Really cool interview. This idea of how species pass on fears to their descendants is fascinating.
There was a study in which researchers captured some crows wearing a creepy mask, and then released them. After a while the crows learned to associate the mask with danger, so they would caw and attack the mask wearers; but the *really* cool thing that developed in the study, is that crows who grew up *after* the captures had ceased had *also* learned to identify the masks with dangers.
It was almost as if a new 'crowlore' about this masked boogeyman had evolved. Which makes me wonder about all these universal, ancestral fears about things like comets, which were considered harbingers of doom by pretty much every ancient culture in the world—a remnant lore evolved from a forgotten catastrophe?
As a naturalist, I'm not sure how open Dan would've been to the idea of 'non-sensory' detections of dangers. And yet, in the armed forces it is almost considered a given that some people are born with a '6th sense' that allows them to be 'precognitive' about covert dangers in the battlefield. One would assume many species are able to tap in into those warning systems, which may be the reason those rabbits are so chill in the presence of sexagenarian podcasters ;)
Hey Chris - you wondered whether it’s ok to called someone a ‘Mensch’ if you’re not Jewish. Well, it’s a German word as well as Yiddish, so do whatever you want. (Funny how it doesn’t feel the same if it’s just a word from German, Italian or whatever…)
This was a fun episode and left me with some thoughts/questions/observations.
Dan's explanation of race vs ancestral lineage is a great illustration of the difference between these two concepts. Africa is home to both some of the tallest populations and some of the smallest populations. Perhaps the same 'race' but definitely different ancestral histories and lineages.
Tracing back the phylogeny of fear made me think about the difference of experience that our early Australopith ancestors probably had compared to our Homo ancestors. One was the first to completely leave the trees, enter a new ecology, and face new predatory threats while the other had millions years worth of ancestors embedded in the ecology and environment.
The discussion of adult play reminded me of this podcast episode of Talking Apes:
where primatologist Kris Sabbi talks about how an unusually productive season led to a surplus of Uvariopsis peapods during the month of June 2017. Instead of fissioning where the females would normally go off into the forest by themselves (with their kids), this abundance of food resulted in the females not only being social but playing with each other. It was to the point that they actually ignored their children in order to play with other females.
As a two-way radio technician, many of our customers are these big south Texas ranches. I've heard more than one rancher remark that deer seem to know the difference between normal ranch activities and hunting. I consider the deer on these ranches semi-domestic and they're often comfortable being with in 10 yards of a person. But if they perceive some sort of hunting or hunting preparation they revert to more instinctual behaviors. They seem very perceptive.
Listening to this made me wonder if Dan, or any of his colleagues, analyzed/modeled the megafauna response during the out of Africa migrations. There are still a few individuals that are holding steadfast on the blitzkrieg hypothesis which argues that as Homo sapiens entered new lands the megafauna went extinct within two hundred years of the arrival of sapiens. Personally, this seems an absurdly narrow window. But the guys at the MeatEater podcast love this as does historian Dan Flores and several archaeologists. I think arguing for such a narrow window makes their position almost indefensible. There's plenty of research coming out (such as ancient DNA being pulled from sediment core samples) that indicates thousands of years of overlap, at least.
But I wonder what Dan's expertise says about how megafauna would react to the arrival of sapiens. The MeatEater guys claim the diaries of people like Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) show prey species who feel totally unthreatened by them. When thinking about it from the perspective of the template concept you guys were discussing, totally fearless prey is probably only possible in North America. Africa and Eurasia has bipedal hunter templates millions of years old in the form of Homo erectus, antecessor, heidelbergensis, Neanderthalensis, Denisovans, floresiensis, luzonensis and possibly earlier australopith species. But even the Americas had Native Americans and their ancestors (albeit much later than other continents) prior to these European adventurers.
Really interesting thoughts, as always. One of the things that undermines the sudden extinction due to the arrival of humans theory is that non-prey species went extinct in the same places at the same times, ranging from predators like saber-toothed tigers to freshwater mollusks. Why/how would humans have hunted and exterminated every saber-toothed tiger in North America? It makes no sense at all. And they certainly didn’t wipe out the prey species the tigers depended on. It’s such a far-fetched idea that I’ve never understood how anyone could buy it — much less specialists.
Head explodingly interesting interview! As a long distance runner (play hardship), a bird hunter who purposely goes out to study predator response in grouse, ducks and others (actual predation) and an anxious person living as an artist blacksmith in a rapacious capitalist economy (imagined danger), this connected many dots. I rarely listen twice to a podcast interview but this is the exception. Thank you so much Dan and Chris.
Really cool interview. This idea of how species pass on fears to their descendants is fascinating.
There was a study in which researchers captured some crows wearing a creepy mask, and then released them. After a while the crows learned to associate the mask with danger, so they would caw and attack the mask wearers; but the *really* cool thing that developed in the study, is that crows who grew up *after* the captures had ceased had *also* learned to identify the masks with dangers.
It was almost as if a new 'crowlore' about this masked boogeyman had evolved. Which makes me wonder about all these universal, ancestral fears about things like comets, which were considered harbingers of doom by pretty much every ancient culture in the world—a remnant lore evolved from a forgotten catastrophe?
As a naturalist, I'm not sure how open Dan would've been to the idea of 'non-sensory' detections of dangers. And yet, in the armed forces it is almost considered a given that some people are born with a '6th sense' that allows them to be 'precognitive' about covert dangers in the battlefield. One would assume many species are able to tap in into those warning systems, which may be the reason those rabbits are so chill in the presence of sexagenarian podcasters ;)
OK, I think "sexagenarian podcaster" might be the worst insult I've received.
Hey Chris - you wondered whether it’s ok to called someone a ‘Mensch’ if you’re not Jewish. Well, it’s a German word as well as Yiddish, so do whatever you want. (Funny how it doesn’t feel the same if it’s just a word from German, Italian or whatever…)
This was a fun episode and left me with some thoughts/questions/observations.
Dan's explanation of race vs ancestral lineage is a great illustration of the difference between these two concepts. Africa is home to both some of the tallest populations and some of the smallest populations. Perhaps the same 'race' but definitely different ancestral histories and lineages.
Tracing back the phylogeny of fear made me think about the difference of experience that our early Australopith ancestors probably had compared to our Homo ancestors. One was the first to completely leave the trees, enter a new ecology, and face new predatory threats while the other had millions years worth of ancestors embedded in the ecology and environment.
The discussion of adult play reminded me of this podcast episode of Talking Apes:
https://pca.st/episode/4dc31e7a-785d-47c5-b7b9-3ffbb2ee7339?t=3673.3,3934.9
where primatologist Kris Sabbi talks about how an unusually productive season led to a surplus of Uvariopsis peapods during the month of June 2017. Instead of fissioning where the females would normally go off into the forest by themselves (with their kids), this abundance of food resulted in the females not only being social but playing with each other. It was to the point that they actually ignored their children in order to play with other females.
As a two-way radio technician, many of our customers are these big south Texas ranches. I've heard more than one rancher remark that deer seem to know the difference between normal ranch activities and hunting. I consider the deer on these ranches semi-domestic and they're often comfortable being with in 10 yards of a person. But if they perceive some sort of hunting or hunting preparation they revert to more instinctual behaviors. They seem very perceptive.
Listening to this made me wonder if Dan, or any of his colleagues, analyzed/modeled the megafauna response during the out of Africa migrations. There are still a few individuals that are holding steadfast on the blitzkrieg hypothesis which argues that as Homo sapiens entered new lands the megafauna went extinct within two hundred years of the arrival of sapiens. Personally, this seems an absurdly narrow window. But the guys at the MeatEater podcast love this as does historian Dan Flores and several archaeologists. I think arguing for such a narrow window makes their position almost indefensible. There's plenty of research coming out (such as ancient DNA being pulled from sediment core samples) that indicates thousands of years of overlap, at least.
But I wonder what Dan's expertise says about how megafauna would react to the arrival of sapiens. The MeatEater guys claim the diaries of people like Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) show prey species who feel totally unthreatened by them. When thinking about it from the perspective of the template concept you guys were discussing, totally fearless prey is probably only possible in North America. Africa and Eurasia has bipedal hunter templates millions of years old in the form of Homo erectus, antecessor, heidelbergensis, Neanderthalensis, Denisovans, floresiensis, luzonensis and possibly earlier australopith species. But even the Americas had Native Americans and their ancestors (albeit much later than other continents) prior to these European adventurers.
Really interesting thoughts, as always. One of the things that undermines the sudden extinction due to the arrival of humans theory is that non-prey species went extinct in the same places at the same times, ranging from predators like saber-toothed tigers to freshwater mollusks. Why/how would humans have hunted and exterminated every saber-toothed tiger in North America? It makes no sense at all. And they certainly didn’t wipe out the prey species the tigers depended on. It’s such a far-fetched idea that I’ve never understood how anyone could buy it — much less specialists.
Head explodingly interesting interview! As a long distance runner (play hardship), a bird hunter who purposely goes out to study predator response in grouse, ducks and others (actual predation) and an anxious person living as an artist blacksmith in a rapacious capitalist economy (imagined danger), this connected many dots. I rarely listen twice to a podcast interview but this is the exception. Thank you so much Dan and Chris.
Fear of the Dark -Irom Maiden
What's the K word? 😬 I hate to be the one who ask...
Kyke, probably, which is an insulting term for a Jewish person.