[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LATIF NASSER: Hey, it's Latif.

LULU MILLER: And Lulu.

LATIF: And Radiolab.

LULU: We both sound a little scratchy, but you're not gonna hear a lot of us today because we're traveling back into the past for a very special, warm, fuzzy yet complicated episode from the archives. But first, we wanted to tell you about something new and shiny.

LATIF: Yeah. Which is a new and shiny delivery mechanism for our—for this show that we love so much, which is you can get it on YouTube now.

LULU: Yeah. So Radiolab has recently made this whole massive YouTube channel, which has some kind of amazing things from over the years. It has animated shorts, it's got music videos from collaborations we've done with different musicians.

LATIF: It's got live shows. It's got—yeah, it's got a ton of stuff. But the best thing of all, I think, is it has these, like, bundles. It has these—these themed lists, including a sort of a starter kit. So for people who are maybe more recent to the show, like, you can just quickly just race, gallop through all our favorite episodes. That's YouTube.com/RadiolabPod.

LULU: So as we were putting that together, thinking about, you know, what are the really special Radiolabs, we started thinking about this oldie but a goodie, which is called "Animal Minds."

LATIF: Are you in this? I heard a voice.

LULU: I am. This is like baby reporter me. This is one of my favorite assignments of all time.

LATIF: Don't spoil the top, though. But it's so good.

LULU: I won't. But I was just starting out and they said, "Hey, can you go record this almost surreal sounding event," which I didn't quite believe took place. And that's how it kicks off.

LATIF: Don't spoil it.

LULU: Okay, I won't say anymore. Let's just—there's a good tussle ahead, and yeah, let's just let the—the Radiolabbers of the past take us away.

ROBERT KRULWICH: So where are we?

JAD ABUMRAD: We're at church.

ROBERT: In a church. Oh, that's—that's different for us.

JAD: Yeah. It's not usually where we start, we're in a church.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

JAD: Cathedral really. A huge cathedral in upper Manhattan, St. John the Divine. We've got an organ.

JAD: That's the preacher, there's the preacher.

ROBERT: Congregation of course.

JAD: Mm-hmm. A couple thousand people in the pews at least. It's your basic Sunday service. Except today. You've also got—here it comes!

[dog barking]

JAD: Dogs! The reason we begin here is because today the church is filled with dogs.

LULU: Can I talk to you about your dog?

MAN: Yeah.

LULU: What's his or her name?

MAN: His name is Blozer.

LULU: And what is he?

MAN: He's a Labrador and poodle mix.

WOMAN: Well, I have Legend, who I just adopted in January.

LULU: Okay.

WOMAN: I have Denzel.

JAD: Oh, by the way, you have more than dogs, you've got birds.

GIRL: His name is Jessie. It's a barn owl.

LULU: And now has this guy ever been blessed before?

GIRL: I don't think so. No. He was just born this year.

JAD: And hamsters.

WOMAN: His name is Tubby. Tubby Toes, and if he'd come out you'd see why, it's because he's really fat.

JAD: And all kinds of creatures.

LULU: We've got a little girl with a falcon. And behind her, oh, it's a giant tortoise!

JAD: This is the St. Francis day of the animals. It's a yearly event.

LULU: And coming towards us...

JAD: Where people bring their animals to be blessed.

LULU: ...is a donkey.

JAD: The folks that are gathered here...

LULU: And there's a little girl with a hermit crab.

JAD: ...they don't think there's anything weird or inappropriate about this. In fact, if you ask them...

LULU: And here comes a bull!

JAD: ...here's what they say.

WOMAN: I don't know if it means anything to her but it means it to me.

LULU: Yeah.

WOMAN: Because you know you want it to baptize your babies.

LULU: Yeah.

WOMAN: And this is more or less the same kind of thing.

LULU: And what is it—what does it mean to you?

WOMAN: It just means when, when she finally does go away she's gonna go to heaven.

LULU: And what kind of parrot is she?

MAN: A macaw, blue and gold. Oh yeah, don't put your hand near his face.

LULU: And what's his name?

WOMAN: Chuckles.

LULU: Chuckles.

PARROT: Bye bye.

LULU: Do you feel like he has a soul, or an inner life of some sort?

WOMAN: It's a thinking being. They're as smart as we are, really.

ROBERT: Jad?

JAD: Yeah?

ROBERT: Since you invited me here I don't want to be impolite or anything.

JAD: Say what you're gonna say!

ROBERT: Well, okay. These people of course they love their animals.

JAD: Sure. Yeah, you can hear that.

WOMAN: Because when I'm feeling sad he comes in the bed, and he lays down spine to spine with me, and he just doesn't leave my side.

ROBERT: But aren't they presuming a little bit, that the animals they love are going to feel the grace of the prayer, or feel the blessing, which is a...

JAD: Which raises a question.

ROBERT: What do we really know about what goes on inside the animal's mind?

JAD: Yeah, all those things you might feel in a church: grace, gratitude, guilt. Can the animals feel those things too?

ROBERT: How much can we share?

JAD: And can you measure it?

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: And we'll begin the hour with a story about an animal who would I'm sure loved to have been at the worship service but was—it was a very inconvenient thing for him.

JAD: He didn't get the info.

ROBERT: He couldn't quite get there.

JAD: Okay just to get things rolling. This is a story that we heard about...

MICK MENAGO: It's okay, I give them enough to talk about as it is.

JAD: ...first from the following dude.

JAD: Hey, is it Mick or is it Mike?

MICK MENAGO: I go by Mick. There's way too many Mikes around.

JAD: [laughs] Oh, okay.

JAD: Mick Menago is his name.

MICK MENAGO: Well the boat's down here...

JAD: And we met Mick recently at the Emeryville Marina, which is not far from San Francisco, where he's got a boat called the Super Fish that Mick says he rents out for all kinds of things.

MICK MENAGO: Nature trips to ash scattering, bachelor parties, fireworks watching. I don't care. I got a little cardboard sign, I stand by the freeway it says "Have boat, need work."

JAD: So yeah, that's Mick. And our story begins one morning in December.

MICK MENAGO: Probably eight o'clock in the morning or something as I recall.

JAD: This is a few years back. Mick, he's just kind of sitting at home.

MICK MENAGO: I was at home, yeah. It was the middle of December. We didn't have any work.

JAD: But then he gets this call.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Mick Menago: Hello?]

MICK MENAGO: I got this call.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Mick Menago: Hello there.

JAD: It was a call relaying a message from a fisherman way out at sea.

MICK MENAGO: Eighteen miles maybe outside the Golden Gate Bridge. They told me that there was a whale in trouble, tangled up in crab gear, and it didn't appear to be able to move.

JAD: So after he hangs up Mick immediately calls a few dive buddies.

MICK MENAGO: Tim Young.

TIM YOUNG: Tim Young, Air Force Pararescue.

MICK MENAGO: And then let's see.

JAMES MOSKITO: James Moskito.

MICK MENAGO: James Moskito.

JAMES MOSKITO: Professional diver.

MICK MENAGO: I called him and said "Hey, you know, here's the deal. Are you interested?"

TIM YOUNG: It was a no brainer.

JAMES MOSKITO: I said "Yeah, I'm in absolutely."

MICK MENAGO: I figured all right we're going.

JAMES MOSKITO: So I packed up my stuff.

TIM YOUNG: Grabbed my gear, and I went directly to the boat.

HOLLY DREWYARD: And we left underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing but the horizon in front of us. My name is Holly Drewyard. I am James' significant other. [laughs] We motored out for about two hours. Headed due west towards the Farallon Islands.

ELLEN HORNE: What were you feeling when you were on the boat heading out?

HOLLY DREWYARD: I didn't think we'd find her. I really didn't.

JAD: But at 18 miles off the coast, completely open water, one of the divers spots some crab buoys in the distance, and some seagulls flying overhead. And as they got closer...

HOLLY DREWYARD: Well, I saw the whale.

TIM YOUNG: It was just a...

HOLLY DREWYARD: Just the very top of the whale.

TIM YOUNG: Sticking up about maybe six inches out of the water.

HOLLY DREWYARD: At the surface.

JAD: A tiny sliver of black.

TIM YOUNG: And that was it. And then I said "Okay, we need to see what's going on, so..."

JAD: So Tim and James jump into an inflatable boat, and they paddle about a couple of hundred feet from the whale.

JAMES MOSKITO: And it just wasn't happening. Every time that this whale came on up it would just displace the boat back again, so it would push us back again.

JAD: Not to mention...

TIM YOUNG: The visibility in the water was just terrible.

JAD: They couldn't even see down there to see, you know, what they were dealing with.

JAMES MOSKITO: And you know what? Sometimes plans have to change in mid-flight.

JAD: So Tim and James look at each other, and without saying a word...

JAMES MOSKITO: Boom. We got out of the boat and...

TIM YOUNG: Splashed into the water.

JAMES MOSKITO: And I see a shadow. This massive animal.

TIM YOUNG: A hazy silhouette.

JAMES MOSKITO: And we just started swimming.

TIM YOUNG: To the whale. About a hundred feet away.

JAMES MOSKITO: You know, parts of blubber and skin floating around.

TIM YOUNG: 35 feet. 20 feet.

JAD: And then they see it.

JAMES MOSKITO: My goodness, this thing is the size of a school bus.

JAD: A female humpback whale is one of the largest creatures on the planet, 50 feet long, 50 tons, and this particular whale wasn't in a kind of C shape, where it's head was at the top of the water, but it's tail was almost pointed directly down.

JAMES MOSKITO: It was almost like somebody was pulling her down by the tail to the bottom of the ocean.

TIM YOUNG: Yeah, there was probably 20 crab traps, 2,000 pounds at least just tied up to the tail.

JAMES MOSKITO: She had just become an anchor.

TIM YOUNG: An anchor.

JAMES MOSKITO: And to see her not be able to move that tail, and to struggle...

TIM YOUNG: Just like—gasp! The whale was actually really laboring to breathe. Just a little puff, and there was just rope everywhere.

TIM YOUNG: It went around the whale's mouth, around the whale's head.

JAD: Across her eye, over her back.

TIM YOUNG: Wrapped around the pectoral fins, all the way down to his tail. I thought there was no hope.

JAMES MOSKITO: There was no chance.

TIM YOUNG: We're looking at a dead whale. The whale just doesn't know it yet. But I knew that I had to try, I'm gonna swim to the whale. And as soon as I decide okay I'm gonna swim to the whale, well the whale decides she wasn't gonna have that.

JAD: What she'd do?

TIM YOUNG: She put up her pectoral fin, which is like her arm, and this pectoral fin is about 15 feet long, about four feet wide. And she just splashed down the water in front of me. You know, it's the size of an airplane wing coming down on top of you, just inches from my head.

TIM YOUNG: So, you know, at that point I backed off and waited.

JAD: Waited for the whale to settle down.

JAMES MOSKITO: She was physically exhausted.

JAD: Which she did, and then they both swim back. James goes to the tail and Tim, up to the whale's head.

TIM YOUNG: You know I was there with a six-inch dive knife.

JAD: Cutting out line right near her eye.

TIM YOUNG: Which was the size of a grapefruit. And her eye was moving, keeping an eye on me.

JAD: Really?

TIM YOUNG: Absolutely.

JAD: He would go left, her eye would go left. He'd go right, her eye would go right.

TIM YOUNG: She was tracking me.

JAD: And all the while, they're just cutting as much rope as they can.

JAMES MOSKITO: You really had to saw at it. It was very strong, very tight. Sometimes I'd cut a rope, and it would be a loose rope, and all of a sudden something else would tighten up, which was the one rope that would let it all free.

JAD: This whole process took hours, but finally James gets to the end of it. He's at the tail, sawing his way through that big clump of line, and he realizes at a certain point that to cut through all that line...

JAMES MOSKITO: I'm going to have to stab the whale to get my knife underneath the rope.

JAD: Ah.

JAMES MOSKITO: It was that tight, though. I jabbed my knife into the whale's tail, and pulled the rope and then cut it.

JAD: And once the rope went—fwip fwip fwip fwip, fwoo!

JAMES MOSKITO: It was a very surreal moment looking down and seeing the 20 crab traps and buoys just disappear into the abyss.

JAD: And just like that the whale was gone.

JAMES MOSKITO: I'm spinning around going "Where'd she go? Where'd she go?"

JAD: But as the water settled, they realized they'd done it. They freed her.

JAMES MOSKITO: As soon as I came up I was like "Woo-hoo!"

TIM YOUNG: Wow!

JAMES MOSKITO: Whooping it up and yelling.

TIM YOUNG: Unbelievable.

JAMES MOSKITO: I was screaming.

TIM YOUNG: Can you imagine it?

JAD: Now here's where the story takes a pretty startling turn.

JAMES MOSKITO: High-fiving.

JAD: In fact, the whole reason we wanted to tell this story to begin with is for what happens next. So Tim and James and the other divers are in the water, they're celebrating, high-fiving, and then all of a sudden James looks down.

JAMES MOSKITO: Next thing I know I have this 50-ton whale coming right at me, and I'm thinking "Oh my God, stop! I just saved you."

JAD: Wait, so this whale is coming at you from below, like Jaws?

JAMES MOSKITO: Yeah, she's rising up towards me.

TIM YOUNG: Oh God!

JAMES MOSKITO: And I was just thinking this is going to hurt, and...

JAD: And...

JAMES MOSKITO: And when she was only inches away from my chest, she stopped. And pushed me on the chest backwards, and then released me, and then kind of pushed again, and then release, and pushed again and again.

JAD: Wow!

JAMES MOSKITO: And then she swam up right next to me, peeks her head up above the water so that her eye was above the water, and then came up and looked directly at me.

JAD: And for what felt like 30 seconds, he says, she just stared at him.

JAMES MOSKITO: The pupil didn't move around. She wasn't looking for anything else. She was just looking at me. You're in the presence of something that great, it makes you feel small.

JAD: Yeah.

JAMES MOSKITO: It really was a very emotional feeling. You know, I wasn't quite sure what to make out of it, make of it.

JAD: But then he says she went off to the next diver.

JAMES MOSKITO: And did the same thing.

TIM YOUNG: I remembered distinctly I was 18 inches away from her eye, and she just looked at me and let me touch her, and then swam off.

JAMES MOSKITO: And then she went off to the next diver and did the same thing, and the next person and did the same thing.

JAD: One by one.

JAMES MOSKITO: Coming up right next to him. Looking at him really good, you know, inches away, eyeballing him.

HOLLY DREWYARD: She swam around every diver.

MICK MENAGO: All the guys got it.

HOLLY DREWYARD: So it was about dusk. The water was glass flat. I was sitting at the helm of the boat just in awe. And they had to leave the whale. She didn't want to leave them.

JAD: Now there's a real question here: what exactly was that whale doing—or saying? Was she saying anything? And if you ask James or Tim or Mick or any of the other divers that were in the water that day they'll tell you...

TIM YOUNG: I felt this whale was really thanking us.

JAMES MOSKITO: I know it sounds crazy, but I could see the look in her eye. This mammal, this 50-ton mammal was literally saying thanks. Thanks for helping me out. And, you know, I'll bring that to my grave knowing the gratification that I felt.

ROBERT: Hmm. Wow!

JAD: So what do you think? I mean, here's the question, really.

ROBERT: Uh-huh.

JAD: Was that whale saying thank you?

ROBERT: Was the whale saying—well, I think the whale was saying something. I mean, a whale, if she was just freed of her ropes, I would think she would just go off and say "Whew, I'm free!" So the fact that she would...

JAD: That she hung around.

ROBERT: And make these specific...

JAD: Circles, eyeballs.

ROBERT: ...visits. Like I don't know I feel that she, there's something intentional about that. She didn't leave anyone out, right?

JAD: No, she...

ROBERT: She went to everybody.

JAD: In fact, according to one of the guys on the boat, she actually went to the boats and did the same thing to the boats.

ROBERT: She said thank you to the boats?

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: Hmm, well then. So she was looking at the people, but she also thought that the craft was somebody she should say thank you, or say deal with.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: So maybe she was just psyched, maybe she was just—I really don't know what she—I mean I don't—I don't feel completely comfortable just saying—of course, I know what I want to feel.

JAD: Yeah, me too.

ROBERT: But let's just try to straighten up for a second. We have a guy named Clive Wynne. He teaches at the university...

CLIVE WYNNE: Hello?

ROBERT: Hey!

JAD: Oh hi, is this Mr. Clive Wynne?

CLIVE WYNNE: Yeah, this is Clive Wynne.

JAD: Hi.

ROBERT: Clive is with the psychology department at the University of Florida.

CLIVE WYNNE: Who am I talking—who's this?

JAD: This is Jad from Radiolab in...

CLIVE WYNNE: Right. Hi, Jad.

JAD: Clive also happens to be an expert on animal psychology.

ROBERT: Hi. This is Robert also.

CLIVE WYNNE: Hi, Robert.

ROBERT: Can you hear us pretty well?

CLIVE WYNNE: I can hear you pretty well. I'm—I'm wondering how well I'm gonna distinguish your voices.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs] Oh, no need to do that.

ROBERT: Treat us as a unitary figure.

JAD: Yeah.

CLIVE WYNNE: [laughs] Okay.

ROBERT: But so let me—let me begin. Now this is Robert talking.

CLIVE WYNNE: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: We'll tell you a story, and we want to know...

JAD: What you think of the story?

ROBERT: So once upon a time and not too long ago...

JAD: All right, we're gonna fast forward a bit because we ran Clive through the entire whale story, front to back.

ROBERT: So my question to you is: if a diver said to you, "This whale said thank you to me," what would you say?

CLIVE WYNNE: Well, I would be put in a difficult situation, because I don't doubt that what these people experienced was a very moving moment with that whale, but the problem is I just don't speak whale, so...

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

CLIVE WYNNE: ...I don't know what thank you looks like in whale. If I'm gonna be a cynic about it I would say, "Well, the whale has been trapped for I believe over a day, and may just be disoriented."

ROBERT: Well but this was—this was parking herself with one individual and then moving to the next. That's not a distracted—that looks like its got some intention.

CLIVE WYNNE: It shows some interest in the individuals. I'll give you that. But how do we—how do we get from that, to deducing that the whale is trying to express thanks?

JAD: What do you mean? It's just...

CLIVE WYNNE: Let's play a different example. Let's suppose that you found a bear in the woods that was caught up in some netting that ended up in the woods. And you work for hours to free the bear, and then the bear eats you. Does that mean that the—the bears are an ungrateful species of animal?

JAD: Yes. [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: No, I don't truly believe that.

CLIVE WYNNE: Right. Well, so I mean it would make as much sense to ascribe ingratitude to the bear as it does to ascribe gratitude to the whale. I just don't think that's a useful way of trying to understand animals. And I think it—ultimately it demeans them, because it means that instead of living in a world that's full of the diversity of wonderful creatures, each with its own ways of relating to other members of its own species and other members of other species, we say "Well, we don't live in a world like that. We live in a world that's basically a world of human beings. It doesn't matter some of these human beings have fur suits on."

ROBERT: [laughs]

CLIVE WYNNE: "Some of these human beings weigh hundreds of tons, and live under the ocean, and can hold their breath for a very long time. None of that really matters ultimately they're all basically like us." And I just don't find that satisfying.

ROBERT: Hmm. Are you saying that you don't know if there's a possibility of sharing, or that you don't think that there's a possibility of sharing at a emotional level between two species?

CLIVE WYNNE: I don't doubt that there is the possibility of sharing between two species. I mean you—I see it with dogs all the time. But I think it would be a mistake if we thought that the love we feel for our dogs, is the same feeling that the dog has back to us. It has different qualities, and it's very...

JAD: But when you pet your dog, and it wags its tail, and it seems happy to see you.

CLIVE WYNNE: Yeah.

JAD: Do you just like not trust that?

CLIVE WYNNE: Well okay, so let me make clear that I wear two hats. When I'm talking about a dog, particularly a pet of my own, I'm wearing—I have two possible hats I can wear, and one is that when the dog pants back at me I just hug the dog and, you know, let him kiss me, and that's—that's life with a dog. But if I'm—if I'm now wearing my scientific hat, I'm getting my blanket as wet as I possibly can.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

CLIVE WYNNE: Then I ask myself what do these behaviors mean among dogs? There's a beautiful study that came out recently from Alexandra Horowitz.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: I'm Alexandra Horowitz, and I study dog cognition.

ROBERT: Where do we find her?

CLIVE WYNNE: She's—well, she's around the corner from you. She's at Barnard College.

JAD: So we sent our producer Soren Wheeler.

SOREN WHEELER: Yo. That's me.

JAD: To meet her, and he ended up hanging out with her, and her dog Finnegan.

SOREN: Yeah. Yeah.

JAD: In a park.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Oh. Oh, good snuffle. That's a nice snuffle. You want to snuffle with the mic?

CLIVE WYNNE: She did this beautiful experiment that shows that when people think their dog is looking guilty...

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Ears back, eyes lowered, tail between the legs.

CLIVE WYNNE: Actually, the dog is just being submissive.

SOREN: So here's what she did. She tracked down a bunch of dog owners.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Posted on Craigslist, and put out posters.

SOREN: And she found a bunch of owners who believe that like most dog owners do, that their dog feels guilt.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Yes, my dog feels guilty when he's done something wrong.

SOREN: And then she set up a situation where all of the dog owners had to scold their dogs because, you know, they'd been told that their dogs did something bad. But the trick of the experiment is that only half the dogs had done something wrong.

CLIVE WYNNE: Half the dogs had actually been naughty, and half the dogs had not been naughty. But then she...

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Misinformed the owners.

CLIVE WYNNE: ...lied to half of the owners.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: So we lied to the owners.

SOREN: So even the owners whose dogs hadn't been bad, thought their dogs had been bad. So everybody scolded their dog.

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Almost everyone did this the same way, which was to say no loudly to their dogs, and maybe put their hands on their hip and just express disapproval

SOREN: No. Finnegan!

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Yes! Finnegan!

SOREN: I can't believe you ate...

ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Finnegan. Oh. It's okay.

SOREN: See, Finnegan just made the look, even though he hadn't done anything wrong. And that's essentially what she found. Even the non-guilty dogs made the guilty look.

CLIVE WYNNE: It didn't matter whether the dog had transgressed or not. All that mattered was whether it was being chastised by its owner.

ROBERT: So bad dog, bad dog!

CLIVE WYNNE: Right.

ROBERT: That creates the look, not the deed.

CLIVE WYNNE: That's exactly right.

JAD: But—but for me the pivotal question here is not whether or not they all had the look, but what's attached to that look. What feeling in the dog is attached to that guilty look? Maybe the dogs who were falsely accused still felt bad.

ROBERT: [laughs]

CLIVE WYNNE: [laughs]. Well maybe they did. Maybe they did, and maybe there are angels on top of this control console here.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

JAD: I thought it was a perfectly valid question.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Anyhow, we should thank Alexandra Horowitz. Her latest book is called Inside of a Dog. ROBERT: And before we end this section, have we resolved the question of what was that whale doing with those people? Was she saying thank you or no?

JAD: No, and do we ever resolve any questions at all?

ROBERT: Well, we try. We get a little closer, and we kind of just go...

JAD: No, we have not resolved it.

ROBERT: So we will try harder?

JAD: But but but but in our next section a mere 70 seconds away we will try very hard to actually get scientific about it.

ROBERT: Good.

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: And I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. Today's hour...

ROBERT: Animal minds. Animal minds.

JAD: Right.

ROBERT: Do—can—can one animal really know what's going on in another animal's head?

JAD: Yeah, like really know?

ROBERT: Really know.

JAD: Thanks for meeting us.

JAD: So we were thinking about that whale story that we heard before the break.

ROBERT: Yep.

JAD: You know, where the divers meet the whale, and they were sure the whale was saying thanks.

JAMES MOSKITO: Literally saying thanks. Thanks for helping me out.

JAD: Okay that is their opinion, but we wanted to know, like, what can you actually scientifically say about that kind of exchange? And that question led us...

PRODUCER: Introduce yourself.

JAD: ...to this guy.

PATRICK HOFF: My name is Patrick Hoff. I am a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

JAD: He may have found a way of separating the animals, of knowing which animals can genuinely have human emotions, and which can't.

PATRICK HOFF: It starts—it starts in 1995. We were studying the anatomy of the human cingulate cortex.

JAD: That's part of the brain that's right here. Kind of between your eyes, but down.

PATRICK HOFF: And a student in my lab, Esther Nimchinsky...

JAD: She was looking at some brains, and she saw...

ROBERT: Something odd.

PATRICK HOFF: These very slender bipolar neurons. I've never seen a neuron like that. Maybe it's abnormal, it's probably pathological.

JAD: Just to be sure, she got some slides of other human brains, looked in the same place.

PATRICK HOFF: And we...

JAD: There it was again.

PATRICK HOFF: ...started to see them in...

ROBERT: And again.

PATRICK HOFF: And we were very pleased. So okay, we have discovered a new cell type. Whoo! Something that is unique to humans.

JAD: But then they went to the library and discovered that some guy...

PATRICK HOFF: Who's name is Constantin von Economo.

ROBERT: Costanto...

PATRICK HOFF: Constantin von Economo.

JAD: This Romanian guy.

ROBERT: ...von Economo.

JAD: He'd seen these cells 70 years ago.

PATRICK HOFF: And he named them spindle cells.

JAD: Because of their shape.

JAD: Oh, that must have been a very sad day for Esther.

PATRICK HOFF: No. No, no.

JAD: Because now they believe that these little brain cells may be a key to how humans relate to one another, and whether or not other creatures can relate to us in the same way.

ROBERT: Right.

JAD: Is it possible to—for us to see a spindle cell?

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah, we can—we can show you spindle cells.

ROBERT: Patrick Hoff took us down the hall.

JAD: Yep.

ROBERT: Jad went first and parked him in front of a big microscope.

PATRICK HOFF: Here, you can look at it.

JAD: Will it be obvious to me?

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah.

JAD: From looking at it?

PATRICK HOFF: Crossing the middle of the field, you can see a series of tall slender...

JAD: It's making me dizzy a little bit.

PATRICK HOFF: We have one, two, three, four, five.

JAD: Is that the spindles?

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah.

JAD: Oh, they're everywhere!

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah.

JAD: Oh. You want to see them?

ROBERT: What do you mean do I want to see them? I mean, yeah! Here you hold the mic. Oh, yeah! There's a whole troop of them, and they're long and skinny and purple.

JAD: It's funny because the normal brain cells which you can also see in there are like dot, dot, dot, but these ones are doooo! Like little purple bananas.

ROBERT: Like a team of purple bananas.

JAD: And the thing that makes these cells so interesting...

ROBERT: All seeming to head off in this direction.

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah.

JAD: ...according to Patrick Hoff is that, you know, in the normal brain cells, they just talk to their neighbors. But these because they're so long...

ROBERT: They seem to be yelling across a big distance.

PATRICK HOFF: Exactly. We know that these cells send an action at some distance.

JAD: It's across the valley.

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah, it's across the valley, exactly. It's projecting.

JAD: But projecting what? And from where to where? Well, Patrick Hoff doesn't entirely know, but he says he can make a pretty good guess based on—well, if you look at the microscope you do notice some things.
PATRICK HOFF: Yeah, yeah. So here, here, on the top of the spindle points toward the surface of the brain always.

JAD: The top, he says, seems to shoot up, towards those more modern parts of the brain that involve...

PATRICK HOFF: High-order cognition.

JAD: Yeah—language, abstract thinking. Whereas the bottom of the spindle seems to shoot...

PATRICK HOFF: Down.

JAD: ...deep down.

PATRICK HOFF: The lower centers in the brain.

JAD: Towards those older parts of our brain that involve feelings, emotions, instinct. So perhaps—this is what Patrick Hoff thinks—that these cells are a kind of network, a really important one that allows the different parts of our inner selves to connect. Like, you've got the parts of us down here that feel things can now communicate with the parts of us up here that think things. And this is an oversimplification of course, but the point, the larger point is that this is exactly what happens when you look into the eyes of another human being. Because it begins with a kind of thought. Your eyes seem sad, but then that thought within you travels a great distance and connects with the feeling of sadness, so that you feel sad too.

PATRICK HOFF: Yeah.

JAD: I mean, it's the basis of kind of empathy.

PATRICK HOFF: Exactly, exactly. You know I see you're happy, you know, so that I feel good about it.

JAD: You know, and consider those times—I mean not just empathy where, like, your thoughts and feelings are in conflict, and they've gotta really talk to one another.

ROBERT: Like for example, when you get in front of me at the microphone yet again.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: And I hate you, but I know that I have to work with you, so I—I sit on that feeling. I just sit on my—it's going down to the bottom of my brain, but I say take a nap.

JAD: See, that's the best part of your spindle situation is that it's not just that thoughts connect to feelings, but those thoughts can sometimes suppress feelings.

JONAH LEHRER: Yeah, I—you know, I think that's the idea is that humans in social interactions can't rely on these hard-wired emotions in the same way other animals might be able to.

JAD: That's Jonah Lehrer, science writer. A regular Radiolab contributor, and a guy we often call to help us make sense of things.

JONAH LEHRER: You know, we can't like a dog just hump every other dog and see what happens.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JONAH LEHRER: We've—we've gotta flirt and be funny and, you know, buy a couple of drinks.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

JONAH LEHRER: But—but that was—you guys have to cut that because I don't want hate mail from...

ROBERT: I am so astonished!

JAD: [laughs]

JONAH LEHRER: Well, I was like, "Wow!"

ROBERT: We've gotta use that, Jad.

JONAH LEHRER: I just—I just turned into a frat boy. So—but the point being that our social interactions are very complicated, in that we can't rely—it's much tougher for humans to rely on simply these hard-wired, primitive instincts. You know, so the job of spindle cells is to simply broadcast content to the rest of the brain.

JAD: Because without our whole brain involved, we'd never be able to navigate the social world and make any kind of connection.
ROBERT: Right. So if spindle cells then allow us to talk gently and emotionally to one another, the question is—this is the question for the hour—what about intra-species? Is it intra- or inter-?

JAD: Intra.

ROBERT: To look within.

JAD: Like, an intranet.

ROBERT: Yeah, that's inside.

JAD: I think across species is what you mean.

ROBERT: Does any other animal have spindle cells?

JAD: And as it happens...

PATRICK HOFF: So where I'm taking you to my cold room.

JAD: ...just down the hall from his office, Professor Hoff has a freezer.

PATRICK HOFF: Where I store the specimens.

JAD: This is a very, very big door, too.

PATRICK HOFF: So...

JAD: Full of brains.

PATRICK HOFF: Yes, so it's going to get really cooler here.

JAD: All different kinds.

PATRICK HOFF: We have brains of all your species, the cetaceans are over there. We have the great apes around here.

ROBERT: This is the whale wall.

PATRICK HOFF: That's the whale wall, yeah.

JAD: He's got dozens and dozens of brains in buckets and in jars. And he keeps them all organized where each category of species has its own shelf.

PATRICK HOFF: You have more apes down there with gorillas and orangutans.

ROBERT: Aah!

JAD: Whew!

ROBERT: It was really cold in there.

JAD: So what they did was they took a bunch of those brains off the shelf and walked them down the hall to the lab, and put little pieces of them under a microscope. They didn't expect to find any of those bizarro neurons in any of these other creatures because he was pretty sure...

PATRICK HOFF: This is something that is unique to humans.

JAD: But...

PATRICK HOFF: One day we were looking at the brain of the humpback whale, and we stumble on spindle cells, plenty of spindle cells.

ROBERT: Oh, so what was that? Did you—were you surprised?

PATRICK HOFF: And I was there, and said "Okay, this is fascinating."

ROBERT: You weren't expecting that?

PATRICK HOFF: I was not at all expecting that.

JAD: But on the other hand...

PATRICK HOFF: Here we have the—the humpback whale which is a very social animal. They—they form clans, they communicate. The males have a song. They hunt together, they develop hunting strategies, which requires perfect coordination of many whales. So they have to act together to do that.
JAD: Now if acting together is the key, you know, in having complex social structures, well then these things shouldn't just be limited to whales. And in fact, over the years Hoff and other scientists have found spindle cells in chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, gorillas. Which begs the question, like, if we want to have an experience with another creature, and not just at the zoo, but a real shared experience, do those creatures need to have these things?

JAD: Do you think the existence of spindle cells creates more of a possibility of having that cross-species sharing moment?

PATRICK HOFF: I think so. If we assume that these cells have such an influence on the sociability of the species, it is very likely that you would experience something of that kind with a species that has them. I doubt you would get a very good experience if you were trying to do this with a hyena.

JONAH LEHRER: So maybe what we see when we look into, you know, these sad eyes of a blue whale, or when we look into, you know, the eyes of an elephant cradling a baby elephant, which are just the cutest things on earth, maybe what we recognize is—is that same flavor of emotion, that same inner life of feeling. Maybe—and this is a big maybe—maybe that inner life requires spindle cells.

ROBERT: But how big is that maybe? I mean, it sounds like a really maybe maybe.

JONAH LEHRER: I mean, you know, at some point this is all just a—I think this is still very theoretical.

ROBERT: And in fact if you ask people, like Clive Wynne the fellow who—who pooh-poohed our whale thank you from before?

JAD: Mm-hmm.

ROBERT: Ask Clive, like, could you look at an animal and find something in the animal that says yep if he has that, he's got feeling?

CLIVE WYNNE: Well, wrong. I don't for a moment imagine that there's gonna be a type of nerve cell or a type of structure in the brain which is gonna be such an acid test of whether an animal has a particular psychological capacity that we can then find that kind of neuron and say, "Well, now we know," without having to look at the behavior of the animal, now we know that this species has this or that psychological ability.

JAD: Well let me ask the question a different way. I mean, do you think—spindle cells or no spindle cells, let's just toss them out for a second—do you think there are a category of creatures that are more likely to have empathic experiences with us? Would you draw a line between beings?

CLIVE WYNNE: Well the thing I would—the thing I would emphasize if we're looking for empathy between different species, is their developmental experiences.

ROBERT: To make his point, Clive told us about this experiment. He says let's take a chimp with all the spindle cells inside the chimp brain in there. Put the chimp in a room, and in front of the chimp let's put two cups face down. Now one of the cups has a grape or something delicious under it. And the chimp doesn't know where the grape is. It could be under cup A or cup B. So what you the experimenter do is you simply point to the cup that has the grape. Like, that's the one. That one right there.

CLIVE WYNNE: And all the animal has to do is to go to the cup that's pointed to. It seems simple enough.

ROBERT: But chimps, Clive says, chimps...

CLIVE WYNNE: Find this stunningly difficult to understand.

ROBERT: Get this wrong.

JAD: What do you mean?

ROBERT: I mean, they just look at you pointing, and they look at you pointing, and they look, and you're pointing, and they just go what?

CLIVE WYNNE: Whereas dogs...

ROBERT: Who don't have spindle cells.

CLIVE WYNNE: ...most pet dogs get this from the get go.

JAD: Wait, dogs can do this and chimps can't?

ROBERT: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CLIVE WYNNE: They quite spontaneously recognize that you should go where—where they point.

ROBERT: And Clive says the explanation here is not that dogs have some special cell in their brain. It's simply because...

CLIVE WYNNE: Because they grow up in our households.

ROBERT: They grow up with us.

CLIVE WYNNE: Right.

JAD: Huh.

ROBERT: To test this idea he did the same study.

JAD: The pointing one?

ROBERT: Yep. Except this time with some wolves.

CLIVE WYNNE: Because wolves are the animals from which dogs are descended, but they haven't lived in human households, obviously.

ROBERT: And normally, like the chimps, wolves totally screw up the pointing test.

CLIVE WYNNE: But we've done some tests on some wolves that were hand reared by human beings and are very friendly to human beings, and we find that those wolves behave just like the dogs. That they are just as good at following the human pointing to find the food.

JAD: Really? Did you have to train them, or...

CLIVE WYNNE: No, we did not train them.

JAD: They just picked it up?

CLIVE WYNNE: Well, they just picked it up. But these are exceptional wolves insofar as they were reared by human beings. They were bottle fed when they were wee babies.

JAD: Ah.

ROBERT: Ah.

CLIVE WYNNE: Because there are things that go on earlier in our development that are crucial, and that include learning who are your—who are your kind. What the—who am I? What am I? And you learn that in a critical period in your early life by looking around you and seeing who you're interacting with. Pretty much every dog you might meet has learned to accept humans as social companions, and that's because it was reared in a human home, and because evolution has prepared it with a relatively slow development so that it's pretty easy to tame a dog. The wolf on the other hand, it goes through its childhood, and adolescence in the blink of an eye, in the course of just a handful of weeks. And so it's actually extremely difficult to successfully hand rear a wolf because you have so little time available to you, and you have to invest 24 hours a day, seven days a week during that brief period that a wolf is open to the possibility of learning who its companions might be.

JAD: That's really interesting.

ROBERT: Ooh, that's so interesting. I'm now sitting here thinking...

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: ...boy, if I could raise a whale with a baby bottle, then I would know whether the whale was saying thank you to me because I would've learned—it's not like I have to learn whale, but whale would've learned human.

CLIVE WYNNE: Well, that's right. I mean, of course this is completely hypothetical. The whale is a really bad example to choose.

ROBERT: [laughs]

CLIVE WYNNE: But my guess would be if you bottle fed a whale, you would get a whale that might plausibly do something like a behavior that expresses thanks.

JAD: [laughs] That is such a hard mental image to conjure.

CLIVE WYNNE: Well, that's right. That's right.

JAD: Robert bottle feeding a whale.

ROBERT: Yeah, well because we have to keep rising to the surface for 21 years to breathe.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: Before I actually get to the experiment.

CLIVE WYNNE: Yes, there's a number of drawbacks to that experiment.

ROBERT: Yeah.

JAD: Radiolab will continue in a moment.

JAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. Today, kind of a hard topic to describe. We're calling it animal minds, animal minds.

ROBERT: Or maybe the better way to say this is minds other than our own.

JAD: Which would be the animals, no?

ROBERT: That's the animals.

JAD: We're animals though. Yeah you're right.

ROBERT: No, yeah.

JAD: Yeah you're right.

ROBERT: Yeah, so we live with other—yeah so we live with—we're having enough trouble just talking to each other. [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: But imagine if I were trying, if you were a Labrador.

JAD: That'd be tough.

ROBERT: See then we'd have a problem. Or a whale.

JAD: No, maybe we wouldn't. That's kind of what we're looking at. How much can you really share with, you know a Labrador or a whale.

ROBERT: Right, and we're not solving this problem in this show at all.

JAD: No.

ROBERT: But maybe we can do this. Maybe instead of talking to scientists about other minds, maybe we should talk to...

JAD: A writer.

ROBERT: Yeah.

PRODUCER: Paul can you hear me? Paul can you hear? Paul, oh Paul. Paul? Paul?

ROBERT: The writer we chose to look for, you may now know, was named Paul.

PRODUCER: Okay stand by.

ROBERT: Put Paul through.

PRODUCER: I'm not hearing anything.

ROBERT: He's the author of any number of travel books, novels.

JAD: Didn't he win a big prize?

ROBERT: I'm sure.

PAUL THEROUX: Yes. Is that Jad?

JAD: Yes, hi.

PAUL THEROUX: J- A- D?

JAD: That's me.

JAD: Like a Pulitzer or one of the—one of the big ones.

PAUL THEROUX: Okay.

ROBERT: No, he didn't win a Pulitzer, but he—he won the prize of my heart when he wrote the Patagonian Express.

JAD: [laughs]

PAUL THEROUX: Oh, so you're taping. Okay great.

JAD: Yes.

ROBERT: Yes.

JAD: Anyhow, Paul Theroux travels all around the world writing about all kinds of things. But the reason we called him is for something that actually happened in his backyard.

ROBERT: Which luckily for him happens to be in the state of Hawaii.

PAUL THEROUX: I own seven acres on a slope, a west-facing slope on the north shore of Oahu.

ROBERT: Oh!

PAUL THEROUX: And I had very, very long grass. And someone said "Oh, I know what you need are some geese. They'll take care of that grass." So I got a couple.

ROBERT: And you decided not to go to the hardware store and buy a lawnmower. You decided to buy two animate birds.

PAUL THEROUX: That's right. I would have needed a really, really serious industrial mower. Instead, I got two non-industrial geese. Well, I actually got three, two ganders and a goose, and a strange thing happened. One of the ganders imprinted on me.

JAD: So what does that mean?

ROBERT: So it means the baby chick boy looked at you...

PAUL THEROUX: Yes.

ROBERT: And, and...

PAUL THEROUX: The first moving thing they see is the mother figure. This goose became very attached, very protective. It would sit in my lap. When another goose came up it would peck at them. It was both protective and attentive.

ROBERT: But as the gander grew up, strange things began to happen.

PAUL THEROUX: First, it became detached from me, then aggressive toward me, and then needed me. It was very strange, and it made me think I want to get some more geese, and I want to read more about them, and then—and then watch them.

ROBERT: So he—well he asked friends, and friends said to him "Look, if you want to know everything that's important to know about geese you have to read E.B. White."

PAUL THEROUX: Most people mention E.B. White when they talk about geese, and of course I know and love E.B. White.

ROBERT: And if you're not a Martian you probably love E.B. White too.

JAD: Well, you—I mean. What do you mean? People it's possible...

ROBERT: How many people have read Stuart Little, or how many people have read Charlotte's Web?

JAD: It's true. True.

ROBERT: And if you don't love the children's fiction, he's certainly one of the great, greatest of all American essayists.

JAD: Yeah, see that's the point. He's one of the great American writers. He actually wrote the bible for writing.

ROBERT: The Elements of Style.

JAD: The Elements of Style.

ROBERT: By Strunk.

JAD: Which is still the bible for writing, weirdly, and it was written like 50 years ago.

ROBERT: So when people point to anything by E.B. White, you point seriously.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: And in this case, very late in life after he'd moved up to a cabin in Maine, he was in his 70s, and this particular essay we're gonna talk about is called very simply...

PAUL THEROUX: The Geese.

ROBERT: The Geese.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, E.B. White: Allen Cove, July 9, 1971. I have had a pair of elderly gray geese—a goose and a gander—living on this place for a number of years, and they have been my friends.]

ROBERT: So Paul Theroux opened the essay fully expecting to learn all about geese. But then he kept running across these little phrases and adjectives that made him cringe.

PAUL THEROUX: You know, he talks about a gosling that grows into—I'm quoting now...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, E.B. White: A real dandy.]

PAUL THEROUX: ...a real dandy.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, E.B. White: Full of pompous thoughts and surly gestures.]

PAUL THEROUX: Pompous thoughts and surly gestures. You know? [laughs]

JAD: I mean, come on. I mean, doesn't that make the goose a little bit more easy to relate to?

PAUL THEROUX: All right take one word. Malice.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, E.B. White: I could not tell whether the look in his eye was one of malice or affection.]

PAUL THEROUX: Malice? Malice is a word you use for, you know Mussolini, or, you know, somebody else. Not for—not for a goose.

ROBERT: But what's the sin in that? If a man who's a professional storyteller, and one of the greatest ones, says "Let me tell you about my geese," and then talks about them as though they were uncles and aunts and neighbors with moods that are distinctly human. So what?

PAUL THEROUX: Well, I suppose you could say so, or you could say but, but so what if he put them in, you know, little Halloween costumes too, for that matter, so what?

ROBERT: [laughs]

PAUL THEROUX: But I'm in the writing business, the writing business should be unsparing. He could be quite unsparing himself in his writing. You're giving E.B. White too much license if you're saying it really doesn't matter. It does matter to me.

ROBERT: And the reason it matters, says Paul Theroux, is that E.B. White got so attached to the idea of those geese as aging critters like himself that he missed something deep and important about the geese.

PAUL THEROUX: The elements of that behavior that is—that is pure goose.

ROBERT: Paul pointed to the end of the essay.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, E.B. White: Suddenly I heard sounds of a rumble outside in the barnyard where the ganders were.]

ROBERT: Where a formerly great gander gets unseated by a younger male goose. There's a big fight, lots of squawking. And the old gander loses.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, E.B. White: I watched as he threaded his way slowly down the narrow path between clumps of thistles and daisies. His head was barely visible above the grasses, but his broken spirit was plain to any eye. I felt very deeply his sorrow and his defeat.]

PAUL THEROUX: Wow, the defeated gander goes off. Well, this isn't true at all. When a gander loses a battle he goes off, gets his strength back, and waits for a chance to attack again. That gander is gonna come back and fight again.

ROBERT: So you're saying he got it wrong about the geese?

PAUL THEROUX: Yes, of course. Of course. Here is a man who is solitary, he's a New Yorker who goes to Maine and becomes a gentleman farmer of a kind. And begins to relate to his geese, and then writes about them as though he's one of them. I know I'm not one of them.

ROBERT: But if you can't use words that are, you know, very human and psychological words, and if you can't because you're not a goose have whatever it is that geese have on their insides, then what if you wanted to share something with a goose? And I'd bet you you do. Is there anyway in which you could honestly describe yourself as a friend of any of these geese?

PAUL THEROUX: I would say, you know, that this is a very good question. I had a very "surly," to use an E.B. White word, a very—a very rambunctious gander, and he got very sick. You know, the thing is sitting on the ground just fouling its nest. I thought he was really gonna die. And I nursed him back to health. I gave him an antibiotic with a turkey baster, and it took about three or four weeks. And the first thing he did when he was nursed back to health was he got up on two legs and I came up with the turkey baster to give him one last drink, and he bit me.

JAD: [laughs]

PAUL THEROUX: And I thought...

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: Where did he bite you?

PAUL THEROUX: He bit my leg. Hard. And I thought, "Okay he's back to health."

JAD: You didn't think, "Ow! How could you?"

PAUL THEROUX: Well I thought he's—he's healthy. He's healthy again, and he's behaving just as goose would.

ROBERT: But don't you see though that if the moment of true—of your true most goose-y moment is a moment when you're with a goose that you help bites you, then you are out of this story in effect.

PAUL THEROUX: I absolutely agree with that. In all of this there's an implied loneliness. I'm not his friend, I'm not a feathered creature. I'm a human being among birds.

ROBERT: Although curiously, Paul Theroux does have an approach to communing with his geese. He takes a chair, puts it on the lawn, plops down in the chair and disappears.

PAUL THEROUX: You know, my writing day ends in the early afternoon. I have lunch, and after lunch there's a long sunny period in the afternoon when I'm alone, I'm with the geese. And I sit around with them, and try to make out what they're doing among each other, and paying no particular attention to me. It's simply watching the world as it was. You're seeing creatures who are behaving as though cities don't exist, presidents don't exist, governments don't exist, roads don't exist.

ROBERT: Ah.

PAUL THEROUX: As if it's before the fall.

JAD: Hmm.

PAUL THEROUX: As though it's the peaceable kingdom. Simply watching animals who are content doing their thing. Then you feel a bit like Adam.

[ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad and Soren Wheeler, Michael Rafael, Ellen Horne.]

[CLIVE WYNNE: And Lulu Miller. With help from Addie Narian and Tim Howard.]

[ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ: Special thanks to Brianna Breen and Kelly Carmody. Apologies for butchering any names.]

JAD: Wait a second. Stop. Stop the machine. It just feels weird to end the show this way, with this lonely geese thing. So we're gonna play for you one final story. It's kind of a continuation of Paul Theroux and his geese, except it involves a very different guy in a very different climate.

JAD: First of all who—who are you? What's your name?

PAUL NICKLEN: My name's Paul Nicklen, and I'm a contributing photographer to National Geographic Magazine.

JAD: Paul Nicklen is basically National Geographic's Arctic guy.

PAUL NICKLEN: It's—I've been pegged as their polar specialist.

JAD: And this particular tale involves his attempt to photograph one of the great Arctic predators.

PAUL NICKLEN: The Leopard seal.

JAD: Leopard seal, which by reputation is a very nasty creature.

PAUL NICKLEN: Preface to this story is in 2003, tragically a scientist was actually killed. Kirsty Brown was doing underwater research, and she was taken down by a leopard seal and drowned.

JAD: Was she just yanked off the ice, or...

PAUL NICKLEN: She was swimming and it just came up and grabbed her.

JAD: Ooh.

PAUL NICKLEN: And took her down to 300 feet.

JAD: Nonetheless our story starts with Paul and his guide Godan. They're in a boat in the Arctic Ocean looking for seals.

PAUL NICKLEN: The first seal we encountered, I'd never seen a leopard seal before, and we came around into this bay where there was a penguin colony. And right away Godan, who's seen many, many leopard seals, he said to me "You know, bloody hell, that's the biggest seal I've ever seen." And she came up to boat with a penguin in her mouth, and she went underneath the boat and she started ramming the penguin underneath the hull of the boat, lifting the bow out of the water. And that's when Godan looks to me and he says "Paul, it's time for you to get in the water, yeah?"

ROBERT: [laughs]

PAUL NICKLEN: In his thick Swedish accent.

JAD: Wow, were you freaking out?

PAUL NICKLEN: I had dry mouth just from the nervousness. I was trembling and, you know, I put my mask on and slipped over into the 29-degree Fahrenheit water. And there she was, instantly right there. Massive, huge.

JAD: Well, how huge?

PAUL NICKLEN: Probably over a thousand pounds.

ROBERT: Oh my God!

PAUL NICKLEN: Twelve feet long. She dropped her penguin, she came right over to me, and she opened up her mouth. And she engulfed the front of the camera, her canines were on top of my head to where below my chin—you know, I'm basically staring down her throat.

JAD: I can't believe you managed to take a picture of this. Because I'm looking at this picture, and these teeth are huge!

PAUL NICKLEN: The canines.

JAD: You know, like, massive!

ROBERT: So you were doing business at this moment?

PAUL NICKLEN: Yeah, I'm working at that point.

JAD: You can even see the textures of the seal's tongue. Like, she has these little fibers on them.

PAUL NICKLEN: Oh, it's 180-degree view, so you had to get that perspective. I'm basically in the mouth to get that shot.

ROBERT: Wow. So then what happened?

PAUL NICKLEN: She backs off, looks at me, sniff my flipper, touched them with nose, poked me in the bum, came up did this open mouth threat display again, and then she swims away.

ROBERT: Oof.

PAUL NICKLEN: Wow. I was just getting ready to swim back to the Zodiac, you know, I've been in the water for quite a while, and I'm cold. And all of a sudden she shows up with a freshly caught live penguin chick in her mouth.

ROBERT: Huh!

PAUL NICKLEN: And I'm sitting there staring at her, and she stops about 10 feet away from. And she's got the penguin by the feet, and the penguin is flapping its flippers trying to get away. She lines the penguin up to face perfectly in my direction and she lets it go. The penguin swam right by me, and she chases off after it and grabs it, comes back and does this again and again and again.

ROBERT: Why?

JAD: Yeah. I mean, what was she doing?

PAUL NICKLEN: At first, I couldn't figure out what was going on. I thought maybe she was having a hard time eating it, and then it dawned on me she was trying to feed me.

ROBERT: Did you make any attempt during this period to say no thank you?

PAUL NICKLEN: No. Nope I'm so—in such disbelief at this point, I'm just trying to capture it.

ROBERT: Well, didn't you feel compelled as a social human to just offer some kind of gestural explanation. I mean, if it was me I would have made some look like, "Come—I don't eat that stuff!" Or...

JAD: Or maybe it's like you take—you take the penguin at that point.

PAUL NICKLEN: Well, I mean I couldn't catch him.

JAD: I mean when in Rome, you know?

PAUL NICKLEN: The penguin is swimming 15 miles an hour, you know?

JAD: Oh, so you mean when she lets go, it just goes—fyoom!

PAUL NICKLEN: Like a bullet.

ROBERT: No, he's pathetic is what he's saying. He's saying, "I'm a pathetic creature, I can't actually catch the thing."

PAUL NICKLEN: I'm thinking exposures, get the shot, keep shooting.

ROBERT: You're such a photo dude, you know?

PAUL NICKLEN: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

PAUL NICKLEN: Well I'm—I work for National Geographic.

JAD: [laughs]

ROBERT: [laughs]

PAUL NICKLEN: I don't want to anthropomorphize too much, but as the penguin was swimming by this huge seal, she looked over at me and I swear she had a look of disgust in her face.

ROBERT: [laughs]

JAD: [laughs]

PAUL NICKLEN: So she goes off and gets another penguin, and this penguin now is quite weak and tired looking, so I think she's worn it down. She lets the penguin go, the penguin takes off. She grabs it, does that a couple of more times.

JAD: And you're still not eating the penguin.

PAUL NICKLEN: Right. Next encounter was bringing me dead penguins. And sometimes she would just drop off a dead penguin right on top of the camera, and she would just sit there with this dejected look on her face, staring at me.

ROBERT: [laughs]

PAUL NICKLEN: And then she went to the stage of flipping dead penguins on top of my head, and trying to force feed me these penguins. Telling me at this point, you know, "Eat these damn penguins, I'm trying to feed you. And why won't you eat my penguins? Eat the penguins." And then she would start to eat the penguins right in front of me, and show me how to eat them. She would rip them apart on the surface, get the skin off them, and she's shredding them in the water in front of me.

JAD: And—and how much time is passing here? I mean, are we talking minutes, hours?

PAUL NICKLEN: This went on for four days.

JAD: Four days!

ROBERT: Four days? [laughs] Oh God!

JAD: And when you're in the water, you know, day after day, what's happening for you at this point? Are you still just a guy with a camera, or...

PAUL NICKLEN: I mean, I was starting to fall in love with this seal. It's just this animal that's just so intelligent and so powerful, and it can kill you in an instant, yet your—I mean...

ROBERT: But when you say you were in love, were you in love with the idea of this, or did you really like her?

PAUL NICKLEN: I really liked her. She was beautiful, she was big. She had this—this beautiful face, beautiful silver color to her. She kind of glowed underwater. I'm just so in love with this seal at this point. I'm not sleeping at night, I have a hard time eating. I just can't wait to see her. I can't—the first thing in the morning, you know, the first sign of light I'm in that zodiac.

PAUL NICKLEN: And then on the fourth day is when, you know, I was thinking okay maybe she's weary of me, and she's getting tired of me, so I'm just gonna totally leave her alone. That's when I started going off and presenting myself to other seals who were swimming around the rookery.

PAUL NICKLEN: And I was in the water, and the same big female came up to me, and she started to do all these really beautiful ballet-like moves. I'm photographing her, and looking at her, and all of a sudden she drops her penguin, she turns upside down, and she does this big guttural "Go go go go," this big jarring noise that's vibrating my whole body. I can really feel it in my chest, it's so loud. And I'm thinking am I being attacked? She finally told me that she's sick of me and wants me off her feeding grounds.

PAUL NICKLEN: But, as soon as she did that, another leopard seal shot out from right behind me. And so this leopard seal had snuck in behind me, and she did that noise to chase that seal away, a smaller seal. She chased the seal away, it too had a penguin. She grabbed its penguin and brought me that seal's penguin and dropped it off in front of me.

JAD: Wow!

ROBERT: Wow!

ROBERT: You're a lucky guy. Wow.

PAUL NICKLEN: I mean, I'm almost getting emotional reliving that. I mean, it's very powerful.

ROBERT: Have you ever been in love with an animal quite this way before?

PAUL NICKLEN: Never. Never.

JAD: Have you every had an experience with—with another human that rivals this?

PAUL NICKLEN: Perhaps when I was kid with my mom. Someone taking care of you, and feeling safe and nurtured, and protected, but I've never had that in my life as an adult.

JAD: It sounds—this is such an interesting species moment here.

ROBERT: Yeah, it sounds like you're doing something...

JAD: You're transgressing or something.

ROBERT: It sounds like you're stealing something from the gods right here, right at this moment.

PAUL NICKLEN: I mean, I don't know what words I can find to explain it.

ROBERT: Hmm.

JAD: Thank you so much.

PAUL NICKLEN: Thank you, guys.

[LISTENER: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Suzie Lechtenberg is our executive producer and Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachael Cusick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. With help from Tanya Chawla, Shima Oliaee and Sarah Sandbach. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Adam Przybyl.]

[LISTENER: This is Michael Burroughs from Portland, Oregon. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org.]

[JAD: Science reporting on Radiolab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.]

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