Into the Wild, with Jane Goodall

Venture into the wild with Neil deGrasse Tyson and legendary primatologist Jane Goodall. Featuring comic co-host Chuck Nice, biological anthropologist Dr. Jill Pruetz, primatologist Natalia Reagan, and Sarah Baeckler, former President and CEO of Project Chimps. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/into-the-wild-with-jane-goodall/ Photo Credit: Brandon Royal.

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.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the hall of the universe. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and tonight we're featuring my interview with the legendary chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall. Who with binoculars and a notebook completely redefined our understanding of both primates and ourselves. So, let's do this.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice joining me, my comedic co-host. Hey, hey Neil. Chuck, always good having you Chuck. Always good being here, man. Chuck, you're my man. Yeah, you're my man too. Because we pay him so he says that back. See, that's how that works. No, I say that because you my man.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also joining us is biological anthropologist Jill Pruitt. Jill, welcome.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Thank you. Glad to be here.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're professor of anthropology?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Texas State University?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What town is that in?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  San Marcos.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  San Marcos, of course. And you're a National Geographic Explorer?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I am.

• 1:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a whole category of person that they have. And you studied chimpanzees in Senegal?

• 1:28Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Senegal. Very cool. And so we'll be relying heavily on your expertise because as you know, we're featuring my interview with living legend Jane Goodall. Was she an inspiration?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, of course.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, she, her fieldwork is, as I understand it, the foundation of all modern primate science. Is that overstating it or is what?

• 1:46Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think she's a rock star.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rock star, okay. Justifiable rock star. Well, in my interview, I asked her how did her path into science begin at all? Because we all have a story. She's got a story. All right, let's check it out.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  It began in a hen house when I was four and a half years old. We went to stay on a farm in the country and I always loved animals. And we lived in London at the time, so mom and I went to this farm. Papa farm where animals are out in the fields and hens are clucking around in the farmyard. And I was given a job to collect the eggs. So, I don't remember this, but apparently I was asking everybody, but you know, here's the egg. Where's the hole on the hen? Where does the egg come out? And nobody could tell me or wouldn't tell me. So what I do remember distinctly is this hen, a brown one, and she's going into this little hen house. And there were nest boxes around the edge.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  So I must have thought, ah, she's going to lay an egg and I crawled after her. And apparently I was gone four whole hours. And the family had no idea where I was. They even called the police. And yet, when mom saw me running towards the house with shining eyes, instead of getting mad at me, how dare you go off without telling us? Don't you dare do it again. She sat down to hear the wonderful story of how a hen lays an egg. So isn't that the making of a little scientist? Curiosity, asking questions, not getting the right answer. Deciding to find out for yourself, making a mistake and not giving up and learning patience. It was all there when I was four and a half.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  And a different kind of mother might have crushed that scientific curiosity. Maybe I wouldn't have done what I've done.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I always tell people, what do parents do? They spend the first year of your life teaching you to walk and talk? And the rest of your life telling you to shut up and sit down? And if they don't, then you become a scientist. So Jill, what, could you highlight for us Jane's legacy? If you may.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that there's so many things she discovered.

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what the first, I guess.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  You know, tool use, chimpanzees or other animals that use tools. Whereas before we, we thought we were the only.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we presumed and maybe we needed that for our own ego to assert.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Right, and so now we know there are a number of things that, you know, Jane discovered that. War, what some people call war in chimpanzees. A number of behaviors that we thought were unique to our own species.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if we use these things that are unique to our own species as a definition of being human? And then we find another animal out there, do we now call those other animals human?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  We usually just raise the bar a little bit.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just keep inching into a new place, just so we can feel good about ourselves.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. We just have to redefine ourselves.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently, she's been knighted. I didn't know you can knight women. Is it called knight? Is that a knighting?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Dame Jane Goodall.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, that's the corresponding to sir, I guess, but for women. No, it's not dame. It's more like, "Damn, Jane Goodall, damn."

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I assume you agree that this, everything she described there in her profile is what makes her a good scientist?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accepting what goes wrong, curious, to the point of risking your health and the concerns of all others who care about you?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, back in the 1960s, Jane Goodall with no formal training in science at the time. I mean, holding aside her four-year-old exploits.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fact is, in the real world, people look, well, what's your resume? Where'd you get your degrees in science? She had no formal training in science, and she went alone into the Tanzanian jungle to study chimpanzees, which, by the way, had never been done before. So I asked her how and why she found herself on that path, without having any science background at all, certainly not anthropology. Let's check it out. So in the 1960s, there's, of course, we're in the Cold War, we're going to the moon, and you're thinking about chimps.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  I'm desperately trying to get into their world and find out about them.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If no one had really done that before, then you're not following in anyone's footsteps.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  No, and my mentor, Dr. Lewis Leakey, you know, paleontologist, spent his life searching for the remains of the earliest humans in Africa.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So not even he is looking for chimps, or he's looking for something on route to humans?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  His argument was, okay, about 60 million years ago, there's an ape-like, human-like creature. And if you uncover a fossil of an early human, you can tell an awful lot from the muzzle attachment, from the wear on the teeth, from the tools associated with the living floor. You can learn a lot about, but behavior, social behavior, that doesn't fossilize. So his theory was, if Jane sees behavior that's similar or the same... Between chimpanzees today and humans today, perhaps that same behavior was brought by humans and by chimps

• 7:04Speaker 02

  along our long evolutionary journey and originated in that ape-like, human-like creature. That's why he sent me out to Gombe. But he didn't know anything about the fieldwork. He just sent me off on my own to go and find out about the chimps.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A great line there. Behavior doesn't fossilize. And I just never thought about it on such simple and very clear terms. So if you look at sort of taxonomy of muscles and bones and this sort of thing, that's one thing. But so much of what defines a species is its behavior, right? So could you tell me more about that, at least in your studies, and how you think about behavior genetically?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, one of the things that Jane discovered, tool use, is something that is a great example because most of the tools that chimps use wouldn't fossilize. So there are some chimps that use stone tools, but most of the tools they use are made of wood. So those would deteriorate. And so at my site, for example, the chimps actually hunt with tools. And that's something that, again, we had used to...

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are these guns?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chimp with an AK-47, that's a cartoon right there.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  But so those are examples of behavior that you couldn't anticipate or couldn't interpret from the fossil record. Social behavior as well. There are... Most of chimpanzee behavior would be hard to discern from the fossil record, I think.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me just try to get my vocabulary straight. All right, so give me the list of, I guess, the great apes.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  The great apes.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we are in this list.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  We are great ape.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I thought you were great. Well, thanks. I'm just saying, it's very nice of you.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So humans?

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Humans.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chimps?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Chimpanzees and bonobos.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And bonobos.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Orangutans and gorillas.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So not...

• 8:59Speaker 01

  All great apes.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's it?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not baboons?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  No, baboons or monkeys.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all right, just so I get this clear. So humans and chimps are closer to one another than either are to old-world monkeys?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Than either are to gorillas, actually.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we go back to a common ancestor between we two. And before that, there's a common ancestor to these other apes in the categories.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we don't have a fossil of a common ancestor, how do we talk about the common ancestor? We just presume there must have been one?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Well, we do. And it changes, our thoughts on the common ancestor change. So morphologically, we think that-

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morphological shape and form.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Right, the body structure. We think it looked more like a chimp than like a living human. Probably more like a bonobo, which is more grassile, slimmer than a chimpanzee.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that word?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Grassile, slimmer-

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, I haven't heard that. Slim?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Slim, thinner.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grassile.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Leaner, long body.

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  From eating grass?

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grassile.

• 10:04Chuck Nice?

  That's why it's thin.

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  Because anybody who eats grass is gonna be thin.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's for sure.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  I mean, unless you're a cow, I take it back.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, cows are just machines we invented to turn grass into steak.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Am I wrong? What? I'm just saying.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  I've never heard that.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's what it is.

• 10:26Chuck Nice?

  But that is awesome, I'm sorry.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's our own creation. You know wild steak cows wandering the hillside?

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Herds of milk cows terrorizing the-

• 10:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, that's so cool. I just see now people do, "Hey man, why don't you have some grass? You look delicious."

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so for Jane Goodall to study chimps in the way she did, right? She had to figure out how to get close enough to them to make these observations. Something other people hadn't thought to do, figured out was necessary. And so, something that had never been done before. So I asked her how she did it. So let's check it out.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I were a chimp and I saw you coming?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  You'd run away.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Run away.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was your tactic?

• 11:15Speaker 02

  I found a peak and with my binoculars, I sat there. And I could actually begin learning quite a bit about the chimps from the foods they ate, the different calls they were making. I could see how they bent over branches to make sleeping platforms or nests at night. And gradually, the chimpanzees got used to me because I wasn't frightening them. I wore the same colored clothes every day. I didn't try to get too close too quickly. And eventually, they realized I wasn't as scary as they first had thought. And then came the scary bit for me. Because having realized that I wasn't scary, they treated me a little bit as though I was a carnivore.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  And they tried to chase me away as if I was a leopard, screaming at me and waving branches and charging past. You know, they're about 10 times stronger than me. So I just pretended I wasn't interested in them. I dug little holes in the ground. I pretended to eat leaves. And I suppose in the end, they thought, well, she's not hurting us. She's not harming us. She doesn't go away, so we better just accept her.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay, two things, Neil.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  First, number one, moving closer and closer over several months, that's how I met my wife.

• 12:41Chuck Nice?

  Because you know, you don't want to look like you're stalking.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay. You just slowly, slowly got closer, right?

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  And number two, for you, Jill, isn't it possible that, you know, she's sitting, digging holes and eating leaves, the other chimps are like, hey, guys, clearly that is the ugliest chimp we have ever seen. We should show some compassion.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how hard is it to gain trust?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  I think it depends. So I study chimps in a savanna. And they were, it actually took us four years to get them used to us. Because in a savanna, they can't climb the trees to get away. They just... They go away, they run.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, it took longer. I think that's one of the lengthiest habituation periods, we say, just wearing them down, in a nice way.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Habituation.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Habituation.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a word.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You invented that word.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  (laughing).

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I didn't. I think Jane might have.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, in my field, our words are simple. We saw spots on the sun, we called them sunspots.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Sunspots.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, see, that's how we roll. (laughing). Just saying. You would invent habituation, okay? So, I also learned, and I was delighted to learn, but I didn't know that it would be controversial, that she named her research subjects rather than numbering them. And anthropologically, this poses a problem.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why? They worry that they might become attached, invest feelings that interfere with their note-taking. What's the real issue here?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  So, I have just a few rules about naming chimps, and we shouldn't name them after people that we know, or at least we all know. And so, I had one person that started to name a chimp Saddam, and I said, "No, we can't really name a chimp Saddam. That's not a nice thing to do."

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  Why? Was that chimp trying to take over all the oil from the other chimps?

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing). But whatever it was she did that she wasn't supposed to do, her observations basically shattered everything that we had previously listed that distinguished us from them. And I think that's a good thing.

• 14:39Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, we will find out how not-special we humans really are when StarTalk returns. (applause).

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're featuring my interview with chimpanzee researcher and living legend Jane Goodall. I asked her about a discovery she made that redefined what it means to be human. Check it out. I remember in my biology class how much of the book was devoted to distinguishing "we" from "they," humans from all other life in the world. There's less of that in modern books, but certainly when I was growing up. And they would say, "Humans, we use tools, and no other animal does." I said, "Okay, yeah, all right. I'm human. I got that." And... You blew that wide open.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  It was very exciting. And it was the first chimpanzee who began to lose his fear of me, who I saw one day break off grass stems, push them into termite mounds, pull them out and bite off the termites. And then breaking off a leafy twig. So to use that as a tool, he had to strip the leaves. That's the beginning of tool making. And it was that observation, because we were, as you say, the only creature to make and use tools. We were man the toolmaker. And it was that observation that enabled Leakey to go to National Geographic Society. And they agreed, A, to fund the research when my six months' money ran out,

• 16:23Speaker 02

  and B, they sent a photographer and filmmaker to document what, by that time, I was learning.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jill, what was the impact of that discovery? That chimpanzees used tools?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Gosh, I think it was just a turning point in how we considered not only chimpanzees but humans. So, I mean, it's...

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it wasn't just a discovery in situ about the animal. It came back to us.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Right. And we continued to do things to see discoveries kind of make us redefine ourselves. But that was really a huge one. I don't think we've seen another one like that.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this quote from Leakey? I had it in my notes. What was it? "We must either redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans."

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or redefine ourselves as tools.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's a permutation he didn't consider. Yeah, yeah. So, but that was unprecedented, right?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  I think it really was at the time, in the 60s.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I mean, I had to ask her about the implications. Well, you came later, obviously. But at the time, just how mind-blowing this must have been. So I asked her about what impact that had. Check it out. Can you help me assess the philosophical impact of realizing we're not the only toolmakers in town? Did that force us to redefine ourselves to keep some distance between us and chimps? Or did it help us embrace chimps and perhaps other animals in the kingdom?

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Well, at first when I reported this, Leakey, of course, believed it. But other scientists were saying, "Well, this is just a young girl. She hasn't been to college. Why do we have to believe?" Then a photograph. And so then people said, "Oh, she must have taught the chimps to use tools." And I'm thinking, "That would have been really brilliant." As they were still mostly running away from me. How on earth would I have even thought of teaching them?

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking, "If you had taught them how to use tools, that's a way more amazing discovery than discovering that they do use tools."

• 18:27Speaker 02

  It would have been incredible.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would have been.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  So anyway, gradually, people were learning more about the information from the field that in communication, they kiss, embrace, hold hands, pat one another, swagger, shake the fist, learning they have a dark side, like us. They can be violent, brutal, aggressive, and kill. But that they also can show compassion and altruism. And so all of this blew away, this crazy idea that there is this line between us and the rest of the animal kingdom.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Jill, I got a question. Would they have been as skeptical of her discovery if she were academically pedigreed like the rest of them? Because it's still an amazing discovery, no matter who's making it, it seems to me.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Right. I think they probably wouldn't have been as critical. But I think it was such a huge blow to our human ego that you would have seen a lot of skepticism.

• 19:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now skepticism is a natural part of science. And so the greatest scientists and discoveries have met skepticism when they came out, like Galileo and Darwin especially, and Einstein. But when other people can double-check and see themselves, and then it just, the skepticism evaporates quickly if the original observation has integrity.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how long did it take?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Well, and around the time that Jane started her studies, the Japanese started studies in Tanzania as well. And so that is the second longest-running research site associated with chimpanzee behavior. And they also began to see tool use other places in Uganda.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she's vindicated?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Right. Oh, definitely now, many, many times over.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she mentioned that chimps have a dark side.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a little scary. Yeah, because guess what? I mean, a chimp on the dark side, that's not, "Luke, I'm your father." That's, "Luke, I'm your very distant cousin."

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've observed chimps behaving badly firsthand, is that correct?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  We have. Well, we had indirect evidence. We heard it happen at night, but we had a former alpha male at my site killed by the other males in his group a few years ago.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, like a gang? Gang murder?

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yes, there were 10 adult males that ganged up on this former alpha.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this, of course, leads us to say, if this is our closest neighbor, genetic neighbor, and it's got violence, does that mean violence is natural in humans and we shouldn't view it as a socially regressive behavior, but as a natural behavior that we then try to try to stop?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  I think aggression is a natural behavior. The lethal aggression that you see is is pretty rare in chimps, and it's more common in some subspecies.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But by the way, all fantasy is also rare in humans. I mean, how many people just go out every day and just kill people? It's an extremely small fraction of the population.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Right, right. One of the reasons I think that that male was killed was he was an especially brutal alpha, and so he was ostracized for five years.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  And when he tried to come back in is when they caught up with him.

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He became beta.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Let me tell you something. There's no justice like chimp justice.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so again, if chimps are relatives, but so are bonobos.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bonobo. How do you pronounce that?

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Bonobo.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bonobo. So I'm told that they they don't, they resolve differences with sex.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yes, they do.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're just as related to us as chimps are.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's like we can pick and choose what we want to say is natural for us. So this whole exercise is flawed. If our two nearest neighbors solve problems in complete opposite ways.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then what does it even mean to say we are related, therefore this behavior in us is natural?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what about altruism?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Altruism, I think you see some amazing examples of altruism in chimps, but that's another area where we have this really high bar, where we use ourselves as an example of, you know, true altruists, if that's something that exists, so completely selfless behavior. But you see definitely examples of altruism.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's an example?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  In chimpanzees. We had an infant kidnapped, an infant taken by poachers, and we're able to confiscate.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Human poachers?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Human poachers. So we're able to confiscate her and give her back to the group within five days, but her mother had been injured in that attack by poachers, so she couldn't carry the baby. So an adolescent male carried the baby for the mother a couple of days. And so if you look at the different steps that were taken, or stages, he qualified as being, you know, exhibiting altruism and empathy. So something that's costly to yourself and it's not necessarily...

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Genetically costly.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Right. Uh huh, right.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, we look at the humans and say, well, we have altruism, so it's normal, I guess.

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  So basically, the theme here is we're just not that special.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I don't think so, but...

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  You think you are hot stuff, but you really are not.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, coming up, more of my interview with legendary chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall. Check it out. Why can't chimps learn from us? Just by watching us?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  They can. They can learn sign language. They can learn 400 signs or more of American Sign Language. They can do amazing things on a computer. Chimps in different parts of Africa show different tool-using behaviors, and the young ones watch and learn. So if we accept a definition of human culture as behavior passed from one generation to the next through observation, chimps have culture. I think that, you know, the thing that makes us more different... Some point in our evolution, we developed this ability to communicate with with words, spoken, written.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  And once you have speech, our kind of speech, you can teach children about things that aren't present. Chimps learn by watching. Once you have speech, you can discuss the past, hand it on, you can plan the future, you can bring people together from different backgrounds to try and solve a problem. So I think this is what's led to this development of the of the intellect.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, OK, so tools no longer left us distinct. So now we got language. Yeah, we can, we got language.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is that the defining difference now?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I think spoken language, but as Jane mentioned, I mean, we can teach apes to use sign language, they can use symbolic, um, lexigram languages.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  OK, so that rules out language then?

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Spoken language.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spoken, OK, so.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  Spoken.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is this cutting this categories.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  Very thin. Like, like a slice of bologna at a very cheap deli. Like, let's just cut it thin, like spoken language.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, all right, they don't have words, but we've all seen chimps communicate.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With, I, do we call them vocalizations? There's some sounds that are that are modulated in ways that they seem to know what they're talking about.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Right. We can understand quite a bit of what they say. I think that's one area that we really need to.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean you can understand what they say?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Well, when we hear.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You speak chimp?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  I do speak a little chimp.

• 26:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, get out of here.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 26:05Chuck Nice?

  You speak chimp?

• 26:06Speaker 01

  I do, I think. I understand it better than I speak it.

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  You know what? I just came up with an idea.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  A little game called Chimp Chat.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chimp Chat.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Chimp Chat. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna call for some audio sounds of a chimp, and then Neil and I can figure out what the chimps are saying, and you can tell us if we're right enough.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  OK.

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  All right?

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, what's the first one? Here we go, guys, first one. Woof, woof, woof.

• 26:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I think that chimp just said, "How many times do I have to tell you? The lock on the bathroom is broken, please knock."

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I got one.

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Next time, put down the toilet seat when you're done." How about that? Is that good?

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  I like that.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Alright, so what were they?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  That was close.

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, get out.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  But that was a raw bark, but sort of a medium level.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Medium level raw bark.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Medium level, which could be, you know, yelling at someone or...

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Complaining about their behavior.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  It's kind of a complaint, so, right.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  So maybe not a predator, which would be more of a...

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Alarmist, that's an alarmist.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, because this is a graded vocalization.

• 27:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  So it's not just a, you know, kind of an inquisitive rah or who, but it's, you know, if someone is doing something you'd rather not do.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  So it's kind of like, you know, "I'm terribly sorry, but this coffee is just not hot."

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like my complaint.

• 27:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, what else?

• 27:31Chuck Nice?

  Alright, what's the next one, guys?

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I got that.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I know what that one is.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I got that.

• 27:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a universal one right there.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That one's pretty clear.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let me tell you something. Here's what that was. "Hey, girl, what's up?"

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Okay, so what was it?

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Um, maybe not that, that.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a no, I think. But maybe not that.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  Maybe not that.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a no, okay?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Sort of like, "Hey buddy, we're here."

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap. That was even closer.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Like advertising yourself there. It could have been like at a fruiting tree, or it could have been when males, that was a male, comes up and joins a group, because chimps are fission-fusions, so not all of them are all together at one time. So it's an advertisement.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  Fission and fusion.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, she took both our words.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thermonuclear fission?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  That's what our words.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thermonuclear fusion.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  That's right. That's right.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  Chimps and the sun got a lot in common.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that brings us to the part of our show called Cosmic Queries. Normally, we take questions from the internet, fanbase of StarTalk, to on the topic at hand, but Jane Goodall sent a question my way, and I figure that'll be the Cosmic Queries for today. Ladies and gentlemen, Jane Goodall.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  It was the full moon, a very clear sky, and coming, shooting out, were little lights, like it was as though it was a firework coming out, a single firework, and then there'd be one, two, three, four, and then it would come from the other side, and then it would be quiet for a bit, and then this display started up again. It was absolutely extraordinary, and nobody seems to know what it could have been.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These were emanating from the full moon?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  From the full moon. It was completely amazing. I was awe-struck.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what we know. So Earth, the planet, plows through several hundred tons of meteors a day. Almost all of it burns up in our atmosphere, because we have an atmosphere, and this is a protective blanket for us. The moon has no such protection.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are places in our orbit where the amount of this debris is more than other places. This is what takes us from a meteor shower to a meteor storm. If we are plowing through this extra-heavy debris section of space, and they're hitting the moon, nothing stops it from going all the way to the surface. And it goes to the surface, and all of that energy has to go somewhere, because the thing stopped moving.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can get explosions off the surface of the moon. Which, in your case, I'm thinking it would have happened on the edges of the moon so that you can see the sparks coming out.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Yes, it was coming out of the edge.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I bet was also coming out towards you, but you wouldn't have noticed it.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, you wouldn't have seen it.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wouldn't have seen it because the moon is in the way. I mean, the moon is bright.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  The moon is bright, you couldn't have seen it.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that is what I would guess that you saw.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  Well, thank you, because nobody else has had any ideas at all.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or they were just aliens celebrating July 4th.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Like, well, it'd be.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up next, we visit a group of chimpanzees being relocated to their new home in Georgia after a life in a medical research lab, when StarTalk returns.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, the Rose Center for Earth and Space. We're featuring my interview with the legendary chimp researcher Jane Goodall. I asked her how we should treat our closest relatives. Check it out. Is there a sense that we should treat some animals differently from others just because they're genetically closer to us?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  No, I think that's, that's wrong.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where do you say, okay, they're in our brain club, but the rest is not? How, how do you coach people to think about that question?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Well, most of the people who, ethical philosophers, they're saying the, the line stops or the division comes when an animal can feel. And if it's a... Does it have consciousness? Can it feel pain? Can it feel fear? Can it feel distress?

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a lot of multiple sides of the issue of animal testing in the service of human health. Where do you land in that conversation?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  I land that I don't think we have the right to take animals and do things to them just for the sake of human health. But fortunately, it's being more and more proven, on the one hand, that a huge, huge, huge amount of animal experimentation actually hasn't helped us at all because they're different, even chimps. You know, they're so like us, they can be infected with many otherwise uniquely human diseases. But they don't react in the same way. And the vaccines that are developed might work on a chimp, but not a human, or vice versa. And on the other hand, there are more and more alternatives,

• 33:40Speaker 02

  other ways of finding out answers to these questions without using live animals.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jill, do you think much about animal testing?

• 33:50Speaker 01

  I do. I began my experience with chimps working in a facility that was a captive chimpanzee breeding facility. And so my job was to try to help those chimps have the best life they could. But their behavior indicates that it's very similar to what you see in humans. And in fact, with captive chimpanzees, they've treated chimps with the same antidepressants. One thing that is distinctly different in chimps is a chimpanzee's smile, which is a fear grin for them. So we have a very distinct smile, and their smile is actually a fearful grimace.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when they smile, they're afraid?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So that's something that's very...

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That reminds me of the famous photo, the space monkey, space chimp, who came back and they opened the capsule, and we thought he was smiling.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Right, that was a fear grin.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he was scared to death.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  He was scared, yeah.

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they put him on Zoloft.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you tell us, I read something about, apparently there's a new law in 2015 that basically barred research on captive chimps.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Biomedical research, invasive biomedical research.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's great. So, we can ask the question, what now becomes of these chimps that were all in captivity in these labs? We can ask that, and to find out, we sent StarTalk's science correspondent and primatologist Natalia Reagan to meet some new arrivals at the chimpanzee sanctuary in Georgia. Ooh. Ooh, let's check it out.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  Hey Neil, I'm at Project Chimps. It is a sanctuary deep in the backwoods of North Georgia where chimpanzees are getting a new lease on life. The sanctuary's 263 acres of lush, green hills. They're gonna be in primate paradise here. Today is a really exciting day. They're getting six new chimpanzees from a research facility in Louisiana. They just spent 16 hours in this transport vehicle.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  So as you can hear, they are very excited to get out. Why am I wearing this sexy face mask? Well, it's not so much to protect myself, it's to protect the chimps. Because humans and chimps are so similarly biologically, genetically, we can transmit diseases back and forth to one another. It's called zoonosis, so this is to protect them. Right now, they're taking the first chimpanzee off this transport vehicle. They're gonna take him inside, get him acclimated for a little bit, and then he's gonna go outside to the sanctuary area where he's gonna be reunited with his friends. He's coming off right now.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  He's fairly calm. Seems to almost know that he's going to be entering a very cool new life.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  We're gonna let these guys settle in and get acclimated, and we're gonna meet the woman who runs this place. And she's gonna introduce us to some chimps who've been here for a while. Here we are with Sarah Baeckler, the founder of this wonderful place. Now, who are these guys?

• 36:48Speaker 05

  These are nine females. And this is Emma, right here, who really wants some juice.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Oh, Emma. See, primates are really interesting in the fact that we love sugar. All primates do, across the board, and chimps are no exception.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  They're excited about the party coming next, I think.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Behind me, they're getting ready for a birthday party for Samira, who turns 14. And if you've ever wondered what a chimpanzee birthday party looks like, look no further, guys. You've got streamers, you've got stuffed frogs, stuffed chimps, watermelon. And I actually got her a gift. Well, because chimps were the first primate to go into space, we got her a space shuttle. Hopefully, it'll inspire them to start looking up. Back to you, Neil.

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have Natalia Reagan right here.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Hello, guys.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a primatologist, and anthropologist, and a part-time comedian?

• 37:48Speaker 04

  Ah, you do it all.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it all.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  Children's parties.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, so what's this, a birthday party for a chimp?

• 37:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Samira, she turned 14, and...

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  14, is that, like, in dog years, what is that?

• 37:59Speaker 04

  It's pretty young, because chimps can live, you know, 55, 60, sometimes 70 years.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, okay.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, in captivity, so she's young, you know? And like most 14-year-old girls' birthday parties, they don't necessarily do each other's hair, but there's grooming. They had, instead of having a birthday cake, they had watermelon. There wasn't really banana daiquiris, but, you know, they had some juice. It was a lot of fun. But there was one chimp in particular that really had it in for me. And sometimes you have a connection with a primate. We had a fecal connection, Gertrude and I. Gertrude is their resident poo-thrower. And she and I had a few deep connections, where she chucked her fecal matter in my general direction.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you throw your fecal matter back at her?

• 38:42Speaker 04

  You know, I really resisted, Neil, it was tough. But I actually did decide you can actually sponsor chimps at Project Chimps. And I decided to sponsor Gertrude.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because she, she loved you so much that her...

• 38:54Speaker 04

  We're, we're fecal family, man.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fecal family.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  We're poo sisters.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you were wearing this plastic mask that you duly described to us. Why wasn't everyone else wearing a plastic mask?

• 39:03Speaker 04

  They've already gone through all the rigmarole of making sure that they don't have anything that could be transmitted.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you never touched the chimps?

• 39:09Speaker 04

  No, and this is, okay, so chimps...

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not?

• 39:11Speaker 04

  Well, again, like we talked about, the zoonosis is a problem, but as we've talked about, and those chimps seemed rather tame, right? They seemed pretty cool. However, we know that chimpanzees can be extremely violent and they're incredibly strong when it comes to, well, human strength. They're very top-heavy. If I went in there and wanted to say, you know, pat a chimp on a shoulder, it might tap me and I might go flying across the room, whether it meant it or not.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is kind of like a fake wild setting here. Why not put them into the real wild?

• 39:37Speaker 04

  Well, it's a great question. Like we mentioned, they were born and bred in captivity, so all they know is life with humans, having food available, presented to them by humans. They don't have the skills that they would need to hack it in the wild. And once they, the groups get acclimated, they'll hopefully introduce them to one another, because they're not hoping to breed them. They're all fixed, like the females are on oral contraceptives. I believe they're oral contraceptives, and the males are snipped.

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chimps on the pill.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, they don't want to breed them there because they really feel like chimps should not be bred in captivity. Yet, it was kind of interesting to see the males be introduced because each of them reacted to the freedom of choice to leave their crate differently. Some were gregarious and ready to like, "Get out and be free", and some were really taking their time. And they finally were given a chance to make a decision, so...

• 40:27Chuck Nice?

  The ones that were excited heard that the other female chimps were on the pill.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, coming up, I asked chimp expert Jane Goodall whether she should be the first person we call when aliens land on Earth. When StarTalk returns.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of National History. We're featuring my interview with climatologist and living legend Jane Goodall. And since her first research journey into Africa in the 1960s, more than half the chimpanzees on Earth have disappeared. So I asked Jane about this tremendous loss. Check it out. In the 1960s, there was about a million chimps in the world?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Somewhere between one and two million in this great equatorial forest belt in Africa.

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And today, what is there?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Today, it's maximum 300,000.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what accounts for the drop in numbers?

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Destruction of the forest.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So their habitat?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Their habitat, but also the bushmeat trade, which is the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, different from subsistence hunting. And then finally, the live animal trade. Shoot a mother to steal the baby to sell. And we thought we'd stamp that out. But now there's a whole new inflow of chimpanzees moving from Africa, often through the Middle East to places like China. So it's a difficult place out there. But it's also difficult for so many of the African people, so many living in abject poverty. Not enough food, not enough education or health facilities.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  And it was when I flew over Gambia in 1990 and looked at what had been part of this great equatorial belt and saw a tiny oasis of forest surrounded by bare hills, more people than the land could support, too poor to buy food from elsewhere, you'll have to cut the last trees down because you've got to survive, you've got to try and grow more food. So poverty alleviation is really important. But at the same time, the unsustainable lifestyle of the rest needs to come down. We need to think differently. There's a lot of work to be done. Luckily, as I travel around, I find people doing amazing work in all these areas

• 43:01Speaker 02

  and projects which are really changing things around.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The next Jane.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Or the current Jane. Yeah, so this is the hope.

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you see the same threats that Jane talks about and writes about?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  I mean fortunately, no, not where I work in Senegal, but we see other threats like mining. That's a big threat right now to chimps in Senegal.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is mining a threat?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  There's been a gold rush and so you have thousands of people coming in from neighboring countries.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Displacing habitat.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 43:31Chuck Nice?

  I thought the chimps were leaving their habitats to go mine for gold.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a new, that's a new, that's a new species that just...

• 43:42Speaker 01

  That's pretty good.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, oh, all right. So, of course, initially with no formal training, she found a way to communicate with chimps as no one had done before. So that got me thinking. Maybe she'd be our best hope to communicate with another sentient species. I just wondered. Let's check it out. If an alien species, space alien, lands on Earth,

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  do we call you first to see if you can figure out how to communicate with them?

• 44:14Speaker 02

  I would love to.

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppose they look at us the way we look at chimps?

• 44:21Speaker 02

  They would, I'm sure.

• 44:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if they got here, that means they've got better technology than we do because we really haven't been anywhere.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Quite honestly, if an intelligent alien looks at us now, they would think, what on earth has gone on? This, what separates us most from chimps and other animals is this intellect that designs technology that enables you to learn about the stars. So how on earth is this most intellectual creature to ever walk on the planet? Why is it destroying its only home? Why are we polluting it, cutting down the rainforest, acidifying the ocean? Why on earth are we doing all this? So those aliens would look at us and shake their heads and say, they're not so intelligent after all. Intellectual maybe, but not wise. We've lost our wisdom.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  We're making decisions based on, how does it help me now? The next shareholders' meeting, next political campaign. Not as the indigenous people do, how does this decision affect future generations? There's a disconnect between this clever, clever brain and love and compassion.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's... Oof. Whoa. So Jill, in your line of study, do you think about wisdom? Since at every turn, your research, there's a mirror back at us as humans in this world. Where do you land on this?

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I think of the loss, losses we would... So, I mean, I love chimps, that's why I study them.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what's on your forearm there?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  It is, that's one of my favorite...

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a chimp tattoo?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  I do.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a good tattoo, too.

• 46:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that an actual chimp that you knew?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yes, it was Frito, one of my favorites.

• 46:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Frito?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Frito.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You named it after a fried snack from... Frito Leg. Frito Leg.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  But I think about with the extinction of chimpanzee communities, the fact that we're still finding out new information about them, even though, you know, we've been saying for 50 years that, you know, we're missing out on a lot, and...

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We need to think differently.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Right, definitely.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's just get just a final thought here. So Jill, what makes us human?

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Gosh, that's a good question. I think that it's...

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't try to stump you here, I'm just trying to...

• 46:37Speaker 01

  No, it's something I think about all the time, I'm not sure, I keep going back to language and what is, what it has enabled us to do. You know, I think we have a lot of power and the ability to do good things, but...

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was gonna go with Hot Pockets, but hey...

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Or Hot Pockets.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they need microwave ovens to have been developed in tandem. There you go. Okay. So, I actually think about this question often. I think about who chimps are to us. What is it genetically, we're 99% identical DNA with chimpanzees. So I think about this and I say, alright, what are we prone to say? We're prone to say, what a difference that 1% makes! We have philosophy and art and the Hubble telescope, and they can just put a stick in a termite mound and pull out termites. Well, just imagine this.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An alien shows up with 1% genetic difference beyond us, that we are relative to the chimp. Consider that our most complex thoughts would be trivial matters for that community of aliens. Because I asked, who defines humans as intelligent? We do. Would we be considered intelligent to this species of aliens that has the same genetic difference in intelligence that we had to chimps? I'm thinking, maybe, they've visited Earth already, took a look, and kept going because

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  they were certain there was no sign of intelligent life here at all. That is a cosmic perspective. This has been StarTalk. Jill Pruitt, thank you. Chuck Nice. Jane Goodall. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.