Episode 103: Transcript

Episode 103: How to Talk to Animals

Transcription by Keffy

Annalee: [00:00:00] Welcome to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about science fiction and what you had for breakfast this morning. I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who writes science fiction, and my most recent book, if you're interested in archaeology is called Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.

Charlie Jane: [00:00:18] It is so good. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm a science fiction writer. I think about science a lot. And I'm also the author of a young adult trilogy. The first book, Victories Greater Than Death. 

Annalee: [00:00:30] Death! 

Charlie Jane: [00:00:30] Is out in paperback now. And the sequel, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, comes out April 5th.

Annalee: [00:00:37] And you should buy both of them and read them before you eat them. So Charlie Jane, how many times a day would you say that you talk to your cat?

Charlie Jane: [00:00:47] It's really hard for me to put a number to that because I feel like I never stopped talking to Marcus Aurelius. We pretty much just have a never ending monologue. I mean, it's a dialogue. But I pretty much just talk to him in a constant stream, and he kind of talks back.

Annalee: [00:01:01] I talk to my cat, too. And I talk to the birds who visit the bird feeder outside, and the squirrels and the raccoons when I see them on the street. I talk to dogs, hopefully their humans aren't too disturbed when I say hello to their dogs. And you know, I feel like they're picking up on some of my meaning—

Charlie Jane: [00:01:21] For sure.

Annalee: [00:01:21] Or at least the tone. The main thing is, I don't want to be rude just in case they understand everything. And this awkward feeling has motivated a lot of speculative fiction where there are tons of talking animals. Sometimes they talk through magic, sometimes a scientist has given them some kind of brain implant or a drug that lets them use human language. And in this episode, we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about talking to non-human animals. Why do we have this recurrent fantasy about communicating with other creatures? And what happens when we try to make it a reality? 

[00:01:57] Later in the episode we'll be joined by science journalist and podcaster Arielle Duhaime-Ross, who is going to tell us about their recent reporting on one of the most infamous scientific studies of human-animal communication, the quest to teach apes sign language. All that is coming up. 

[00:02:15] Also, on our audio extra next week for people who give us money through Patreon, we'll be talking about writing animal characters, why it can be great and what the pitfalls are. And by the way, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent of corporate media because it's funded by you our listeners through Patreon? 

Charlie Jane: [00:02:35] Yay! Yeah! Y

Annalee: [00:02:36] Yeah, that is right. And if you become a patron, you are making this podcast happen. Plus, you get audio extras with every episode, you also get an interocitor for communicating with the aliens from This Island Earth. Plus you get access to our Discord server where Charlie Jane and I hang out, like all the time.

Charlie Jane: [00:02:52] We're just in there constantly. 

Annalee: [00:02:54] We're just in there having a debate about the new Taiko Waititi show. It's called Our Flag Means Death. And if you want to know what Charlie thought and what I thought you got to join up, hang out on Discord. So anything you give through Patreon, it goes right back into making our opinions even more correct, you can find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.

[00:03:17] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:03:44] So obviously, we've been telling stories about talking to animals and having animals talk back to us, for as long as we've had language, probably. It goes back to some of the earliest folklore and fables. There are many stories in many cultures about communicating with animals in different ways. But how, specifically, does this turn up in science fiction and fantasy stories? And what are the main tropes that we tend to see?

Annalee: [00:04:08] So let's start by talking about stories where humans and non-human animals start talking to each other, usually for the first time. So there's a couple of ways that that happens. There's the idea that is sometimes called uplift, which means taking non-human animals and making them kind of like people. So you get a character like Rocket Raccoon, who is the gun toting cyber raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Charlie Jane: [00:04:34] Love Rocket Raccoon.

Annalee: [00:04:36] Or you get—love that character, too. Or you get something like the apes in Planet of the Apes, who in both versions of the story have been uplifted, although for different reasons. They've been given this kind of… in the new Planet of the Apes, they've been given this kind of drug. And in the previous one, I don't actually remember how they uplift them. But apes are uplifted in order to perform labor after… 

[00:05:02] The weird thing is, so in the original series of movies, the apes replaced dogs and cats, because there's a plague that kills all the dogs and cats and humans uplift apes to replace them. But then it's really not replacing pets, if you're uplifting them into humans. Anyway, it’s a problem in history. 

Charlie Jane: [00:05:22] It’s a whole thing. 

Annalee: [00:05:23] But the point is that these are both stories about kind of interfering with these non-human animals in order to make them—

Charlie Jane: [00:05:31] By giving them uplifting and turning them into, yeah.

Annalee: [00:05:34] Then there's the other version of this story, which I call the Dr. Dolittle version of the story, which is where there's somebody who suddenly starts understanding things that animals have been saying all along, but we just couldn't understand them. So Dr. Dolittle in the classic stories from the 1920s. And then there's been tons of remakes, through film. My favorites are the ones that have Eddie Murphy that start in the late ‘90s. And he's just a doctor who suddenly starts understanding animal language. And so those are kind of the two poles I see. One is uplifting, turning the animals into more people more like us. The other is people learning to understand animals for themselves.

Charlie Jane: [00:06:16] Which is interesting, because it feels like those are two very different visions of what animals are like. In one version, animals are basically incapable of communication, incapable of thought really, as we understand it, until we do something to them. And then the other, it's like, no, they were always capable of thought, they were always capable of communicating, it's just that we, through our own limitations were unable to understand them. So it's really, it's two very different visions. And of course, there's a problem with the uplift story, there's a central problem, which is that the animals cannot consent to be uplifted, that you can only ask them for consent once you've already put the brain implants in, and given them human equivalent intelligence and communication abilities, by which time it's kind of too late for them to say, “No, I didn't want that.” 

Annalee: [00:07:03] It’s coercive. 

Charlie Jane: [00:07:04] It's this weird paradox of like… it’s the weird paradox of uplifting.

Annalee: [00:07:09] Yeah. And I think that that goes to the heart of what I find interesting about these stories, which is that they're very allegorical. 

Charlie Jane: [00:07:18] Yes.

Annalee: [00:07:18] I feel like talking animal stories make us think about fables. And that makes it a little bit more likely that we're going to turn them into allegories, or read them as allegories. And that both of these stories, the uplift type story, or the Dolittle type story, are ultimately about what our obligations are to the environment. How should we treat non-human animals and everything else that's alive around us? Uplift stories are one approach, which is to make non-human animals and basically make them into humans with fur. Just turn everything into a human, hack their brains until they’re people. And like you were saying it's not consensual, and it's often really violent in these stories. 

[00:08:00] Then there's the Dolittle model, which is much more about trying to just understand the nonhumans on their own terms, just like meeting them where they are. I mentioned earlier, I love the Eddie Murphy Dolittle movies. And in his version of the story, this means that at one point he has to help a rat who's having what he thinks might be a heart attack.

Dr. Dolittle Clip: Doc, doc! Help me! You gotta help me. He's dead. He's laying there dead. You gotta help me. 

[Loud rat groan]

He's not dead. 

Oh, no no, don’t go, buddy, old pal, friend of mine. You gotta help him. 

Oh, really? Why is that?

Because you da man! You da man! 

Oh, I’m the man, now? I thought I was a guy the other day that you wanted to give bubonic. 

I’m going [unclear] like now. 

I was just kidding! You and I were riffing, Dr. Serious, come on.

Goodbye world, I smell flowers. 

I'm begging you to let him die. Don’t let my buddy go.

Charlie Jane: [00:08:55] God, that clip is kind of intense. It's kind of heartbreaking. I feel bad for that poor rat guy.

Annalee: [00:09:00] Well, don't feel too bad because by the end of the scene, it turns out the rat just has gas and it ends up farting in Eddie Murphy's face.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:06] I mean, relatable. And like, you know.

Annalee: [00:09:09] We've all been there. But not before he actually gives mouth to mouth resuscitation to the rat. So we see that he's meeting the rats where they are. And Dolittle stories in general, which is stories where humans try to understand animals. They're almost like first contact stories, where we have our first meeting with whatever it is, Vulcans or fairies, or the under people. We have to listen to them and help them out. Do you remember that show? Seaquest from the 1990s sort of like Star Trek and an undersea vessel?

Charlie Jane: [00:09:43] Yeah, I think they actually eventually found the sea, right? 

Annalee: [00:09:44] Yes, they quested for the sea.

Charlie Jane: [00:09:47] Eventually they found it.

Annalee: [00:09:47] They found the sea, yes, thank you, Charlie Jane. Anyway, in that show, which like, everybody, go back and watch the show, like if you need something to fill your heart with love, Seaquest. So one of the crew of Seaquest is a dolphin named Darwin. And there's this tech whiz kid on the crew who's invented a translator so that the dolphin can work with them and talk to them. It's kind of like a universal translator. And so it's sort of the tech version of the Dolittle story. And in the first episode of the show, which I recently rewatched, we learned that Darwin's people, his pod of dolphins, they already have a culture, they have their own form of medicine. Darwin gets sick, and he has to go visit his family so they can give him dolphin medicine. 

Charlie Jane: [00:10:35] Aw.

Annalee: [00:10:35] So it's not at all like Darwin has been uplifted. It's just dolphins were already as sophisticated as humans, but we just couldn't understand them.

Charlie Jane: [00:10:44] So you mentioned something called the “under people” a while ago. Are those like mole people? What's the deal with the under people.

Annalee: [00:10:52] The under people are an uplifted group of nonhuman animals from the stories by Cordwainer Smith. So Cordwainer Smith was a science fiction writer whose stories really became popular in kind of the ‘50s and early ‘60s and he's currently an obsession of mine, because I'm writing about him for a book, and I visited an archive at Stanford that has all of his papers. So I kind of went through a bunch of his stuff. And he lived two lives. So he worked as a day job as a psyop expert for the army. He literally wrote a book called Psychological Warfare that was used for decades. And he was an expert in Southeast Asia and China. 

[00:11:36] And then he wrote this arc of stories under his science fiction pseudonym, Cordwainer Smith, that are clustered around a future global power called Norstrilia, which is North Australia, which is a kind of a hybrid of European and Asian powers. And they create this group called the under people who are uplifted animals. They're kind of hybrid human-animal. It's very surreal. They live underneath this very beautiful, futuristic city, where human beings and robots are kind of leading these incredible, I guess, kind of utopian lives. They live for a really long time, they have great medicine, but the under people live in squalor, basically, under highways, and they have no rights. They just are laborers. They do literally like cleaning the sewers. And they're clearly supposed to be some kind of racial group that's been marginalized, or maybe a political underclass. And I think because Cordwainer Smith, in his army job, was exposed to so many places in Southeast Asia where there were separatist movements and revolutions happening. He'd seen a lot of the horrors of colonialism and post-colonialism. And he was very opposed to a lot of the interventions that were happening and wanted to write about that and kind of chose this as an allegory. So it's really a kind of political allegory about imperialism.

Charlie Jane: [00:13:08] Yeah, and we talked, in our one of our previous episodes with Maggie Tokuda-Hall about how a lot of these stories about animals and kind of uplifted animals, or speaking animals, kind of ultimately become allegories about race or class, but mostly race.

Annalee: [00:13:25] Specifically, they're about creating a class of slave laborers. And another really important story in this sub genre, the kind of uplift sub genre is The Island of Dr. Moreau, which was originally an HG Wells novel from 1896. And it's been told and retold for over a century now in many different media. 

[00:13:50] In the original story, it's about an English doctor who's on a South Pacific Island and he is uplifting animals through this bizarre kind of chemical process. And he's trying to teach them to be civilized. So it's clearly about colonialism. It's about mixed race people as well as mixed cultures created by 19th century colonies. And actually, I'm right now I'm reading Silvia Moreno Garcia's forthcoming novel, The Daughter of Dr. Moreau. It's really spectacular. It's another retelling of the story. She sets it in late 19th century Yucatan. And in her novel, it's very explicit that Moreau is making these hybrids because the European colonists aren't happy with the way their Mayan laborers keep rebelling and keep demanding more rights. And so each of these stories, I think, comes back to this question of, again, how do we treat nature? How do we treat each other? And basically asking, why do we keep trying to invent slaves?

Charlie Jane: [00:14:48] Yeah, and it's axiomatic, I guess, that you know, whenever you have a story about The Other, you know, it's always about us. It's always about humans. It's always about who we are as people and we're kind of creating this other in as a way to talk about ourselves.

[00:15:02] One of my favorite stories about uplifted animals is the comic book WE3 by Grant Morrison.

Annalee: [00:15:07] I love that so much.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:08] and et.al. The government turns a dog, a cat, and a rabbit into these cyborg war machines that can talk. And talk about a heartbreaking story. It's incredibly upsetting. And this is one of those rare examples where the uplifted animals do not talk just like the way we would expect humans to talk. Instead the cat just keeps saying “Stink Boss. Stink Boss.” And it's like…

Annalee: [00:15:32] That’s what they call the humans. “Our stink boss,” which, you know that's what your cat is calling you.

Charlie Jane: [00:15:40] It’s actually more upsetting and more kind of, like oh my God, because you know, that's what your cat would say, if they could talk. They'd be like, “Stink boss!” And that’s how animals would talk. It's not just like, “Hello, excuse me, I have now been uplifted.” It's like, they kind of express what animals are always expressing, which is not understanding these weird-ass humans.

Annalee: [00:16:02] Yeah. And also kind of insulting them and not wanting to obey them, which again, the sort of “stink boss” thing reminds me of Rocket Raccoon who has been uplifted to be a super soldier, and is incredibly disobedient. Not at all, what you would want out of your super soldier. And this is another component of these under people and hybrid stories is that they always end with disobedience. The hybrids rise up, and that gives these stories a lot in common with robot uprising stories. 

Charlie Jane: [00:16:35] Yes. 

Annalee: [00:16:35] And what's interesting for me is that in the Cordwainer Smith stories about the under people that I was describing earlier, the animal uprising is portrayed as a search for justice. And the result is a slightly more democratic system. Once the animals have risen up with the help of some great animal leaders D’Joan and C’Mell, who are two great hybrids. One is a dog woman and one is a cat woman. And they usher in a new, better era for humanity. And in Moreau stories, or Moreau-style stories, the results are always bloody, and horrific. The animals revolt, and they destroy everything.

Charlie Jane: [00:17:22] Yeah. And it's interesting that we start getting these animal uplifting stories around the same time that we start getting robot stories, as you mentioned. And like the robot stories are pretty much from the beginning about uprisings and about worker rebel revolts. And it’s like something in the water, something about like the rise of modern industrial capitalism is making people think about this. But what's the difference between doing a robot story and a story about animal hybrids? Why… is it more about animal abuse when it's animal hybrids?

Annalee: [00:17:54] So I think actually, that they come from the same place. I think that the robot uprising and the animal uprising are both, as we were just discussing, they're coming out of the late 19th century when we're starting to see really major worker revolutions and organizing. And so this is a way of thinking about how are we treating the working class? And one of my favorite versions of Island of Dr. Moreau is the 1932 movie called The Island of Lost Souls, which is a huge cult classic. And Bela Lugosi plays the leader of the hybrids. And he starts the revolution against the incredibly creepy doctor. And for the whole movie, we see him lashing the hybrids with a bullwhip. He's vivisecting them in this place that the hybrids called the House of Pain. He's clearly a plantation owner or some kind of overseer on the plantation. And at the end, right before the hybrids rise up and basically just rip Moreau apart, Lugosi gives us amazing speech, where he yells at Moreau that he hasn't made them men. He's made them part men, part beast, and then he says you made us things.

Bela Lugosi: [00:19:17] You made us things! Not man! Not beast! Part man, part beast! Things!

Charlie Jane: [00:19:40] Yeah, okay, that kind of answers my question because this feels even more dehumanizing, in a way than a story about robots.

Annalee: [00:19:47] Yeah, and it's really hard to overstate how influential this movie was, and the remix of Island of Dr. Moreau even inspired a classic New Wave song by Oingo Boingo in the 1980s.

Oingo Boingo Clip: [3rd verse of No Spill Blood.

Charlie Jane: [00:20:12] Right and that was Danny Wolfman. I mean, Danny Elfman. So you know, we talked about fables earlier. And obviously this is the roots of a lot of our stories about talking to animals. So let's talk a little bit about modern stories where there are animals who just kind of talk to each other like the amazing Disney movie Zootopia or the show Arnold about an aardvark and his friends or you know, George Orwell's Animal Farm?

Annalee: [00:20:34] Yes. So I call those anthropomorphization stories. Basically, they are full on allegories where animals stand in for people. And probably the earliest of the modern versions come from Beatrix Potter, who created Peter Rabbit and many, many other characters who I grew up loving, like Hunca Munca, the mouse, who's just super badass. And also, there's stuff like Watership Down also a British novel, about tragic rabbits. Much more tragic than Peter, obviously. And right now actually, in the United States, the comic book Maus by Art Spiegelman is making a comeback because people are trying to ban it from schools because they think that it's part of critical race studies. And Maus is a perfect example of these anthropomorphization stories. It's an allegory about Nazi Germany, where the Nazis are cats and the Jews are mice. Incidentally, the Americans are dogs. And there's a couple of other groups thrown in there.

Charlie Jane: [00:21:33] Right. Yeah. And I guess they tried to claim they were banning Maus because of one brief moment of nudity. But it's so clear that the real reason is because it's such a powerful story. And it's powerful, in part, because of the way it uses animal characters as a way to talk about real life injustice and atrocities. And for some reason, using animals is just a uniquely potent way to do an allegory. And can you talk more about that?

Annalee: [00:21:58] Yeah, one of the reasons we tell speculative stories is that they provide a kind of a safe space. It’s easier to think about political issues in the context of a story about like a mad doctor or a cat woman spy, because it just doesn't feel like we're talking about ourselves. So we can relax a little and consider a new perspective. And yet, it really seems like when we have a talking animal allegory like Maus, I don't think people do feel more comfortable. I don't think it feels safe. I think that's why people want to ban Maus. It's almost like the talking animal story is too on the nose. It's too obviously about us. And therefore, we take it personally.

Charlie Jane: [00:22:41] Plus we just emotionally connect to these animals in a way that's just like, it's so pure, I feel like.

Annalee: [00:22:46] It's really pure. And it's really hard to deny the allegory. And so it doesn't give us that cushion that say Island of Dr. Moreau does where there's humans and animals. When it's all animals, suddenly, it's clear. They're us. 

[00:23:07] So coming up after the break, we are going to talk to Arielle Duhaime-Ross, who has been researching and reporting on what happened when scientists in real life have tried to teach animals to communicate like people?

[00:23:21] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:27] Do you ever look up at the night sky and wonder about your place in the universe? Then you just might want to join The Planetary Society.

Annalee: [00:23:36] I did. I joined The Planetary Society. I love them. The Planetary Society is a global space exploration nonprofit that was co founded by Carl Sagan and now is led by Bill Nye, and their weekly podcast, which is awesome is called Planetary Radio. And it takes you to the outer reaches of the solar system and beyond.

Charlie Jane: [00:23:56] Host Mat Kaplan visits with scientists, mission leaders, astronauts and writers who provide their unique and exciting perspectives on the exploration of our universe. 

Annalee: [00:24:10] On the first Friday of every month, Matt and The Planetary Society's chief advocate Casey Dreier dive deep into the policy and politics of how NASA operates and how exploration decisions are made in the US Capitol.

Charlie Jane: [00:24:23] Space is vast. There's a lot of exploring to do. Subscribe to Planetary Radio today where ever you get your podcasts you won't regret it. 

Annalee: [00:24:32] You really won't. They are super awesome. 

[00:24:36] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:24:40] Now, we are very excited to be joined by Arielle Duhaime-Ross, host of the Vice podcast called A Show About Animals. They're also the host of Vice News Reports. Welcome Arielle.

Arielle: [00:24:52] Thank you so much for having me. This is fantastic.

Annalee: [00:24:56] Thanks for joining us.

Charlie Jane: [00:24:57] Yeah, it's such an awesome, it's so lovely talking to you.

Annalee: [00:25:00] I was a huge fan of A Show About Animals, which just wrapped up in January. And you focused on the world famous experiments with teaching two apes sign language during the 1970s. So these were Koko the gorilla and Nim Chimpsky, who was a chimp, and those are fantastic names. So tell us a little bit about their two different stories and why these experiments were so important.

Arielle: [00:25:25] Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much for listening truly, like I had such a blast working on the first season of the show.

Annalee: [00:25:33] It was so good. It was like drama. It was amazing. It was high drama.

Arielle: [00:25:38] Honestly, it felt so different from other projects that I've worked on. And there was so much human drama and animal drama in that season. So it was a total blast. Very, very interesting. And you know, there's science there, too. So basically, it's the story of the ape language research studies of the 1970s. There have been a number of studies that have attempted to teach sign language or some kind of human language to great apes. But arguably, I think the most famous ones are Koko, the gorilla and Nim Chimpsky. Koko the gorilla, you might know Koko, right? Koko was really famous through a book called Koko and Her Kitten. Lots of kids grew up watching her on Mr. Rogers and Reading Rainbow. She's this famous gorilla. And then there was also Nim Chimpsky. 

[00:26:31] And so basically, one of the very first studies was Koko. And Koko was taught a form of sign language early on in her life, starting in 1972, she was born in 1971, by a person named Penny Patterson, who was a psychologist, a grad student at Stanford University, and who wanted to see, is it possible to teach an animal human language? And does that then force us to rethink the role of humans in the world and the way that we conceptualize humanity, right? Do we have to rethink who we are if we have a shared language because at the time, language was viewed as sort of this final frontier, differentiating us from other animals. 

[00:27:22] Jane Goodall had already demonstrated that animals, chimps specifically, could use tools. We were learning that actually other animals were much closer to us than we previously thought. And so language was viewed as one of those final frontiers. Penny Patterson then decides that she wants to see if it's possible to teach a human language to a gorilla. And the reason why they chose sign language is because there had previously been studies trying to teach spoken language to great apes, and those experiments had failed, their vocal cords can't do it, apparently. It's the way their lips are shaped. It's just not physically possible. And so sign language seemed like a good alternative. 

[00:28:12] Now, a few years after that, in the early 1970s, another scientist, this time in New York City, a man named Herbert Terrace, decides that he's going to launch his own study. He thinks he can do a better version of this than Penny Patterson did and previous scientists have done and he uses a chimp. This chimp is named Nim Chimpsky. It was sort of a dig at Noam Chomsky. And that was the deal with the name. I’ll explain BF Skinner versus Noam Chomsky if you guys want me to, but…

Annalee: [00:28:48] We’ll let listeners Google that one. They can Google it and find out all Noam Chomsky’s theories of language acquisition.

Charlie Jane: [00:28:56] I’m just guessing BF Skinner tried to put Noam Chomsky in some kind of box, I don't know, we’ll find out. We’ll Google.

Arielle: [00:29:00] Right, it is something like that. Something like that. There's usually some kind of some thing in a box with BF Skinner.

Charlie Jane: [00:29:07] There’s always a box.

Arielle: [00:29:10] But yeah, so Herbert Terrace decides to do this sort of competing study, and he just thinks he can do a better version of it, right? He's not trying to disprove anything, he just thinks that he can be more rigorous than anybody has been before. And long story short, he ends up publishing this study, where not only he says that it's impossible. He was unable to teach actual language to Nim Chimpsky. But he says that everybody else is also screwing up, and that this field should seriously rethink what they're doing. And it's just this bomb in the scientific world that he just basically throws and kind of runs away afterwards because he doesn't keep working on this stuff after this. He publishes a book where he explains his theories as to why it didn't work, and then he just kind of walks away. And he's still a very well known, very well regarded scientist at Columbia. But he just he just drops this bomb and then everybody kind of loses their funding and people kind of are forced to walk away from their studies. But Penny Patterson keeps on working with Koko the gorilla for years and years and years right up until Koko the gorilla’s death in 2018.

Annalee: [00:30:24] And what are some of the signs that Penny teaches to Koko? Like, what kinds of conversations could they have using sign language?

Arielle: [00:30:32] I mean, honestly, if you ask Penny, she'll say that they talked about every single thing and that there were no limitations. I did, in fact, talk to Penny. And it seemed like Penny thought that Koko was able to understand really complicated concepts like the word curious, even early on, right? The concept of curiosity was something that Koko could understand, according to Penny Patterson. And there are these stories, these famous stories about how Koko was signing the word for bird, and they were indoors, and there were no birds. So why would she be signing bird and it was, she was modifying the sign. And it was kind of like the word bird, but not really. And then finally, Penny spots a fly in the corner of the room. And it's like, oh, she's making these associations, like a fly is like a bird. And she was like evolving and trying to build upon the language that she already possessed, right? So those are the kinds of things that, in Penny's mind, demonstrate that Koko really did have a grasp of a human language, and was then able to be creative. And that was a big deal for her. And there are these stories about how Koko would communicate, and they become sort of mythical, in their own specific way.

Charlie Jane: [00:31:57] Yeah, I mean, I remember when Koko the gorilla died, it was a huge thing on the internet, in media, people were freaking out because she was this beloved figure and we'd all seen her on TV growing up, and she had been hanging out with Big Bird and stuff, I guess. And I guess, is there is there an argument to be made? Or, have people made an argument that like having this experiment become such a media kind of driven frenzy and have it turning this gorilla into a celebrity, does that kind of taint the research? Or does it make it harder to kind of have controlled conditions in the experiment or anything like that?

Arielle: [00:32:34] You know, it could have happened that way. We can talk about that for sure,  but I think that actually, if you look at the record, the reason why Koko became such a celebrity was because the scientific world was leaving Penny and Koko behind. And so they then had to pivot to a different audience, an audience that would be willing to help sustain Penny's work with Koko and help get on, frankly, gifted donations, right. So Penny sort of pivots to children. And that is where you start seeing Koko and Her Kitten, that famous book because Koko was friends with some kittens, and arguably did really enjoy being around cats.

Charlie Jane: [00:33:21] Relatable.

Arielle: [00:33:23] Right. I mean, don't we all. So there was this book that was written about her relationship with a specific kitten named All Ball. And then all these TV appearances happen. One of the most famous videos of Koko is her spending time with Robin Williams and Robin Williams talking about it as almost like a spiritual experience. But then some things happen that make it feel like Penny lost sight of the science, wasn't really working very hard on sign language with Koko after a while, and then also, whether it was her or other members of her team, they start capitalizing on this attention that Koko was receiving in ways that feel, honestly, not good. 

[00:34:12] So I was told by somebody who used to work at The Gorilla Foundation that when Robin Williams died, that was an opportunity for them to get donations and so they they put out this picture of Koko mourning Robin Williams and saying how sad she was, how devastated she was. And the picture was actually just a picture of the way that Koko sat every night. She would sit with her lip drooping and her head bowed. And that's just, when she was tired, that's how she sat. And that picture was put out as a way to demonstrate Koko's chagrin. They started pushing things really, really hard towards the end in ways that that don't feel great, unfortunately.

Annalee: [00:34:58] I wanted to go back to talking about how the Koko versus Nim Chimpsky debates, because I thought that was such an interesting piece of your reporting. So there was this huge kind of professional showdown between the two different groups. There was Herbert Terrace, who headed the Nim project. And I feel like he basically accused Penny Patterson, who worked with Koko, of confirmation bias and poor research. But I really felt like, as I was listening to your work that, that the accusations felt like they masked something else, like maybe it was just this idea that apes just are inferior and so we can't ever imagine a nonhuman animal being as awesome as us with language. Or maybe it's because old Herbert Terrace didn't like the idea of women doing cutting edge research. So I'm wondering, what do you think were kind of the underlying issues that motivated this debate beyond the kind of scientific concerns?

Arielle: [00:36:04] Yeah, I really think you picked up on something important there. That was the undertone of a lot of the way that Herbert Terrace talked about Penny Patterson. Because we can definitely debate the merits of Penny Patterson's approach. But I think that Herbert Terrace made a lot of assumptions in his takedown that maybe he would have come to the same conclusions if he had had more information. But it just really seemed like he jumped to a bunch of conclusions without having as much information as one might hope. 

[00:36:36] And I, in the way, because I spoke to Herbert Terrace as well. And then the way you know, that he talked about penny Patterson, he talked about Penny’s work as a hobby. He used that word with me once. And I remember thinking, okay, but like, and this was pointed out to me by somebody else, as well, Rose Eveleth, a mutual friend of ours, that Herbert Terrace was literally doing the same thing Penny was and so if it was a hobby for Penny, then it's a hobby for you too, bro. You know? 

Annalee: [00:37:08] Yeah, I mean, the thing that I thought was so insane was Herbert Terrace, basically just like, offloaded all care of Nim Chimpsky onto a female colleague of his, and he was just like, here, you take care of it. And so he wasn't even doing the same work, he was…

Charlie Jane: [00:37:27] Oh, man.

Arielle: [00:37:27] Yeah, and if we want to talk about rigor, some of the things in the way that Herbert Terrace set up his own experiment, it really seems like Nim was set up to fail, in many ways, right? They had a lot of different people coming in and out of Nim Chimpsky’s life, teaching him sign language. And by the way, I want to be really clear, because I probably would come to this conclusion anyways, but I'm using the term sign language specifically, because I'm making a distinction between sign language and American Sign Language. Because a lot of the people who were teaching both Koko and Nim were not fluent at all in American Sign Language, did not grow up speaking the language, did not grow up signing and were very much beginners, as well. And so the consistency in the signs and their ability to interpret and understand what these animals are signing, and even just like, agree on what is going on in any given situation and quote, unquote, “conversation” with these animals, I think is really questionable.

Annalee: [00:38:39] Yeah, it sounded like they were just making up signs sometimes. 

Arielle: [00:38:42] Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And Koko had her own signs for certain things. And Nim had his own signs for certain things. If you had somebody who was fluent in ASL try and sign with these animals. They’d only pick up on like, maybe half of what was being said. And it was always very, very simple things. These animals were largely communicating, the stuff that we know for sure that they were talking about, was like, I want that banana, give me that blanket. They're all requests, they're not exchanges, where you're having, you know, tell me about your day, or how are you doing? Actually, maybe how are you doing was a thing, but it was not… It's honestly so hard to talk about this, because even the how are you doing conversation, there is an argument to be made that Koko knew what to answer to that question in order to get a treat. 

Charlie Jane: [00:39:41] Right. 

Annalee: [00:39:41] Yeah. 

Arielle: [00:39:41] To what extent is it cueing? Is it like when my dog knows to sit when I make a certain hand gesture, because I do use gestures with my dog? Versus, does she understand the concept of sitting in a chair and would she know that when I'm sitting in a chair, it's the same thing as what she's doing? You know, it's complicated. Right? And that is a question where there is a limit to our ability to understand, specifically in the way that these studies were set up in the ‘70s. There are a lot of unanswered questions here.

Annalee: [00:40:19] One of my favorite pieces of the story was, I think both Koko and Nim really liked to be tickled. And that was one of the signs that they had, was tickle me, or was that just Koko?

Arielle: [00:40:29] Yeah, tickle chase. No, both of them loved being tickled. Absolutely. And they both had different versions. Koko really loved being, like a tickle chase game was like a big thing for her, she really loved it. 

Charlie Jane: [00:40:43] Aww.

Arielle: [00:40:43] Yeah.

Annalee: [00:40:43] So I liked that they both independently were like okay, we definitely need a sign for tickling. Like, that is very key. Bananas, yes, but tickling also. So it’s very relatable.

Arielle: [00:40:56] Totally, yeah. There's also there are other issues with these studies. And this is where my brain is going. They wanted to be touched, they wanted that social interaction and part of that is because they were ripped away from their families and their natural environment at a very young age, right. In many ways one could argue that these studies were 100% inhumane. Nim was ripped away from his mother at two weeks old and then given to a human, a woman named Stephanie Lafarge in Brooklyn, to raise Nim as a human child. And that comes with a whole bunch of issues, right? So, yeah, there's was a lot to discuss when it comes to these studies.

Charlie Jane: [00:41:38] It blows my mind that all this research was being done 50 years ago, and like has anybody tried to teach a great ape sign language since the early ‘70s? Has it just not?

Arielle: [00:41:49] Yeah, not really. As Annalee sort of alluded to, there was a big blow up. There was a big conference called the Clever Hans conference in 1980. And Herbert Terrace was there, Penny Patterson was not, but a bunch of people who were trying to do language studies with animals were and the conference was a fiasco. There was debunkers who were there accusing all these people of basically being idiots and having confirmation bias and all these things. And so, a lot of the studies just stopped. The National Science Foundation stopped funding this work. And so, a lot of these, some of these chimps, because there were a lot more chimps, not gorillas, not so much in the same way, but chimps who were taught sign language during that time, who didn't become famous, and some of them are still alive. And so you can sign with chimps right now and it is possible to like get them to do things with signs. And to have them make requests with signs, some of them are currently living at a sanctuary in Louisiana that's really famous for caring for a lot of these animals that were used in scientific studies. 

[00:43:12] But by and large, this work was sort of stopped. Instead there was a refocusing more towards understanding how animals communicate with each other or trying to communicate with animals using their own language. Dolphin research is a really good example of this, trying to use dolphin song and clicks to get animals to do certain things or fulfill certain tasks. But as far as human language goes, there was, it kind of fell off a little bit, but now they're sort of seems to be, and the researcher who is working on this probably wouldn't love the way that I'm framing this, but there seems to be a resurgence of this kind of work at least when it comes to, and some people might be aware of this, the the dog buttons. 

Annalee: [00:44:00] Oh, yeah. 

Arielle: [00:44:00] On TikTok and Instagram.

Annalee: [00:44:06] And cat buttons.

Arielle: [00:44:06] Right, yes. Cats are absolutely trainable, by the way, so I'm, you know, I recently petsit some cats who use a toilet. And that was fascinating.

Annalee: [00:44:18] Yeah, I follow someone on Instagram who's trained their cat to use the buttons and I am always extremely skeptical about it. For folks who haven't seen that it's basically just, a board that you can put down on the ground and the cats can learn to push buttons and each button means something different, like, give me food or other stuff. Go for a walk, if it’s a dog.

Arielle: [00:44:41] Yeah. Yeah, it's like walk, Mom, Dad, love, treats. Nap, park.

Charlie Jane: [00:44:50] Love treats. 

Arielle: [00:44:51] Yeah, love treats.

Annalee: [00:44:51] Love treats, love treats. Sorry, that's just me pushing the buttons. 

Arielle: [00:44:58] That's exactly what it sounds like. And there is scientific research that is being conducted and the scientist’s name is Federico Rossano. And he's at UC San Diego. And basically he stumbled upon these people who were teaching their dogs to use buttons to request things and communicate with their owners. And he started to actually try and conduct a study. So he's put cameras in some of these people's homes to detect whenever the dog even goes close to the buttons to see if it's not like a fluke, right? Like, is there actually a pattern? Does this actually make sense? And we don't know the results of that study yet. It has not been published yet. I am waiting with bated breath. I'm very excited about it. But he's very clear in stating that this is not a language study. It's a cognitive. It's a cognitive study, trying to look at their cognition.

Annalee: [00:45:50] Right, to kind of avoid the taint of trying to do a Koko-type study. 

Arielle: [00:46:01] Yeah, I mean, honestly, language research. If you say, “I'm doing a language study with an animal.” Scientists kind of like, nobody does that. It's now, because of Koko and Nim Chimpsky, it is viewed as being extremely tainted. And that's interesting in and of itself.

Annalee: [00:46:16] I think that's so interesting, the distinction you were making between the studies like Nim and Koko and the button pushing, and also things like Alex, the grey parrot who kind of spoke English. Those kinds of studies, which are all about, like, let's make animals speak English to us, versus like a study where it's like, oh, what if we tried to learn the ways that animals are communicating? I wonder which one do you think is more likely to lead us in the right path? Do you think we're going to actually make some progress and communicate with animals?

Arielle: [00:46:54] Yeah, I mean, I think we are communicating with animals, right, like straight up, I think we do communicate with animals. I'm definitely communicating with my dog, when I'm… she does this thing where she'll look at a specific object really, really hard. And then I'm looking at what she's looking at. I'm like, oh, this is what you want. Right? Like, I know how to read her gaze. Yeah, so she wants me to move the ottoman in the sun patch. Fine, I’ll move the ottoman in the sun patch. She's very opinionated. 

[00:47:21] But my conclusion was that I feel like, we are trying really, really hard to turn animals, at least what these studies were doing was was trying really, really hard to turn animals into humans, right? To humanize them, to teach them our way of doing things. And that is, honestly, I don't know if that's gonna get us anywhere long term, to think about it that way. Because, you know, when I think about the way, I keep talking about my dog, because I'm obsessed with her, but when I think about the way that my dog interacts with the world. We have some shared experiences to a certain extent, but she can hear things that I can't hear, she can smell things that I can't smell. I think I read, and somebody might want to fact check me, but I think I read that a dog can smell like a drop of blood in a pool. That’s the kind of analogies that we're talking about when we talk about their ability to smell things. And that's also how some people think that dogs can conceptualize time because if you're gone for an hour, your smell dissipates over that amount of time. And that's why they're panicking after an hour, instead of panicking after half an hour, and they always panic after an hour, like those kinds of things. 

Charlie Jane: [00:48:39] Aw, poor dog.

Arielle: [00:48:39] And so, if we were to have a shared language, if she suddenly started talking in English to me, I probably wouldn't understand what the heck she's talking about. Right? Because we don't experience the world in the same way at all. Like maybe after a very, like, I don't know if we would ever actually get anywhere, right? She'd be like, well this is so obvious. This smell. Can’t you smell thing that… no, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Annalee: [00:49:07] Yeah, it’s like, hello, let’s follow this smell to the and yeah, it’s a thing that… the universal translator cannot deal with that, like on Star Trek. There's no universal translator for pheromones and smells, which is kind of weird. It seems like that they should have added that by now. But no.

Arielle: [00:49:29] And you know…

Charlie Jane: [00:49:29] I mean, that's a really good question.

Arielle: [00:49:31] And then if I push the question a little bit further, if you'll permit me to just go ahead for one second. When I was working on A Show About Animals the first season I was thinking a lot about Ursula Le Guin’s book The Word for World Is Forest. 

Charlie Jane: [00:49:46] Oh yeah. 

Arielle: [00:49:48] Because and it's kind of a spoiler so like, so, I don't know, skip ahead however many seconds if you don't want to hear this but like, you know, the conclusion is…

Annalee: [00:49:58] Spoiler for a very old book, yeah. 

Arielle: [00:49:58] For a very old book, right. These two species, humans and these like chimp-like aliens, I guess, experience the world very, very differently, think about the world very, very differently. Don't even sleep the same way. They’re vastly, vastly different. And then at some point, there's enough interaction that humans end up teaching the World War to one of these individuals. And that changes the entire other species, the chimp species culture, forever. And that's how the book ends. You're left with this feeling of like, oh, God, what did we do? And I just don't know if I want my dog to understand our world. I guess I want to understand hers, but like, at what cost? 

Annalee: [00:50:54] Yeah.

Arielle: [00:50:55] Maybe this is, this is me just really enjoying difference, and really enjoying my inability to fully grasp her world, and her inability to fully grasp mine. I think there's beauty in that. And I just don't know. And like, the kid in me is like screaming, right, because I desperately wanted to talk to the animals when I was a kid. But now at this point, is that what I want? I just really, really appreciate difference. And I appreciate the unknown. And yeah, whatever we learn about animals is wonderful and great. And I would never want to stop that. But I kind of like that I don't think we're ever going to get there.

Annalee: [00:51:37] Yeah, I like that, too. I mean, that's the beginning of really changing how we think about the world to is to fully understand that other creatures see it really differently. That there is another possibility of another way to perceive everything. So I love that. 

[00:51:58] Are you going to be doing more seasons of A Show About Animals? Is there anything coming up?

Arielle: [00:52:02] I mean, tentatively, yes. We are currently in the very beginning stages of planning out season two. I can't tell you what it's about yet but I am very excited. And I think that it, hopefully, if this works out, will flow really well. And we'll have some maybe even overlapping characters, like overlapping sources, people that we interview maybe in season two. So if you liked season one, you might want to stick around for season two.

Charlie Jane: [00:52:34] Yay!

Annalee: [00:52:34] Very cool. Well, I can't wait to see it. So where else can people find your stuff online?

Arielle: [00:52:39] Yeah, I mean, mostly, honestly, in the podcast world these days. I used to be on TV for a show called VICE News Tonight, that's still on the air covering climate change. But now it's VICE News Reports, go listen to Vice News reports. It is a general news weekly, documentary style news show. And right now, if I can say this, I think my team is doing unbelievable reporting on the war in Ukraine. And I'm just so incredibly proud of their work. And last week's episode, when I heard some of the tape, it made me cry. So please go check that out. I really, really, really am just so in awe of everybody that I work with right now.

Annalee: [00:53:19] Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us. 

Charlie Jane: [00:53:21] Yeah, thank you. It's so great talking with you.

Arielle: [00:53:24] Thank you so much for having me. I gotta say, I'm a huge fan of both of you guys. I've like read—

Annalee: [00:53:30] Oh, it’s definitely mutual. 

Arielle: [00:53:33] You know, I've read some of your books. I'm a big fan so this is cool.

Charlie Jane: [00:53:36] I’m pushing the love button. And I'm just like, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. 

Annalee: [00:53:39] It's true. That's how I communicate with Charlie, actually. 

[00:53:44] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.

Annalee: [00:53:44] You've been listening to correct opinions on Our Opinions Are Correct. Thank you so much for listening. And if you like what you're hearing, please consider supporting us on Patreon. We're an indie podcast. We depend on you to keep going. So you can find us on patreon patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect. You can follow us on Twitter at @OOACpod. Thanks so much to our producer Veronica Simonetti. Thanks to Women’s Audio Mission where we recorded this episode, and thanks to Chris Palmer for the music. Talk to you later. If you're a patron, we'll see you on Discord.

Together: [00:54:20] Bye!

[00:54:21] OOAC theme music plays: Drums with a bass drop and more science fictional bells and percussion.