Animals Have Cultures, Too

by L. E. Carmichael

Behaviour is what you do, culture is how you do it.

This is totally obvious in human cultures, which have rules and guidelines for every behaviour - from table manners to what we wear to how we greet each other. But in the last few decades, scientists have begun to realize that animals have culture, too.

And we're not just talking about primates.

A recent National Geographic's Weird Animal Question of the Week deals with accents and dialects in animal communication. One of their examples is wild canines, whose howls are not only distinctive between species - grey wolves and coyotes - but are also characteristic to particular geographic regions and populations. These differences probably help animals identify members, not just of their own family groups, but of their broader regions.

The article mentions the long, single pitch howl of the arctic wolf, a group I studied during my PhD research on the genetics of wolves and arctic foxes. My work focused on gene flow, the transfer of genetic material from one population to another. For gene flow to occur, an animal must do two things:

1) Leave the population it was born in

2) Find a mate in a new geographic region, thus passing its genetic material into the next generation.

I discovered there was very little gene flow between tundra wolves and wolves living below the tree line, even though there were no physical impediments to travel between the areas. More surprising, there were several distinctive populations of wolves on the tundra, signalling low gene flow even among wolves living in what was apparently the same habitat.

Or was it?

What I'd stumbled on turned out to be another signal of animal culture - hunting behaviour. All wolves hunt, but what they hunt varies. It has to, because different prey species prefer different habitats. Wolves below Canada's tree line, for example, eat deer and moose - animals that tend not to move around much. Wolves in the tundra mostly eat barren ground caribou - animals famous for their long-distance migrations. And wolves in the tundra were sorting themselves into populations that corresponded with the migration ranges of their prey.

What this suggests is that wolves are doing more than passing distinctive dialects down to their young. They are teaching their pups how to hunt particular food types. And once the pups learn effective hunting strategies, they tend to stay in an area where they can use those strategies. Because tundra wolves are most often mating with other tundra wolves, their genes as well as their behaviour will diverge from those of wolves in other areas.

Culture - one more thing that does NOT separate humans from animals. :)

Interested in learning more about animal communication? Check out Fox Talk: How Some Very Special Animals Helped Scientists Understand Communication.

Meet the North

Post by Helaine Becker

Paddling North

I recently had the good fortune to meet author Jennifer Kingsley at the Lakefield Literary Festival. I was completely taken with her, and with her story of her current project: circumnavigating the Arctic via word of mouth. She'd talk to someone, who would tell her about someone else in the north she should meet, go see that person, talk to them and get another recommendation, and so on. How fabulous, I thought! How brilliant a demo of the science of communication, in action!

Jennifer Kingsley

I asked Jennifer if she'd talk to Sci-Why, and she very graciously agreed. She sent me her answers to my questions from Greenland, where she is now deep in her project.

Here is the interview:

1. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and how you get started on the Meet the North Project.

I'm a Canadian who loves the outdoors, and I express that in two different ways. One: I'm a guide and naturalist, and I work on sailboats and ships in different parts of the world, primarily the Arctic. Two: I'm a writer and radio producer always looking for ways to bring stories and sounds out of remote regions and into the imaginations of my audience.

My first book is called Paddlenorth: Adventure, Resilience, and Renewal in the Arctic Wild, and it's about a 54-day canoe expedition across the Canadian Arctic.

2. Paddlenorth  is terrific. I was so intrigued by your presentation at the Lakefield Festival, I got the book right away! It's full of adventure, of course. But also heart. And there's some serious drama and mystery too. Heart-thumping, page-turning mystery.

Now, you've embarked on a new adventure! Can you describe the Meet the North project for Sci/Why readers?

Meet the North is my personal journey from WHAT is the Arctic to WHO is the Arctic. It's a project I created, and it's sponsored by Lindblad Expeditions/National Geographic.
Here's the skinny about Meet the North from the project web site www.meetthenorth.org:

#meetthenorth is a project about the lives of northerners from
Svalbard to Greenland, Iceland, the Canadian Arctic, and beyond.
These are among the most remarkable places on Earth, and the
best way to understand them is to ask those who know them best.

This project gets its direction from the people of the north.
Their ideas set our path; we listen, and we follow their lead.
By meeting one person at a time, and by asking that person to
introduce us to someone new, we are getting to know the
Arctic community, and we are sharing our journey with you.

Join the adventure on Instagram at #meetthenorth 

and by following @meetthenorth. Follow the
stories on this website too.

3. Sooooo coool! To my mind, your project is science in action, in that through your project, you are demonstrating and investigating human communication. Do you agree? Can you elaborate?

Meet the North is absolutely about human communication. It's about having a strong vision . . . but not much of a plan. I let the people that I meet set my path, so it's not until they introduce me to someone new that I know where I am going next. I think you could call it social science; it's similar to Snowball Sampling, which is used by some anthropologists.

I think what makes this project valuable and different is that it values the contribution of each individual. It's not about mapping the entire fabric; it's about finding one true thread.

4. It seems to me your project will provide valuable scientific data for use in other fields. Can you elaborate on that?

I believe that this project, and it's method, will help to uncover ideas and topics that would not be discovered otherwise. If I really want to know what is important to someone, I have to be very open. It doesn't serve me to come in with preconceived ideas, nor can I open with directive questions.

In this way, I think Meet the North could help fill out the picture painted by other work in other fields. It gives a human face to the data others are collecting.

5. Can you describe one encounter you have already had, and what it revealed/meant to you?

I just got home from Iceland, and at the beginning of my time there, I had one meeting set up. That one meeting led me, through a series of introductions, to the far east corner of the country which has been, perhaps, the least impacted by the recent tourism boom. By making personal connections to a very out of the way place, I discovered a project I would never have heard about otherwise.

Way out there, in a municipality of 500 people, there is a movement afoot to turn a fjord into a container port. This will only make sense more than a decade from now, if sea ice melts in a certain way and if global politics take a certain turn. It's an attempt to involve Iceland in the evolving Arctic economy, when many Icelanders are opening guest houses and selling souvenirs. It was a whiff of the change in the air - still faint but indicative of big changes ahead. So we interviewed the man spearheading this initiative, out in the middle of the heath. Who knows what will be there 10 years from now.

 Thanks, Jennifer! Good luck with your project, and please keep us posted!

Are Canadians interested in science? You tell us!

By Claire Eamer

A couple of weeks ago, Rick Mercer delivered one of his trademark rants in support of science - pure science, whether or not it confers immediate economic benefit. He criticized the federal government for its lack of respect and support for science and said that Canadians are “as passionate and curious as anyone else” when it comes to science.

Now, as a science communicator - both to kids and to adults - that is my experience too. I've talked to kids, teachers, librarians, parents, and passing adults from Vancouver Island to Nunavut in the past few years. Almost all were enthusiastic about science, curious about how things work, fascinated by the natural world, and delighted to learn new things. (The exceptions were two kids from a religious fundamentalist family and one grown-up radio interviewer - but you can't please everyone, I guess.)

But this, it appears, is not everyone's experience.

Canadian geneticist David Kent, currently at the University of Cambridge in the UK, wrote a blog post politely and articulately disagreeing with Rick Mercer. That triggered an online storm of the best possible kind - some people agreeing with Kent and others disagreeing.

Besides the stream of comments attached to Kent's post - all polite and passionate (including, I hope, my own) - the discussion has continued on other blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds.

One of the commenters, science communicator Kevin Mogk, felt strongly enough about the discussion to repost his own comments, inviting more discussion. Another referred to his own earlier post with concerns similar to Kent's. 

A number of people referenced the Council of Canadian Academies' report, issued in August 2014, on the state of science culture in Canada. Among its findings: "Canadians have positive attitudes towards science and technology and low levels of reservations about science compared with citizens of other countries."

The Canadian science blog and blog aggregator, Science Borealis, recently published a careful and detailed set of counter-arguments to Kent's post.

Theresa Liao, science communicator at the University of British Columbia and a friend of David Kent, posted her own response on her blog, Science, I Choose You!

Among the evidence cited for Canadians' interest in and enthusiasm for science are the excellent books, blogs and articles being produced by Canadian science writers for a Canadian and international audience, including:

• nominees and winners of the Canadian Science in Society Book Awards  and the Lane Anderson Awards
• the Canadian science bloggers listed and featured on the website of the Canadian Science Writers' Association and the Science Borealis blog
• the substantial audiences attracted by CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks and CBC Television's The Nature of Things
• the crowds of kids and adults who fill science centres, science museums, and open science days at universities and research centres

So, who is right? Or are we all right, to some degree? What do we - all of us - need to do to make sure that Canadians have access to scientific information in a form that makes it useful to them? And how can we ensure that kids who are passionate about science (and that's most of them, in my experience) don't lose that passion as they get older, whether or not they become scientists themselves?

If you read this far, you care - and you have an opinion. Please share!






 

Talking Science with Kids

By Claire Eamer

This blog, in a slightly different form, first appeared on the Eamer Science Services website (where I masquerade as a writer of science for grown-ups), but I thought it might be worth repeating the main points here.

I spent most of May touring Ontario and talking about science with kids, mainly because one of my kids’ science books, Lizards in the Sky: Animals Where You Least Expect Them, was nominated for an award in the Ontario Library Association’s annual Forest of Reading competition.

This was my first Forest of Reading nomination, and it was awesome! It’s a children’s choice award, which means that kids all over Ontario read the books and vote for their favourites. Even if you don’t win (I didn’t), you still win, because schools and libraries buy your books and kids read them.

And, I found, they read with enthusiasm!

I gave presentations at several schools on the Niagara Peninsula to audiences from kindergarten to Grade 8. In one case, the whole K-to-8 school was — rather alarmingly — in the audience. At a Toronto library, the mid-week afternoon audience ranged in age from two to roughly 70. To my amazement and pleasure, all the audiences were interested, attentive, courteous, full of questions, and enthusiastic about science.

Toward the end of the month, I even spent an afternoon at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, talking with kids and adults about animals, habitat, evolution, and the sheer joy of learning about all of them.

The Forest of Reading wraps up with a two-day Festival of Reading at Harbourfront in Toronto. Thousands of kids and teachers attend, cheering on their favourite authors, swapping books, collecting autographs, getting their photographs taken with authors, and generally talking books-books-books with anyone and everyone.

The whole experience was immensely encouraging to someone who cares about books and about science. Books are not dead. The kids love ‘em, in whatever form they find them. And they love science. Both the kids and adults I talked to were full of smart, interesting questions about the science in Lizards in the Sky, and full of enthusiasm for the diversity of life that the book celebrates.

My take-away message from a month of touring? If we can talk about science in an accessible way, people — both kids and adults — are more than ready to listen.

Talking to Your Dog is Not As Crazy As You Think

by L E Carmichael

Any dog owner will tell you that their pet understands them - recognizes words, follows commands, and somehow knows when they need a sympathetic snuggle.  Scientists call this communicative skill and intelligence "social cognition."  It's the set of knowledge and behaviours that animals - including humans - need in order to survive in social groups.  In the case of the dog, humans are a natural part of that social group, and language is one of the major ways humans communicate.  Use of human language by dogs is a developing field of study.

Thanks to Othal via Wikimedia Commons for this
gorgeous border collie photo!

Take Rico, for example.  Rico's owners claimed that the border collie knew the names of 200 objects, and would retrieve each item on request.  Scientists were skeptical at first - after all, a horse known as "Clever Hans" wasn't actually counting, but reading his trainer's body language.  However, when Rico had to go into a separate room to find the toy his owner asked for, where he couldn't receive any additional clues, he still got it right 37 out of 40 times.  

Rico's vocabulary, though on par with trained apes, dolphins, and parrots, wasn't that interesting to scientists.  What they wanted to understand was how Rico learned the names of new objects.  They placed unfamiliar items in the room with toys that he knew, then asked him to retrieve using a brand new word.  Seven out of 10 times, Rico brought the new object.  He was using exclusion learning - "I know the names of all of these things, but mom used a different word, and therefore...."  This "fast mapping" is the same technique human children use during language learning, and Rico's success rate was comparable to that of an average 3-year-old.

Scientists have shown that when humans generalize new words to categories of objects, they do so based on shape, rather than size or texture.  For example, if shown a ball for the first time, kids will extend that label to other spherical objects.  Similarities in size and texture are less important - a golf ball and a whiffle ball are both balls.  Would the same true for dogs?

A second border collie, Gable, was taught that the word "dax" represented a small, fuzzy, U-shaped object.  He was then asked to identify the dax among objects with different sizes, shapes or textures.  Unlike people, Gable generalized the word dax to objects the same size, not shape, as the original.  He also used texture as an indicator.  

Scientists believe that humans rely on shape because, in general, vision is our dominant sense.  It's less clear why dogs may be relying on different indicators, but the results suggest that there could be fundamental differences in the way dogs and people learn and understand language.  Which makes it even more incredible that we manage to communicate at all!

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The video of Gable is from: van der Zee et al (2012) Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important? PLOS ONE: e49382.  You can find more videos at the article's home page.

SPOTting the Deep Past

This summer, I went journeying Into The Deep Past again. This time, it wasn't a chance to walk through my home neighbourhood again and see the geological changes that have shaped the world around me. Nope! This time, instead of the familiar hills and ocean shorelines of Vancouver Island, I was exploring the Alberta Badlands along the Red Deer River.

See that tiny dot mid-river, below the bluff? That's me in my kayak!

There are so many ways of showing that process of being in a place and learning to understand what we are seeing. My daughter Lila is a professional photographer; she took the photos above and below, which show me setting out on the river in an inflatable kayak that has served me well in many places close to home, and now on the river.

These photographs contrast well to the painting artist Suzanne Robb made of another location a day's paddle downstream from my launch point. Here, Suzanne shows the striking patterns of weathering that are so visible from the river. The deep runnels that cut into the layers of sediment expose fossils from millions of years ago, when this area was under the shallow Bearpaw Sea.

Suzanne's painting shows the colours as they are felt, instead of the muted way they are shown in Lila's photos. Eroded hillsides looked like dinosaur bones sticking out of the clay and sand -- and yes, there are dinosaur bones all through the sediments from 65 million years ago and older! Other eroded bluffs along the river banks have round faces like Mount Rushmore, and some crumbles have sharp broken edges like profiles of faces looking up-river at the Buffalo Jump.
It's wonderful how different people can be in the same place and create different ways of showing what they have learned. I'm not the photographer that Lila is, nor the painter that Suzanne is. I use other technology to help show people where I've been. One of my best tools is the SPOT device. It's a small electronic device a little bigger than a cell phone. Press the OK button, and it sends a signal to any passing communications satellite to send a pre-written message to up to ten of my friends, with a link to my GPS location on a map.

This is a map of the first message I sent from the Red Deer River.

The map of my second day's travels shows that I went through Dry Island Buffalo Jump Park and camped near Tolman Bridge. The spot marked 4 on the next map shows where I looked at the buffalo jump and the mesa called Dry Island. Some maps look better on a satellite photo, like this one that even shows the shadow of a few little clouds.

The buffalo jump is impressive if you know what you're looking at; a cliff becomes a cliff where the buffalo would fall, not just a crumbly bluff. And below wasn't just a jumble of muddy crumbles mixed with old bones. It was the place where people would have been waiting with spears to finish off the buffalo, after the runners had driven them off the cliff. Falling a hundred feet onto its head doesn't kill a buffalo. But the fall does stun it or break a leg, so it's easier to kill. And then, there's lots of water here from the river and a nearby stream, for the butchering and cooking. The science of buffalo hunting makes sense when you can see the cliff and the water.
The river makes more sense in some ways, too, when I see it on the map that shows how few roads there are in this part of Alberta, or on the satellite photo that shows how the river gouged out its little canyon through this dry land. The SPOT is no substitute for a camera, but it's a good tool to have for keeping track of where I've been. Ultimately, nothing matches being there, feeling the slippery clay clinging to my feet, or the tea-brown river quietly slipping between banks where cattle graze and swallows dart.

Yes, As a Matter of Fact. Grammar IS Important in Science.

by L E Carmichael

When I was in grad school, I worked part time as a teaching assistant.  One semester, I gave my lab students a vocabulary quiz in the form of a crossword puzzle; they responded with unanimous outrage.  As one put it, "I didn't major in science because I wanted to worry about my spelling."

I couldn't quite convince them that spelling is as important to scientists as to people in any other field.  After all, mitosis and meiosis differ by only two letters; biologically, they differ by amoebas and humans.

Grammar can be another sticking point for students.  When I took marks off their papers, they'd often say, "Oh, but you knew what I meant."  Maybe.  But the job of a writer (and a scientist) is to make sure the reader doesn't have to guess.

Fortunately, there's now hope for the grammatically-confounded scientist.  Dr. Lorraine Lica has created a wonderful web page explaining why "that" and "which" are not the same, and why you should care.  And then she explains how to use them.  With the help of set theory.  And Venn diagrams.

I may just have died and gone to geek heaven.

Eyebrows: An example of how little we know about ourselves

I’ve been reading and writing about eyebrows this week. I’m learning a lot. It has made me think, with amazement, how human beings (like me) are so oblivious to our own biology in so many ways. I mean, eyebrows are just two strips of hair; they’re kind of boring, perhaps even a little gross. Even though I look at eyebrows dozens or even hundreds of times a day, I’ve never paid them much attention before. All this time, I had no idea how important they are to everyday life.

For one, they are crucial for communicating emotion– more so than words. Our eyebrows tell others when we are angry, sad, afraid and happy. We also use them in conversation, like visual punctuation, as well as to convey empathy. And we send specific messages with them; raising our eyebrows quickly, known as the eyebrow flash,is something that cultures around the world do automatically to send signals. The message can be “hello,” or “yes,” or “I’m flirting with you.”

Detail, portrait of a man with raised eyebrows, Giovanni Battista Moroni

Eyebrows talk, and we are very good at understanding what they are saying, without thinking. But there is more. Eyebrows are crucial for us to recognize faces and determine the identity of its owner. That is one reason why we first look at the eyebrows and eyes when we see a face. People’s eyebrows give us even more information – whether they are male or female, and to some extent how old they are.

THICK EYEBROWS ON A YOUNg male

We also seem to read information from eyebrows about people’s personalities, though there is no evidence (and it is unlikely) that eyebrow shape and personality are actually related. We judge a face with thin eyebrows to be happier, weaker, and more intelligent. Thick eyebrows are judged as stubborn, strong, even mean. This makes me wonder if there is a biological reason for people in so many cultures, especially women, altering their brows to make them thinner. Could it be that we are unconsciously changing what our faces communicate to the world?

Female eyebrow, thinned and tattooed

So here I am, looking at my own eyebrows in the mirror several times a day, using them to detect the emotions and identity of the faces of everyone I meet, and moving them up and down and in and out to send signals to people without being aware of it. My mind pays attention to eyebrows when I’m speaking to people and when I’m watching actors on a screen, and registers and understands the signals they convey without my knowledge.

My conscious mind can try to fake emotions using my eyebrows, but this uses a different part of my brain, and like most of us I am not very good at faking it. The movements we make when deliberately “making a face” are faster, bigger, and last longer. Most people have little difficulty telling the difference between when we are faking a frown and when we really mean it.

Studying the science of eyebrows has made it very clear that my brain is causing me to behave in ways that I do not know about. This makes me wonder what else I’m doing that I have no control over. It makes me uncomfortable to think that I’m an animal, a product of evolution, and that I respond to my environment – including other people – in such complex ways without my knowledge.

It is also marvellous to realize how little we understand about our own biology. Eyebrows are right under our noses (well, actually above our noses), are utterly unique to our species, and yet are not fully understood. From a purely selfish perspective, this means there is plenty of intrigue and mystery left to explore, and plenty still to write about.