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LULU: Hey there. Lulu here. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. I am thankful to you for real, I am really, really thankful to you for listening to our show. We love making it for you. And another thing I feel thankful for is the story I am about to play you. I really do. It's a story that gives me hope when I'm feeling worried about humans, when I'm feeling worried about the fact that they can sometimes be mean or greedy. And so I wanted to play it for you today. Don't worry, it's not about humans, it's about animals. It is a story about baboons.

 

LULU: Baboons, they are primates like us. They look a little like really muscly, muscly monkeys with lots of fur and a really furrowed brow. They're kind of scary looking. They are known to fight one another if they, you know, get into a conflict over territory or food. They can even tear each other apart. And well, because we are primates like them, sometimes people say that in our true nature, we're like them too. That if left to our own devices, we too just naturally are greedy or violent or territorial. But this story shows another possibility. That maybe this supposed truth of human nature isn't so true. You'll see what I mean as you listen along, handing it off now to hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. 

 

JAD: To get things started, let's just take the question that was just in the air: are we human beings violent forever and forever and forever, amen? Is that just who we are?

 

ROBERT: That's a good question.

 

JAD: It's a good question, right? And the people who usually say yes …

 

ROBERT: Yeah?

 

JAD: ... say yes because—in part, because of our ancestors.

 

ROBERT: We're like them, they're like us. That's how it goes.

 

JAD: On the other hand, let me tell you a story.

 

ROBERT: I was hoping there would be another hand.

 

JAD: Yes. Do you remember this guy?

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: I'm Robert Sapolsky. I'm …

 

ROBERT: Oh, yeah. That's Robert Sapolsky.

 

JAD: We've had him on the show a couple of times. He's a neuroscientist, spends most of the year at Stanford.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: ... being a lab rat scientist, doing neurobiology in the lab.

 

JAD: But in the summers …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Most summers I go and spend time in East Africa, in the Serengeti studying wild baboons there.

 

ROBERT: Why—what is it—what is he working on? What's his reason to be there?

 

JAD: Well, Sapolsky's interested in studying stress. The effect that stress has on the body. And it turns out, baboons are a perfect source of data because they're always under stress. You know, the one thing we know about baboons, and have known forever, is that they fight …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Baboons …

 

JAD: ... constantly.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: ... not just metaphorically, but literally have been the textbook example of a highly-aggressive, male-dominated hierarchical society. Because these animals hunt, because they live in these aggressive troops on the savanna, parentheses just like we humans used to, and thus we evolved very similarly, they have a constant baseline level of aggression which inevitably spills over into their social lives.

 

JAD: Which is why he studies them. So what Sapolsky does basically, is he goes into the bush and he watches.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Here are field notebooks. And there's a floor of them there. And a whole shelf there.

 

JAD: His office is covered with these field notebooks, each one containing detailed notes of who groomed who …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And who's not getting along with who, and who's messing around with who in the bushes.

 

JAD: And he tells the following story of a particular moment in his baboon watching which completely changed his life, changed how he sees the world. It happened about 30 years ago. Sapolsky was a young guy just out of grad school studying his first troop.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: My—my first baboons.

 

JAD: A troop he really loved.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: These were animals I was very connected with.

 

JAD: In most ways, it was a pretty average group.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Yeah, your basic baboon troop. The males, highly aggressive, dumping on each other.

 

JAD: Because that's just what males do.

 

ROBERT: Right.

 

JAD: Or so he thought.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Okay, mid-'80s, a big boom in tourism in Kenya. Wonders for the economy, lots of new lodges, lots of lodge expansions. And there happened to be the next territory over, a tourist lodge.

 

JAD: And this one particular lodge, he says, had gotten really big really fast.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And during that time, the lodge greatly expanded their garbage dump.

JAD: Which means basically, that they just dug a hole out behind the lodge.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And then each day, a tractor came out with the leftovers and dumped it there.

 

JAD: So what we're talking about here, if you can nasally imagine, is a big steaming pile of trash, half-eaten food baking in the sun, smell wafting in the breeze for miles and miles and into the nostrils of baboons everywhere. So it was not long before a troop of baboons—not Sapolsky's, but one nearby …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Discovered the garbage, and just started feeding on it. And here they are eating leftover desserts and chicken whatevers.

 

JAD: To find a dump full of food must be to a baboon like—like wandering into heaven.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: It's manna in the wilderness.

 

JAD: Yeah.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: So this troop almost immediately shifted their entire behavior to they just slept in the trees above the garbage dump, and instead of getting up at six in the morning to start foraging, they would waddle down around two minutes of nine. And the tractor would show up at nine o'clock and dump the food, and they would have 20 minutes of sheer frenzy. And then they'd go back to sort of being couch potatoes.

 

JAD: And this is how it went for a while.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: So they're over there living off of garbage, and somehow some of the males in my troop figure this out.

 

JAD: These males think, "We gotta get in on this. We've gotta go over there and take their food."

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: What emerged was each morning, a bunch of males would run a kilometer or so to the garbage dump and fight their way in to get some of the garbage.

 

JAD: So every morning there'd be a showdown, basically.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Yeah. And they would come back with canine slashes and stuff like that. And …

 

JAD: But they'd also have drumsticks, cakes, hamburgers. And this ritual, says Sapolsky, went on for years.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And then a few years into it, I got word that there were a couple of baboons in this garbage dump troop that looked awful and something was wrong with them.

 

JAD: Some guys from the lodge had called him and said, "Hey, you better get down here and look at this." And when he got there, what he saw was horrible.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Animals with rotting hands walking on their elbows. I mean, just really bad. So trying to figure out what this is about, get veterinarians involved. And we finally figure out it's tuberculosis.

 

JAD: Turns out some infected meat had been thrown in the dump and then eaten by the baboons. And this was really bad news because while tuberculosis in people is a really slow moving disease …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: TB kills non-human primates in weeks, and it's a nightmare of a disease for them.

 

JAD: In just a short time, the garbage dump troop was completely decimated. Not to mention that the tough guys in Sapolsky's troop, the ones that had gone to the dump every morning, they got it too.

 

JAD: They have the same kind of rotting hands, and …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: They all die of it.

 

JAD: Oh, wow. That must've been really kind of tragic to witness.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: This was not a good period for me. You know, these were my animals. I had—I had grown up with these guys.

 

JAD: But, you know, while Sapolsky was heartbroken now that half the alpha males in his troop were dead, he did notice some strange things started to happen. Changes.

 

ROBERT: How did they change?

 

JAD: Well, grooming spiked.

 

ROBERT: Grooming. So you and I sit on a branch, and I take little fleas out of your fur.

 

JAD: Yes. Well, you know, usually when a female grooms a male, the males never reciprocate. But suddenly, they were. Even weirder …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: You saw adult males sitting in contact with each other and grooming each other.

 

ROBERT: Oh!

 

JAD: You know how—how rare that is? It'd be like, if suddenly in the middle of round five of a heavyweight bout, Mike Tyson just decided to stop boxing …

 

ROBERT: And nuzzle his opponent. [laughs]

 

JAD: Or comb Evander Holyfield's hair.

 

ROBERT: [laughs]

 

JAD: It would be like that.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: If you're a baboonologist, it would have been less shocking if these guys had wings, or were photosynthetic or something. Up to then I had seen, like, 30 seconds of male-male grooming in the course of 15 years.

 

JAD: But at the time, Sapolsky kind of wrote it off. This was just some freak event that wasn't gonna last. So he actually stopped studying them.

 

ROBERT: Even after that big investment of time?

 

JAD: Yeah.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Scientifically, they were ruined by such a non-natural event removing half the study subjects.

 

JAD: Oh, as a scientist it became less interesting to you.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: You know, that was the rationale. It was just too painful to go and watch these guys. So I moved to the other end of the reserve about 40 miles away and started with a new troop there. And for six years, I would not go anywhere near this corner of the park, because I just didn't want to be there.

 

LULU: We’ll be back in a moment. 

 

LULU: Alright we’re back. On with the story. 

 

JAD: Now fast forward six years, and we come to the moment that really changed things for him, really flipped him into a different way of thinking. And it happened kind of by accident.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: So about six years later, I'm out there for the first time with who was soon destined to become my wife, and decided I wanted to kind of show her where I had grown up. What part of the park …

 

JAD: Aww, you wanted to go to the old haunt.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Yeah, basically. So went there, and the troop was there.

 

JAD: And they were acting pretty much the same as before: lots of grooming, not so much fighting.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And isn't that nice? And they're still, like, this great remnant troop.

JAD: And he's sitting there with his wife just pointing out all the different baboons. "Oh, there's Tiva, and there's—I don't know, whoever." And then it hits him.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: This epiphinal whatever.

 

JAD: Wait a second!

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: There was only one male left who had been there at the time of the TB outbreak.

 

JAD: Dun dun dun!

 

ROBERT: I don't follow this. What? One male?

 

JAD: Stick with me for just one second and you will get it.

 

ROBERT: Okay.

 

JAD: The thing about male baboons, first thing you gotta understand, is around puberty, the males get a little antsy.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: They get itchy, they're bored and they just pick up and leave. So in a troop, any of the adult males grew up someplace else.

 

JAD: Which meant that these new guys that were coming into Sapolsky's troop, were coming in from the outside, from the old world order.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: The jerky, real dog-eat-dog world out there.

 

JAD: Which would mean that this whole kumbaya situation should evaporate the moment these guys show up. But it didn't. It stuck.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Oh my God! The new guys are learning we don't do stuff like that here.

 

JAD: And if the new guys are learning a new way, well, that means the old way, the violent way, isn't the only way.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And this—this floored me. It was one of those moments. It will be one of the three or four best science moments in my life. The key question was how do these guys unlearn their entire childhood culture of aggression, blah, blah, and somehow learn we don't do stuff like that around here?

 

ROBERT: Well?

 

JAD: Well, what?

 

ROBERT: Well, how do they unlearn something that was supposedly built in?

 

JAD: Oh. Well, he doesn't really know exactly.

 

ROBERT: Oh.

 

JAD: But, but but but, here's Sapolsky's hunch. Here's his hunch. And this is really cool. It may have to do with that precarious moment when the new guy comes in. Now normally what happens in this sort of status quo, is that the new guy arrives and it's just a really bad experience for him.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: It's awful. I mean, you look at them and you just identify with, like, freshman year at college or something. They're completely peripheral. Every male who's higher ranking dumps on them.

 

JAD: And even worse, this freshman baboon is completely ignored by the ladies.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: And you just sit there and say, "Somebody groom him. Somebody groom him! Come on!"

 

ROBERT: Why don't they groom him?

 

JAD: Well, because if they did …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Some adult male would have attacked them.

 

ROBERT: Oh.

 

JAD: So the ladies hang back while he's out there biting and clawing and trying to scratch his way in. And what you've got here is a cycle that has existed for a long, long time. But if you make one small change, just remove the alpha male, take him out of the equation, suddenly …

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: The females are more relaxed, and more likely to take a social gamble of reaching out to somebody new. The key thing is the females.

 

JAD: Sapolsky thinks that it's all about timing. If the females can get to the new guy early enough, everything's different.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: It's remarkable. In your typical troop, it's three months on the average before the first female grooms you. In this troop? Six days.

 

JAD: Get out! Six days as compared to three months?

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Yeah. And in a world in which from day one as an adolescent male you're treated better, something about the aggressiveness melts away.

 

JAD: It has been 20 years.

 

ROBERT: Really?

 

JAD: Yes. 20 years. And Sapolsky's original baboon troop is still operating in this peaceful mode, even though dozens of new males have come and gone at this point.

 

ROBERT: Hmm.

 

JAD: And the idea that something that was thought to be so unchangeable could change and change quickly and then stay changed as a result of something so airy and undefinable as culture, well, that has caused Robert Sapolsky, dare I say it, to hope.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: Absolutely. And it's not something that I do by nature.

 

JAD: [laughs] You're not a hopeful guy by nature.

 

ROBERT SAPOLSKY: No, not at all.

 

LULU: Alright, that'll do it for today, hoping that whoever you are, wherever you are, you get a little break today and maybe a moment to pause and think about who and what you are grateful for in this world. And if it's a person, maybe even let them know. If it's an animal, maybe go give him a hug. Again, I am truly, truly grateful to you for being here for these nature stories. We'll have another one coming in two weeks.

 

EMMA: Hi, I’m Emma and I live in Portland, Maine. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.