Science and Creativity: Do Animals Have Culture? Part I

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2018

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laurel Braitman is a historian of science and the author of Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves. She’s particularly interested in animals held in captivity. “If their minds aren’t stimulated and challenged they can end up with all sorts of disturbing behaviors,” she explains. Braitman wondered if music could help counter animal anxiety and depression? This question led Braitman to arrange a series of concerts for all-animal audiences.

Plus, we hear from Richard Prum, an ornithologist at Yale University, who discusses his latest work — the philosophy of aesthetics. It stems from his earliest research studying small South American birds called Manakins. Manakins are known for outlandish mating displays in which males perform an elaborate dance and to Prum’s eye, the diversity and complexity of these dances could only be explained as an appeal to the birds’ aesthetic preferences. In other words, it’s art. “My hypothesis,” he explains to Kurt Andersen, “is that ornament in manakins evolves merely because it’s popular, or merely beautiful.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From PRX.
0:06.8	This is Studio 360.
0:08.7	I'm Kurt Yuderson.
0:12.9	On this Studio 360 podcast Extra,
0:15.8	we are presenting a special series of stories
0:18.2	about science and creativity.
0:20.5	We're looking into the particular question of whether animals,
0:24.0	animals other than us, have culture.
0:28.2	Here is part one of a three-part series.
0:41.9	That, in case you didn't know, is a humpback whale. That, in case you didn't know, is a humpback whale singing.
0:59.0	We've known for a long time that some animals apparently do things for purely aesthetic reasons. Bower birds decorate their nests with colorful bits of string and foil.
1:04.0	Octopuses are known to carefully arrange interesting shiny objects outside their dens.
1:10.0	No, as far as we know, octopuses do not make gardens.
1:15.6	Scientists are looking at all these behaviors to ask seriously whether animals make aesthetic judgments.
1:21.6	What shapes their preferences and how?
1:24.6	Whether animals have what we could call culture.
1:28.3	We've certainly been forcing our tastes on them for a long time.
1:32.3	There is a whole music industry catering to pet owners.
1:36.3	If you've got one of those dogs that cries when you leave for work,
1:40.3	there are CDs to calm them down, usually classical music.
1:45.1	But did Rusty tell you he liked Chopin?
1:48.6	Certainly classical music isn't calming for all people.
	...

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