sizeof most animal brains, there's usuallya pretty direct link to the size of their bodies. the bigger the body,the bigger the brain. but some animalsdefy expectations.
humans have much moregray matter than other animals our size. so do chimps and whales. and so do dolphins. so how did their brains get big? lori marino:the $6 million question has always been, why do dolphins and whaleshave such large brains? narrator:neuroscientist lori marino istrying to answer that question
by hunting downsome very ancient clues. she travelsall over the country, studying fossils to trace theevolution of the dolphin brain. marino:one of the things that we wantedto find out with this research was exactly when they gottheir large brains. narrator:here at the smithsonianinstitution, she and her colleague mark uhenare examining fossil skulls of the dolphin'sancient ancestors:
early whales calledarchaeocetes. some archaeocetes were huge,ferocious predators with gigantic teeth. compared to modern dolphins,their bodies were massive. growing up to 55 feet long, in their day,nearly 40 million years ago, they were the biggest animalson earth. today, examining fossil skullsof early whales, lori is trying to estimatethe size of the brains
that once sat inside. in ancient fossils, the spacewhere the brain was housed is often filled with sediment. but a ct scan can seethrough the sediment and reveal the exact dimensions. marino:we were absolutely thrilled to see the resultsof the study because it gave us informationno one had before. narrator:when lori examines the ct scansof this giant killer's skull,
she discoversnot everything was big. marino:this animal had a very big bodyand a very small brain. narrator:but a few million years later,things started to change. marino:something happened, and what we see is a shift. narrator:when lori looks at more recentdolphin ancestors, dating to about30 million years ago, she discovers, in evolutionaryterms, a fairly sudden shift. bodies and teeth shrank,
but at the same time,brains got bigger. the brain of the early dolphinsand whales increased in size, sometimes manyfold. narrator:the dolphin brain got bigand stayed that way. in fact, for millions of years,until early humans came along, the dolphin had the mostpowerful brain on the planet. marino:up until abouta million years ago, the brainiest specieson the planet were not primates; they were dolphins and whales.
and we are just a very recentkid on the block. narrator:the question is,why did the brain change? marino:everyone would like to knowwhy there was this shift in relative brain sizewith dolphins. it really is a mystery. it suggests that they embarked on a very different evolutionarypath than their ancestors. narrator:lori thinks that pathwas a social one. no longer giant, toothy beasts,
individuals could increasetheir chances for survival by joining forces. marino:perhaps they neededto hunt together, to band togetheragainst predators, so these new animals weresmaller and not as formidable. they kind of needed each other. narrator:today, more than 30 differentkinds of dolphins swim the seas, includingthe bottlenose dolphin, the spotted dolphin
and the orca, or killer whale,the largest of all dolphins. most live in groups, or pods, usually of a few dozenindividuals. sometimes, pods will cometogether, forming a mega-pod numbering in the hundredsor thousands. it seems clear that today'sdolphins need each other, but why would they needbig brains, too? to find out, we need to divedeep into the dolphin world... here, in the caribbean watersnear the island of bimini.
okay, al, we're readywhen you are! narrator:researchers kathleen dudzinskiand kelly melillo sweeting have spent years trackingwild spotted dolphins, carefully observing andrecording their interactions, trying to decipher the secretsof dolphin society. today, the scientists encounter a gathering of dolphinsswimming together. there are about 16,of mixed sexes and ages. kathleen dudzinski:what we definitely saw was asocializing group of dolphins.
they were interacting, playing, they were affectionatewith one another. narrator:by observing these dolphinsyear after year, researchers are beginningto get a clearer picture of what dolphin societyis really like. compared to many land mammals, dolphin society is extremelycomplex and dynamic, and many of the relationshipsthey form might surprise you. the only connection that followsa predictable pattern
is the one between a motherand her calf. among spotted dolphins, the two will stay togetherfor about three years, until the youngster is weaned. after that,almost anything goes. males and females who mate don'tform long-term relationships. but sometimes adult females do and help each other outwith babysitting duties. kelly melillo sweeting:"white blotch"was one adult female
that we saw very consistentlyfor ten years, and she was notorious as what appeared to bea babysitter. she'd come to the boatwith her own calf and she'd have two or threeextras in tow. and we know they only haveone calf at a time, so it was a very clear example of that babysittingand taking turns. narrator:and it's not just the femaleswho form close relationships
and collaborateto make life easier. male dolphins competewith one another to find mates, but sometimes two or three maleswill form an alliance to work together, to huntand to attract females. often these relationshipslast for many years, even entire lifetimes. dudzinski:i do believe that dolphins have friendships and favorites and that their socialinteractions
are developing the friendshipsthat they might have that might last a lifetime. narrator:those in close relationshipskeep in touch-- literally-- by tapping each other'spectoral fins. but even if they're in some kindof alliance or friendship, dolphins like these willregularly mingle with others. this flexible social structure is known asa "fission-fusion" society. human societyis also fission-fusion.
during an average day, we will movefrom small family groups to larger groups of colleagues to mid-size gatheringsof friends. dolphins formall sorts of relationships, just like we do. and they change over time. it's a complicatedand bustling social world. and it's this social complexitythat some scientists think
could hold the key to theevolution of bigger brains. marino:when you're a social animal, there's a lot that you needto keep track of. there's all kindsof relationships, all kinds of interactions,hierarchies, collaborations that may occur. there's a very nice relationshipbetween social complexity that you observein a species organization and the size of their brain.
narrator:so how do dolphinsuse their big brains to navigate their social lives? is it possiblethat some of that brain is powering a complex systemof communication? after all, wheneverdolphins get together, the water can get very noisy. (dolphins clicking) dolphins makeall kinds of sounds: fast-paced clicksthat sound like a creaky door...
(clicking and creaking) loud outbursts that resemblesquawking birds... (loud clicking) and high-pitched whistles. (whistling) for decades, researchershave been trying to figure out what it all means. but in the 1960s,one controversial scientist took an alternative approach.
neuroscientist john lillywas convinced that dolphins were much more intelligent thanpeople had previously thought. diana reiss:john lilly wasa neurophysiologist who was the firstto really suggest that dolphins might behighly intelligent. he was the first to reallysort of light the fire and get a lot of us interested. he talked about themas humans of the sea. and i just want to talkto such ancient characters
and find out, you know,if they have any wisdom for us. narrator:rather than decipheringtheir language, lilly decided the quickest routeto communicating with dolphins would be to teach one of themhow to speak english. and he set out to do just that, with one of the strangestanimal experiments ever devised. reiss:john lilly did an experiment that involved buildinga dolphin house. and what he did was
he bought propertyand he flooded the first floor so the dolphin could actuallylive in this first floor area. narrator:with the dolphin, named peter, living in less thanfour feet of water, it wasn't a veryhumane approach. but the idea was to keep peterin close contact with his teacher. reiss:he actually had a womanliving there with the dolphin in a very intense time,
where she tried to teachthis dolphin english. narrator:the young womanwas margaret howe, and she lived, ate and slepthere for two and a half months, trying to teach peter every day. this is a sound recording of margaret counting whilepeter attempts to imitate her. margaret: one, two, three, four, five. (peter squeaks five times) margaret: one, two, three, four, five, six.
(peter squeaks rapidly) narrator:it's safe to saythe dolphin house experiment was both unethicaland a complete failure. reiss:what the dolphins didwas not english. they could imitate the numbersof syllables they were hearing, but they couldn'tformulate english. they don't have the same kind ofarticulatory system we have. narrator:in spite of its shortcomings, lilly's workgot a lot of attention
and inspired the hollywood film the day of the dolphin. what do you knowabout linguistics? narrator:the fictional scientist,played by george c. scott, seemed to have better luckteaching his dolphin to count "one, two, three"in english than john lilly ever did. dolphin:one... two... three!
narrator:for real-life scientists, lilly's workshowed that any idea of teaching dolphins humanlanguage was probably a fantasy. today, researchers are focusedintently on trying to decipher the dolphin's own systemof communication, and they've been usingunderwater microphones to record all those clicks,squawks and whistles, hoping to find patterns and discoverwhat they actually mean.
but there's a problem. dolphins make sounds underwater by vibrating tissuesin their nasal cavities, a bit like the way we humansvibrate our vocal cords. they usually don'topen their mouths or make any visible signs. justin gregg:dolphins are essentiallyventriloquists. they produce soundand you can't see anything. nothing changeson their facial expression,
or even their blowholes. so they can be making soundswithout moving, and you have no ideawho made the sound. narrator:but now researchers have come upwith a pioneering new technique to listen inon dolphin conversations. vincent janik:we're going out todayto try to find wild dolphins and attach tags to them. narrator:biologist vincent janikis on a quest to eavesdrop on wild dolphins
and try to decipherthe dolphin communication code. janik:they are little recording tagsthat can give us information about their soundsthat they're making and also give us informationabout their behavior as they're in the bay,their own wild environment. narrator:today, a bottlenose dolphin'sbeen captured in shallow water. are you going to putthe acoustic on? narrator:the researchers work rapidly tominimize distress to the animal. to solve the problem
of capturing the exact soundsmade by a particular dolphin, vincent's team uses suction cups to attach a recording devicedirectly to the animal's head. it's small enoughfor a dolphin to ignore. nicholas, nicholas, get signal? roger that. okay. narrator:if it were uncomfortable, the dolphin could easily usethe seabed to knock it off.
it will now record all thesounds that the dolphin makes and, using gps, will keep trackof its movements. narrator:the dolphin's released and soon joins some othertagged dolphins. the scientists willconstantly observe them so later they'll be ableto match their behavior to the sounds they're making. what's going on over there? there's lots of splashing.
i think that's a dorsal fin. yeah, they're two dolphins. janik:what we can look at iswhat the animal's doing-- whether it's traveling,whether it's foraging, whether it's socializingwith others. those kinds of thingswe can observe from the surface. narrator:after a few hours, the devicesfall off on their own and float to the surfaceso the team can retrieve them and begin analyzingthe dolphin's sounds.
(clicking and squeaking) at first hearing,it's a cacophony: a whole range of dolphin clicks,whistles and pulses. (creaking) today, we know thatthe creaky-door clicks are the sounds dolphins usefor echolocation. they work like sonar pings. dolphins listen for the echoesof the clicks as they bounce off objectsin their environment.
this plays a crucial role inhelping them locate their prey and navigate in murky water. but vincent is interested inother kinds of dolphin sounds: the ones they usefor communication. sometimes, there are patterns:certain sounds consistently made when a dolphin is doinga particular action, like this one. (braying) janik:one sound that we've foundis the so-called bray sound,
which dolphins producewhen they find fish. (braying continues) and it's a sound that brings inother dolphins as well. narrator:and when dolphins areaggressive, playful or not, they often producelower frequency sounds known as burst pulses. (clicking) these kinds of calls are commonin the animal kingdom. but there is one kind of sounddolphins make
that is much more unusual. it's calledthe signature whistle. janik:every dolphinhas its own signature whistle that's differentfrom all others. so within a population, you have very,very different whistles for every animal. the function of the whistle really is to broadcastits identity
and also to stay in touchwith other group members. the closestin our language perhaps is really if i would say,"i'm vincent and i'm over here." narrator:dolphins have good vision, but if the water is murkyor individuals get separated, vincent believes they usesignature whistles to help keep a group together. janik:if an animal gets lost, it will also producethat whistle
to try to make contact again,and that's something that we often seebetween mothers and calves. when the calf wanders offand is far away and eventually wants to get backto the mother, what it does is it starts toproduce its signature whistle. narrator:it is rare for animalsto have unique calls that correspondto particular individuals, but dolphins aren'tthe only animals to use vocal calls as a wayof identifying each other.
one other animalknown to do this inhabits a worldcompletely different from the dolphins'underwater domain. the amboseli national parkin kenya is home to some of the mostsocial animals on the planet: elephants. karen mccomb:the thing about this park that's outstanding is thevisibility of the elephants, a population of more thana thousand elephants,
which we know individually. narrator:karen mccomb has been observingelephants here for decades, trying to unlock the secrets of elephant societyand communication. mccomb:it's being ableto get inside animal minds, get into a social world that's actuallyrather different from ours that will tell us what elephantsare really thinking. narrator:elephant society is a familyaffair, especially for females.
they stay with their mothers,sisters, aunts and cousins for their entire lives. the oldest female,known as the matriarch, is the leader. young males stickwith their mothers until they'reabout ten years old, and then they leave the socialgroup to live independently. and elephantsare always on the move. elephants havethis really unusual
and complex social system. so instead of just staying put and communicatingwith their immediate neighbors, they sort of movein relation to one another in a very fluid,fission-fusion way. narrator:females and young males spendtime with lots of elephants in groups of different sizes. and they communicate with dozensof different kinds of calls. some rumblesare such low frequency
they're out of rangeof human hearing, but elephants can detect themfrom miles away. karen believes that their callsare crucial for the elephants to keep trackof friend and foe. mccomb:they'll come into contactwith many, many other families as they move and feed, and they will bemaking decisions about which familiesit's safe to feed next to and which they should avoid.
narrator:to find out how elephantsmake those decisions, karen designed an experiment. it involves yearsof painstaking research and some very powerful speakers. karen has made a libraryof elephant contact calls and is going to play some to a group of elephantswho are on the move and see how they react. first, she plays a callfrom an elephant
from a different group,but a friendly one. (low, rumbling call) the elephantsjust keep on walking and their behaviordoesn't change. but when karen plays a call from an elephantthey don't know well, their behavioris very different. (higher, more abrupt call) the elephants abruptlystop their march.
they turn towardthe unfamiliar voice, gather closer together and movedirectly toward the sound in what karen saysis a defensive show of force. karen tested 21 familiesand found that the elephants consistently distinguishedbetween friend and stranger, recognizingup to 100 different voices. she believes that a lotof their brain power and memory is going into keeping trackof other elephants: the ones they doand do not know.
who is safe to be aroundand who might pose a threat? and it could be the samewith us. justin gregg:we have these relationships that we need to maintainthroughout our lives with friends and enemies. you have to rememberwho owes you a favor. and that sort of complexityseems to go hand in hand with the evolutionof larger brains. narrator:it's not enoughto be simply social.
the animal worldis full of social creatures, and plenty of them have someof the tiniest brains around. gregg:there's lots of differentkinds of social behavior of social animals. insects, for example, termites and antsare extremely social, and they can't liveby themselves. they need each otherfor everything that they do. narrator:ants live in colonies, sometimeswith millions of members,
and divide laborbetween workers and soldiers. the collective might of termites can result in the constructionof huge, elaborate mounds. and social living, along with an intricatecommunication system, is crucial to bees, with tens of thousandsof individuals working together to find foodand raise their young. all these animalsare highly social,
and together,they can accomplish wonders. but each individualhas a miniscule brain. gregg:ants are always essentiallyworking together toward one goal: to help each other outto make the colony a success. now, dolphins are on the otherend of the spectrum. sometimes they cooperate, sometimes they are competingwith each other. so when you enter this element
of both cooperatingand competing at the same time in order to survive, this new kindof social complexity and intelligence blossoms. narrator:cooperation and competition,side by side. this is the recipe for a reallycomplicated social life. and animals who live this wayoften have big brains. but whether one leadsto the other is still unclear. part of the challengefor scientists is figuring out
how much animals like dolphinsmight understand about their social lives. dolphin cognition expertdiana reiss has spent yearstrying to find out. she works with dolphins at thenational aquarium in baltimore. keeping dolphins in captivityis controversial, and aquariums in the u.s.haven't captured wild dolphins for two decades. diana believes
it's only in the controlledenvironment of aquariums that you can unlock some of thesecrets of the dolphin mind. here, she cancarry out experiments not possible in the wild. the aquarium hasan observation chamber, nicknamed "the pit." it's cramped. but from here,diana has an excellent view of the dolphins'underwater behavior.
this dolphin is makingbubble rings, a behavior observed bothin captivity and in the wild. a dolphin blows outan air bubble from its blowhole, then flicks it with its tailto create a ring shape. bubble rings appearto have no practical purpose, except for entertainment. it's another dolphin behaviorwe can relate to: the ability to play. diana wants to find outwhat else we share
on an even morefundamental level. she's investigatingwhether dolphins recognize themselvesas individuals. do they each havea sense of self? diana places a one-way mirrorinside the observation window. diana reiss:so now we're lookingthrough a window and they'll be seeing a mirror. narrator:the dolphins can't see peopleinside the pit. all they seeare their own reflections.
dolphins don't behave like this, staying in one placeand staring, if they simply meetanother dolphin. another extremely unusual actionis this curious fin wiggling. reiss:this looks nothing likewhat they do when they're sociallyinteracting with another. narrator:they also look inside theirmouths or closely at their eyes. reiss:they perform all sortsof odd behaviors much like we might doin front of a mirror
to see what we look likewhen we do that new dance step or when we just want to seehow we look in a new outfit. narrator:they seem to be using the mirrorlike a tool to see parts of their bodiesthat are usually out of view. this all supports the ideathat dolphins must be aware they're looking at themselves. dolphins share this ability torecognize themselves in a mirror with just a few other animals. elephants do it.
so do chimpanzees. but the vast majority,including dogs, don't. and interestingly,neither do young humans. before they're 18 months old,most children fail to point out a red dot paintedon their cheek. this boy assumeshe's looking at another child. only when they're about twodoes a child first realize that the markis on her own cheek and she knows the reflectionis of herself.
eventually, a human child'sself-awareness will go far beyond recognizingher own body in a mirror. she'll be awareof her own thoughts and be able to contemplatethe thoughts of others. but is the same true for otheranimals, like dolphins? diana thinks it might be. reiss:having a sense of selfwould go hand in hand, i could say flipper to flipper, with complex understandingof others.
narrator:so if animals like dolphins recognize themselvesas individuals, how much do they understand about the other creaturesaround them? it's a question debatedby animal researchers. brian hare:the big question is not,"do animals think?" the big question is, "do theythink about others thinking?" narrator:"thinking about others thinking" is something we humans doall the time.
as humans, we are remarkable because we can imaginewhat it's like, in some context,to be someone else. that's an amazing abilitythat we see in humans. narrator:this ability we have to imagine what it's liketo be another person is known as "theory of mind." alexandra horowitz:the theory of mind is the idea that all humans normally developan understanding
that other people havedifferent minds than our own: that what i know is differentthan what you know and that what i wantis different than what you want. and that's a big questionfor animal researchers: whether any non-human animalalso eventually, or at all, develops a theory of mind. narrator:it's extremely difficult to prove that an animal "thinks"about other animals' "thoughts," but some of the most interestingresearch has been done
with our closest relatives:the chimpanzees. primatologist frans de waalworks with chimpanzees at the yerkes primate centerin atlanta. when an animal like a chimpis aware that another chimp has a different perspectiveon the world, it could give it an advantage. chimpanzee groups have a strictranking system. at the very topis the most powerful chimp: the alpha male.
he's in charge of the group, and every other chimp hasa position of rank below him, from the most dominantto the most subordinate. frans has set upan interesting experiment to find out howa low-ranking animal behaves when it getsvaluable information that a more dominant memberdoes not know. could one chimpactively deceive another? most studies that areon deception
are observational,anecdotal studies. but nowadays,we do experiments also on it, and so you can,for example, hide food. one chimp knows where it is, the other one doesn't knowwhere it is, and then you can see ifdeception goes on between them. narrator:the experiment involvestwo chimps: rita and missy. rita is the more dominant. at the start of the experiment,
the chimps arein their sleeping quarters. one of the keepers goesinto the outdoor enclosure and hides a bananaunder the red tube. missy is allowed to watchthrough a window, so she sees the keeperhide the banana. rita can see missy watchingthrough the window, but she can't seewhat's going on outside. then they let the chimps out. rita, the dominant chimp,comes out first.
if she knew wherethe banana was hidden, she'd simply help herself. but only missy, the subordinate, saw the banana being placedunder the red tube. rita just saw missy watching. so the two have verydifferent perspectives on the same situation. missy notices ritaclose to the food and sits on top of the tube.
she seems to be playing it cool. rita now wanders off. when she's far enough away,missy goes for the banana. frans believes that missyhas successfully deceived rita. he's observedthis kind of behavior in chimps, but it's rare in other animals. so if animalscan deceive others, what would that sayabout their minds? reiss:when we think about deception,
you have to sort of understandthe rules of the game. deception is manipulatingthe rules of the game, so a highly social animal who understandsthe rules of the game and then changes it somehowfor its own benefit or to make a joke, perhaps,or to achieve something shows a level of sophistication. narrator:we humans are very good at it. so, are the most successfulanimals natural born liars?
hare:if you live in a complexsocial group, you're competing against otherswho eat the same thing you do, who matewith the same individuals that you mightwant to mate with, so if you can somehow manipulatethe behavior of others, then you're goingto have potentially a competitive advantage. narrator:but social living is notjust about lies and deceit. deception can only get youso far.
there's a big disadvantageto deception and that's why it is notso often used, is that if i do that too oftento you, you may catch on and at some point,you don't trust me anymore. narrator:frans believes that primates, as they negotiatetheir social lives, are very awareof the competition. and so he's come upwith another experiment, this one to testtheir sense of justice.
do they realize if they'rebeing treated fairly or not, compared to others? normally, you would think the only thing an animalshould care about is, "what do i get for my task? i work, i get rewards." but no, they're comparing withwhat the other one is getting. narrator:frans begins the fairness testwith the capuchin monkey. these small, clever animalsare kept in large enclosures,
but for the short durationof the test, they're in a lab area. each monkey carries outa simple task: they have to give a small stoneto the experimenter in exchange for a reward. when both get a rewardof cucumber, everyone's happy. but watch what happens when the one on the rightreceives a grape reward instead. frans de waal:if you start givingone of them grapes,
which are far betterthan cucumber, then the one who gets cucumberbecomes very upset and becomes agitated--emotionally agitated. (loud banging) narrator:it turns outquite a few creatures, including ravens and dogs, will protest if they getthe short end of the stick, as if they know that they'rebeing treated unfairly. but what about a concernfor injustice for the other guy?
research with oneof our closest relatives, a highly social chimpcalled a bonobo, is revealing some surprises. at the lola ya bonobo orphanagein the congo, animals spend most of their daysin the forest, but come insidefor short periods of time for experiments like this. one bonobo is insidean enclosure. the door is locked and can onlybe opened from the other side.
here, another bonobo--a stranger-- is given a deliciouspile of fruit. so what will she do? hare:we recently discovered that bonobos can sharewith strangers-- that they actuallywill sacrifice their own food for the opportunityto interact with another bonobothey've never met before. that's not somethingthat we thought
another species would do. when we think about natureas red in tooth and claw, that you would sharewith somebody you don't share any genes with,that's not in your family, they're not even in your group? i thought that was somethingthat humans did. so the fact that a bonobodoes that is remarkable. it's the closest thingthat you can think of to doing charity in animals.
narrator:among the most social animals,there's growing evidence for active concernfor the well-being of others. recently, it was reportedthat elephants will console an animalin distress by gently touching itwith their trunks. and elephants do something elsewhich might demonstrate powerful feelings of connectionto others of their species. elephants,through observational evidence, seem to have a reallyunusual interest
in the deadof their own species, either fresh carcassesor skulls. the very interesting thingis actually the interest seems to persistafter death. narrator:karen mccomb has devisedan experiment to find out more. she takes the skullsof elephants killed by poachers to make a miniature graveyard in the pathof an approaching herd. now she just observes.
mccomb:yep, i thinkwe've definitely got the beginningsof a reaction here. some of the younger femalesstarting to respond. they've picked up a whiffof the skulls. the male is swinging his trunk towards the skullsand the jawbones as well. narrator:a few animals, including chimps, will be curious about the corpseof a companion, touching and investigatingthe body.
but only elephantstake an interest in the skulls and bonesof their own kind long after death. mccomb:we've got the femalesclustering around the skull, touching the jawbones. you see the way the endsof the trunks are moist there? that's enhancing the scentthat they're getting. you wouldn't see thatin any other species, except for humans.
narrator:to test whetherthis intense response was specific to elephant skulls and not just a reactionto a new object, karen has doneexactly the same thing with skulls from other animals. mccomb:if you present elephants with the skullsof other large herbivores, the biggest herbivoresyou can get-- rhino, buffalo skulls--
you do not getthat level of interest. given the choicebetween the three, they make a beelinefor the elephant skull. and they're particularlyinterested actually in elephant ivory. that, they will spend a massiveamount of time investigating, picking it up, carrying it off,touching it. they are definitely ableto recognize, distinguish the skullsand other remains of elephants
from other species. narrator:this kind of behavior seemsvery familiar to us humans. mccomb:obviously, we are intenselyinvolved and interested in death in the sense that our relationships continuebeyond that, and it's very interestingthat this highly social animal seems to also havea social interest that extends beyond death. narrator:as we watch these elephants
gently touch the remainsof their dead, it's impossible to know exactlywhat is driving their curiosity. or whether these animalsmight be experiencing emotions similar to whatwe would feel, like grief. what scientistslike karen do know is that for highlysocial creatures, relationships are essentialfor survival. so, with so much timeand brain power spent reading social situations,
could these animalsbe better prepared to gauge an interactionwith another species? one such interactionwas reported not long ago in the waters near hawaii, where a group of diverswas swimming at night, photographing manta rays. unexpectedly, a lone dolphinswims close to the divers. they notice that the dolphin istangled in a thin fishing line and has a hook stuck in its fin.
without help,he will probably perish. justin gregg:and it approaches this diveras if it knows that the diver can possiblyhelp out. and that's in factwhat the diver does: very gently cuts awaythe fishing line. it takes quite awhile. the dolphin actuallyhas to go up for air and then come back down again. narrator:the entire processtakes about seven minutes.
gregg:so the question is, what was the dolphin thinking? my guess is the dolphinwas just approaching the diver and then probably figured outthat the diver was intending to helpat that stage. so did it comeswimming out of the deep to solicit a diver's help? probably not, but it certainlywas smart enough to figure out thatthe diver could help
once the diverstarted helping. narrator:when the fishing line has beenremoved, he swims away. it is a remarkable encounterbetween two species. witnessing the behaviorof all these social animals, it's hard not to connect-- to see some parallelswith our own complicated lives. brian hare:part of the experienceof being human as a species is a bit lonely. and i think oneof the really fun things
about studying other animalsis over time, we learn that actually, we're not the onlyreally social species. we're not the only speciesthat has literally soap operas going onevery day in their lives, and we're not the only species that has many of the sameproblems we experience. whether it's that, "oh, my gosh, i have to dealwith my family member
"who is driving me crazy, but they're my familyso i have to support them," or, you know, "gosh, i have this friendthat i like to hang out with but they keep takingadvantage of me," or the fact that, "oh, this guy who thinkshe's so much bigger than me "and he can dowhatever he wants, "i have to getmy friends together
and be nice to themso they'll help me." these are all thingsthat we experience together with lots of othersocial animals on the planet, so i think it's not just tryingto understand what the lifeof animals are like. i think part of it is thatit makes us feel part of nature and that we're not here alone. there are other animalsthat experience things that we also experience.
narrator:and it could be thatthese kinds of experiences, these challenges we faceevery day as social animals, have played a key rolein the evolution of bigger and smarter brains. because in certain situations, the creature who cancleverly negotiate, who can lend or extenda helping hand, is often the one with the bestchance of survival. hare:i think we oftenthink about evolution
as always the biggest,strongest, most competitive individual is the one that's goingto survive and reproduce. but i think we seeagain and again and again and againin evolution that that's not the case at all. other times,what's going to be favored is things that leadto better cooperation so that you can work togetherto solve problems
you otherwise couldn't solveon your own. and that requires tolerance. that requires actuallynot dominance, but sometimesa lack of dominance. so when we studya wide variety of species, you see things beyond just "it'salways the big guy that wins."
