Pod Insights Science Friday Can Men and Women (Baboons) Really Just Be Friends? | The Best Bear Deterrent May Be Drones About this episode Just like in “When Harry Met Sally”, the answer isn’t so simple for Kinda baboons, which form long-term friendships between the sexes. Plus, new research found drones to be more effective than dogs, cars, or loud noises at convincing bears to avoid human areas.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:42 Flora Lichtman? This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichtman. Today in the podcast, an age-old question, or at least a debate that romantic comedies love to explore.
1:52 Speaker 03 Men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.
1:56 Flora Lichtman? That's not true. I have a number of men friends, and there is no sex involved.
2:00 Speaker 03 No, you don't.
2:01 Flora Lichtman? Yes, I do.
2:02 Speaker 03 No, you don't.
2:02 Flora Lichtman? Yes, I do. That's, of course, from When Harry Met Sally with Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, and is perhaps the second most famous scene in the movie.
2:12 Speaker 00 I'll have what she's having.
2:14 Flora Lichtman? Anyway, because romantic comedies insist on being romantic, in this movie, the answer is ultimately no. Men and women cannot be friends. But new research adds a wrinkle, at least in the animal kingdom. My next guest is a world authority on a relatively unknown species of baboon, the Kinda baboon, and she found that they upend a lot of stereotypes about baboon bonding, primate power dynamics, and how male and female baboons get along. Here to tell us more is Dr. Anna Wire, founder of the Kasanka Baboon Project in Zambia. Welcome to Science Friday.
2:54 Speaker 04 Thank you so much for having me.
2:56 Flora Lichtman? OK, tell me a little bit about these baboons. Where do they live? What do they look like?
3:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, so Kinda baboons, we find them in Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Zambia, and they're much smaller than the traditional baboon that most people would be familiar with. So they're about half the size. They're more slender, and males and females are closer in size.
3:22 Flora Lichtman? And you're one of the first people to study them in the wild. How did that happen?
3:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, so I got really lucky. When I was applying to grad school, I ended up starting to work with two professors that had been looking at the genetics of the baboons in Zambia, as there's three species that occur in Zambia. They used to be considered grouped with a species called yellow baboons, but now we know from genetic evidence that they were quite different than originally thought. And so they were looking for someone to start to study these baboons and see if, maybe behaviorally, they were different as well.
4:02 Flora Lichtman? Yeah, what questions were you asking?
4:04 Speaker 04 I had two goals. One was to just study the species that had never been studied. So there's many studies on baboons, ones that are going back 50-plus years. So there's a lot of comparative information. So going out and asking similar questions just to see how they compare. And then, more specifically, my main dissertation question, and the question that's evolved over the past 10-plus years, is... What are the male, adult males and adult females doing together over time? Are they spending a lot of time together? Or are females spending a lot of time together? How do they differ?
4:45 Speaker 04 So in typical baboons that live in large groups, males usually are on the periphery. When they become adults, they leave the group and join another group. Where females remain in the group they were born in and they inherit the rank of their mother. So they're very female bonded. Females spend a lot of time together. Males are interacting with females mostly just during times of mating.
5:10 Flora Lichtman? Not friends, is what I'm hearing.
5:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, or friends, but mostly in the context of around mating or when infants are really small and vulnerable.
5:20 Flora Lichtman? Okay.
5:21 Speaker 04 And the thought that we were seeing in kindas from some short pilot studies was that males were interacting with females in all of their reproductive states. So if they had an infant, if they didn't have an infant, if they were reproductively receptive. And that we saw the males were doing a lot of the friendly behavior towards the females instead of the females doing it towards them, which is what we see in other baboons.
5:46 Flora Lichtman? And not just during mating?
5:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, exactly. So high rates in all reproductive states. So in a typical southern Chakma baboon, a male would be grooming a female and giving her a lot of attention when she's ready to mate. Or a female would be grooming a male a lot of the time. Otherwise, when there's risk of other males committing infanticide or hurting her infant. So it's like a protection thing.
6:13 Flora Lichtman? It's really transactional, is what it sounds like.
6:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, a lot, yeah, in a lot of ways. And so for most of a female's adult life, she's the one approaching males. She's the one, you know. Grunting and, and doing affiliative or kind things to try to get the male near her for protection.
6:34 Flora Lichtman? Females catering to males, tale as old as time, Anna.
6:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
6:38 Flora Lichtman? Tale as old as time.
6:40 Speaker 04 And then we might see a switch during the mating, but that drops off significantly. And what I thought I was seeing and what I went out to study and observe in one group over many years is different. Our initial observations actually showing that males are doing a lot more of the maintaining of these friendships is what we call them. And doing more grooming towards females than females are grooming towards them. And also more just safe infant interactions. So females letting males hold their infants and groom their infants and males being interested in infants and things like that.
7:17 Flora Lichtman? Why do you think the kinder males are behaving differently than other male baboons? Do you have a theory?
7:24 Speaker 04 Yeah. And it's kind of a suite of characteristics that we think is going on. So as genetic methods have gotten much, much better, the last 20 plus years, we've realized that kinders are, are probably the basal or the first kind of living baboon that existed. And there are six species of baboons. And so those species kind of diverged from that so that this behavior might be the more initial behavior.
7:54 Flora Lichtman? Yeah, it's interesting to me that the older baboon behavior might be this more egalitarian behavior.
8:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, then that questions the perception that humans or primates or animals are innately aggressive or want to fight or things like that, that there's actually
8:13 Flora Lichtman? Yes.
8:14 Speaker 04 other strategies. And that in this kinder scenario, females are getting a lot more choice. They can be choosier on who they mate with. And it appears that males are spending more time. Creating longer term bonds with females to hopefully get reproductive mating access instead of what the traditional baboon model was is that males fight other males to get reproductive mating access.
8:44 Flora Lichtman? Yes, I did hear you saying there that it's a long term investment to get mating access, which
8:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:51 Flora Lichtman? is actually the plot of When Harry Met Sally ultimately.
8:55 Speaker 04 Right. I was thinking about that actually as well, that it is the plot really, isn't it? Like over time, the nice male might, might actually, you know, reap more rewards than the aggressive one.
9:10 Flora Lichtman? And that it actually, at the end of the day, is about mating.
9:14 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I think it's about, the interesting thing too, is there's been studies in grooming in primates, it really is the main social activity. So you think in humans, the most social thing we do is speak with one another and that really maintains bonds. But obviously, physical touch is really, really important. In baboons, they do also make these interesting sounds, but they groom not just to clean. They spend way more time than needed for, you know, getting out a bug here or there. It's really about social connection and reducing cortisol levels. And primates, you know, it shows that giving reduces those levels
9:55 Speaker 04 as well as getting grooming. So even giving it can make you relax. And so perhaps all that extra grooming that's going on also reduces the need for, you know, so much aggression.
10:09 Flora Lichtman? I'm craving some Kinda sounds. Can you
10:12 Speaker 04 Okay.
10:13 Flora Lichtman? do them for me?
10:15 Speaker 04 Sure. Yeah, I can do a few. So to ask to either groom or can I groom your infant? There's a lot of things we call grunting. And it sort of sounds like this.
10:28 Speaker 04 As an animal approaches and gets closer and it's a sound, this grunting that kind of shows like, I'm coming in nice.
10:38 Flora Lichtman? Hmm.
10:39 Speaker 04 I'm coming in nice. And another kind of, I don't know if the sound will come through, but it's, it's really, we call it a lip smack. And when they're doing a lot of those behaviors to their, they're smacking their lips, that's also just like a comforting, calming sound that makes sense, maybe like a cooey.
10:59 Flora Lichtman? But not for me, I'll say.
11:06 Flora Lichtman? But, okay, you do, you can, is that like a kissy sound?
11:09 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's like, you don't really, as observers, we don't really even hear it, I suppose, unless you could get a microphone right in there. They're just kind of, almost like you are blotting your lipstick.
11:24 Flora Lichtman? Okay, I love it. I love hearing you do this, thank you. I feel, I feel like I'm there. I'm so curious what it's like in the field. I mean, you've spent so much time with these baboons. Did you have to gain their trust?
11:39 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was a long endeavor. In the area I picked as well, there's, there is some poaching of baboons and just poaching in the area. So baboons in general are a little wary. So it took about six months of just trying to follow them every day before they started to kind of calm down and realize that we weren't there to do harm.
12:01 Flora Lichtman? Hmm, wow, six months.
12:04 Speaker 04 But it really took maybe a year, a year before, like, the trust was earned enough that it felt like it could get really good data and identify individuals. It's a trusting.
12:16 Flora Lichtman? Do you have to do things to blend in? I mean, are you like grooming yourself?
12:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, so in the beginning, definitely, I would, I would groom my fleece. Eye contact is kind of a, a direct threat, so I'd look down a lot. I'd pretend to eat things that they were eating. And then the trust started to build. And we, we don't interact with them. We don't try to get too close to them, close enough. But now, you know, we can have several researchers and. The group is over 100 individuals and researchers are kind of within that whole thing doing their observations.
12:53 Flora Lichtman? What do you still want to know?
12:55 Speaker 04 So there are so many things we still want to know. I mean, I think one of the interesting things I think that we're just starting to find out, you know, is from the beginning, we got to see males come into the group and see how that happened, but we couldn't really see what females did when they became adults. Like, what do they choose? How do they choose their male friends?
13:17 Speaker 04 How do they navigate their social world now that they are be reproductively, you know, receptive and can have infants? And so we've got to see that a few times, but now we have several females that have been born in the group that are becoming adults and are starting to show these patterns. And so that will be really interesting complement.
13:39 Flora Lichtman? Well, I'm always interested in the female perspective, so please come back and tell us about it.
13:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'd love to.
13:46 Flora Lichtman? Thanks, Anna, for coming on.
13:47 Speaker 04 Thank you. It was such a pleasure.
13:49 Flora Lichtman? Dr. Anna Weir, founder of the Kasanca Baboon Project in Zambia.
13:57 Flora Lichtman? After the break, adventures of a bear management specialist, AKA a bear cop.
14:03 Speaker 05 The bears are pretty easy to deal with, but people can be very difficult to deal with.
14:08 Flora Lichtman? Stick around.
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16:36 Flora Lichtman? What do you do when a bear keeps coming too close to people and will not take the hint to stay away? Joining me now is Wesley Sarmiento, currently at the University of Montana as a research fellow, but formerly a bear management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. He recently wrote about his experiences shooing bears away in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science. Welcome to Science Friday, Wesley.
17:04 Speaker 05 Thanks for having me, Flora.
17:06 Flora Lichtman? What exactly is the job of a bear management specialist?
17:11 Speaker 05 Really, the job of a bear management specialist is keeping bears out of trouble and keeping people and their property safe. And so that can entail a lot of different things, from being really proactive and helping people secure attractants like spilled grain or garbage, to being reactive and having to catch a grizzly bear because it's getting into livestock or something that it shouldn't.
17:36 Flora Lichtman? Should we think of you as a bear cop?
17:38 Speaker 05 A little bit of a bear cop, yeah.
17:42 Flora Lichtman? You know, we increasingly are hearing about big wild animals like bears, but also mountain lions and wolves venturing into neighborhoods and people encountering them on trails. What's the situation with grizzly bears?
17:57 Speaker 05 So grizzly bears in Montana have been protected since the 1970s. And since they've been protected, their population has really been expanding out. And so, starting in the 70s, they were really only found in the mountains, like around Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. But the last 40-plus years of protection has allowed the population to grow and expand out from those areas. And so now grizzly bears are being found way out on the prairie where they were historically, but is now a very different landscape than it was 200 years ago when Lewis and Clark came through. It's dominated by agriculture, and so a lot of crops are being grown, like wheat and barley and chickpeas. And then it's also a lot of livestock production.
18:43 Flora Lichtman? And it sounds like therefore there are people there as well.
18:46 Speaker 05 There's a lot of people there.
18:48 Flora Lichtman? So what are the traditional tools a bear cop has at their disposal?
18:52 Speaker 05 The traditional tools that a bear manager has are a vehicle to run bears off, and also a shotgun to use non-lethal deterrents like cracker shells, which is basically like an exploding firecracker, beanbag rounds and rubber bullets. And then also some other things like air horns and that sort of stuff.
19:14 Flora Lichtman? In this article, you are describing a new potential tool. Will you tell us about it?
19:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, so the new potential tool is a drone. People can just go and buy really capable drones right off the internet. And these drones are capable of 30 minutes of flight. You can fly them in high winds, and they even have thermal capabilities, so you can fly them at night.
19:39 Flora Lichtman? And what's the aim? What are you trying to do? Is it to scare the bear? Or, you know, what's the ideal?
19:45 Speaker 05 So there's two objectives for scaring the bears away. That's just hazing the animal. And hazing basically means like to chase an animal. Let's get the bear away from somewhere where we don't want it. And then the second objective is a longer term effect that we call aversive conditioning. And aversive conditioning basically means teaching an animal to not want to do something.
20:14 Flora Lichtman? And is it working with the drones?
20:16 Speaker 05 The evidence that I came up with in my area, found that it was very effective. In 91% of the cases where I used drones, the bears did successfully move away from where they needed to be. And there's also evidence for that long-term aversive conditioning where older bears needed less hazing and also hazing events decreased over each calendar year.
20:41 Flora Lichtman? I assume this is really helpful because it doesn't also put the bear at risk or you at risk.
20:47 Speaker 05 Absolutely. By us hazing bears, that keeps bears out of trouble. And that keeps them from coming near people where they could get into trouble or someone could shoot them in self-defense or they get hit on the road. So it's better for them long-term. But then it's also a lot safer hazing a bear with a drone because I can do it from the safety of my vehicle instead of going out on foot like I used to do and making myself too available to where I could get attacked by a bear.
21:16 Flora Lichtman? Before we let you go, I'm so interested in this job. What kind of temperament do you need to be a good bear cop?
21:26 Speaker 05 You need to be calm in all kinds of situations. Most importantly, you need really good people skills because the bears are pretty easy to deal with, but people can be very difficult to deal with, particularly people that don't want bears around or don't like bears whatsoever. And so being able to put yourself in those people's shoes and understand their perspective and where they're coming from is essential for the job. So you can relate to them and you can empathize with them.
21:57 Flora Lichtman? Not just empathy for the bears, but for the people too.
22:00 Speaker 05 You do need a lot of empathy for the people.
22:03 Flora Lichtman? Wesley Sarmiento, former bear management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, now at the University of Montana as a research fellow. Thanks for joining us.
22:12 Speaker 05 Thank you again, Flora.
22:16 Flora Lichtman? As you know, Science Friday is more than just a radio show, and you can join us for events both online and in person. If you're near Columbia, Missouri, please join us Saturday, May 10th, for another edition of Sci-Fri Live with our friends at KBIA. Find info on all our events at sciencefriday.com/events.
22:41 Flora Lichtman? And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including...
22:47 Speaker 03 Danielle Johnson. Jason Rosenberg.
22:49 Flora Lichtman? Shoshana Buxbaum. Diana Plasker. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.
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