Cosmic Queries: Primatology

Bone up on our neighbors on the evolutionary tree: chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, monkeys and more, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Chuck Nice, and primatologist Natalia Reagan answer fan submitted questions about primates, extant and extinct. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and today is Cosmic Queries Primate Edition. And we've got an anthropologist who specializes in primate behavior, right in studio with us, Natalia Reagan.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Hello, how are you?

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Natalia, you're like your brand new one of our StarTalk All-Stars.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I'm very excited.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome, welcome to the club. Welcome to the club Chuck Nice. Hey! It was good to have you as my co-host. Of course. Donning an Einstein t-shirt. Indeed. Very nice. Yes. And lately, you're host of Playing with Science. That's correct. A new spin-off of StarTalk. Of StarTalk. And you know why we spun this off? I'll tell you. Why? Because we did StarTalk on all manner of topics, and some of them would be sports. And the sports ones had their own following. That's right. And we said, "Let's feed them." Let's feed those sportsters. Feed them. That's right. Just give them all they want. Me and Gary O'Reilly, who is a former footballer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a Brit footballer. Footballer, as they say. Or as my daughter calls it, "Feetball." Feetball, good.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because football is an American sport, so she calls feetball. And, you know, we get into all manner of science as it relates to sports. It's really cool. And I wanted to rename football because hardly anyone puts their foot on it. Isn't that funny? Yeah, yeah, so they should- What would you call it? Armball. Armball, well, because yes. Yeah, yeah, you catch it, you run with it. You run with it, it's armball. There you go. Exactly. I thought this through. So this is Cosmic Queries Primate Edition. So Natalia, you've hung out with primates?

• 1:55Speaker 01

  I have.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On human primates, presumably also human primates.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Human primates as well, they're, you know, I tolerate them.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're okay.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  I actually studied spider monkeys. I studied a critically endangered subspecies of spider monkey called the Azaro spider monkey in Panama.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Um, I did, my main focus was conservation, so I actually was doing a census. The same year that we had our census in 2010, I was in Panama counting spider monkeys.

• 2:19Chuck Nice?

  And did you find that the spider monkeys were, um, cooperative in filling out their census forms?

• 2:26Speaker 01

  They were not. They were very ornery. Like, I had to chase these guys down. They threw fruit at me. They...

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Better than other things they could throw at you.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  No. Everybody asks. Everybody asks, do they throw their poop? And I'm like, why would they poop in their hand and throat? And all they have to do is just gently position their bottom right over your head.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  And just, that's what, that's what we call getting baptized.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  You're baptized in primatology. It's either poop or pee.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  So wait a minute, you mean there they, like, here we have birds that do that on your shoulder. There you have monkeys?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm never going.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, you got, yeah, spiders and you got howlers. And the funny thing is, the diet, you know, whatever you eat affects what kind, whatever comes out.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  And they eat a lot of fruit?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, we talked about how spider monkeys are frugivores, that it's their preferred food is fruit. And howler monkeys are folivores, meaning they eat leaves. And their poop stinks. I'm just telling you. You can smell them.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind of a vor are they?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Folivore.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does that mean?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  They eat leaves.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Folivore.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  Folivore.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Folivore.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25Chuck Nice?

  So now, and what if they're from Brooklyn and they eat a lot of kale?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Ooh, gosh.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  Are they a hipster bore?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, like, yeah, they're just a hipster.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aren't, isn't kale leaves?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  They're a folivore.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's somebody's leaves, what we call kale.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Right. Kale, yeah. No, I...

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and so you worked among them. Did you become one with them?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I wish, man. They...

• 3:47Chuck Nice?

  Are you the Jane Goodall of spider monkeys?

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Well, the funny thing is, I, God, I wish. No, I know some great spider monkey researchers that would, that probably should take that particular role. But spider monkeys are called the chimpanzees of the new world because their social behavior is a lot like chimps. As far as they have big groups and they fission off into smaller groups and, uh, as far as...

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fission.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Vision.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The physics word.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  That is a good physics word.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My duty to call.

• 4:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Like this. Uh, and...

• 4:12Chuck Nice?

  As opposed to fusion.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. They fuse together in a sleeping tree at the end of the night and then they fission off to go eat and, you know, find food elsewhere. Uh, kinda like how chimps do. They'll have a big group and they'll go off into smaller groups.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it true, uh, people don't wanna believe this, but I think it's true. I read it on the internet.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, that chimps and humans are more... Genetically, chimps and humans are more genetically alike than either chimps or humans are genetically related to the monkeys.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Well, it's the common ancestor. Our common ancestor was more recent between chimps and humans.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to go farther back in time to get the common ancestor between the common ancestor we had with chimps and all the rest of the monkeys.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  And does that-

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Primates with tails. Old world monkeys and apparently some new world monkeys.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, new world monkeys. And those are the only ones, by the way.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Is that all the great apes? Do chimps, like, so orangutans and all those?

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's make the list, the great ape list.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  There's chimps, there's bonobos, there's orangutans, which are those sexy ginger redheads in the southeast Asia.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what orangutans look like?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  I know.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a whole movie series with orangutan.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's his face?

• 5:27Chuck Nice?

  Clint Eastwood.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clint Eastwood.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  Any which way but up.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Bud Lusen.

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, something like that, yeah.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why we know orangutan.

• 5:35Chuck Nice?

  And according to Bill Maher, we have one as president.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Oh, man. I wouldn't, I don't know. I feel like that's really giving orangutans a bad rap.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's a burn.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I mean, yeah, he has the flanges, because the male orangs have the flanges.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wider cheek.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are actually the pads right here. Those are like the-

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You call them flanges?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Flanges. Hey, baby.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's their face.

• 6:01Chuck Nice?

  How do you know what that comes from? The mama orangutan's going, "Such a good boy." What a good boy.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Greek, right? Oh, big piece of cheese.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  They gotta do it equally, or else you're just gonna have like one giant weird flange.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do we have the full list?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  No, we don't. So, well, actually, of the great apes, it's humans, gorillas, we didn't get gorillas, chimps, bonobos. And then, and the orangs are the southeast-

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how about the baboons?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Baboons are monkeys.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, I thought they don't have tails, though, do they?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Well, some, I mean, they have a little bit of a tail. Not, I mean, like, there's stump-tailed macaques, which don't have tails, but they are monkeys. They are macaques. Yeah, so they're not part of the, yeah, they're not part of the great family.

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was in South Africa, and I'd eaten something out on the porch-

• 6:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the game park. And I would turn around and come back, baboon stole my bacon. Right off my plate. Waited for me to not look.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  Waited for you.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waited for me to not look. If you look at that as a monkey, that's an ape.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  They're smart and they're, yeah, very crafty and they, there's actually great footage if you Google it of, of an, uh, not a ring, uh, of a baboon taking down a flamingo. They actually will hunt and, and kill and eat flamingos and it's, it looks like a-

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make some good eatings, yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Probably tastes like shrimp because they eat them.

• 7:23Chuck Nice?

  They eat a lot of shrimp.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  That's why they're so pink.

• 7:25Chuck Nice?

  Color.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then there's the lesser apes. Oh, by the way, I was gonna throw in that.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So great apes. Don't you be discriminating apes.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  I know, it's because they're dominated size. Gibbons.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gibbons.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Gibbons, well gibbons and then also there's sea amongs which are, uh, the, part of that group, but they're a little bit different. They have the throat sack. They are extremely loud. So howler monkeys, which I was kind of showing you that call before we started filming, um-

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, don't just share it with us. Now you have, now that you brought it up, you have to do it.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  I studied spider monkeys, but there are also a lot of howler monkeys where I worked and-

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Howler monkey?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Howler. So they howl, but the, you'll hear, it's not so much of a howl. It sounds more of like somebody clearing their throat in the morning, but very loud.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know how to call a howler monkey?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  I call howler monkeys. Sometimes they call back.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let, let, let's hear.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes they don't and I'm sad.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:16Chuck Nice?

  Sound like Eddie Murphy laughing.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. So, so does this make them horny or something? What, what, are you, have you checked the book on that sound?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  You know, I-

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're doing to them?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Translation guide, the Google Translate's not that great. Again, um, but no, it, it's, it's, that's how they wake up in the morning and they'll just kind of let one group know like, hey, guys, we're here.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so it's a wake up thing?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Well, not, not just, well, they do it in the morning.

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  It's their morning show.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  So if you travel to Central America or, or, uh, South America, any area or, you know, Southern Mexico, uh, where they have howler monkeys, a lot of people hear them in the morning, like 5:00 AM and they're like, what the hell is that? Like, what is that? They think it's a jaguar. They think they're like getting attacked by something.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just you on spring break.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  It's a little, yeah, right?

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Cancun.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Um, it's just this little monkey making its loud and they have these, you know, great throat sacks and they're the fall of wars. So what they do is they let people, or let people, they let the other, uh, howler monkeys know, hey, guys, we're over here, just, just so you know. Uh, and they kind of communicate that way. So it's-

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I read, correct me if I'm wrong, that we speak, we have the power to create language because of a genetic-

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Defect in whatever it is that would makes apes make sounds. That's what I, I, I've read that recently.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I actually do not know that. I'm gonna have to look that up. Yeah.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know, because that actually, I mean...

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A genetic mutation. It's a, a single mutation.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  One single mutation.

• 9:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That enabled us to speak.

• 9:40Chuck Nice?

  Separates us and allows us to speak.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 9:43Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's awesome.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  That is really...

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It allows us to then communicate more complex ideas. Figure out how to put it in a book. So now you don't have to know everything in order to move civilization forward.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can stand on the shoulders of those who came before you.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Well, there's been, you know, looking at, uh, speech if, if Neanderthals actually were able to talk. And, and there, uh, there's a great special where they actually, um, they think that they might have been able to, but because of the way their, um, uh, the vocal cords or the, the, the, just the morphology of their, um,

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Their, uh, throat was, they basically had this really high pitched voice. It would be very, very nasally and very...

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Mike Tyson. Yeah, I mean...

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I don't want to get punched, so he said it, not me.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they wear their speech.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely. That's exactly, yeah.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It didn't intimidate anybody.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  It's just great. It's just great. I'm so glad that we got together like this. It's awesome.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  It's awesome.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a high pitch with a, with a, with a list.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  With a list. Right. That's the Neanderthal. That's the Neanderthal.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you've got questions on, on this topic, on primates?

• 10:42Chuck Nice?

  On primatology. We have a great deal of people.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Through the internet from Facebook and, and other sources.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So bring it on.

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so here we go. Let's, uh...

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll defer everyone, because I don't know, I don't know jack about, you know, I mean, other than humans being apes ourselves.

• 10:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  You know more than the average bear.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  I'm not a bear. That's, that's...

• 10:59Speaker 01

  I don't know many bears that know a lot about primates, so maybe, maybe that wasn't a good...

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  You know more than the average primate. There you go.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what do you got, Chuck?

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Uh, let's start off with Jared Kellogg, coming to us from Facebook, and Jared says this. Are primates still evolving? Are there findings that show human intervention, whether habitat change, food change, et cetera, has changed how they interact with each other and with us?

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice question.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  It's a great question. Um, well, first of all, everything's still evolving. No, nothing, nothing has stopped. We're still evolving. Humans are. Um, and as far as, uh... monkeys and apes, yes, I mean, in fact, we talk about, um.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I have a rebuttal to that.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Sure, okay.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should I wait, or, or, or should I put it in right now?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  You can put it in right now.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, so my rebuttal to that, so, so I, I agree that there's all, evolution is always a force at work.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Mm.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that doesn't mean you're speciating, and here's, here's, here's, here's my point. You can, you can split a species, strand both branches from one another, now they can move independently. You come back in a million years, they're different. Right. I get that.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? But, right now, all humans, all over the world, can make babies.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, if we're all making babies.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then, we are not stranding any one branch of ourselves. And if we're all making babies at all times, doesn't that ossify who and what we are, in the tree of life?

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we have the coelacanth that hasn't changed for, what, how long?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Millions.

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Millions. Millions of years. The roach, I don't think has changed. They thought was extinct, by the way. Right, this big old fish. Right. We got one at the Museum of Natural History, in, in a, in a cabinet. Oh, yeah. So, you see that, like, the, the, the cartilaginous, bony. Right. Remains after somebody, I don't know, they ate it, ate the flesh. My point is.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you think of a, a speciation when you, when you isolate branches. This is how you get the exotic animals on, in Australia.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Madagascar.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Madagascar and Australia.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if we're not stranding ourselves, unless we put a colony on Mars, why would we think that one day we're gonna be something different?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Well, it's not that we're gonna be something different, it's just, evolution does not necessarily mean we're becoming a new species. It's just the way that we are exchanging genes, uh, is causing, you know, perhaps different, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, the genotype, uh, metamorphosis, or is, is, is expressed in the phenotype sometimes differently. And, and as we, populations, and as we're becoming this very globalized world, and, and populations are mixing with other populations that didn't in the past, you know, we're going to see, you know, different, uh, expressions, you know, whether it's, you know, in the way we look, or the way.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but we'll, but we'll all have that together.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not, we're not necessarily becoming a new species, and I'm not saying that chimps will become a new species as they're, you know.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get back to them.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so now we're mess, we're in their environment, you know, you know, we're spreading.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have they, do they have to adapt?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, of course, of course, I mean, and that's kind of the, the idea that. It sort of adapt or die out, you know?

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's it.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  And that's why we talked about briefly, I think last time was macaques, for instance.

• 14:05Chuck Nice?

  Last time, say that's.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry. There's a species of monkey called macaques, which are really interesting because as far as a primate goes, they're the second most widely distributed primate in the world, second to us, to humans. And what they're able to do is eat anything. They're like humans.

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  Just like humans.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're like human little.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  That's the big dividing lines, yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Being able to, and in fact, there was a really great study coming out at NYU, a grad student, Alex Decason, I hope I'm saying her last name right, but James Hyam and another researcher basically found that what you eat is actually what is affecting brain size. It's not necessarily a primate's social skills. And so diet has a lot to do with not only.

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  As a matter of fact, wasn't that when, of course, when we started using fire and then roasting meat and then getting bigger sources of protein that caused our brains to become larger?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not just meat, because if you think about it, brains take a lot of calories to function. And so it's not just about eating protein, but also even eating like carbohydrates, like so being able to cook tubers and roots and things like that. So the actual ability to eat.

• 15:14Chuck Nice?

  Just to keep eating.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, eating things that are high.

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  Just keep eating.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  In front of you and to thrive anywhere. Like, humans are amazing. I mean, we can live in the Arctic and survive off.

• 15:22Chuck Nice?

  Do, mhm.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and do.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  But the more specialized your diet, the more you are in danger. The more susceptible you are.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Especially when it comes to interaction, like with your environment. If, say for instance, spider monkeys, the ones that I study with deforestation, there's not a lot of fruit available. So, oh, it's problematic for them.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  They can just go to Whole Foods.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  They can go to, right, exactly. They can go hit the farm. Well, that's the thing is.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  Farmer's market in the forest.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  But that happens. Primates will actually forage on other people's, on people's property and eat their food at farms and farmers will get mad and will attack and kill them. Because they see them as a threat to their livelihood. So we're threatening their livelihood.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  Really, we came in and took over their territory. Oh, that's cold. It is cold. Oh, yeah, that ain't right.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  No, and it's it's it's you see it with orangutans. In fact, you know, farmers have killed orangutans in the past because of of just them foraging for crops. Cause they're hungry. I mean, you would do it too. Uh, we've got to eat.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  Orangutans are like highly intelligent creatures?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, they're great. They're great apes. So like us and they're they're they're really good at imitation. So they'll see somebody like using a hammer and nail and you'll look over later on and there's the orang just sort of. You're not really necessarily hammering anything or doing anything.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  Imitations. I thought they were like, you know, doing, I thought they were doing impressions like, here's my Jay Leno.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  I would pay good money to see that.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so when I, when I was a kid, I'm old enough to have seen Planet of the Apes in first run, first run theaters.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Old I am. I did not see Planet of the Apes again until like forty years later.

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh, that's a deep movie.

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it is.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. And in it.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  With the best ending in the world.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In it, in it, the different lines of primates have different roles in the society.

• 17:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 17:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the orangutans, if I remember correctly, they were the diplomats.

• 17:16Chuck Nice?

  And the big thinkers.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the big thinkers and the gorillas were the.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Security guards.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and guess who the scientists were? They were the chimpanzees. Yeah, the, the, the ones closest to the humans.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  Humans, yeah.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't, they were just all apes when I saw the movie.

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Planet of the Apes. And so they actually did some, some, some thinking, some, some dividing and, and splitting. Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Cause I think, I mean, even in the most recent one, I remember watching it and because.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most recent Planet of the.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  The Apes movies, yes. Uh, and they had, uh, the same sort of, you know, the, the different groups of great apes. But I almost wish they could take it a step further. And I know I'm, I'm just being a little too, you know, pointed and, and, you know, particular.

• 17:58Chuck Nice?

  What would that step be?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Well, that step would be because they have different social groups. So like orangutans don't usually live in social groups. They live, you know, it's a single mom with her infants and a single dad and they both are kind of like solitary. But of course, that doesn't make for a very good movie if they're like, where are the orangutans?

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if they're clever, if they're clever screenwriters, they could possibly build that in. Yeah, once you have a variation in something.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll do something with it. Yeah.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  A loner orangutan, you talking to me?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 18:23Chuck Nice?

  Don't see anybody else here. Must be talking to me.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  Brooklyn orangutan.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Oh god, it's him again. Okay.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, another bit of trouble. We've got to take a break. We'll come back and we'll get a bunch more questions in on primates as the topic with our special guest Natalia Reagan, anthropologist and primate expert when we return.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Neil Tyson here, sometimes with a degrasse.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Is the grass greener?

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the grass is greener. Neil on degrasse. Nice, always good to have you as co-host.

• 19:16Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Natalia Reagan, I keep calling you Reagan, it's Reagan, Natalia Reagan.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll answer to anything.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll answer to it. So you're anthropologist and you've worked in the field specializing in spider monkeys, but we assume you have some osmotic knowledge of other members of the primate community?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  The primate world, yes.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Primate universe, the primateiverse. So what do you have Chuck?

• 19:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's jump right back into it. Quasma queries, so you know, we have your questions here. Let's get right into it. John Clemmons wants to know this. He's asking you specifically Natalia, do you have a favorite primate?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Oh gosh, I feel like I would be a total jerk if I didn't say spider monkeys.

• 19:53Chuck Nice?

  Just because you studied them?

• 19:54Speaker 01

  They're pretty, oh here, I'm gonna say a couple of cool things.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a lame reason.

• 19:57Chuck Nice?

  That is a lame reason.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  We can't let, we can't let, we can't let you off the hook on that.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  I know.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because you wrote papers on it.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Well, actually spider monkeys are pretty, I think, fantastic. Not only do they-

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then here it is.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What distinguishes them to make them high on your list from all the other primates?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so I love the fact that, again, we talked about the frug of war thing, that they, spider monkeys eat primarily fruit. The ones that I studied in Panama were so tenacious. As far as the deforestation problem in Panama, it's bad. And I saw spider monkeys groups living in what should be a corridor between two huge fragments, living in just the corridor. So they were able to scrap together a living, and by living, I mean food, and still had infants, you know, on their back and on their front, you know, I I one and I two, those are the different stages of infancy. And so they were still able to to make it in this really degraded-

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They reorganized their civilization to still survive in spite of what humans are doing.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yes, and they also, so like one of the cool-

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, they're working on nuclear weapons.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. A spider monkey with the codes, I would just, oh-

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Launch codes.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Oh, god. And they have, they have the prehensile tail, so all they had to do is just kind of like,

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prehensile means it can grip.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  It could actually, prehensile, and only New World monkeys, by the way, have that, and not all of them, only a few do. But also, I, this is an interesting fact, spider monkeys-

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be the judge of that.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I think you'll like it. Female spider monkeys have the hypertrophic clitoris.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what that means. I know what one of those words is, but the one, I don't know what the word is.

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I certainly don't know. I certainly know what hypertrophic means. What is this other word you-

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Shouldn't I get a map? Does someone need a map? Well-

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is, so these are spider monkeys?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  These are spider monkeys, and females-

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Female spider monkeys.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  They have, it basically looks like almost an index finger hanging down, it's a dangler. It's a pseudo penis, and it looks like, it would be, the first time I ever saw a female spider monkey, I thought, oh, those are some male spider monkeys, to which I was told, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these were, so hypertrophic means bigger?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's extending from the body, yes.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Extending from the body.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  That's, yeah.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  By the way, what is the purpose of a hypertrophic clitoris, of dangling clitoris?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  You know, that's the thing, is it's, there's not, there's, there's different ideas of what that could be, but there's no actual, uh, accepted theory about why there is the hypertrophic clitoris. Uh, one of them is that it, it makes it easy to identify females from far distance, because it really does. I mean, it helps us researchers, I know, from, if I have binoculars, I see it- The dangler.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  So what does the male penis do then?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  The male penis actually, I mean, it's actually not too shabby itself. I actually have seen some copulations in the field. And by the way, spider monkeys have very long copulations compared to others.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk.

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's the same.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For hours.

• 22:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Welcome to monkey porn.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  So no.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  I know they have very long copulations. I actually had to write an entry in the primatological encyclopedia that's coming out on intermission pattern and copulatory posture, which is basically monkey sex positions.

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  The lady person. But I had to talk about how long spider monkeys will engage. And it's usually on the upwards of like 20 minutes.

• 23:05Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can be for a very long time.

• 23:07Chuck Nice?

  Well, I have to, oh wow, look at that.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  That right there is a hyena pseudo penis. That's a female.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  That's a female hyena right there.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  It's a clitoris. And actually hyenas give birth through their clitoris.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  So for those of you who do not have the benefit of StarTalkAllAccess.com right now, we are looking at a picture that is up on the screen. It is a female hyena who is gestating right now. She's pregnant and she has a hypertrophic clitoris.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Clitoris, yeah.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the clitoris doubles as the birth canal.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, so would men say like, oh, I could never have a child because, how could you imagine, you know, giving birth through urethra? Meet the hyena. That can't feel great.

• 23:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe it does.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Maybe, yeah, you're right. You know, maybe, yeah, right? Maybe it's like, whoa.

• 23:54Chuck Nice?

  That's nature's reward for them.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. Right, right.

• 23:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So SpiderMonkeys.

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's giving some arguments there.

• 23:59Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna give you some arguments.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  All right. We'll give you that. All right, well, let's move on. Let's, uh, let's go to, um, Juco Van Nen, Van Nen. Okay. From Helsinki, Finland. What's your guess? Are there primates in the Trappist One system? That's to you, Neil. And I think he just wants, he's just trying to find a way to get to ask you about Trappist One. That's.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the Trappist One is a star system. It has seven recently discovered Earth-like planets, three of which are orbiting in the Goldie. ...lock zone. Okay. Where there's not too hot, not too cold, you can sustain liquid water. That's about all we know right now. These planets do cross the front, the surface of, the cross between us and our sightline to the host star. There's a cottage industry ready to blossom, where we will study the ingredients of the atmospheres of these planets. By analyzing the light of the host star as it passes through that atmosphere. And so then you can say, oh, does it have oxygen, is there methane, is there any of this other stuff?

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what we don't know, we can't look at the surface yet, but we are in search of biomarkers.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we would do to answer that question, take it seriously, is we would ask you, Natalia. Is there any effect that primates have on their atmosphere? So that when we study the chemical composition of the atmosphere, we can say, it's got primates. That would be the question. Wow. Because if it has methane, for example, maybe there's a farming industry, because methane is a byproduct of farms. Or Mexican food.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Mmm, beans.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is a primary ingredient of flatulence. Does it have termites? There, there's, you know, maybe it's not uniquely implicating them, but it could be suggestive of it. So from what you know, do primates have any special impact on their atmosphere?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Their environment? Well, what they do, I mean, it's not so much, I think, the atmosphere as far as.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Air.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Air, but, so for instance, we talked about spider monkeys eating fruit, or other monkeys eating fruit. That is a way, they are actually distributors of those seeds, so they.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The same way bees pollinate.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flowers, they carry the, the seed, the fruit, and actually. They eat the whole fruit, including the seeds. You can't digest the seeds. Right, so that comes out. And they poop it out, and, and that, so this is the plant's diabolical plan. Right. To spread their seeds. Right. Yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there was one theory that I read years ago about how, um.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can imagine the plant scientists saying, okay, we're gonna produce this fruit, and how do we get it? Let's put it through the entire digestive system of a bear. But we have to make the casing strong enough so it didn't resist the digestive things. Right. Then they'll poop it over here, poop it over there, and we can spread. These are like.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yep. No, I actually, I would, I, so I hosted a Bigfoot show years ago called Bigfoot Bounty, and we found, uh, and we'd had the contestants going out looking for biomaterials that could be Bigfoot poop, basically. And there was one turd that I found. I'll never forget this turd.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is a sentence I'd never thought I would hear in my life. That was a sentence.

• 27:18Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  It was gleaming.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never before spoken sentence. There was one turd I never thought I'd find in my life.

• 27:23Chuck Nice?

  That was StarTalk history right there.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  It was a beautiful turd. It was purple. And I, I just looked at it and then it was clearly a bear turd, but it was all just blackberries. It was just like, it, it, it was just all seed. It almost looked like it was like a candy confection thing, but it was a turd. I did not.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop there. We don't hit that.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't, please, whatever you do, don't ruin candy for me. I have very few things left in my life.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sorry about that. But as far, yeah, so seed distribution and, um, you know, obviously.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What we'd have to do is we, we need more than the atmosphere. We would need some other geographic data.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, also, uh, environmental DNA is very interesting. Like, they'll leave behind, like, or, uh, if something, say, for instance, bites or stings them, or, well, not bite, stings, but more bites, like a blood-sucking insect, we could dissect their blood meal and, and find if there are primates.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I saw that movie. Jurassic Park, I saw that.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Oh, that's, that's amber. This is actually, no, no, you can do ecological surveys now like that.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  I'm not kidding.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they, so this is their DNA remnants from various things that happened?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Well, it's just blood that's in the, like, say if a mosquito bites a, a.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. Right, right, right.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So your DNA signature is outside of yourself?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In some way.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Environmental DNA.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right. That was very cool.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else you got, Chuck?

• 28:38Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Let's talk about Antonio Rodriguez, who wants to know this. Are there primate hybrids?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Very good question.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  It is a very good question.

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  That's an end mate hybrid. If there are primate hybrids, what is the hybrid?

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's been hybridizing them?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Baboons, actually, back to baboons. They do hybridize and they all, they are able to produce, um, offspring. So.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Uh, with other baboons. So it's.

• 29:06Chuck Nice?

  No, not, not what we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about like a centaur.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  They're different spe, oh, oh, God.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Like a minotaur. No, that.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  That would be, oh, that'd be so weird.

• 29:16Chuck Nice?

  Like a baboon minotaur, like some kind of chimera, man. That's, I want, like a chupacabra, like a baboon chupacabra.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what's funny? The, the, the centaur.

• 29:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's half horse, half man, okay? And the Minotaur, this is weird. It's, it's half man, half bull. But the rear, it's a, it's, it's a human butt.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just weird.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all human up to the waist. So it's got a human butt.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  So weird.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just, that's, they'll think that through.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  It's very top-heavy too, like I would.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I know.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  You just like fall over all the time.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  It's difficult to walk around as a Minotaur.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so no, but we're talking about blending genes, of course.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So are the, are the great apes close enough to one another genetically that they can cross-breed?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Uh, I think that's. Yeah, I think, I think, no, no, no. And that's the thing. So baboons are able, there's multiple species of baboon that are able to do that.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but we still call them all baboons.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but they're different species of baboons. So there's, you know, the olive baboons, there's, um, uh, Hamadryas, there's gelada baboons, which.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so but.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Fantastic, but.

• 30:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not interesting.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I know.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  I get it. Um, as far as like of a chimp and a gorilla.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  Like what we want is a chimp boon.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A chimp boon, or chimparilla.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  A chimparilla. That's even better.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  No, that, that, uh, having, I mean, I'm sure they could mate, um, a lot of things can mate with each other, but I don't think they'd actually produce viable offspring, no.

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we haven't seen that. Now, how about chimps and bonobos?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing. Yeah, chimps and bonobos are bonobos, uh, probably could. They haven't seen any, I think, hybrid, uh, hybrids coming out of them.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Geographically, where do we find them?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing is they do have some overlap. Uh, bonobos are only in DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire. Uh, chimps are in multiple places throughout Africa, DRC, they're in, um, Republic of Congo and, and just various places throughout, uh, in Western.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DRC, by the way, is a very famous wine, just so you know.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Is it really?

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Domain di aromi di Conti. It's too many syllables for Americans, we just call it DRC.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  DRC.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Wow, is it produced?

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in Burgundy.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Nice, well, um.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We said DRC, I said, wow.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good wine.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Wow. Uh, they're winemakers, bonobos. Um, that's also probably why they're making love all the time.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go, see?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  By females. They want their wine and they want their sweet love. Um, but as far as them mixing with, uh, chimps, I, I don't know of any studies that have come out. But, um, there was a species of, well, no, it was a, it was a chimp, uh, a group of chimps in an area of DRC that they, they were so large that they thought they could be, uh, a hybrid of gorillas and chimps. It turns out they're just chimps, but at the time.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're chimps.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, a good friend of mine actually studied them.

• 31:55Chuck Nice?

  They're chimps with gym memberships.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  They were just like.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude. What are you juicing?

• 32:02Speaker 01

  They're, they're, they're CrossFit chimps.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're literally juicing.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Juicing their fruits.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. It's, uh, yeah, you gotta, you gotta do what you gotta do.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so that's-

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me, give me one more. You got, one last question.

• 32:13Chuck Nice?

  You gotta talk for one more?

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so, okay, that's, that's too much there. That's too much.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Uh, that one was funny.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tie is looking over your shoulder.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah, you're not supposed to do that.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Surprise.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Uh, as humans, are we progressing? No, let's forget that one. Uh-

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, what, wait, who, what?

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay. Are, as humans, are we, Chris, Chris Snyder, as humans, are we progressing forward? Or are we idling with all the technology that is so easily available? In other words-

• 32:41Speaker 01

  It's a great question.

• 32:41Chuck Nice?

  Are we going to evolve because of our technology? Like, will that turn us into different humans and thereby different, further separating us from our primate-

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what we can do. We can turn ourselves into superhumans and then turn chimps into humans.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  If only it were that easy.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we can go to the Bahamas.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I don't, I think there's an ethical question there that is probably, uh, not a good idea.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Um, no, I-

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, I was just, I was just balling there, I don't know.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Although, yeah, I don't know, I mean, chimps are really aggressive. I don't know if I want them, like, taking out my trash.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, well, is there any attempt to, uh, in the, in the spirit of that question? Is there any attempt to modify their DNA to make them more capable of surviving their environment? In one way or another, yeah?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Not that I know of, no. Not, I mean, like, modifying their DNA, no. I mean, even like, the, the new gene editing we have in, in humans, like CRISPR, and there's a, a new one that I, I read about recently that's even, you could actually inject a living person with, um, edited genes that are, it's supposed to take effect. It worked on lab rats, but, um, that's run into a lot of ethical questions. But as far as trying to change living primates to better adapt, no. It's just mostly trying to change human behavior so they can live longer, you know?

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Uh, hopefully push, you know, for instance, like in orangutans with deforestation, we're trying to get people not to use palm oil because that's a big problem there. So, things like that. We're trying to amend our behavior rather than expecting them to just- Sort of like change your diet, become a new species.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's wrong with palm oil?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Well, palm oil plantations are basically a big cause of deforestation in-

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For whatever was there before.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah, so it's all- the palm oil itself is not a bad thing, it's just the way it's-

• 34:21Chuck Nice?

  We cut it down. We cut down a bunch of trees so that we can actually raise palm oil.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'd love me some coconut, I'm not getting them like-

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, no, no.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coconut go way back.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Coconut. Coconut's very good for you.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break. You've been listening to, and some of you may have even been watching, this episode of StarTalk: Cosmic Queries, Primate Edition, with anthropologist Natalia Reagan when we come back.

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk: Cosmic Queries, Primate Edition. Yes, humans are primates, just in case you didn't know.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're animals.

• 35:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And even if you didn't know we were animals, your mama told you. At least once in your life.

• 35:09Chuck Nice?

  You're some kinda animal?

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. As a matter of fact, yeah.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Well, yes, I am.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that what they say, what the parents, what the teachers say to kids who don't yet know they're gonna be professional comedians? They'll say something in class and the teacher's-

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  What are you?

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you, a comedian?

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  I wish I could go back to every single time that happened to me. I kid you not, Neil. I actually dream of being able to get into a time machine.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, the first thing, if I invent a time machine, we'll get that squared out.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Please.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we'll solve world, world problems.

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  And believe me, it would go just like this. What are you, some kinda comedian? Just wait, bitch! Sorry.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Fast forward.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Natalia Reagan, so you're here to help us answer questions on primates.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It came through our social media network, so give me more.

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Don Rim from Facebook says this. Judging from the study of Coco the gorilla, do you believe that primates and other animals are capable of higher learning?

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good question.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  It is a good question. Um, so not just Coco, there's multiple examples of, of non-human primates-

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coco was a gorilla. There were also some chimpanzee ones, too.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, Mawsho. Um, yeah, there's been a lot-

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was the name of that one?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Mawsho.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mawsho, yeah, that's right, right. Mawsho the chimp.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, yeah, as far as cognitive abilities, there's a lot that non-human primates can do, and there's been studies, not just having to do sign language and things of that sort, but, um- Actually being able to understand and remember patterns. They found that chimps were actually better at doing some of those pattern memory tests than actual humans were. So there are a lot of abilities that I think non-human primates have in terms of cognition, but we also have to remember that measuring cognition in animals is not just about being able to, you know, do algebra or calculus. It's about, you know, social intelligence and being able to communicate in ways that works for them because it's not about adapting and surviving in our world. It's about adapting and surviving in their world.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Maybe if they had a need for algebra, they would actually

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  Understand and develop an understanding of algebra. They don't have a need for it.

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be scary.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want no ape doing better on math, my math test than I am.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  They're better on their SATs than me.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you know Carl Sagan's famous quote? I think it was in reference to dolphins, but it could easily be applied to chimps. It was, "We have found some dolphins that have managed to make gestures that make it clear that they understand what we're talking about, but we have yet to find any human that can speak dolphin."

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I mean, we are so species centric in so many ways.

• 37:52Chuck Nice?

  That's good.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  I try to talk to cats, man, but I don't know if they get me. You know, like I try to understand what

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, they get you. They're just ignoring you. That's a cat, right?

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you see the X K C D comic about that?

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I gotta laugh first before I even say it. Okay, so this guy comes home, right? And there's a cat sitting on the edge of the couch, right? Then obviously just came home from his day. And the caption is, "If cats could talk." Okay, so he comes in, "Hi Kitty Witty, how are you?" And the cat looks up and just goes back to what he was doing, doesn't say a thing.

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  That's a perfect, that's perfect.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The best comic ever.

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  If cats could talk, that's perfect.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just looks up and then just goes back down.

• 38:40Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I 100% agree.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So give me some cosmic queries.

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Evolution is at a cellular level. This is from Michelle Tapia. DNA writes our shape. Adding it here and there can change you.

• 38:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, thanks so much. Uh, Michelle, that was the end of it. She was just like, there you go. That's whatever. Is that really what evolution is though? I'll ask the question. Is that indeed what evolution is? Uh, the change on a cellular level?

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's the passing down of different genetic material and it does, it, it starts at a cellular level. But it also, you know, it doesn't necessarily manifest itself immediately. You know, the genes are passed down and might actually be seen generations from now that, you know, had been in your family for, for generations. But it's also not goal driven.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, but if I'm, if I'm born with six fingers, that sixth finger is not just a cell. That's a whole thing in my body. And now I got the sixth finger gene.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  It's a weird mutation, man.

• 39:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if I start making babies with other six fingered mateable partners, we go, we can start a new base 12, uh, arithmetic system.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  That's right. And you'll be the most awesome piano players in the world.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Stand up bass, you'd just be like, yeah, the fastest, fastest fingered.

• 39:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. Uh, I play the sitar better than anybody you've ever seen.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Six fingered man.

• 40:05Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Why do apes retain or perpetuate the kindred instinct? No signs of actual hate or feud against each other. And, uh, us humans appear to have lost this identity. But is that true about other apes?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say that. Uh, I see ape, apes and-

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there ape homicide?

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, chimps will kill one another. So-

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is there ape, are there ape muggings?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Uh, right, exactly.

• 40:34Chuck Nice?

  So funny.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Give me your banana.

• 40:35Chuck Nice?

  Give me that banana.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Give me your banana.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want the banana. You can just the rest of what's in your wallet.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Your money's no good here. Give me your food. Well, that's the funny thing is, like, for them, currency is food. Like I actually, I've done a video on this about how, you know, chimps will give gifts of fruit in hopes of getting a little extra side nookie, just because that's what, that is.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fruit for nookie.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Well, it's kinda like buying your sweetheart a necklace or something like that. It's an exchange. It's an exchange. But anyways, back to the question.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is cheaper than diamonds.

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 41:14Chuck Nice?

  These guys got it good.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  If only.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  These guys got it good, man. I wish I could come home, "Hey, baby, here's an orange." Wish I could. "Hey, how you doing? Here's an orange, and you know what? Here's a few grapes on me." Just to make it even sweeter.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Only life are that simple, man. Oh, gosh. But, yeah, as far as altruism and kindness, there is that in the animal world. We see that in multiple species, not just in primates, human and non-human, but there is aggression. Chimpanzees are known for a lot of, you know, in-group fighting. They'll have, you know, alpha males.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  They gang war, too.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do.

• 41:53Chuck Nice?

  They gang war.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  You know, but the thing is, we don't like to get lost.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in the blood.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. You don't wear blue in this part of the forest. So, we're red there.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying. You know, I'm a fan of the West Side Story, the movie. I just can't be... Come out, they start dancing.

• 42:07Chuck Nice?

  Boy, boy, crazy chimp boy. Cool boy.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  You've got the monkeys in the trees as a chorus.

• 42:19Chuck Nice?

  No, but they do, so they are violent.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. So, they'll have coalitions where they actually, they'll circle their territory, and if they see a chimp from a nearby group that they, that shouldn't be there, they will attack and they will kill. And sometimes they will do things like eat that particular chimp.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it can be pretty bloody, but...

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like, yeah, this is, "I will eat your heart and get your strength that you had."

• 42:43Chuck Nice?

  I don't know who my favorite primate is, but I'm quickly finding out who my least favorite is.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  But also, we have to remember, even though they can be very aggressive, so are humans in some ways, but we are, we are way more cooperative, as are chimps, than aggressive, I think.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On balance, yeah.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, because you have, I mean, otherwise, they would just, they'd all be dead.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'd be killing each other all the time.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Cooperation is a big part of who we are in other primates.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can go a whole year and not want to kill anyone.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I don't know if that's possible right now.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's, let's get this one in before our lightning round because guy Zachary Aaron Kloster wants to know this. Can you explain some of the stranger mating dominance rituals that various primates do? I'm thinking about silverbacks, as well as baboons. Talk about these, some of these rituals.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Well, I mean.

• 43:36Chuck Nice?

  Top three primate mating rituals. Yeah, way to break it down. Top three primate rituals, mating rituals.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Mating rich, I don't know if there's so much a ritual, but there's just the way they, the way I go about it. Orangutans, one of the things that people don't know is it's males or solitary females forage usually alone with whatever infant they have. And it can be, get a little rough. If a female's not interested in a male, males will do well, forced copulation. And so that, yeah, which is, I mean, it happens.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Ape rape.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  You know, it, it, yep.

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  That's terrible.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Or just rape. That would be their combined.

• 44:07Chuck Nice?

  Is that what they, oh, God.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  It is. It's forced copulation.

• 44:09Chuck Nice?

  So this happens?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  It does happen. And it, yeah, so, so to romanticize.

• 44:14Chuck Nice?

  Does that mean the male is stronger than the female?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yes. And so there's sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism means that there's a size difference between males and females on average between.

• 44:22Chuck Nice?

  It could go either way, depending on the species.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, black widows, I mean, have you ever seen a male black widow? Probably not, because they're so small. They're itty bitty.

• 44:29Chuck Nice?

  They're completely lame.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're so lame. Oh, my God.

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  So any other, like, very unusual primate mating rituals?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think of actual rich, I mean, like, you know, funny rituals.

• 44:40Chuck Nice?

  So now, what about the, okay, is, is this the baboon? Or whose butt gets inflamed and red?

• 44:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, in fact, a friend of mine.

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  A baboon butt?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, baboons. And my friend is actually right now on a, on her way to Zambia to do research, Megan Petersdorf, and she actually will be, she's at New York University, but she will be looking at sexual swellings of baboons. And she's, my friend Todd Disatell, also of NYU, they developed a laser system so they can actually measure the size of her swollen vulva.

• 45:11Chuck Nice?

  Laser metric system.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, to, to, to measure the size of, of the swollen vulva. And it's a single signal to the opposite sex that they are ready to get down. That is a scientific term. You can tell your friends and family.

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  But yeah, chimps have the same sexual swellings, bonobos as well, will get these sexual swellings when they.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that because they're in heat?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's well, they don't have heat.

• 45:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Humans were not ever, it's not a heat thing.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  No, well, we have ovulate, we have concealed ovulation, which is a whole nother. That's a whole nother show, which is very interesting, and there's different theories of why we have, you can't, unless you really know your partner, or you, you know, you can huff it on them, you can smell like, oh, something's up. You don't really know.

• 45:49Chuck Nice?

  There's no man who knows when his woman is ovulating. I don't care what anybody, there is not a man alive.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the damn research says.

• 45:56Chuck Nice?

  Not a man alive, who is like, honey, it's, you know, I would say, let's make love, but I'm pretty sure you're ovulating. No, we do not know.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  There's people that do the whole, you know, the rhythm method, and they know this kind of stuff.

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's, I'm intrigued that among primates, counting us with this group, that

• 46:13Speaker 01

  They have a time.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have concealed ovulation, and others don't.

• 46:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's intriguing to me.

• 46:18Chuck Nice?

  Not all non-human primates. Because the other primates do not have child custody cases.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting, and a lot of those, those, uh, uh, primate species that have the sexual swellings, they do live in large groups. So if, for instance, somebody does give birth, and you don't know who, was it Steve, Jim, Bob, who knows? The village, or basically, they take care of their own.

• 46:39Chuck Nice?

  They're cool with it.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  They're cool, like, it's okay. Um, they don't necessarily.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a village to raise.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  There's no, you know, um, uh, Jerry Springer.

• 46:47Chuck Nice?

  Unlike us, no, no guy wants to answer the door, hey, what's up? Hey, man, yeah, I'm here to pick up your wife and kids.

• 46:57Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta go to lightning round.

• 46:58Chuck Nice?

  Let's go to lightning round. All right, here we go. Mubin Ahmed wants to know this, can monkeys be lunatics?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Monkeys can act a little crazy.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And go off the ranch.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yes, they can be, there's are, there are those outliers that, you know, and there's even freeloaded monkeys, monkeys that take too much and don't give back, that other monkeys will kind of spurn and ostracize.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next one, go.

• 47:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, Petros in Zuzulas wants to know this, how can all Homo sapiens be nearly genetically identical to each other, when not all Homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthal?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Uh, well.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to put it clear, as I remember it, there are, uh, Europe especially, but there are branches of the human species that have more Neanderthal than others.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yes, so if you only have Afri-, if you're only of African descent and-

• 47:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have no Neanderthal.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  No Neanderthal, but they're all, they also have a new, uh, uh, there's Denisovans, which are a group that lived in Asia that are, uh, that basically are found in, uh, populations in Asia and, um, uh, Melanesia, and then there's also a new unknown, uh, DNA that they don't know, they don't have fossil evidence for, that also admixed with, uh, humans, but they're found in like Australia and-

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does it mean for us to be close to one another, but some have Neanderthal and others don't?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Don't. Um, it, well, basically it means where's a founder population in Africa, there's more genetic diversity between those with, living within or that are from Africa and then those, uh, that have spread out, so.

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we are different on the level that these differences manifest.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, but we can all still interbreed.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a small difference.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  It was a very small sample of, of humans that admixed with Neanderthals. It was not a lot, it was not like, it wasn't happening every, you know, as Todd, my, um, I had a Neanderthal show this weekend, uh, he brought up the fact that they think it was, you know, only several thou-, or maybe several hundreds, not like thousands of thousands of, uh, instances of admixture.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  So it's not a ton of DNA that got into our system.

• 48:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for some people, you get to say, stop being a Neanderthal, because they got actually some of that in them. Right.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  But they're, but the, but Neanderthals weren't all that bad.

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have an Neanderthal sympathizer. Exactly.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  I mean, they weren't like-

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you love them so much, why don't you marry one?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Hey, I might.

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta bring that to a halt here. Uh, Natalia Reagan, thank you for being on StarTalk. Thank you for having me. And Chuck. Hey. Always good to have you. Always good to be here, man. And when you're not with me, you're with, you're, you're, you're with Gary O'Reilly, okay? Well, it's not really like that. It's not like that, you're, you're, you're playing with science with Gary O'Reilly.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  They're just friends, you know?

• 49:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Call me sometime, okay? I'm Field of Grass Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.