Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:01
RadioLab is supported by Progressive Insurance. What
0:03
if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as
0:05
putting on your favorite podcast? With
0:08
Progressive, it is. Just visit
0:10
the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages
0:12
you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate, then their
0:14
tool will provide options from other companies so you
0:16
can compare. All you need to do
0:18
is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote
0:20
today at progressive.com to join the over 28 million
0:23
drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive
0:25
Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, comparison rates
0:27
not available in all states or situations.
0:29
Prices vary based on how you buy. Hey,
0:32
it's Lulu. This is RadioLab. We
0:36
have a story with feelings today.
0:39
We've got an emotional one, a good one,
0:41
a great one from the archives that
0:45
explores the line between
0:47
humans and chimps and
0:50
then blurs it right out. It's
0:53
sort of a trio of stories. It
0:56
actually starts with a tiny little story I did when
0:58
I was a baby producer. You will hear my
1:00
voice at the tippy top. It involves
1:03
a researcher who was working with the great
1:05
Jane Goodall and did something she wasn't
1:07
supposed to do and kept it a secret for a
1:09
long time but finally spills it on the air. So
1:12
anyway, without further ado, here
1:15
comes the episode which is
1:17
called Lucy from our archives
1:19
kicking it off to Jad and Robert.
1:22
Wait, wait, you're listening. Okay. All
1:25
right. You're
1:29
listening to RadioLab from
1:31
WNYC. Rewind.
1:34
All right. Let's
1:42
start with an encounter. Yes.
1:45
Hello. Hello. Okay.
1:48
Can you hear me okay? I can barely
1:51
hear you. Okay, so this is, well, our
1:53
producer Lulu Miller was calling
1:55
around trying to find some stories
1:57
for this hour. Okay. Let's see.
2:00
up on the phone with a woman named Barbara Smuts. Is
2:02
that any better? Yeah. Barbara Smuts is
2:04
now at the University of Michigan, but years
2:06
ago she was a field researcher in Tanzania
2:09
working with the great Jane Goodall. You know,
2:11
following chimps at a distance and writing down
2:13
everything they do and that kind of thing.
2:16
Right. Okay. And
2:18
when she was in Tanzania, she ran into
2:20
in Gombe National Park a particularly young male
2:22
chimp named Goblin. Will you tell me the
2:24
story of Goblin? Oh, sure.
2:28
First of all, what does he look like? Well,
2:31
he's an adolescent male. If he
2:34
stood up, he would come up to quite
2:36
a bit above my waist. Yeah.
2:39
And almost immediately he started
2:42
picking on me in the sense that he would
2:44
walk past me and just kind of jab me
2:46
casually as he went by. And
2:49
sometimes he would punch me with a fist, sometimes
2:51
he would just kind of whack me with an
2:53
open hand or just kind of use
2:56
his body to just kind of shove at me as
2:58
he went past. You know, he'd look at
3:00
me as he approached and
3:02
I'd be going, oh no. And
3:05
is that something they would often do with humans
3:07
or was this rare? No, no, no. He was
3:09
in a phase of life. When
3:12
a male, as a male matures,
3:14
he rises in rank and before
3:16
he challenges any other adult male,
3:19
he rises kind of step by
3:21
step through the female hierarchy. He
3:23
basically intimidates female after female until
3:25
they give in and
3:28
acknowledge that he's superior and then he'll
3:30
pretty much leave them alone. So
3:33
he was at the point where he
3:35
dominated all but probably two
3:37
of the adult females. And you. And
3:40
me. So that part of it
3:42
is where Goblin was and the other part of
3:44
it is that I'm really small. So as you're
3:46
out there doing your research, what do you think
3:48
is going on? Did you think he just. Well,
3:51
I just felt like he was a bully. And
3:53
I was an easy target. And
3:56
in the evening, I would say that Jane could
3:58
tell her what happened. happened, asked
4:01
her what to do, and she would say, just
4:04
ignore him. Eventually he'll get
4:07
bored and he'll stop doing it, which was
4:09
this kind of standard advice, this
4:11
sort of myth of total scientific
4:13
objectivity, just ignore it and it'll
4:15
go away. But instead
4:17
he escalated. I remember one
4:19
time I was sitting at the top of a hill
4:22
and he came up behind me
4:24
and jumped on my back, which
4:27
forced me to roll down the hill. And
4:29
he kind of rolled down with me, you know, we were like this
4:32
ball rolling down a hill. Then
4:35
I would tell Jane and ask her what to do
4:37
and she would always say the same thing, just ignore it.
4:40
But one day, during
4:42
the rainy season, we
4:45
all carried raincoats with us and
4:47
when it wasn't raining we
4:50
would carry
4:52
them on our backs
4:55
so that it wasn't in the way. And
4:59
Godwin walked up to me one
5:01
day and yanked my
5:03
raincoat and
5:05
these raincoats, they were
5:07
like our most valuable possessions, the
5:10
raincoat. So he grabbed it and
5:12
he was going to run away with it. And
5:15
so we had this tug of war and so the
5:17
two of us were standing facing each other, you know,
5:20
tugging on this raincoat.
5:22
And then I did something that was
5:25
not premeditated at all. I
5:31
just leaned forward and I punched him as hard
5:33
as I could in the face. Oh
5:35
my God. What
5:38
did you think like right after you'd done it?
5:40
Were you shocked at yourself
5:42
that you just... Yeah, I'd never
5:44
punched anybody, much less a
5:47
chimp who I was supposed to be studying
5:49
from a distance. So I was shaking. What
5:51
did he do? He just collapsed. He
5:54
like turned into a little baby. He
5:56
collapsed on the ground and started whimpering.
6:00
And he looked to Figen, who was the
6:02
alpha male at the time, who was sitting nearby.
6:04
And he was like Figen's
6:06
little sidekick, always kind of hanging out
6:08
with Figen and playing up to him.
6:10
He ran over to Figen, screaming
6:13
like, this being just beat
6:15
up on me. Come on, let's get
6:17
her. And fortunately, Figen
6:20
did not take it seriously. I
6:23
remember he just reached over with his, you
6:25
know, great big hand. And
6:27
without even looking at Goblin, he patted him on
6:29
the head a few times. And
6:32
then went back to whatever he was doing. Because
6:35
it could have been really bad if he had taken
6:37
it seriously. I
6:40
did not go back and tell Jane Goodall I
6:43
had punched Goblin in the nose. And
6:45
I just, I didn't tell the story for a
6:47
long time. Why not? Well,
6:53
I think, you know, I would have gotten a
6:55
lot of disapproval. Anyway,
6:59
Goblin never bothered
7:01
me again. So
7:04
here's the reason we played that story. Because
7:06
here you've got this moment where you've got
7:08
a scientist, Barbara Smuts, who's, you know, trained
7:10
scientist, got scientific rules of objectivity and all
7:12
that. And she totally loses
7:15
that. Yeah, she slips. And
7:19
for just that moment, she's not really a human.
7:21
He's not really a chimp. The
7:24
ringpole is the only important thing. The borders have
7:26
dropped is really what's happened. Yeah. Now
7:28
we're used to thinking of borders, you know, between us and the
7:30
animals as being fixed. And
7:33
most people would say this is good. Keep
7:36
them there, keep us here, keep us separate. Not, not
7:38
in this hour. We're going to meet
7:41
people who decided to go the other way. People
7:43
who are trying to live intimately, and
7:46
I mean really intimately, with
7:48
big wild animals. Something you
7:50
could either call incredibly stupid or our
7:53
last great hope. Because there are so many
7:55
of us on the planet. So
7:57
coming up, we've got two stories of a world. radical
8:00
experiment in sharing.
8:30
What country are we in? Okay,
9:34
so getting back to our story about Lucy.
9:37
This is a story that begins in
9:40
1964, and it's one that Charles
9:42
would have never heard about had he not bumped
9:44
into this obscure old memoir.
9:46
Long out of print. Yeah, what's the name of the book?
9:48
Do you actually have it with you? Yeah, hold on. It's
9:56
called Lucy growing up
9:58
human. chimpanzee daughter in
10:00
a psychotherapist family by Maurice K. Tamerlin.
10:03
Maurice K. Tamerlin, he is the psychotherapist.
10:05
He's a psychotherapist. And he's also the
10:07
dad in this story. And his wife
10:09
Jane, who's a social worker, she's the
10:11
mom. Now the thing to know was
10:14
that, especially for Maurice Tamerlin, this was
10:16
more than just adopting a baby chimp.
10:19
This was an experiment. He wanted
10:21
to know, given the right upbringing, how
10:24
human could Lucy become? You know, what
10:26
he says early on in this book,
10:30
would she learn to love us and
10:32
perhaps have other human emotions as well?
10:35
Would she be well behaved, rebellious,
10:37
intelligent or stupid? What about sex?
10:41
Maurice Tamerlin actually died in 1989, but
10:43
these are his words read by radio
10:46
host David Garland. Would she mother
10:48
her offspring? Would she learn to
10:50
talk? How intelligent might she be? And
10:52
so how did they get her? He says that he
10:55
and his wife Jane made all the arrangements,
10:57
went and got the chimp. On the day
10:59
the infant was born, the mother was anesthetized.
11:01
In the early morning of her second day,
11:04
Jane fed the mother a Coca-Cola, which had
11:06
been spiked with fensiclidine, a
11:08
drug which puts chimpanzees into a deep,
11:11
pleasant sleep. And
11:17
the baby was taken away. Jane named
11:20
her Lucy and brought her home on
11:22
a commercial airline, carried in a bassinet,
11:24
her face covered with a lacy blanket.
11:27
We were blissfully unaware of the
11:29
complexities we were creating on the day Lucy
11:31
came home. So
11:34
the baby was a day or two old? Just
11:36
two days old. So it wasn't weaned? No, and
11:39
that was part of the experiment. Did they bottle
11:41
feed her? Yeah, she quickly learned to hold her
11:43
own bottle. At two months, her eyes would focus.
11:45
At three months, she was trying to climb out
11:47
of her crib to go to people. And
11:50
at six months, she was pretty mobile on
11:52
all four lamps. She
12:00
would see us using silverware and immediately do so
12:03
herself. She began to dress herself in skirts. She
12:05
would often grab my hand, pull me to my
12:07
feet, and beg me to chase her, always
12:10
looking back to see that Daddy was not too
12:12
far behind. You
12:15
know, he really went at this with
12:17
this sort of full bore earnestness. You
12:19
know, when he calls her his darling
12:21
daughter. I took great
12:23
pride in my daughter's achievement. He does
12:25
feel like a real parent to Lucy.
12:28
She was so responsive to being looked at, held, and
12:30
stroked. But he's also,
12:33
to make no mistake, treating this
12:35
as a very intense cutting-edge experiment.
12:37
The next phase of the experiment, which
12:39
occupies a good deal of the book, involves one
12:42
of those talents that we thought
12:44
used to have only been limited to us. Language.
12:48
Okay. Can you introduce yourself, please? Okay.
12:50
My name is Roger Fouts. I'm
12:53
a professor of psychology and have
12:55
worked with chimpanzees since 1967. Roger
12:59
Fouts was called in by Maurice Temerlin
13:01
to address one of the, you know,
13:03
crucial questions of the experiment. Which he learned to talk. Right.
13:05
And at the time, he was the guy. He'd
13:08
just been part of a team that had proven
13:10
for the first time that chimps could use
13:12
sign language to communicate. So his
13:14
job with Lucy was to teach her
13:17
how to sign. And I think I came into
13:19
her life when she was, as I remember, it was 1970.
13:22
I think it was four or five.
13:24
She was four or five years old.
13:26
Roger taught her signs for airplane, baby
13:28
doll, ball, banana, barrette, berry, bird. Yeah.
13:31
So I was sort of like blanket. The
13:34
tutor friend babysitter that would come over
13:36
for a few hours, bow tie, each
13:39
day and spend some time, you
13:41
know, just playing with Lucy. I would
13:43
work on signs, camps. We'd read books
13:45
together or we'd go for walks.
13:47
And I would chat
13:49
with her, basically. Cry. Dirty.
13:52
And he says that Lucy, you know, just sort of picked
13:54
it up. Picked it all up. It was like a beginning.
13:58
She learned some 250 signs. And
14:00
the big question is, okay, so is it
14:02
mere mimicry or are
14:05
they able to spontaneously create
14:08
words and put them together
14:10
in a new original way? And
14:12
there's been a lot of anecdotal evidence
14:14
that in fact Lucy did
14:17
spontaneously create words.
14:20
In a later session, when shown a
14:23
piece of watermelon, Lucy tasted it.
14:25
And she called it candy drink. Huh.
14:28
A radish had
14:30
gotten quite old and one day she was
14:32
calling it food and food for I think
14:34
several days of the study. And then she
14:36
decided to eat this old radish and she
14:38
took a bite and spit it out. I
14:41
said, well, what is that? She called it cry hurt
14:43
food. Wow. She would
14:45
also lie to me. Really? Yes,
14:47
yeah, yeah. And lying, we should also say, is
14:50
another one of those things that people used to
14:52
think only we do. During one
14:54
of my sessions, I came in and she had
14:56
a potty accent and that she had been potty
14:58
trained, but sometimes she didn't always make it. And
15:00
I was upset because I was now faced with
15:02
having to clean it
15:05
up. And so I said, who's this that?
15:07
And she said, Sue. Who's Sue? Sue
15:09
was one of my students that would come in
15:11
and spend time with Lucy too. I said, no,
15:14
Sue's not here. And finally she blamed it
15:16
on the stuff. And yeah, said Lucy and
15:18
sorry. And so Sue. Yeah, this
15:20
is Sue. Sue's having a drum ball. The grad student
15:22
of yours who says she didn't actually see that lie
15:24
take place. Yes. But
15:27
she told us that when she met Lucy, she
15:29
was blown away by the incongruity
15:32
of it all. Like for instance, every time she
15:34
would walk in the house, Lucy would just walk
15:37
casually into the kitchen and search
15:39
through the cupboard for the kind of tea
15:41
she wanted that day and put
15:43
some water in a kettle and put it on
15:46
the stove and make us tea. Yeah,
15:48
became a routine. I'd come in and she would
15:50
start the tea. It was the casualness
15:52
with which she did it. The kind of
15:54
air about it that, yes, I'm making tea
15:56
and I would like you to have some
15:59
too because tea. is what we do. And
16:02
so the thing to do is to sit
16:04
down and to casually sip the tea with
16:07
Lucy and casually look
16:09
through the magazines, listen to
16:11
the radio. What magazines would she
16:13
look at? Well, she looked at, I
16:15
think, House and Garden and some
16:19
magazines that had pictures of women and
16:21
children in them, whatever the Timmerlands had
16:23
out. Wow. Lucy had developed an
16:25
awareness of our emotions. If
16:28
Jane is distressed, Timmerlands life, Lucy
16:30
notices it immediately and attempts to
16:32
comfort her by putting her arm
16:34
about her, grooming her, or kissing
16:36
her. If Jane is sick, Lucy
16:38
would exhibit tender protectiveness toward her,
16:40
bringing her food, sharing her own
16:42
food. And as we get to this
16:44
next part, this is sort of the midpoint of the memoir,
16:46
it's useful to sort of remember a basic fact of biology.
16:49
Speciation happens
16:52
when you've got one group of creatures that gets
16:54
divided into two, and then these two groups
16:56
evolve away from one another. And eventually they
16:58
get so far away from each other that
17:01
they can't have babies. And nature makes sure
17:03
that they can't have babies by making one
17:05
species basically undesirable to the other. You look
17:07
across, you're a baboon, you look across at
17:09
a chimp, and you go, eh. Yeah,
17:11
you're only sexually attracted to your own kind.
17:14
That is essentially what a species is. Now,
17:19
this isn't something you're supposed to be able to learn or
17:21
unlearn. This is just the way it is. Yeah, which
17:24
brings us to some troubling passages in
17:26
the book, beginning
17:28
really on page 105. Can you read
17:31
it? Yeah. And we
17:33
should warn that this next minute and a half
17:35
contains a sexual reference. One
17:37
afternoon around five o'clock, Jane and I were sitting
17:39
in the living room when we observed this sequence
17:41
of behavior. Lucy left the living
17:43
room and went to the kitchen, opened a cabinet
17:46
and took from it a glass, opened a different
17:48
cabinet, and brought out a bottle of gin. Gin?
17:51
Yeah, yeah, she loved gin and tonics.
17:53
That's actually not the important part. It's
17:55
what happens next. She takes
17:57
her gin, goes back to the living room, sits on the couch. And
18:01
there's really no other way to say
18:04
this. She starts to masturbate. But
18:07
even that's not the important part. It's actually
18:09
in the very next moment that a boundary
18:11
that took approximately six million years to establish
18:15
dissolves. Mr.
18:23
Temerlin sees Lucy doing this and he
18:25
thinks, hmm. This?
18:29
This is a perfect experimental moment. So
18:32
he runs off to the mall. Buys
18:34
a copy of Playgirl magazine and brings it back
18:37
to her. This is full of naked guy. Yeah.
18:40
And Lucy would masturbate
18:43
to these centerfolds. I
18:45
was not a part of that. I was never there
18:47
when Lucy looked at the porno. But
18:50
Sue says that she was there for
18:52
what happened next. Yes. I
18:56
was there when she was introduced to
18:58
her first adult male chimpanzee. Had Lucy
19:00
ever seen another chimpanzee before?
19:03
Never seen another chimpanzee from the moment
19:05
of birth. Wow. She says they brought
19:07
this male chimpanzee in. To see if
19:09
Lucy was attracted to chimpanzee
19:12
males. And was she? I...well,
19:16
the male chimpanzee would sit there
19:18
with his hand held out toward
19:20
her and she
19:22
was very frightened. And
19:25
she tried to move away. It
19:27
was then, says Sue, that she realized
19:30
that in every way that mattered, Lucy
19:33
was no longer a chimp. She
19:36
was stranded. Right in between this
19:40
great divide that I knew was there
19:42
between humans and nonhumans. And I did
19:44
not know how to negotiate this. There
19:46
is no category in our language except
19:49
a mythical one for something that's not
19:51
human and not animal. It's
19:54
not human. It's not human. It's not
19:56
human. Video
20:09
Lab is supported by Mint Mobile. This spring,
20:11
cleaning up your wireless bill is easy thanks
20:13
to Mint Mobile. Right now, Mint Mobile is
20:16
offering affordable premium wireless plans with unlimited talk
20:18
text and data plans when you purchase a
20:20
three-month plan. To get this
20:22
new customer offer and your new
20:24
three-month unlimited wireless plan options, go
20:26
to mintmobile.com/Radiolab. It's
20:28
mintmobile.com/Radiolab. $45
20:30
upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a
20:33
month for first three-month plan only. Speed
20:35
slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plans.
20:37
Additional taxes fees and restrictions apply. See
20:40
Mint Mobile for details. Radiolab
20:43
is supported by Babbel. Sometimes self-improvement
20:45
can feel like a pretty overwhelming
20:47
journey. So what if this
20:50
year you just got a tiny bit
20:52
better every day? When you're learning
20:54
a new language with Babbel, that's exactly what you're
20:56
doing. Babbel is a science-backed
20:58
language learning app with quick 10-minute lessons
21:00
that have been handcrafted by over 200
21:02
language experts to help you start speaking
21:04
a new language in as little as
21:07
three weeks. You can learn
21:09
everything you need to have real-world conversations,
21:11
cafe sí vu play, from vocabulary words
21:13
to culture and more. And
21:15
if Babbel can help you start speaking a new language in
21:17
just three weeks, imagine what you could do in a few
21:19
months or a full year. Here
21:21
is a special limited time deal for Radiolab listeners.
21:23
Right now get up to 60% off
21:26
your Babbel subscription, but only
21:29
for our listeners at babel.com/radiolab.
21:32
Get up to 60% off
21:34
at babel.com/radiolab, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L
21:38
dot com slash radiolab. Rules and
21:40
restrictions may apply. Radiolab
21:45
is supported by Zbiotics. If
21:47
you've been looking for some help waking
21:49
up refreshed after a fun night out,
21:51
Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic is here to help.
21:54
Zbiotics is a genetically engineered probiotic
21:56
invented by scientists to help tackle
21:59
rough mornings. after drinking. This
22:01
probiotic is the first drink of the night for
22:03
better tomorrow as it works to break down the
22:06
byproduct of alcohol which is responsible for rough
22:08
mornings after. Go to zbiotics.com/Radiolab
22:10
to get 15% off your first order
22:12
when you use Radiolab at checkout. Zbiotics
22:14
is backed with a 100% money back
22:16
guarantee. If you're unsatisfied for any reason,
22:19
they'll refund your money no questions asked.
22:21
That's zbiotics.com/Radiolab and use the
22:23
code Radiolab at checkout for
22:26
15% off. Hi,
22:30
I'm Alexis Ohanian. You
22:32
may know me as one of the co-founders of Reddit, but
22:35
more recently a large part of my
22:37
identity is being a father to my
22:39
wonderful daughter. In my
22:41
podcast Business Dad, I hope to open
22:43
the conversation about working parents a bit. You'll
22:46
get to hear from a wide range
22:48
of business dads from Rainn Wilson and
22:50
Guy Roz to Todd Carmichael and Shane
22:52
Batier to find out how they
22:54
balance being a dad with a successful career.
22:58
Business Dad is available now, so be
23:01
sure to listen and subscribe wherever you
23:03
get your podcasts. Hey,
23:10
I'm John Iboomrod. And I'm Robert
23:12
Krollwich. This is Radiolab. Today, we're
23:15
listening to a story about Lucy.
23:17
Lucy... The confused chimp. Confused chimp. The
23:19
chimp that's raised as a human. You dressed
23:21
like a human? Talks like a human. Even...
23:23
Well, a little bit anyway. Sexually attracted to
23:26
humans. So the thing to understand before we
23:28
go on in the story, says Charles, Seabird,
23:31
is you can do this
23:33
and you can do it heartily
23:35
and you can get one confused
23:37
chimp. But at some point, nature
23:39
reasserts itself, at least in this
23:41
way. As a chimpanzee grows, it
23:44
becomes very strong. Very
23:46
strong. And that, says Charles, is usually
23:48
the point where the human owner throws
23:50
in the towel. And you know, there are
23:52
people who really, who can't have children, who
23:54
have chimps as their substitute children. And they
23:56
all have to go through that moment where
23:58
the chimp gets... Too big, too
24:01
strong, too willful, too sexually
24:03
mature, and they invariably relinquished
24:06
the champ. But in Lucy's case, what happened? So
24:09
in Lucy's case, the Temerlins really
24:12
hung on way longer than most. Lucy
24:14
was 10 going on 11.
24:16
They had by this time rigged up
24:18
an entire portion of the house for
24:21
this very strong, willful animal. Behind bars,
24:24
padded rooms so you can bounce. Behind bars?
24:26
Bars. So they built a cage inside the
24:28
house? In their house. Which defeats the entire
24:30
purpose of the whole thing. That's right. That's
24:32
right. Was she destroying things? Oh god, she
24:34
was tearing the house to shreds. Lucy was
24:36
into everything. She could take a normal
24:39
living room and turn it into pure
24:41
chaos in less than five minutes. Just,
24:44
and with company, she
24:47
would just jump on a guest and start
24:49
bouncing up and down. Our friends and relatives
24:51
began to visit us less frequently. Now
24:54
that she's grown and is five to
24:56
seven times stronger than I am, she
24:59
could tear us apart literally. It
25:01
was more and more challenging and time consuming
25:03
and upsetting to the extent that he and
25:05
his wife finally said, all right, we can't
25:07
do this anymore. This is too much. Experiment
25:10
over. The
25:15
memoir ends with a big, fat
25:17
question. What will
25:19
happen to Lucy? On
25:23
the final page, Maurice Temerlin
25:25
says, well, we know we can't
25:27
keep her, but we don't, we don't
25:29
know what to do. The
25:32
end. I was raised in the romantic tradition
25:34
and I like books to have happy endings.
25:37
If they don't have happy endings, they
25:39
should have tragic endings. I
25:42
hate books which have no ending. Like
25:44
this one. Hi.
25:54
Oh, hi. Is this Janice? Yes, it is.
25:57
This is Janice Carter. Not only does she
25:59
know the ending, ending of the story, she's
26:02
actually the key player in it. Well, I hope
26:04
we have a decent conversation because
26:06
the lines are really terrible. It
26:08
took us a really long time to find Janice
26:10
Carter. She lives in a remote
26:12
part of Gambia in western
26:14
Africa, and that'll become relevant
26:16
in a second. How did you meet
26:18
Lucy? I met her.
26:21
One of my part-time jobs that I
26:23
had to put myself through grad school
26:25
was to clean Lucy's cage. That's
26:28
how I met her. I cleaned up
26:30
after her. In fact, Janice says
26:32
she was one of the few people who could actually handle
26:34
Lucy when she was out of her cage. Which,
26:36
a surprise to Timmerlands, because she
26:38
had been quite difficult to previous
26:40
caretakers. Was that because you were
26:43
stronger than the predecessor caretakers, or
26:45
you were clever, or?
26:47
Well, I think it was
26:50
probably more timing. I think
26:52
that the time that I entered Lucy's
26:54
place, she was looking
26:56
for something outside of that fear
26:59
of mom and dad, and
27:01
I was a friend. In
27:04
any case, Janice ended up being in Lucy's life
27:06
at the exact moment when the Timmerlands finally decided
27:08
what they were going to do with Lucy. They
27:11
visited a number of... It's
27:13
1977. They had just spent a
27:15
year traveling around the world looking at different options.
27:18
Zoos, research labs, chimp retirement homes, which
27:20
were these facilities that were springing up
27:22
to house chimps like Lucy, who had
27:24
been raised by humans or in the
27:26
circus. But every place they visited, she
27:28
says, was just too
27:31
depressing for them, too cage-like for
27:33
this being that they essentially considered their daughter.
27:35
And so, the decision they came to was
27:38
that the best way to honor Lucy, the
27:40
best way to really make her happy was
27:43
to simply let her go... in the
27:49
wild. And
27:54
they asked Janice to help them do it. Did you
27:56
have any idea or any experience of what you were
27:58
getting yourself into? So
28:09
after a 22-hour flight, Janice, the
28:11
Temerlins, and Lucy arrive in Dakar,
28:13
Senegal. I remember through
28:15
arriving really early in the morning.
28:18
I don't know how hot it was. It was early in the morning.
28:21
Compared to Oklahoma, this was just
28:23
different. Socks of insects
28:26
and mosquitoes and high, high,
28:28
high humidity. It was the
28:30
rainy season. After they landed, she says, they
28:32
piled into a car. And crossed the Gambia River.
28:34
And then made their way to a nature reserve.
28:36
A nature reserve. Which was basically just a bunch
28:38
of big cages. Really large enclosures
28:41
there. Sitting right outside in the jungle.
28:43
So they get there, coax Lucy
28:45
into one of these cages, say their goodbyes for
28:47
the night, and they leave her. To
28:51
spend her very first night alone. Outdoors.
29:02
After a few weeks, Maurice and Jane
29:04
Temerlin decided to leave. And
29:07
the plan was that Janice, for just a little while,
29:09
would stay behind. You
29:12
know, to help Lucy with the transition. She
29:14
started to lose
29:17
her hair and get skin
29:19
infections. No,
29:22
I wasn't happy being there
29:24
either. I hated it. How
29:26
long did you think you would be staying there? Three
29:29
weeks. Three weeks. Wow.
29:31
So we're saying that Janice
29:33
Carter has actually never left. At
29:40
the end of those three weeks, there was just
29:43
no way that I could
29:45
leave Lucy. The weeks turn
29:47
into months, and then into
29:49
a year. And still, Lucy's stressed out. She's
29:52
not eating, her hair is falling out. By
29:55
this point, a whole other group of chimps shows
29:57
up at this nature reserve. These are former captives.
29:59
like Lucy, and they start to
30:01
deteriorate as well. So
30:04
Janice decides what she needs to do is change
30:07
locations. So she takes Lucy and
30:09
all these other chimps to this
30:11
abandoned island that she found. This is
30:13
a long, narrow island. This is
30:15
in the Gambia River. A mile wide at its
30:18
widest point. Very thick,
30:20
green forest. And the idea here
30:22
was that you would release them, and they
30:24
would be able to do whatever
30:26
in the island and learn how to
30:28
climb trees and learn how to forage
30:30
and learn how to establish
30:33
relationships with each other. Was that the notion?
30:36
Yeah, in a nutshell. And
30:39
you would think that if
30:41
you gave them freedom, they would just
30:43
jump for joy. And that's the last
30:46
chapter of the book. But it's
30:49
not what happened. She says that when
30:51
Lucy and the other chimps got to the island and she
30:53
let them loose, they clung to her. During
30:57
the day, she'd walk them around
30:59
the island and point out to them, here are the fruits
31:01
you should be eating. These are the leaves you should be
31:03
eating. But they weren't interested in any of that stuff. They
31:06
were actually more interested in her stuff, which was
31:08
what they were used to. I had human
31:11
objects and tools that I needed for
31:13
my own survival, and
31:16
they wanted to use them. Like
31:19
when I would cook or brush
31:22
my teeth or take a bath or anything
31:24
that I wanted to do. They wanted to
31:26
be doing it with me. Janice figured
31:28
the only way this was going to work is
31:31
if she could somehow keep the chimps away
31:33
from her and her tools. And so here's
31:35
where she does something really radical. She
31:37
had run into a couple of British army officers
31:40
who were passing through the Gambion, some kind of
31:42
wilderness training thing. And she somehow
31:44
convinced them to build her a cage,
31:47
a giant metal industrial
31:49
cage, then to fly it over to
31:51
her island and drop
31:54
it funk right in the center. The
31:56
thing about this cage is
31:58
that it wasn't for the chimps. It
32:01
was for her. Yes. You lived
32:03
in a cage? I lived in a cage,
32:05
yes. Wow. And
32:16
in the beginning she says her cage didn't even have
32:18
a roof. No. In the
32:20
rainy season it rained on me. The
32:23
only thing above her head was this fine wire
32:25
mesh to keep the chimps out. And the
32:27
chimps all wanted to be inside with me. When
32:30
I said no, then they put time off
32:33
off of the cage and sleep out in
32:35
the open on
32:37
the wire on top right above
32:39
me. Every time there
32:41
was any sound in the night of a
32:43
hyena or anything,
32:45
they would immediately squeal
32:48
and defecate and urinate right on top of
32:50
me. Oh, God, easily. Then
32:53
I put corrugates on the roof, but then
32:55
they started dancing on the corrugates. They really
32:57
liked the sound that it made. They were
32:59
all day long, dizzy, dancing. It
33:03
sounds funny, and it was at times.
33:06
It's not the kind of thing
33:08
that's being chimp. After
33:11
about a year, says Janice,
33:13
most of the chimps lost
33:15
interest in her
33:18
because they couldn't get her tools. She was stuck in a cage. They gave up.
33:20
They stopped hanging around her and they just wandered
33:22
off into the forest and foraged for themselves. That's Mooty. He's
33:24
stayed behind. The
33:29
obvious reason was that she was different than
33:31
all the rest of the
33:33
chimps. And so
33:35
Janice and Lucy entered into a kind of sign language battle of wills.
33:37
If I came out of the tent and looked to see if they
33:40
were all gone, there she was, right there, looking nearly forlorn
33:42
at me and using sign language to tell me to come out to be
33:44
with her. But Janice and Lucy were all gone.
33:46
But Janice with sign to Lucy knew
33:48
Lucy. Go! Lucy
34:01
would then sign back, no Janice come.
34:04
No, Lucy go. No Janice
34:06
come. Lucy go. And this
34:08
went on and on. I tried
34:10
and I tried and I tried and I tried.
34:12
But Lucy wouldn't move.
34:14
She would just stand there waiting for
34:16
Janice to help her. Sometimes
34:18
I would stand all day long
34:21
and I would try to ignore
34:23
her, ignore that she was there thinking
34:25
that if I ignored her then she'd go
34:27
off with the others. But that didn't work.
34:29
And if I did look at her then
34:32
she would sign that she was
34:34
hurt. She would use the sign for
34:36
hurt. Meanwhile, she wasn't
34:38
foraging for herself. She was getting thinner.
34:41
And I tried everything and really,
34:43
really knocked myself out trying to
34:45
do things for her. And
34:48
I just started to think maybe she never
34:50
was going to do it. And we would
34:53
argue about it. I ate everything.
34:55
I was eating ants. I was
34:58
eating sticky latex from pigs. I
35:00
was doing everything that I was
35:02
finding really nauseating to do. Just
35:05
so that she would
35:07
watch me do it and say wow, if she's doing
35:10
it then I'm going to do it too. And she
35:12
wouldn't do it. She'd just turn her head away. And
35:19
I honestly thought at one point that
35:21
she would rather starve to death than
35:23
have to work for her food.
35:26
I was losing hope. But
35:29
incredibly, Janice kept at
35:31
this for years. She
35:33
would have to toss Lucy some food, some of
35:35
hers, just to keep Lucy from starving. But
35:38
she kept at it. And
35:40
then one evening, after a
35:42
really, really long day, Janice
35:46
and Lucy were walking through the forest and they both
35:48
stopped because they're so beat and
35:50
crashed. And we fell asleep. On
35:52
the ground together. When
35:55
I woke up, Lucy
35:57
was actually four years old.
36:00
holding my hand and she had a leaf. She's
36:04
holding out a leaf? Yes. But
36:07
she reached out and she offered it
36:09
to me and then I
36:11
offered it to her and she
36:15
ate it. It was a miracle. It
36:18
was an absolute miracle. And
36:21
after that says Janice. Things turned. And
36:24
actually from that moment
36:26
on, Lucy did start to
36:28
make the effort and go off. And
36:31
be a chimp. And be a
36:33
chimp. That's Charles Seabird again. And it was
36:35
not too long after that that Janice went
36:37
away and... She left the island? Mm-hmm.
36:46
Janice says she'd periodically circle in
36:48
a boat just to keep an
36:50
eye on Lucy. But
36:52
she says she never, not once, set
36:55
foot on that island. At least not
36:57
for a year. Then
37:00
one day she
37:03
decided to go back. This day is the
37:05
first day that I went actually on
37:07
the island. She pulled her boat up to
37:09
the tip of the island where there was this little clearing.
37:12
And she parked. And as she did, Lucy and
37:14
the other chimps who'd heard the boat came
37:16
out of the forest and into the clearing. And
37:18
Lucy and her walked toward each other. And
37:20
I took with me some of Lucy's possessions
37:23
that had been important to her. Like her
37:25
mirror. And she used
37:27
to like to draw and book. Just to see
37:30
how she responded to it. And
37:32
what did she do? Well,
37:35
she looked at the thing. She looked at
37:37
the book. She looked at herself in the
37:39
mirror. And she signed to herself in the
37:41
mirror. Then all of a sudden, she
37:45
grabbed me. I
37:48
mean really grabbed me. One arm circled
37:50
all the way around me. And
37:52
she sort of held
37:55
me really, really tight.
38:00
It just really made me
38:03
breathless and I started crying.
38:09
She started to give these soft little
38:11
pants and I feel pretty certain what
38:13
she was saying to me was it's
38:15
okay. You know,
38:17
it's all okay now. At
38:25
that moment, somebody in Janice's boat snapped
38:27
a picture of her and Lucy hugging. This picture
38:30
of the Charles Siever printed in his pocket. It's
38:32
one of those images that when you see it,
38:34
I don't know why. It
38:37
just haunts you. Lucy
38:39
has her head against Janice's chest and Janice
38:41
has her arms around Lucy. It's one of
38:44
the more fraught moments. You have
38:46
to just look at the picture. I mean,
38:48
it sort of made me want to write the book. Something
38:52
about the complexity and the
38:54
invertedness of that picture. After
38:58
that, the other chimp had started to go
39:00
and she wanted to go with them and
39:02
she got up and she... She
39:06
didn't turn back to look at me. She
39:08
just kept walking. She
39:10
wanted to go with the other chimp and she did. A
39:19
year later, Janice went back
39:21
to visit Lucy again. But when she
39:23
got there, this time, Lucy
39:26
was gone. And I went to all the
39:28
different places looking to see if she could find
39:31
anything. And he did. We found her, the
39:33
body. She was lying right near
39:35
the place where Janice's cage had been, just
39:38
a skeleton. And
39:44
her hands and her feet were separated
39:46
from the rest of the skeleton. So
39:50
how did you know that that was her body? She
39:54
had a slit between her front teeth and
39:57
she was very long and there was
39:59
nobody else missing. And
40:02
maybe the saddest, strangest thing was
40:04
that we didn't find any signs
40:06
of her skin or
40:08
hair. It appeared that Lucy had
40:11
been skinned. And
40:13
no one knows actually what happened, but
40:16
because the hands were taken, which poachers do, they
40:18
thought one of the conjectures which makes it really
40:21
unbelievably tragic is
40:23
that they think that Lucy,
40:25
always the first to approach
40:27
humans, just sort of guilelessly
40:29
approached poachers and not knowing
40:31
that they were that and that they just
40:33
took advantage of their unwitting and over eager
40:36
prey. But that
40:38
was Lucy's end. The
40:42
scenario that I have developed
40:45
to cope with her death is that a
40:48
fisherman or someone who, some local person
40:50
that just happened to pull up next
40:53
to the land and was going to
40:55
take a break or cut a raffia
40:57
palm down or do something. And because
41:01
she always felt confidence
41:03
around humans, she probably
41:05
approached the person, perhaps she just
41:07
described the person and just
41:09
on the beach like the weekend,
41:11
she was probably shot. I've
41:15
got no other explanation.
41:35
Janice Carter still lives in Gambia, where
41:38
she now works not just with the chimps, but
41:40
with the local population to
41:42
protect the habitat for the chimps. And
41:45
Charles Seibert's latest book, which is a really
41:47
tremendous book, is the Washula Woods
41:50
Accord. Our sincere thanks to
41:52
him for turning this on to the Lucy story. Also,
42:04
if you go to our website radiolab.org,
42:06
you can see pictures of Lucy and
42:08
Janice, and also that particular picture that
42:10
I described of the hug. It's
42:15
just one of those pictures you really just have to see. It's
42:17
at radiolab.org. Radiolab
42:21
is supported by Mint Mobile. This spring, cleaning
42:23
up your wireless bill is easy thanks to
42:25
Mint Mobile. Right now, Mint Mobile is offering
42:28
affordable premium wireless plans with unlimited talk text
42:30
and data plans when you purchase a three-month
42:32
plan. To get this new
42:34
customer offer and your new three-month
42:36
unlimited wireless plan options, go to
42:38
mintmobile.com/radiolab. That's mintmobile.com/radiolab.
42:42
$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a
42:44
month for first three-month plan only. Speed
42:47
slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plans.
42:49
Additional taxes fees and restrictions apply. See
42:51
Mint Mobile for details. Radiolab
42:55
is supported by Babbel. Sometimes
42:57
self-improvement can feel like a pretty overwhelming
42:59
journey. So what if this year
43:01
you just got a tiny bit better
43:03
every day? When you are
43:06
learning a new language with Babbel, that's
43:08
exactly what you're doing. Babbel is a
43:10
science-backed language learning app with quick 10-minute
43:12
lessons that have been handcrafted by over
43:14
200 language experts to help you start
43:16
speaking a new language in as little
43:18
as three weeks. You can
43:20
learn everything you need to have real-world
43:22
conversations. Caffe if you play, from vocabulary
43:24
words to culture and more. And
43:27
if Babbel can help you start speaking a new language in
43:29
just three weeks, imagine what you could do in a few
43:31
months or a full year. Here
43:33
is a special limited time deal for Radiolab listeners.
43:35
Right now get up to 60% off
43:38
your Babbel subscription, but only
43:41
for our listeners at babel.com/radiolab.
43:43
Get up to 60% off
43:46
at babel.com/radiolab, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L
43:50
dot com slash radiolab. Details
43:52
and restrictions may apply. Reddit,
44:00
but more recently, a large part of
44:02
my identity is being a father to
44:05
my wonderful daughters. In
44:07
my podcast, Business Dad, I hope to open
44:09
the conversation about working parents a bit. You'll
44:12
get to hear from a wide range
44:14
of business dads, from Rainn Wilson to
44:16
Guy Roz to Todd Carmichael and Shane
44:18
Batier, to find out how
44:20
they balance being a dad with a successful
44:22
career. Business
44:25
Dad is available now, so be sure
44:27
to listen and subscribe wherever you get
44:29
your podcasts. Hey, I'm Chad
44:31
Abumrod. Wow,
44:34
that was a big hey. Sorry,
44:38
I was just feeling it. I was
44:40
feeling it. I'm Robert Krollwood. This is Radio
44:42
Lab. We shouldn't be laughing
44:44
because we've been listening to a really, really
44:47
sad story about a chimp named Lucy who...
44:50
Was born as a chimp, raised as
44:52
a human and died in, well, under...
44:54
because she ran into a human that
44:56
she trusted and probably shouldn't have. Yeah.
44:59
And so the question that we want to ask now, and we asked
45:01
this question to Charles Siebert, you know, guy who wrote a lot about
45:03
chimp, says, what's the lesson that we
45:05
should draw from this? It's a good
45:07
question. I think what it says, it points
45:11
back to something I said earlier, that
45:14
the only option now and the
45:16
best way to dignify and honor
45:18
what they are, who they are,
45:21
they're more than what, is
45:23
to fence them, ourselves off
45:25
from them in little
45:28
pockets of their
45:30
home, that we leave alone.
45:33
That would be coexistence. Well,
45:40
if you can't do it that way, and there's a very
45:42
good reason why you couldn't do it that way, because there
45:44
are what, six, now 6.8 billion
45:46
people in the world, soon to go up
45:48
to nine billion... Too many of us. Too
45:51
many of us. So what do you do? Well,
45:53
one thing you might try, I mean, it's kind
45:55
of a far out notion, but you
45:58
could go back to the Lucy experiment. the
46:00
one we just described. It ended very badly. Yeah.
46:02
But this time you do it... How
46:04
shall I put this? You do it, um, differently. Just
46:07
us. There's a place in
46:10
Iowa where this is kinda happening. Kinda. You
46:14
can send our producer store in the
46:16
mail to check it out. And ready to go visit
46:18
to Savage Runbo. So to set things up, what was
46:20
the name of this place? The Great Ape Trust, although
46:22
I think the name is kind of in flaut. But
46:25
anyway, The Great Ape Trust, which is this place in
46:27
Des Moines, Iowa, where, um, it's
46:29
kinda like a compound where they keep a very
46:32
special group of bonobos. Is it bonobos
46:34
or bonobos? How do they say it? I think
46:36
they say bonobos. Huh. Okay,
46:39
so now you're gonna start working again. So
46:42
when I got there, Bill Fields, who's the director of the
46:44
place... Director of Scientific Research... That's
46:46
him, right there. Hi, I'm Bonobo Suddy. Bill
46:49
took me inside. And
46:51
then there's this place where they keep the bonobos.
46:54
But, uh, Bill had to kind of go in there ahead of
46:56
me and ask. Uh-huh.
46:59
That they
47:01
are ready to see me. Do you want the visitor
47:03
to come see you? Uh-huh. Okay.
47:06
Okay. All right. We're gonna bring the
47:09
visitor to see you. And
47:11
I walk into this room, which is this kind of big
47:13
concrete room. Uh-huh. The
47:16
rules are when there are visitors that the
47:18
bonobos are kind of kept behind this fence.
47:21
Oh, there's a fence in the room? Yeah.
47:24
And just on the other side of the fence is... ...concee.
47:28
Oh. What does he look like? He's pretty
47:30
big. Maybe if
47:33
he stood completely upright, he'd be a little bit shorter than
47:35
I am?
47:41
But he's Bill. And
47:43
more than that, he's got this... ...hug. And
47:49
he looks at you. Directly
47:53
in the eye. He was standing there
47:55
with his arms just kind of swinging. His fingers
47:57
are... ...amazing. What
48:02
my going to do! Some
48:05
little bit more like there's another person from
48:07
the other side of that meyer. So
48:17
here's one of the first things that confidence when
48:19
I kind like this. Like
48:21
a big plastic salad bowl. and he
48:24
taking too big plastic salad bowls face
48:26
down on the concrete and put his
48:28
hands on him and run on. Around
48:36
the room, Around
48:40
around circle and he just. Slams
48:45
himself up against of the wire
48:47
while the why would he think
48:49
he was doing. Know
48:51
what does this? Is
49:06
in the microphone. So
49:08
here's here's poses to Sue with
49:10
remember Sue from the last story
49:12
says have a drummer after she
49:14
worked with Lucy? This is about
49:16
thirty years ago. She got Tansy.
49:19
And she raised him. I mean she from
49:21
a little biddy? yeah but noble would you
49:23
know? Carry on the around with her all
49:26
the time loving him as much as I
49:28
love my son. she becomes light, watch movies
49:30
when he went to bed at night and
49:32
a mother to causing. The. Sounds
49:34
a little bit like the lucy think so,
49:37
but the difference here is that list. Time
49:39
to eat. We never wanted to take
49:41
him away from his mother metadata. Friends.
49:43
He also has been nobleman. Natasha was
49:46
born in the Congo so she carried
49:48
the knowledge as the novice culture as
49:50
best she could across the concepts. I
49:52
was a member of a different species.
49:54
I had a different kind of land
49:56
which human. Kind of language to says that the
49:58
whole idea of the experiment was to. It kind
50:00
of an emotional mine ah bond between
50:02
her and cons that would fill Kanzi
50:04
with an. Innate desire to. Understand
50:08
what I was going to say to understand
50:10
how I sell to want to communicate with.
50:12
Me and so pretty soon times he is using
50:14
this. They have a kind of special keyboard for
50:16
the he with these symbols. Me beat her says
50:18
him on it. Makes sense of computer voice as
50:20
a word. Milk.
50:25
He's. Using this symbol keep years
50:27
to communicate. This
50:32
is. The two of them sitting in front of the keyboard. Mommy
50:36
White cliffs over six
50:38
hundred Really saw a
50:40
man. This is
50:42
word. To. Me it just gets
50:44
a ponzi and he got older. Started
50:47
being able to communicate without the keyboard.
50:49
She would talk to him and. He
50:52
would talk bath. Mat
50:54
I'll give an example goes when I was
50:57
there were there was one point where we
50:59
are outsize. Society where
51:01
yes because he has his outside
51:03
space and were outside too but
51:05
he still fence then like before
51:07
and bill and time when you
51:09
are having this kind of fat
51:12
and box office apple. Ponzi
51:15
seems to be saying there's something I want
51:18
to show your there's something you need to
51:20
see. It's not quite clear was going I
51:22
fear. And. Bill can't quite figure
51:24
it out either so fancy takes us
51:26
then from the tool site over this
51:29
other place where there's on the other
51:31
suspects piss. Had asked if we can't
51:33
seem to because we're behind dispense but
51:35
when ponzi is basically pointing down and
51:37
a pet about out of have. Some
51:40
the whole lot. his watt
51:42
lamp. And. According
51:44
to Bill and Sue saying there's something
51:46
there's no matter how his consulting I
51:48
mean why I mean to you and
51:51
me a sound like. Having
51:56
like ice I could salvage Ponzi
51:58
was gesturing at something. You got
52:00
it, you got it. Right here,
52:02
right here. Is it
52:04
dangerous? Bill
52:06
and Sue are hearing Does it live
52:08
under the mud? Work. Has
52:12
it got teeth? It's
52:15
got teeth, it's got big teeth. And you
52:17
want us to get rid of it? Are
52:20
you scared of it? Not
52:22
too much. You can handle
52:24
it. Well, I
52:26
can't come in there right now, but I can
52:29
in a little bit and we'll check it
52:31
out. We were so interested in this situation
52:33
you're hearing right here. I'll come
52:35
and look. Are they really talking? So we
52:37
decided to call up Bill Fields.
52:39
Hello? Hello,
52:42
hello, hello. This is Bill. Hey Bill, so we
52:44
heard a bit of tape that Soren recorded where
52:46
you guys were outside and Kanzi was pointing in
52:48
a hole or something. And
52:50
it just sounded like you guys were having some kind of
52:52
real, bilingual exchange.
52:55
I mean, is that really what was happening? Yes,
52:58
that's what was happening. We have begun to
53:00
be able to decode his speech. If you
53:03
say, Kanzi, what do you want for breakfast?
53:05
He'll point on the lexogram keyboard he wanted.
53:07
Grapes, onions, tofu. Say, okay, I'm going to
53:09
go tell everybody we're going to have grapes,
53:12
onions, and tofu. And he
53:14
will just respond with right now. Like
53:16
vocally? Yes. What does that sound like?
53:18
I'm going to see if I can do it. So
53:22
it's in English? Yes. Oh
53:24
man. Yes, when he speaks to me, and I
53:26
understand it, it's in English. The
53:29
first time it happened, says Bill, he was a
53:31
grad student, and he and Kanzi were outside. I
53:33
was sitting on a stop. And
53:35
Kanzi was sort of in a field nearby,
53:37
but at a certain point he says Kanzi
53:39
stopped what he was doing, turned right, Bill.
53:41
And I'll do my best to reproduce it
53:43
for you. He said to me, like
53:50
that. He said what? He said
53:52
chase, but it was very hard for him to say it. Don't
53:54
you just ask yourself, like, really?
53:56
Am I sure that's what I heard? Not anymore. I
54:00
used to. It is such a
54:02
common occurrence in our lab and it's not
54:04
just my experience, it's my staff's experience, it's
54:06
Sue's experience. And so, Ron, what about you?
54:08
I mean, you were there. Do you buy
54:11
what he's saying? Kanzi speaks words. I
54:15
still don't know. Yeah. I mean,
54:17
the science isn't there, but what I do buy is
54:19
that there's real communication
54:21
going on and I think it may
54:23
be like a new kind of communication.
54:26
This is something I don't think has
54:28
happened anywhere else. Bill and
54:30
Sue have literally created a third
54:33
culture, a culture that is neither just
54:36
bonobo or just human, it's something
54:38
in between. And
54:40
I think that that culture
54:42
and those relationships are real.
54:45
Yeah. Now, the weird thing about
54:47
that is that with all
54:49
the great things that come out of that, there are also
54:52
moments of real confusion.
54:55
Like what? One time,
54:58
we had a principal investigator who was
55:00
visiting the lab at that time and
55:03
she was having a
55:05
very strong disagreement with
55:07
Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh about method
55:10
and this really upset Kanzi. Why was the
55:12
investigator screaming at Sue or what was she
55:14
doing? Why do you call him an investigator?
55:16
Is that like, is this some kind of
55:19
academic visitor? Is that what we need? That's
55:21
how scientists are referred to. You have the
55:23
principal investigator, the co-investigator. It's
55:25
not Columbo with a gun packing a gun. This is
55:27
like just some guy from some college somewhere.
55:29
It's a scientific investigator. Okay. So
55:32
just to fill out the scene, you've got Sue, Bill,
55:35
and this investigator in one room and
55:37
Kanzi in a different room behind some
55:39
glass. Very thick, clear glass. So Kanzi
55:41
can actually see what's happening in their
55:43
room. You can see that this investigator
55:46
is getting angry with Sue, his human
55:48
mom, getting more and more animated. It
55:50
was professionally aggressive and loud. And
55:52
what was the argument about? Do you remember it? Oh,
55:54
yes. It was about the format
55:56
that we were going to use for archived
55:59
video. That's it. Well,
56:03
you know, words have been fought over stupid things. And
56:07
as Sue and this lady are arguing, what was
56:09
Kanzi doing? He was banging on the window. So
56:12
I went to speak
56:14
to him. He walked into Kanzi's room.
56:16
Kanzi then went to the keyboard and told
56:19
him, you have to punish that investigator for
56:21
screaming at Sue. He didn't want, he wanted
56:23
me to go in there and
56:26
stop her from doing this. It was my responsibility
56:30
to take care of things and that if I
56:32
didn't do it, he was going
56:34
to bite me. Really? Were you being told,
56:36
man up, this woman is being attacked and
56:38
you're supposed to pound or bite that investigator.
56:40
And if you don't bite her, I will
56:42
bite you? Is that what essentially... Yes, and
56:45
I defaulted to human culture. I
56:48
said, Kanzi, I really
56:50
can't go argue. I can't interfere. I
56:52
just defaulted to the way things
56:55
would happen in the human world. And
56:57
so later they told Sue that Kanzi told me
57:00
he was going to bite me and
57:02
Sue said, Kanzi, you're not going to bite me. And
57:05
24 hours later after
57:07
he threatened to bite me, he says Sue was
57:09
putting Kanzi back in his enclosure, but Kanzi pushed
57:12
past her, ran down the hall, found Bill in
57:14
his office. He came and found me and he
57:16
bit me. He bit you? Where
57:19
did he bite you? On
57:21
the hand. It was really serious.
57:23
I lost a finger. Jeez.
57:26
What happened was the hand was bitten and they
57:29
had to reattach all of the ligaments so that
57:31
the rest of my hand would work. I
57:34
had three surgeries that week. The first one
57:36
was 14 hours, the next one was about
57:38
eight hours, and the third one was about
57:40
three hours. But the problem was I apparently
57:43
had sensitivities to drugs we didn't know about
57:46
and they had given me morphine and
57:48
I arrested. It stopped my
57:50
breathing and my heart. You almost died.
57:52
Yes. Wow,
57:55
sir. Would you think if you'd bitten him, he
57:57
wouldn't have bitten you? I'm certain of it. Yeah
58:01
so what'd you do then the minute
58:03
you just come back the lab and
58:05
to nothing happened or I came back
58:07
to the lab that fourteen days after
58:09
the event on. I was
58:11
not ready to but I didn't know
58:13
what else to do. But for eight
58:15
months I didn't speak to county and
58:17
a he was kept trying to make
58:19
up with me. I held he do
58:21
that. would he Would he say he
58:23
type his keyboard sorry or never he
58:25
would. He refused to tell me who
58:28
sorry but he would keep calling me a
58:30
bill says he's use the keyboard to ask
58:32
the other researchers to get bill get them
58:34
and when he went to reduce his camps
58:36
down and renew my friendship with him in
58:38
just act like nothing had happened. And
58:40
ah I simply wouldn't go and see him
58:43
and see came to me and tried to
58:45
talk me into going to same as during
58:47
times he's ready to apologize. But. She
58:49
come back and say know cause he's not
58:51
going apart as he doesn't think he should
58:53
and down I just stood on the ground.
58:55
you know cause he's gonna apologize to me.
58:59
Finally one afternoon, eight months later,
59:01
When. His colleagues came up to me
59:03
and told them kinds he wants to
59:06
he sorry and as soon as I
59:08
got down there he threw his body
59:10
up against the wire pressing up against
59:12
me. Hey just screamed and screamed in
59:14
my mouth which was to spirits submissive
59:17
scream. It was very clear
59:19
he was sorry and he was trying to make
59:21
up with me, and I ask him on the
59:23
keyboard, are you sorry and he told me? And
59:27
will receive to himself against of mine.
59:29
That mean you can still against the
59:31
separating device between you and him. Yes
59:33
he just pressed his body up against
59:35
that wire and so I put my
59:37
body up against him and we pressed
59:39
up against he to. Deceive.
59:42
What's happening here? You're telling a story
59:44
which reads more and more and more
59:47
like a soap opera between a community
59:49
of beings. The fact that one of
59:51
them is a little bonobo, another one
59:53
is a guy is almost incidental to
59:56
the story. It's like, I could put
59:58
this on Channel Five. It's.
1:00:02
Just kind of. He.
1:00:09
says. No.
1:00:19
Currently the great A process as much
1:00:21
as considers about seven the the know
1:00:23
there and a dozen or so and
1:00:26
of staff and researchers and while they're
1:00:28
certainly not the same they have created
1:00:30
at the very least some. Some
1:00:33
middle ground, And
1:00:35
for sue. That's not
1:00:37
about a solution to any
1:00:40
conservation problem or some scientific
1:00:42
breakthrough. It's is something. Deeper.
1:00:45
And more personal when I am
1:00:47
with the Now boasts I. See
1:00:50
a like I have
1:00:52
something that. I
1:00:54
shared with them long ago. That
1:00:56
I forgot. As
1:00:59
we've closed ourselves and separated ourselves,
1:01:01
we've gained a wonderful societies that
1:01:03
we've lost the kind of sold
1:01:06
his soul connection. That they.
1:01:09
Maintain. And
1:01:14
it sometimes seems to me as though
1:01:16
we're both are a kind of a.
1:01:20
A disadvantage species. They have things
1:01:23
that I've lost. I have things
1:01:25
that that they don't have. I
1:01:28
feel like if I could have
1:01:31
their abilities and keep mine. And
1:01:34
would be whole. You
1:01:51
can find more information about anything
1:01:53
the you heard in the shower
1:01:55
at our website. radiolab.org is also
1:01:57
Lucy Pictures and Janice and Com
1:01:59
the pictures. and you
1:02:01
can subscribe to our podcast. That's at
1:02:03
radiolab.org. I'm Jan Abumrad. I'm Robert Krowich.
1:02:05
Thanks for listening, Miles. Hi, I'm Rhianne,
1:02:09
and I'm from Denny Garland, Ireland. Babiolab
1:02:11
was created by Jad
1:02:14
Abumrad and is edited by Soreen
1:02:16
Mitter. Lulu Miller and
1:02:18
Mathis Nasser are our co-hosts. Drinkies
1:02:20
is our director of sound design.
1:02:22
Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy
1:02:25
Bloom, Becca Bresler, the Keddie
1:02:27
Foster Keys, W. Harry
1:02:29
Furtuna, David Gable, Maria Paz
1:02:31
Gutierrez, Sindhu Nana Sandeban, Matt
1:02:34
Geerti, Annie McEwen, Alex Mason,
1:02:36
Sally Clary, Valentina Powers, Sarah
1:02:39
Sandbach, Ariane Wach, Pat Walters,
1:02:42
and Molly Webster. The staff checkers are
1:02:44
Diane Kelly, Emily Kruger, Natalie
1:02:46
Middleton. Hi,
1:02:49
I'm Erica Inyankar's leadership support
1:02:51
for Radiolab Science Programming is
1:02:53
provided by the Gordon and
1:02:55
Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox,
1:02:57
a Simon Foundation initiative, and
1:03:00
the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational
1:03:02
support for Radiolab was provided by
1:03:05
the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Life
1:03:11
is a highway. And on it, there will
1:03:13
be many chicken sandwiches. But there's
1:03:15
only one McChrissy, so go ahead and
1:03:17
hit the turn signal if you know
1:03:20
about this juicy gem of
1:03:22
a detour. I'm
1:03:29
David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour.
1:03:32
There's nothing like finding a story you can
1:03:34
really sink into that lets you tune
1:03:37
out the noise and focus on what matters.
1:03:40
In print or here on the podcast, the
1:03:42
New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness, depth, and even
1:03:44
humor that you can't find anywhere else. So
1:03:47
please join me every week for the New Yorker
1:03:49
Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More