Summary
This animal is nicknamed the "happiest animal on earth," but what do they have to be happy about? Not much, beyond hanging out with Roger Federer. Find out the meaning of "Rottnest" and learn about the child-sacrificing, lightning-fearing, gorgonzola-choking quokka on this episode of Species.
Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gI4fknlR16jnIiVTwIQB7BrUW1I_oo5lK_QtBm2WN6M/edit?usp=sharing
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Why do humans smile? Why is it that when I'm happy or I'm being friendly or if something's funny, I smile? |
| 0:08.5 | Most other animals don't smile, not the way we do. Chimps appear to smile like us, some other |
| 0:14.5 | primates debatably as well. Some people insist that their dogs smile. Dogs probably don't smile for any real reason, but if they do, |
| 0:24.1 | it is only due to some weird artificial selection pressure for dogs that look like they're |
| 0:29.1 | smiling. Unlikely. But for humans, for chimps, and for other primates too, maybe, why smile? |
| 0:38.4 | Curling up the sides of your lips and showing your teeth certainly doesn't seem to be a friendly gesture in any intuitive way. |
| 0:48.2 | I would personally imagine that showing teeth is an aggressive move, and it isn't cultural. All humans smile instinctively. |
| 0:57.7 | Blind children who have never seen a smile in their life still smile in the same ways |
| 1:04.4 | in the same situations. So how did the smile evolve? Well, there are two theories that I really like. The first is that it evolved from a submissive gesture. Primates often bear their teeth with relaxed lips and a closed jaw to show that they aren't ready to bite or do violence. |
| 1:29.7 | A smile could easily evolve from that as a way of saying, |
| 1:33.5 | I'm friendly or everything is good. |
| 1:36.6 | An alternative theory is that the smile is just a side effect of laughter, |
| 1:41.7 | which chimps have in a playful context. A smile is like a silent laugh, |
| 1:47.1 | where you show that everything is just playful. And two things can be true at once. I think if you |
| 1:53.7 | know the literature on the evolution of laughter as a mechanism for signaling that something is not a threat, |
| 2:01.0 | these two theories dovetail nicely. |
| 2:04.0 | We'll talk about the evolution of laughter more in a bonus episode one day, I hope. |
| 2:09.7 | But for now, we are going to talk about an animal that has been grossly mislabeled |
| 2:15.3 | as the happiest animal in the world for their adorable smile. |
| 2:21.5 | Today we are going to talk about the quaka. |
| 2:25.2 | Satanics Bricyrus. |
| 2:28.0 | I'm Mackin. This is Species. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Macken Murphy, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Macken Murphy and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.