Making the Fur Fly

Although many people debate about the use of animals in science and civilization, few argue as adamantly against their use than our guest, Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder and president of PETA.

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. This week, "Making the Fur Fly: Animal Science and Civilization." To help me in studio is animal behaviorist Peter Borschel.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Applied animal behaviorist.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, "Applied Animal..." That means you're actually in the real world doing...

• 0:40Speaker 01

  I'm in the real world.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Solving real problems. You got your PhD in comparative psychology and animal behavior from Michigan State.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, well, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We snared you in the middle of a gig today. What are you actually gonna do today?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Well, I've got to evaluate a dog up at Animal Care and Control, which is...

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evaluate a dog, what does that mean? You know, in dog shows, they get goose, you know, when they evaluate them, so...

• 1:03Speaker 01

  No, no, this is all behavior. So I've got a pit bull who apparently was sicked on somebody and hurt them badly.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who sicked the pit bull on whom?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Apparently, the owner sicked the dog on, I think it was an ex-girlfriend.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow, wow. So, why else have a pit bull unless this is the kind of thing you're gonna do with it? I guess. I don't, I don't know. For this program, you know, I spent time with the president and founder of PETA.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so we're gonna join some interview clips later in the show.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Find out what she has to say about this whole world. But as you surely know, we've relied on animals since the beginning, the dawn of civilization. They're animals that, of course, eat us. We don't rely on them.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We tried our darndest to find out which animals are not likely to eat us and which ones make good eating for ourselves and which ones can serve our needs, which ones can pull our plows, which ones keep us warm at night. And so they've really been our companions for thousands of years. And so in your job, you're at the end point of this because you're worried about the behavior of domestic animals, I presume.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so if a lion eats somebody, you're not gonna study why the lion did that?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  No, that's pretty obvious.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Either the lion was hungry or the person was stupid.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One or the other, but that's right, and the lion, you know, can't blame a lion for being a lion.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  No, absolutely.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, animals would not only just serve our needs domestically for civilization. In fact, what we now call civilization rested wholly on what animals were doing for us.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be they, like I said, the farm animals to horses. I mean, before there were cars, there were horses, period. You know, that was what you had to get from A to B. And so, we also know that animals have been used as test subjects in laboratories. This has been a sort of fundamental part of scientific research over the decades. But I don't suppose you worry much about those animals, is that right?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Well, I was, in my graduate career, I dealt with them, but I'm dealing with them.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just as part of the normal sort of research cycle that you go through, right?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, there's also this issue about what role animals play in our health. Of course, animal meat is a very high and concentrated source of protein, which if you go off of meat, you explore, you need to explore other ways to make this up. And, of course, there's farming practices that when you grow animals that people use to eat, then that's a huge usage of farmland. It's like seventy percent of all farmland is given unto animals that we would then later eat.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Right. On the other hand, our pets help us health-wise also.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Psychologically, I guess.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Psychologically, lower blood pressure, relax us, give us some comfort, and that's not trivial.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so our pets are not just pets, they're like psychological crutches for us?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  They can be, yes.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, which works better, a dog or a cat, to lower your blood pressure?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Well, since fish can do it as well. It probably depends on the animal and the person.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've never pet a fish before.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Right. Just watching them sometimes does it.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's the fact of having a creature inside your home, I guess, that works this way?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's interesting. So do you consult humans for human health with regard to pets? Or consult humans with regard to pet health?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Well, it's really well-being in terms of the behavior of the animal. So sometimes it doesn't pinge on the person's health. I mean, if the dog is gonna bite you or cause you a great deal of stress, yes, then that's a problem. But then what we do sometimes injures the animal psychologically as well.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we as pet owners?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  So we have to find a happy medium here.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so who calls you if someone has an emotionally distressed pet? It's not the pet.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or maybe you'd have a pet hotline. That would be a phone ringing continuously.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  If that worked, it would help my business. That's true.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  No, if the owner will call me up with something, it's a problem. The dog's aggressive, or the cat pees out of the litter box, or the dog's afraid of thunder, or the cat gets into a fight with other cats, the whole range of things we see.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw a comedian joke once that we know we're smarter than cats because cats are afraid of vacuum cleaners and we're not.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Right. And so are dogs sometimes.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And but it's not odd to be afraid of thunder and lightning. I mean, children are afraid. And we're only not afraid because we understand it, right?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Well, see, that's a good point because my joke with clients is that the dog thinks that the vacuum cleaner is the monster that lives in the closet.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  And comes out periodically and growls and makes noise. And they don't understand the concept of cleaning the house.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's pick up with the beginning of my interview with Ingrid Newkirk. She's the president and co-founder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is much more famously known as PETA. And she visited my office. She, in fact, interviewed me for a video clip she was doing for her website, which ultimately ended up like in an ad for PETA, which was more than I had ever imagined they would do with it. But anyhow, let's see just what she says about the treatment of animals and what role that's played in our culture.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When did you get started?

• 6:45Speaker 02

  1980. See these crow's feet?

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not all that long ago, right? So thirty years. Was there some event that triggered it?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  There were, in the cosmic scheme of things. I'm sure this doesn't count at all, thirty years, but I was a law enforcement officer and went on to-

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Where? At a place where you got your accent?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  No, I'm English originally, but I moved to Maryland and I was a law enforcement officer. I happened to get a call about cruelty to animals, which was on a farm, and someone had moved away and left all the animals behind. Most of them had starved. There's one little pig who was left behind and who was still alive. And I cradled him in my arms, took him to the water spigot and got him something to drink. He was dehydrated more than he was starved, but both. And driving home that night, I started to think, "Oh, I'm so hungry. What have I got for dinner?" It was before microwaves. I had defrosted the pork chops. And I suddenly thought, "Well, I haven't been to a slaughterhouse yet. I have since, but I know they can't be pleasant places. And here I am prosecuting people for being cruel to one pig, and I'm sure that the pig I'm about to eat didn't do well.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  So I decided, "I need to look at this more deeply."

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this was an existential moment for you, where you save a pig while you're about to munch down on a pork chop?

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Actually, I should tell you that before that, I stopped eating snails.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In America, that's not hard to put into effect. You can start that movement and succeed by nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  And in England, too.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We now prevent you from eating snails. Uh, okay.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Actually, that's a good idea to try and pass a law, isn't it? But I picked up these snails that were alive, and I'm a very bad cook, but I was driving home with a little paper bag full of snails, because they said it was so easy. All you needed was a little wine, a little garlic, and the snails.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And some butter, I thought. Isn't there butter in there?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  You don't actually need it, but you can use it. And I may have forgotten that ingredient. But driving up a lonely country road, I suddenly had the feeling I was being watched. And I looked over and the neck of the paper bag had come open. All the snails that seemed that they could get out had come to the edge of the bag and were looking up at me. And I thought, "I can't stand this." So I let them go.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this was another moment.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I tell you, I am a slow loner. I had my first fur coat when I was nineteen, and it was made of about a hundred squirrels. It was a very-

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, a squirrel fur coat. I've never heard of that.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  No, it was an arty Ginger Rogers, very special creation. And no one was there then from an animal rights group to hand me a card that said, "Your coat looked better on its original one hundred owners." Or question the fact that I thought I was kind, and yet I also thought I was fashionable. So it took a while.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've eaten squirrel once before in Texas, and it tastes like chicken, of course.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  I love chickens too, but I do like them live, scratching in the dirt, enjoying the sun.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's none other than the president and founder of PETA. More of that interview later in StarTalk. So Lynn Copeland.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you doing?

• 9:47Speaker 03

  I'm fine. I'm a little horrified at who buys a squirrel coat.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's odd that the president of PETA owned a squirrel coat.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  I wonder if it had tire tracks on it? What a gross thing. Only in New York would I be okay with a squirrel coat, because they're disgusting, the ones in the park.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where else do you get a hundred squirrels if not roadkill?

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a thought that is, Lynn.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  And would she be against that, Neil? Is that a PETA problem, if you're using dead squirrels?

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't, I don't know. I should have quizzed, I should have like had you prompt me before I had my interview with her.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  I think that's what PETA should do, is they should make roadkill coats. For people who want to wear fur.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But don't want to kill them on purpose.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  But don't want to kill it. You can wear a possum coat, an armadillo hat.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just one thing. So let's get back to eating meat for a moment. It's a huge, it uses up a lot of resources. By the way, I'm an omnivore, as humans I think were born to be. And I enjoy it, you know, I eat a steak, you know, and-

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Refresh me, carnivores, you eat meat?

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carne, like carne.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Right, like meat.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It means you only eat-

• 10:51Speaker 03

  An omnivore means you eat meat and veggies.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And-

• 10:54Speaker 03

  And anything.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And vegetarian.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  And cake.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything that was once alive.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Anything that won't eat you back.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, that's right. And if omnivore eats anything that was once alive, and then you have the vegetarians, and then...

• 11:07Speaker 03

  The vegans.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I heard about the breatharians. You hear about them?

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Are they like vegans, the most annoying people on the planet? I went to a vegan restaurant on a date, and I asked for honey for my tea, and the guy goes, "We don't serve honey," angry. And I said, "Why?" And he's saying, "Well, you would have to take that from the bees without their permission." And I was like, "Well, they don't give you permission because they don't have lips, and they can't speak."

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bees don't have lips. I never thought that one through.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I don't think they do. Can they speak? Do they have vocal cords?

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They apparently speak to each other. When we come back, more of my interview with the president and co-founder of Peanut.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm here with my co-host comedian Lynn Copelitz, and we also have Peter Borschel. He's an animal behaviorist, and we snared him from his appointed rounds today. Thanks for...

• 12:17Speaker 03

  I have so many questions about my animals' behavior.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You own somebody named Aldo?

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Yes, he's a Yorkie.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that that little bitty dog that fits in your pocket?

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, but he's chunky. He's husky, is what we like to call it. He had a knee injury in high school, and he hasn't been the same since.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's a mix, a husky-Yorkie.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's a little husky. Now, here's my question, because I was raised with Dobermans and Labradors, and they're dogs with a G-O-B, you know? Like, they're nice to you, they hear a noise, they're like, "Excuse me, I gotta go home, mess something up right now." And then off they go to work. But Aldo is like an abusive Italian man in a dog suit. Like, he's really a different kind of dog. Like, the terrier, like, he's really, he abuses me.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Peter, what do you say about that?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Does he bite?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  He bites when you leave.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  And he barks incessantly sometimes, and I've seen him roll his eyes.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Peter, how often is this the fault of the owner, and how often is it just the inbred properties of the dog itself?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  I think the inbred properties of the dog are maybe a little more important. But you go to work...

• 13:18Speaker 03

  It's not all me. See, everyone I date, and everyone's always like, "He's annoying because you're annoying."

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, no. See, probably, is he barking when he's left alone?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Nope. He goes to sleep.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, that's good.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  He doesn't eat things. He doesn't chew things up. He goes right to sleep. He barks when he wants to play.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, he needs more play.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Well, don't we all, Peter?

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I know. Peter, do we have to, like, pay you for that advice? No.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  He needs more. It hurts when I do this. Don't do that.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be picking up more with my interview with the president and founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk. But just some, some little facts about PETA. They did some controversial things, or at least under the banner of PETA. One of them was that they created something called the unhappy meal, where they had Ronald McDonald looking like one of these horror movie

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Like a sad clown?

• 14:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Clown. Yeah, sad, evil horror clown, like the Joker from, from Batman. And, you know, there's a bloody rubber chicken and mutilated animal. So there, there's been some, some hardball played there. But my favorite was in September 2008, PETA sent a letter to Ben and Jerry's, asking them to start making ice cream with milk from humans instead of cattle. Now, I've, I've thought about this, like, forever. Why are we sucking the, the secretions of ma- of, of bovine creatures that are not even our species? Why not just have, like, farms of meat?

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Really? I'll tell you why. As a woman, I'll tell you why. Because now we are, we're working, we're reading, now you want to milk us?

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  For your ice cream? Really?

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, keep it in the species.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Does it hurt the cow?

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think they, they like getting milk, because otherwise it's, it's, they're, they're distended. I mean, they're, they're bred to be

• 14:51Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. They don't mind getting milked.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Please. What are you gonna call it? Chunky mommy? Instead of chunky monkey?

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chunky mama? I, I don't know. I'm just saying.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  Oh, gross.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, in terms of household pets, you know, there's the, there're dog people and there're cat people. I, I, I confess, I'm a dog person. I never really understood cats. My, I saw a comic recently. It says, if cats could talk, and it had a, a guy walk up to a cat asleep on the couch, and it says, "Hi, kitty kitty." And the cat looks up, and then goes back to sleep. If cats could talk.

• 15:23Speaker 03

  They still wouldn't, yeah.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, we have a clip from Brian Mallow, the science comedian. It's a clip called Feline Existentialism. But you got it, you got to check this out. Go for it.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  I know we humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize, to project our feelings and attributes upon other creatures, even inanimate objects. But having said that, I still believe cats are very profound creatures and more philosophically oriented than we ever give them credit for being. For instance, the other day, my cat, Damien...

• 15:59Speaker 04

  He's the anti-cat. He's a black cat. Damien was in a funk. He was moping around the house, walked out onto the patio, came back in, wandered into the kitchen, stirred his food around a little. Then he came over, rubbed up against my legs, looked up at me with these hopeful eyes, and gave out this plaintive meow. Meow. Which I think could be interpreted literally. I think he was saying, "Meow. I hurt.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Life is painful and meaningless, all hairballs and tapeworms. Meow, he said. I'm itchy and scratchy and neutered and dry food sucks. Meow, he cried.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Meow. Why was I created if only to endure this? Life is a litter box and it needs to be changed."

• 16:47Speaker 04

  "Meow," he said. And with those simple words, I think he was trying to express a very complex emotion, despite having a limited vocabulary and no concept of syntax.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  He's followed in the footsteps of Jean-Paul Sartre, even though he has twice as many feet. Damien, the first feline existentialist.

• 17:15Speaker 04

  Damien would appreciate that. I always imagined a conversation between the existential cat and a pessimistic dog. Meow, rough.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Meow, rough.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brian Mallow, you can follow him on Twitter. He's the Science Comedian, just @ScienceComedian. People have these odd relationships with their cats, but the fact is, in the laboratory and in Bio 101, we are operating on many of these animals. Cats, you know, the frogs is probably the first thing you'd ever reach in high school. And this has been going on for a long time. And it's been necessary for medicines and, dare I say, necessary for cosmetics, but the role of PETA's been trying to sort of change those tides.

• 18:05Speaker 03

  You know that old myth that cats could steal a baby's breath?

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never heard that.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Have you ever heard of that? They say that you don't let a cat get up near a baby.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Maybe it's just my Italian family, but they say if you let a cat near a baby, because you know how cats put their little weird cat lips against your lips and they'll suck your breath out?

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't suck the breath, but they do like milk. And if the baby's just been nursed...

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Ahhh, that's what it is. That's what it is.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  See? That was a good question. And a great answer.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Getting back to my interview with Ingrid Newkirk of PETA, she talks about her relationship with scientists and what gives when scientists do experiments on animals in the lab and how she reacts. Let's check it out. What's been your ongoing relationship with scientists and lab animals?

• 18:51Speaker 02

  There's a tremendous difference from when we started to now, and we are really beholden to so many scientists. You can, of course, find the answers to everything without the patter of little feet. Every major advance these days that used to be you just force-fed the animal or electrocuted the animal, you can now, almost invariably, do in vitro. You can do it on a computer that's programmed with human data.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Computations.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Thank you. Gas chromatography, mass spectrometry, all these sorts of things. But, of course, that's not to say there aren't millions of animals still used by what I call Joe Sixpack scientists.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is a Joe Sixpack scientist?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Somebody who started out doing something, went down a particular line, never grew, never explored, paid the mortgage, and nobody looking over their shoulder, so still using animals the way their mentors did.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying they didn't invest any creative thought in how to do it differently?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yes, and you find this with the institutional animal care and use committees at various universities, for example.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are would-be committees that regulate the ethics of the research that goes on on campus?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Yes, and more than the ethics, is that they have federal regulatory obligation to look at whether there are other ways to conduct these experiments. And often you find that they just don't. They take the word of the Joe Sixpack scientist, "Oh, this is the way we do it. These are the numbers of animals we must use," rather than seeing can we reduce them, can we replace them.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I think of swapping out animals with some other means to test, I read about when they used to test traffic accidents, they'd strap pigs into the chair. We now have crash test dummies, which obviously give a much better data set than what a dead pig could have given you. You can load it up with electronic sensors and the like. But when I think of the testing of certain medicines, for example, where you can't test a medicine on a dummy, and so you test on some other mammal, because we're mammals and so there's a lot of biological similarity. I'm imagining there's some point where you can't simulate it on the computer, you can't do it on a crash test dummy, so you do it on a rat. And I haven't asked, but you might be the only one who cares about the rights of rats.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  I do, I do.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's fine.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  There are little mammals like us.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's got a thing. But the line that I draw, which is if I spend time, money, and effort to rid my home of vermin, and if that vermin happens to be mice or rats, I have no sympathy for them in any other situation. And so when I see rats in a lab or mice in a lab, I'm cool with that if the experiment is to improve human life.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  First, may I say that it was actually Peter who stopped all the crash tests on baboons.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Congratulations. So it's not only a good thing, it turned out to be better than anything imagined before.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  You see the mannequin on TV, you know you've got something.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the mannequin is doing TV commercials. You know you've created an icon of society.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  But they said there was no other way to do it. And of course, we've heard the same with cosmetics tests on animals and so on. And we've had to really fight it in order to show there always is a more innovative way to do something.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you don't know that there always is, you're hoping that there always will be.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Point taken, yes. But in every endeavor that we've embarked upon, we have been able to show that there is a better way.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got a good track record. You've got a good track record.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  We do.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So since you yourself are not a scientist, you need sympathetic scientists to help you find these other ways.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Indeed. And we have a core group of 1,200 scientists, each in various disciplines. And when we have a conundrum...

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I won't be part of that group until we find aliens, and then you're gonna have to put me on the list, I guess.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Unless they zap us.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless they zap us first.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Unless they're giant rats, you know. And then you're in.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Revenge. We are so much in trouble.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  And wait a sec now, even if you don't like them invading your home, probably we invaded their territory first, they have to find something.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, they've evolved. They don't really survive well outside of cities and farms. They are co-evolved with our civilization. They might have been some earlier version, some proto-rat that was fine in the wilderness, but right now, they live best among us.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  But even if you don't like someone, you really detest them and they're annoying and they've done something to you, you never wish them harm if there's another way, hopefully, if there's another way to extract information other than by harming them, putting them in a cage and eventually bumping them off and then.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think if I was given that choice, I would find some other way to get them out of the house rather than electrocute them.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  And there are, we have actually wildlife biologists who can help you get rodents out of the house, even insects.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more of my interview with Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of Peanut.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, joined by Lynn Copelitz, comedian, and Dr. Peter Borschel. Hello. Welcome back to StarTalk. Peter is an annual behaviorist and commenting throughout this program on all issues related to human animal interaction, human, non-human animal interaction. So I interviewed Temple Grandin, one of the world's foremost animal behaviorists and a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Why? As is true with all geniuses, they think differently from everybody else. When she figured out that her autistic mind actually thinks in pictures, she went on to completely transform the livestock industry.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an entire HBO biopic about her starring Claire Danes. When she dropped by my office, I couldn't resist snaring an interview with her. What follows is a clip from that conversation. We talked about what she calls her visual mind and how her different way of thinking helped her to understand animals in a way nobody had before.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  People ask me all the time, "How can you care about animals and be involved in slaughtering them?" One of the things I got to thinking was those cattle would have never have existed at all.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think about this all the time.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  The animals would have never have lived at all. We've got to give those animals a decent life. There are problems. You know, there's problems with pushing the metabolism of dairy cow too hard, there's problems with the beta agonist growth promoters and things pushing metabolism too hard.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what happens if you do?

• 25:06Speaker 05

  Well, you get lameness, you can get stiffness. Chickens, if they grow too fast, and that's just done with genetics, you can get leg lameness. And, and one of the things that I've worked on, on animal welfare guidelines, is outcome standards. I don't care what you feed them or how you breed them, but that animal better not be lame and in pain. It better not have a good body condition. It better be an environment where it's not going to get lung damage from ammonia. Back in 1999, I worked with McDonald's Corporation and Wendy's to implement animal welfare audits at slaughter plants. And boy, I can tell you, before 1999, the plants were bad. Broken equipment, they'd have problems with, you know, we couldn't get cattle shot on the first shot because a gun was busted.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  And things are not perfect today, but they're much better than what they were in the past.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's still room to go, but the trend lines are, are.

• 25:58Speaker 05

  But compared to the early 90s and the 80s, things have drastically improved. I mean, I used to go into plants on the night shift back in the early 90s and the 80s and you'd have four broken captive bolt guns and they were shooting every animal five times. It was absolutely atrocious.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are the bolt guns that they shoot into the temple, I guess?

• 26:17Speaker 05

  Well, they shoot it right into the forehead of the cattle. It's got a steel bolt about six inches long, bam, right into the forehead of the cattle. And when it works right, it will make them brain dead instantly.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Instantly, right.

• 26:27Speaker 05

  Instant brain dead.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if it doesn't work, it's like, that's bad.

• 26:30Speaker 05

  It was totally bad.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 26:32Speaker 05

  It's totally bad. And, and these guns require a lot of maintenance. Now, most of the plants have a dedicated maintenance program. They put the gun on a test stand to measure that it hits hard enough. You know, before the McDonald's audit started in 1999, none of that existed.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peter, what do you know about Dr. Grandin?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  She's a very interesting lady.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  And a little difficult to speak to because she doesn't have some of the social skills that

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As an old-

• 26:59Speaker 01

  autistic people does.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  But she has the skill of reading animals, and particularly horses and cattle, which she was familiar with growing up with. Well, she reads non-human animals better.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Better than she reads humans?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Well, she was aware of how animals respond to each other in groups, and was looking at simple things like, how do they respond when they're herded together in a crowded condition into a slaughterhouse?

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this completely changed the anxiety of the animals as they went for slaughter?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It did.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they still ended up getting slaughtered?

• 27:29Speaker 01

  They did.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it revolutionized the cattle industry. But they were more eager to go.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn, you wear a lot of makeup, right?

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, really, thanks, Neil. That's how you segue into me wanting to know about animal makeup testing?

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just asking, I don't know.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Lynn, you're a painted whore. What do you think about it? I think it's wrong to poke bunnies in the eye with mascara and stuff like that. I really do think that's wrong. Although I will enjoy a good rabbit stew, I do not want to hurt one.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you'll eat the rabbit, but-

• 27:57Speaker 03

  I have that American Indian thing. I think you should honor the animal and be grateful for it, and you can eat it. But I don't really believe in eating things that are being treated really poorly and all that. But it doesn't matter, I mean, whatever. My real question is-

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So putting lipstick and mascara on it?

• 28:12Speaker 03

  I don't think we have to test things on animals, and I'll tell you why. I don't understand why we don't test stuff on prisoners. I mean, why has no one talked about that? You can get good behavior, and we'll just poke you in the eye with a mascara wand-

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a whole other show, I think.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  -and fry foundation on you. We can load you up with all sorts of hormones and stuff, why not?

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And bargain for years off your sentence?

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Especially like sex act criminals? Let's do it!

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Well, the problem is our lawyers would ask for informed consent, and you'd have to get written permission.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  From the criminal.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  That's right, and they can get time off.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  What I'm saying is you can lessen your thing if we can test on you.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It might be worth it. The chimp doesn't have lawyers and they don't sign informed consent forms. Yet chimps were some of the first mammals put into space. And mammals, animals in general, mammals in particular, have been sort of fundamental to the early experiments that went on at the birth of the space program.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Let's stick criminals in space.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out. Uh, let's go back to my interview with Ingrid Newkirk, who was visiting New York and my office at the Hayden Planetarium. And we chatted briefly about animals in space.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lika, perhaps one of the most famous animals there ever was, was a dog, the first animal to orbit the Earth, put into space by the Soviet Union. They knew on launch that that dog was not coming back. They had no way for it to re-enter. That dog was a homeless mutt wandering the alleys of Moscow and is now remembered forever. Is there some point where you would judge, hey, okay, you turned a mutt into something famous, even though it was killed in the name of exploration? Do you draw a line anywhere, or is it all the same to you?

• 29:50Speaker 02

  I draw lots of lines, but I would say, you know, NASA last year was trying to send squirrel monkeys up into space in radiation experiments. And we had the support of former astronauts and all sorts of people to say, you don't need to do this. You can study radiation on those of us who've already gone. In Lika's time, nobody had gone before. But I think there was a deep ethical question. As, would you send some poor person who you didn't particularly care about, say, space exploration had started at an earlier time, when we really didn't care about certain other cultures, nations?

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some people versus others, yes.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yes, would it have been?

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Send your slave up.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Send your slave up. And Lika was?

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Send the court taster up.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, send your architect before you put his eyes out. Yeah, all that. And so I think there is a deep ethical question. No, it wasn't ethical to send Leica up and let him die out there. He must have been extraordinarily frightened.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't think in Dog Heaven, Leica is a celebrated character?

• 30:47Speaker 02

  If there's Dog Heaven, he certainly is. As is that chimpanzee who went up and came down. The one who came down, the famous photograph of him, where they always said he was smiling upon re-entry, and actually, it was a fear grimace.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right? Oh, interesting. Yeah, so there are a couple of chimps. One is Ham, but he didn't go into orbit. And then there was Eno. Eno actually was the first chimp in orbit.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  And Ham spent, I think, twenty or more years in the National Zoo in a barren cage with nobody else, no others of his kind, with a tire. That's how little we knew about chimpanzees then.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we learned.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Not from that. But from Jane Goodall and other people who went out and looked at them in nature. Yes.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the more research we do on animals, the more we learn how that they have feelings, they have thoughts, they have emotions, they care about things, they don't care about other things.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  They communicate with each other?

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They communicate with each other, yeah. So, so one interesting point here is that for some of the animals, in fact, for, for one of those that went into space, they, they gave it a drug during the launch so that it would not react in a bad way. But, you know, anyone would react weirdly if you're strapped on top of a controlled explosion. But it brings me to the topic of sort of the role of drugs in, in not only experimenting on animals, because the animals are testing drugs for humans, and what kind of alternatives there might be for that. And, and Peter, you're involved in animal behavior. And I've read recently, especially in places like California, where people are giving drugs to the dogs to affect their, their conduct at home.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Aldo's on Puppy Prozac.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that, your, your dog Aldo?

• 32:24Speaker 03

  Aldo's on Puppy Prozac.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example, yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Well, see, Puppy Prozac is Human Prozac in a beef-flavored pill.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  I know, I take it as well, only not the beef flavored.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  And dogs will show some of the same behaviors that we do in terms of anxiety, depression, fear, aggressive behavior.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there was a day when no one even had those thoughts. You sure we're not just personalizing what we think the dog is? Do you think these are real emotions?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. I mean, you look at it behaviorally and you see what the dog does, or you look at some physiological measures, and it's all consistent with what humans show in separation anxiety, for instance.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're not just projecting, you're saying?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Oh, no, we're not projecting at all. There's some real data on this.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, when Aldo bites when you leave, that's not me projecting that on him. He's doing that because he's anxious. Like, he doesn't want you to go.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are dogs who will do that. They'll get in the way, try to block you, and sometimes nip at your feet, or growl and even get worse.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are two angles here. One is using drugs to alter the behavior of a dog. The other is testing drugs on animals in the service of treating humans who have problems. And of course, there's been some progress there by swapping out the studies on stem cells can grow into, you can make stem cells grow into any kind of other tissue. And if you're testing products on tissue, you can create the tissue without it being part of a living animal in order to do so.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, I'm sorry.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, go, yeah.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  But Peter, what I'm curious about, because my dog has had a lot of problems lately, and I've had to ask the doctor a lot of things, and she's told me how some, because an animal, especially a dog's physiology is different than a human's, that there are some pills that will have like a negative reaction. Like, if I gave a human pill to the dog, he would not react the same way at all.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Well, that's true.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  And vice versa.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is true. And there's some drugs that may work with some animals and cause paradoxical effects on others. But that's the same thing with people. So even something like Valium or Librium will cause hyperexcitability in some people, as in some dogs and in some cats.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, one thing I always wondered is, there's talk about saving animals, but what about the plants? They're alive, too.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  I know. Are you kidding? I love my plants.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the president and founder of PETA, let's find out what Ingrid Newkirk has to say about animals versus plants.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something that's made its rounds among comedic circles was back when there's this "save the dolphins" movement, when they were no longer fishing for tuna with line and rod, they were just using nets, and then dolphins would end up in the nets. So there's a big concern to "don't eat tuna because you're killing dolphins." How about the tuna?

• 34:58Speaker 02

  That's right!

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't the tuna want to live too? And all you worry about is the dolphin? That doesn't sound fair to the tuna. So, did you take a position on that one?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yes, tuna save tuna.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tuna saved.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  But I saw, I was in New York and I saw someone wearing a shirt that said "don't club seals, club sandwiches." And I thought, "Hang on, that's three kinds of animals between two slices of bread. No, don't do any of that."

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got bacon and turkey. Was there a third in there?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Isn't there something else in there?

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's a slaughtered tomato.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Alright. So, fine, we'll have an LT.

• 35:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People tend to want to protect nicer-looking animals than others. Does it have a furry tail? Does it have big eyes? You don't discriminate one kind of animal from another, I presume. It doesn't have to be cute for you to like it more.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  We don't use cuteness. I mean, I'd be in deep trouble if human beings were judged on cuteness. So, Thomas Jefferson also talked about how you shouldn't judge human beings on intelligence. That what kind of world would it be if only the attractive or the super smart were afforded any respect? So, it's whether or not they're sentient, whether they can feel pain, and if we can avoid visiting pain upon them.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a slippery slope? Because suppose the day arrives that we can show incontrovertibly that animals below some certain complexity have no feelings at all. They don't feel pain, they don't even know the symptoms of stress, they just exist. And that might be so today with paramecium, or, I don't know, I'm just imagining that there's some neuro-threshold below which we can demonstrate they don't feel a thing. If that's the case, if your argument had always been if they're sentient and they can feel pain and love and hate or whatever, then it'd be okay to just slaughter anything below that list by your current sort of philosophy?

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I could care less. I mean, if they don't feel it, take them out. Don't care.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heard it here first on StarTalk. Take them out, obviously.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  No, that would not be everybody's view, but I only care about stopping suffering. Child, elderly person, animal, the work.

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how about the people, I think they're fringe, but for the point of this conversation, how about the people who say that plants feel?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's interesting because obviously it's a straw, yes, it's a straw dog, but I-

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Straw dog, you've got a plant and an animal saying what it is.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  They're mixing it, aren't we?

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mixing a total mix.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Gosh, oh, no, if someone actually thought that plants feel pain, and perhaps one day it will be shown that they do, they certainly are sensitive to light and what have you.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they have sensors, that's a good point. They react to light, yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and who knows what that really means, but if you really care, then you wouldn't eat animals, because animals have to eat 10 to 100 times the number of plants before you convert. And I think that you may have questions, do plants feel pain, but you know that animals feel pain, so the jury is not out on that one.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more of my interview with Ingrid Newkirk, founder and president of PETA.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, joined by Lynn Koplitz, comedian, and Dr. Peter Borschel. And you consult with people to fix their animal problems. Yes. We'll get back to you in a moment on that, but first, I'll remind people, we're in the middle of an interview that I conducted with the president and founder of PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk, and I wanted to find out from her what she thought about people who might imagine if other animals were in charge, would they be so kind to us, as she wants to be, to other animals? I just wondered about that, and let's find out what she had to say. What do you say about predators in the wild that play with their prey before they bite their heads off and maul them?

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't look very ethical to me, and that's sort of going on in nature. And so, at what point do you say, "Oh, it's okay for them to do it, but we shouldn't"?

• 39:06Speaker 02

  I say, "We can do better." I mean, we pride ourselves on being ethical creatures and intelligent creatures, and of caring. I mean, why do we even bother to say kindness is a virtue if we don't look for some way not to enjoy torture?

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, are you saying not to put words in your mouth? You're saying these other animals, particularly those in the feline branch of animals, you know, house cats and tigers, that they don't have a choice, because it's kind of genetically within them, and they don't hold themselves up as being ethical, anything. They're just surviving.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yes, and I think we have a world of choices, not only in the supermarket and what we wear, what we buy, how we amuse ourselves. In almost every pursuit, we can make a kind choice or a cruel choice.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If other animals were in charge, do you think they'd have some organization for the protection of humans? Would they just slaughter us because it's their survival, as they say, "Dog eat dog"?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  They'd certainly be entitled to, given how we've behaved, but I think some animals, like some human beings, are more magnanimous and empathetic.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Empathetic, okay.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  And I think that it depends which animals were in charge.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you see the movie Planet of the Apes?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  I did.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's several sequels to that. What an exploration of who's in charge and who isn't, and who gets enslaved, and what's obvious in one culture versus another. I mean, it's 40 years old, but I think it held up.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  I do think that it's an interesting question as to who's on top. In some ways, gorillas do probably have been in charge, because they are gentle, they have conflict resolution far superior to our own, and when you look at the wars that are raging on this planet, then I don't think human beings have done the best job.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, any encounter between a gorilla and a human, the human loses. The human has to have, like, guns and missiles to win that one.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Although they beat their chests and then they back off, unless you have done something horrible, like steal their child for a zoo.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they come at you.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Peter, as I understand this, we didn't really think of primate research as anything other than the cold sort of laboratory analysis that it was until Jane Goodall came and started and named the animals in the wild and ascribed emotions to them. Would you say that was the start of human empathy for the plight of other animals?

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I think it was a big start, yeah. She made a big leap even in naming the animals. That was verboten before. You didn't, you gave it...

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it verboten or just no one thought to do that?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Well, no, they actually named them, but they gave them a number.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a social security number. I have a driver's license number. I have...

• 41:24Speaker 03

  And she connected to them.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  She did. She connected to them. She saw them as individuals.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference. They weren't laboratory subjects to her.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  And she gave them behavior. She said, "This one does this in the morning and that one does that in the afternoon."

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Which raises an interesting question about how you do research. So there's a model in which you have a large number of animals to answer a question, disregarding individual differences. And then the other side where you say, "Let's look at them as individuals" because that's a research question right there. What makes one animal different from another?

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And any pet owner knows this. You have multiple dogs, multiple cats.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're all different. They're all different in large ways.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In their behavior. So who are we to then think that other animals that are not pets wouldn't also have similar kinds of differences?

• 42:05Speaker 03

  But you know, what you were saying when you were talking, and Peter, back me up, on the thing with Ingrid about cats being predators and so forth, and would they be as kind as... They wouldn't because they're predators. You know, I think certain animals in the wildlife are predators. They're like serial killers of the human world. I mean, seriously. I mean, polar bears are serial killers. They will eat their baby if they're hungry, right away.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think, of course, I think the point all along is that they know no other way to behave, and we do. I think that's the distinction here.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  But I think if you tried to show a polar bear another way to behave, you can't domesticate them. They're not like that.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that Gary Larson comic where the lions are around a zebra, and one of them lifts up and says, "I think I'll have a salad."

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Hilarious. But what I wanted to ask you, Peter, this because I'll never get the chance to ask animal behavior.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How often are we ever around an animal behaviorist?

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Never. Is that I was at the Bronx Zoo when I first came to New York. There was a family of gorillas there. I believe they're still there. There was a brother, a sister, a mother, and a father. I'm telling the story fast. And the brother was kind of a jerk. He was like a teenager gorilla. The father barely moved. He kept hitting the sister in the head and pushing her into the moat. She was just trying to pick her feet. She wasn't bothering anybody. And the mother kept helping her out of the moat. And then he would beat his chest and run back up on the thing and hit her again. And finally, I had enough. And I beat my chest. He looked at me. I looked at him. I beat my chest and all hell broke loose. He threw himself against the glass, both hands, with his teeth out. I had nannies and Hasidic women beating the crap out of me and screaming, "Are you crazy?"

• 43:37Speaker 03

  They had to close the thing down. The person had to come in. The father gorilla got up.

• 43:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lynn Koplets, the gorilla whisperer.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  No, I'm telling you, primates, they don't like, they have a thing. One whacked off at me and one tried to kill me.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We're on the net.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  What does that mean?

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In multiple places. On Facebook, like at StarTalk Radio. Also, we tweet at whatotherthanstarTalkradio. For my last clip of the show, I'm going to go to science comedian Brian Mallow once again, as he reflects deeply, I think, on what it is to be free.

• 44:12Speaker 06

  Modern humans go to such great lengths to shut nature out of our homes, even though we're a part of nature. But then we choose a few select elements to bring inside with us. When we bring plants in, it's always in just enough dirt to barely survive. Not really thrive. I'll pluck you from the earth, then give you about a cubic foot of soil. Instead of the sun, you get a 40-watt light bulb. I think you'll be okay. We bring in a few animals. Dogs and cats, of course, are the most popular pets. They got in early and secured a place in our homes. But I'm fascinated by bird owners. Most people who own a bird, first thing they do is clip its wings and stick it in a cage.

• 44:55Speaker 06

  You take the thing that is most special and beautiful about it, and that's the first thing that's gotta go. You know, if you wanted a flightless bird, why didn't you just get an emu? They already have those. Or how about a chicken? Did you even consider that? You're messing up a perfectly good bird. Maybe you didn't even want a bird. Maybe just get a hamster. They come with that wheel. You can use it to power the light that shines on the plant. You'll have your own self-contained, off-the-grid Rube Goldberg ecosystem. And no birds are harmed in the process. For StarTalk Radio, I'm Brian Mallett.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta bring this show to a close, but I want to thank my guests. And as always, I want to bid you to keep looking up.