Animal Emotions 🦁
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Season 2: Episode 44 Description
In today's episode: 🦁 What can lions teach us about yawning? Find out today as Nature Nerds' Laine Farber tells us about some empathetic lions. 🐕 Do bugs have feelings? Correspondent Sarah Namias shares the latest research. 🗞️ In the news: A bad week for Amazon and 2022 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees. ⚾ And test your knowledge about bees in today's Trivia on the Ten. ✅
Sources for the episode
Why Do Dogs Tilt Their Heads? New Study Offers Clues | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
Amazon Web Services outage causes issues at Disney+, Netflix, Coinbase (cnbc.com)
2021 Hall of Fame Committee election results (mlb.com)
Looted Gilgamesh tablet returns to Iraq in formal ceremony | AP News
Can Animals Speak? 7 Fascinating Facts About Animal Communication (bustle.com)
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TRANSCRIPT:
Bethany Van Delft 0:01
What can lions teach us about yawning? And do bugs have feelings? Today we're listening closely to new research on how animals communicate. Hey, down here, hi. I'm Bethany Van Delft. It's Tuesday, December 14th. And this is the Ten News.
Various Voices 0:22
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Bethany Van Delft 0:30
Have you ever yawned because someone next to you yawned? Sorry. Did you know that lions do the same thing? What? Correspondent Laine Farber is here to tell us more about why.
Laine Farber 0:45
Tilt your head back slightly. Open your mouth wide. Take a deep breath and think yawn. So, did you yawn? Chances are half of you did we all yawn? You learn to yawn while you were still in your mother's tummy. It's an extremely normal human behavior, but it's a bit more complicated than you think. You see, scientists don't fully understand yawns. Okay. However, they now know a little bit more about the strange natural phenomenon, thanks to a pride of lions. Oh, that's right, I said lions. But before we get to the ferocious felines, let's take a look at some yawn science. Scientists separate yawns into two categories, spontaneous and contagious. Spontaneous yawns happen seemingly at random. You might have a spontaneous yawn when getting up in the morning, when feeling bored, or when preparing to skydive from an airplane. Contagious yawns are well contagious, they're passed from person to person just like a cold. You might catch the strange sickness from seeing someone yawn, hearing the word yawn, or even reading the word yawn. If you do catch on, don't panic. It's natural. Roughly 60 to 70% of people are susceptible to contagious yawns. Now that we understand what yawns are, let's get to the question that's bugging us all. What do lions have to do with yawning? Well, for a long time, we thought yawns were caused by sleepiness, but scientists have debunked this tiger tail. Thanks to lots of research, and some help from a pride of lions. When it comes to contagious yawning. Scientists theorize it all boils down to empathy and communication.
Sound Bit 2:37
What does that mean?
Laine Farber 2:39
Some scientists believe humans yawn in response to each other because we possess empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share someone else's feelings. Having Empathy means you're good at connecting with other people and forming relationships. But did you know that animals are empathetic, too? That's right, highly social animals like lions show empathy towards members of their pride. So it makes sense that this study proves that these special animals also fall victim to contagious yawning. We're working on a project in South Africa, a researcher named Elisabetta palagi accidentally observed lots of lazy lion yawns. Having previously studied contagious yawning in primates. Polanski decided that the lion’s yawns are worth further investigation. After four months of observation, palagi and her team discovered something incredible, contagious yawning led to coordinated actions amongst the pride lions that caught each other's yawns were 11 times more likely to mirror each other's movements than those who weren't yawning. That's a pretty neat finding because it supports the theory that contagious yawning is a form of unconscious communication amongst empathetic animals. Wow. So we solved the mystery of yawning, right? Well, not exactly. But thanks to some lazy lions and radical researchers. We're one step closer.
Bethany Van Delft 4:07
Thank you, Laine, for that cool story. Oh, no. I think I got the yawns from those lions. Have you observed your pets showing emotion? Your dog might whine when she's upset or your cat might purr when he's happy. For a long time, scientists have been trying to understand if animals have the same kinds of emotions that we do. Here to tell us more is Ten News correspondent Sarah Namias.
Sarah Namias 4:38
The next time you go to squish an ant or swat away a housefly you might want to consider this. Scientists say there's mounting evidence that insects might have feelings No way. According to a recent BBC report, a study at the University of Oxford in England has been looking into the emotional capacity of fruit flies. Their research has revealed that these tiny insects demonstrate curiosity about what their peers are doing and that they're even able to learn from each other. Further investigation has shown that insects may be able to experience a wide range of emotions, like excitement when something good happens, or sadness when something bad happens. The findings go on to suggest that bugs can experience optimism, fear, and react to pain as any mammal would. And while an insect’s brain is vastly different from a human's, there are regions of a bug's brain, which have been compared to those in people, specifically, the area responsible for human intelligence. That's incredible studies into a bug's feelings may be somewhat recent, but bugs have been around for a long time. Did you know that the earliest insects emerged at least 400 million years ago? That's long before dinosaurs walked the earth. Wow. And did you know that many prehistoric insects were really quite massive? If you lived back in the Paleozoic period, that's a whopping 300 million years ago, and you bumped into a dragonfly, you'd be looking at a bug with a wingspan of about two and a half feet. That's like the size of a crow. And just as insects have evolved to be smaller in size, research has shown that their intelligence has evolved as well. studies reveal that bees can learn basic math, Cockroaches have complex social lives and form groups that bond and communicate. And ants can find tools to help them with tasks like using a leaf to carry liquids back to their nest. Smart and now with big feelings, so much to learn about our insect friends. But for now, it's kind of fun to imagine. Do ants get grumpy? What if bees get jealous? Or maybe flies fall in love? It's all in A Bug's Life.
Bethany Van Delft 7:28
Now, let's see what else is going on. The Amazon Web Service business had a tough week last week. Its servers which a number of large companies rely on went down for hours. The outage caused major delays for the Amazon delivery business and affected other companies and services across the country, including Disney+ and Netflix. Bummer. Minni Minoso is one of at least six new players who will enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022. Minoso, who was born in Cuba and was the first black Latino player in the majors, is known as the Latino Jackie Robinson. Bud Fowler, who in 1878 became the first African American to play pro baseball will also be inducted. A 3500-year-old clay tablet that was looted from a museum in Iraq in 1991 has been returned after turning up in Washington DC. This isn't just any tablet. It contains part of a poem called The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest known works of literature. We are so glad it was returned to its rightful home. Way to go. Lucky you, it's...
Various Voices 8:52
What, what, what's the big idea?
Bethany Van Delft 8:55
Trivia on the Ten. Animals can communicate with sound visual displays of color, even electricity. But, what animal is famous for communicating through dance? Hint: it's not humans. Is it a) mantis shrimp, b) caterpillars or c) bees? Did you guess it? The answer is C. Bees. Our pollinator friends tell each other where to find food by doing elaborate dances that explain the location based on the sun. What? Cool beans, man. The humble Bumblebee was observed dancing to communicate back in ancient Roman times and in 1973 the scientist, Karl Von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for decades of studying be dancing. Well, we know where the next viral dance craze is coming. Time is up, but before we go, here's a quick note for the grownups. Thanks for listening to the Ten News. Look out for new episodes on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and extras on Saturdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. The Ten News creative team is working on their new dance moves and includes Tracey Crooks, Pete Musto, Adam Barnard, Tessa Flannery, and Nathalie Alonso. Laine Farber and Sarah Namias contributed to this episode. Our production director is Jeremiah Tittle and our executive producers are Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to the Ten News. I'm trying to work on my Big Dance.
