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Isabel Behncke

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2022-06-01
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2022-06-01
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  1. “Exactly. But let me tell you how you... So, well, all over the place, but not quite. Humboldt goes to Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and he climbs Chimborazo, and basically he does an Andean route. He never got to Chile, unfortunately, but Darwin spent around three years in Chile, the voyage of the Beagle, that we can talk about separately. But the five-year voyage of the Beagle, three years-ish were in Chile, which I think is super important. Basically, he spent a lot more time there than in Galapagos. I need to say that.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Darwin, unhumbled, and the origins of how we think about nature and how we think about evolution, neither of them were white coat lab scientists or just scholars that live within four walls. They were both explorers and they were both adventurous and they were both naturalists. And this is super important because I think it's a tradition of thinking that basically has given us the most important ideas that we have today on evolution and nature. And let me synthesize those ideas. Humboldt leaves Europe and embarks in this extraordinary trip to South America. And of course, I'm not biased, but they were both trips in South America. Yeah. Of course. Let me point that out. I'm not biased, but let me tell you.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Equally or if not more important, I think for Darwin was the influence of Alexander von Humboldt. Von Humboldt is a Prussian aristocrat who was born the same year than Napoleon, I think 1769. And he died, by the way, on 1859, which is the date that Darwin published, the origin of species. So there's like an interesting evolutionary contingency there. And von Humboldt, he was an explorer, a genius, another polymass, scholar, and I think above all, which is the point that I want to link between”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Good call. Good call. Nothing mystical about it. It's just like, no, we're going to be drunk. We're going to be drunk off our asses. Oh, yeah. Reality, empiricism. And so Erasmus Darwin had in his chariot an emblem called Econcia Obniae in Latin. Life comes from the sea. The point where I'm trying to make here is that Darwin himself had ancestors, both intellectual ancestors, but also family ancestors that were thinking about evolution, often ideas are in the environment. So that's the family side of Darwin.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Exactly. Let's get Actually, it's a big point. The lunar society was called like that because they would meet once a month in full moon and of course drinking and food sharing was involved and they had to ride back home and so a full moon would actually be a very practical.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “He is one of the biggest influences on the Romantic poets, on Byron and many others. So Darwin inherited, first of all, this strange influences. And Erasmus Darwin used to hold these meetings in his home. They were called the Lunar Society, when they were trying to find out basically about life and creativity and as polymaths do.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Origins of evolutionary thinking, if you think about evolution, you will picture an old Darwin, old Charles Darwin with a long beard, correct? So like the lone genius that had this great idea, which by the way, the philosopher Daniel Dennett says the best idea ever thought was evolution. And so let's define what is this such amazing idea. The simple idea that all life is related. So evolution really is about how all life is related and how all life evolves. Everything has an origin. And like King Lear said, nothing comes from nothing. So Darwin himself was the grandson of this extraordinary man who was called Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus Darwin was a polymath. He was a doctor. He was creative. He was a poet.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Yes, very different assumptions, and actually completely understandable because, of course, Skinner was trying to do science and he was trying to isolate variables and to do controlled experiments, which is an essential part of science. So, of course, Condralance did things that today wouldn't be considered proper science either. I think these guys were experimenting in different ways, and today we have a concealence and integration of the experimental side of behavior and the naturalistic observations that is kind of exciting.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Scientists, but I think there's something about really putting literally yourself in the feet and the wings and the mind of another animal as much as you can as the other animal rather than as a human that help you become a better scientist. And so I think Lorenz had that genius and he tried to look at the animals in themselves.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “He was observing birds and he's more famous for having brought up geese. So he had this incubators with geese, eggs, and he discovered in printing, namely that when the eggs hatched, the first thing that the chicks looked at, if it was him rather than the female, the chicks would imprint on him. So he effectively, this is not quite what ethologists would do today, right? But we're talking about the origin story. And so he started walking, basically the chicks would follow him. And he learned the vocalization. So he learned to communicate with them and go like, and then they would follow him. And he became like the mother geese. I love that because, of course, again, don't do this at home and we wouldn't want to do it today as well.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Yeah, so that's a great question. I think not only in timing, but also in terms of approach. So Lorenz, let me tell you an anecdote about Lorenz, and we'll go to Skinner.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Which animals have evolved, and what does this tell us about their behavior today? So that's ethology. And then the word applied, I use it in the sense that I was trained and worked as an ethologist, but almost without wanting or thinking about it, I can't help but think about the world and the problems that we have today. So whenever you think about, say, cooperation, competition, play, aggression, obviously your mind goes, okay, what does this tell us about war and creativity and innovation and so on? So apply this really trying to cross that bridge between science and society.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Oh, okay. So Western mythology, animal behavior, comes from a group of people that were in Europe studying animal behavior. And when they were studying animal behavior, they went, you know, there are pressures and adaptations in other animals that are interesting in themselves, but they're also help us think about our own behavior. And so for them, it was very important to observe behavior as naturally occurring in habitats where animals live. So of course we can still observe behavior in cages and in zoos and inside homes and that has its own value. But as Ithologist, we try to observe behavior as well in the wild because when it's interacting with ecology, I think it tells us something very important about the environment in which we”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Ethology is the study of behavior. I might have as well just used behavioral sciences. I use mythology because it's my own particular field of training. People might be familiar with the work of Conrad Lorenz.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Vulnerable. Yes, right. But that's the point. Really, and I think that's the take home of this story. It is an extremely vulnerable part of the male anatomy. And it's actually used that as such in aggressive interactions so that you actually You said in playful interactions is, I think, playing with a line of trust vulnerability and real life risk that's extremely interesting and gets at the root of what play is. And so these males were playing and they were males from different communities. So what kind of trust do you need to build in order to have this kind of interaction between males that don't usually live together or are related?”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Something's going to happen here because it doesn't happen very often. And in chimpanzees, when chimpanzees meet other communities, typically they try not to because it's aggressive and you can have neighboring males that patrol the territory and they will kill a male of the other territory, of the other community, sorry. And sometimes not only kill, but also maim. For instance, they will take out their genitals. It's very, very, that's why this Bonobo observation, I think, is poignant because there's this joke. Okay, I'll ask you, what's the most vulnerable part of the melanatomy?”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Occurring behavior of apes in the wild. It's difficult for many reasons, but there are still some alive, which is great. And I was following this wild group of bonobos for a long time, for many months. And of course, they don't usually meet other communities. And we can get into that. Why is it that typically interactions are within a community? And then suddenly the study group, you know, they have this way of traveling, which seems very intentional. And you can tell it when you observe it. They suddenly kind of switch onto, okay, we're going somewhere. And they cross the river, which typically demarcates their territory. And I was like, oh God, where are they going? These guys are going somewhere, like very intentionally. And they went into the territory of the neighboring community. So I was like, whoa.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Yes. Gently Gently. There was no harm done. And don't do this at home. I should have started saying that. There was also some biting. And other forms of physical touch, which may have looked to an untrained eye, like fighting. Back when Jiro were not fighting, they were playing, and Baku and Jiro were in the depths of the jungles in Congo. And they are, they were not humans, but Bunobo males. And this observation of these two males playing was to me really extraordinary because let me give you some context after the kicking in the nats comment. Bonobos are, together with chimpanzees, are living closest relatives. We have many other evolutionary relatives, but they're dead, they're extinct. So for us primatologists, it's really amazing to be able to observe the natural”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “I love this question. It was August 2010, Ambako and Jiro are two males and they were one of them was kicking the other in the nuts.”

    2022-06-01 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT