Have you ever wondered what animals think and feel? Let's start with a question: Does my dog really love me, or does she just want a treat? Well, it's easy to see that our dog really loves us, easy to see, right, what's going on in that fuzzy little head. What is going on? Something's going on.
Algunha vez vos preguntastes que pensan e senten os animais? Comecemos cunha pregunta: A miña cadela quéreme ou só quere unha caricia? É doado ver que a nosa cadela realmente nos quere. É doado velo, non? Que está a pasar... ...nesa cabeciña peluda? Que está a pasar? Algo está a pasar.
But why is the question always do they love us? Why is it always about us? Why are we such narcissists? I found a different question to ask animals. Who are you?
Por que sempre preguntamos se nos queren? Por que sempre é sobre nós? Por que somos tan narcisistas? Atopei outra pregunta para os animais. Quen sodes?
There are capacities of the human mind that we tend to think are capacities only of the human mind. But is that true? What are other beings doing with those brains? What are they thinking and feeling? Is there a way to know? I think there is a way in. I think there are several ways in. We can look at evolution, we can look at their brains and we can watch what they do.
Hai aptitudes da mente humana que tendemos a crer que só son da mente humana Pero é certo? Que fan outros seres con eses cerebros? Que pensan e senten? Hai modo de sabelo? Creo que o hai. Creo que hai moitas maneiras. Podemos fixarnos na evolución, mirar os seus cerebros e ver que fan.
The first thing to remember is: our brain is inherited. The first neurons came from jellyfish. Jellyfish gave rise to the first chordates. The first chordates gave rise to the first vertebrates. The vertebrates came out of the sea, and here we are. But it's still true that a neuron, a nerve cell, looks the same in a crayfish, a bird or you. What does that say about the minds of crayfish? Can we tell anything about that? Well, it turns out that if you give a crayfish a lot of little tiny electric shocks every time it tries to come out of its burrow, it will develop anxiety. If you give the crayfish the same drug used to treat anxiety disorder in humans, it relaxes and comes out and explores. How do we show how much we care about crayfish anxiety? Mostly, we boil them.
O primeiro que hai que lembrar: o noso cerebro é herdado. As primeiras neuronas viñeron das medusas. As medusas orixinaron ós cordados. Os cordados orixinaron ós vertebrados. Os vertebrados saíron do mar e aquí estamos. O que é certo é que unha neurona, unha célula nerviosa, parece a mesma nun cangrexo, nun paxaro ou en vós. Que nos di iso... ...sobre a mente dos cangrexos? Podemos dicir algo? Resulta que... ...se se lle dá a un cangrexo pequenas descargas eléctricas cada vez que tenta saír da súa toba, xerará ansiedade. Se se lle dá ó cangrexo o mesmo medicamento usado para tratar a ansiedade nos humanos, reláxase, sae e explora. Como amosamos o que nos importa a ansiedade dos cangrexos? Fervéndoos.
(Laughter)
Octopuses use tools, as well as do most apes and they recognize human faces. How do we celebrate the ape-like intelligence of this invertebrate? Mostly boiled. If a grouper chases a fish into a crevice in the coral, it will sometimes go to where it knows a moray eel is sleeping and it will signal to the moray, "Follow me," and the moray will understand that signal. The moray may go into the crevice and get the fish, but the fish may bolt and the grouper may get it. This is an ancient partnership that we have just recently found out about. How do we celebrate that ancient partnership? Mostly fried. A pattern is emerging and it says a lot more about us than it does about them.
Os polbos usan ferramentas, como os simios, e recoñecen rostros humanos. Como celebramos a intelixencia simiesca destes invertebrados? Fervéndoos. Se un mero persegue un peixe ata unha greta no coral, irá onde sabe que hai unha morea durmindo e diralle á morea "sígueme", e a morea entenderá ese sinal. A morea pode entrar na greta e coller o peixe, pero o peixe pode fuxir e o mero atrapalo. Esta é unha antiga colaboración que acabamos de descubrir. Como celebramos esa antiga colaboración? Fritíndoos. Está xurdindo un patrón que di máis sobre nós ca sobre eles.
Sea otters use tools and they take time away from what they're doing to show their babies what to do, which is called teaching. Chimpanzees don't teach. Killer whales teach and killer whales share food.
As londras mariñas usan ferramentas e sacan tempo do que están a facer para amosarlles ás crías que facer, ó que se chama ensinanza. Os chimpancés non ensinan. As candorcas ensinan e comparten comida.
When evolution makes something new, it uses the parts it has in stock, off the shelf, before it fabricates a new twist. And our brain has come to us through the enormity of the deep sweep of time. If you look at the human brain compared to a chimpanzee brain, what you see is we have basically a very big chimpanzee brain. It's a good thing ours is bigger, because we're also really insecure.
Cando a evolución fai algo novo, usa as pezas que ten, sácaas do caixón, antes de dar un novo xiro. O noso cerebro chegounos a través dun longo período de tempo. Se comparamos o cerebro humano co do chimpancé, vemos que temos un gran cerebro de chimpancé. Isto é algo bo para nós, porque somos inseguros.
(Laughter)
But, uh oh, there's a dolphin, a bigger brain with more convolutions. OK, maybe you're saying, all right, well, we see brains, but what does that have to say about minds? Well, we can see the working of the mind in the logic of behaviors. So these elephants, you can see, obviously, they are resting. They have found a patch of shade under the palm trees under which to let their babies sleep, while they doze but remain vigilant. We make perfect sense of that image just as they make perfect sense of what they're doing because under the arc of the same sun on the same plains, listening to the howls of the same dangers, they became who they are and we became who we are.
Pero están os golfiños cun cerebro meirande e máis circunvolucións. Quizais estades dicindo "vemos cerebros, pero que teñen que ver coa mente?" Podemos ver o funcionamento da mente na lóxica do comportamento. Estes elefantes, como podedes ver, están a descansar. Atoparon sombra so unha palmeira baixo a cal dormen as súas crías mentres eles sonean, mais vixiantes. Entendemos esa imaxe así como eles saben o que fan porque baixo o mesmo sol nas mesmas chairas escoitando os ouveos dos mesmos perigos, convertéronse no que son e nós no que somos.
We've been neighbors for a very long time. No one would mistake these elephants as being relaxed. They're obviously very concerned about something. What are they concerned about? It turns out that if you record the voices of tourists and you play that recording from a speaker hidden in bushes, elephants will ignore it, because tourists never bother elephants. But if you record the voices of herders who carry spears and often hurt elephants in confrontations at water holes, the elephants will bunch up and run away from the hidden speaker. Not only do elephants know that there are humans, they know that there are different kinds of humans, and that some are OK and some are dangerous.
Fomos veciños por moito tempo. Ninguén diría que estes elefantes están relaxados. Están moi preocupados por algo. Que lles preocupa? Se gravades as voces dos turistas e as reproducides cun altofalante escondido nuns arbustos, os elefantes ignorarano porque non os molestan. Pero se gravades as voces dos pastores que levan lanzas e os feren en enfrontamentos nas áreas de auga, os elefantes agruparanse e fuxirán do altofalante oculto. Non só saben que hai humanos, saben que hai distintos tipos e que algúns son bos e outros perigosos.
They have been watching us for much longer than we have been watching them. They know us better than we know them. We have the same imperatives: take care of our babies, find food, try to stay alive. Whether we're outfitted for hiking in the hills of Africa or outfitted for diving under the sea, we are basically the same. We are kin under the skin. The elephant has the same skeleton, the killer whale has the same skeleton, as do we. We see helping where help is needed. We see curiosity in the young. We see the bonds of family connections. We recognize affection. Courtship is courtship. And then we ask, "Are they conscious?"
Estiveron observándonos máis tempo que nós a eles. Coñécennos mellor do que nós a eles. Temos os mesmos imperativos: coidar dos nosos bebés, atopar comida, manternos vivos. Tanto se nos equipamos para facer sendeirismo nas montañas de África ou para somerxernos no mar, somos os mesmos. Somos parentes baixo a pel. O elefante ten o mesmo esqueleto, a candorca ten o mesmo esqueleto ca nós. Vémolos axudar onde se necesita. Vemos curiosidade no novo. Vemos os lazos de conexións familiares. Recoñecemos o afecto. O cortexo é o cortexo. E preguntámonos: son conscientes?
When you get general anesthesia, it makes you unconscious, which means you have no sensation of anything. Consciousness is simply the thing that feels like something. If you see, if you hear, if you feel, if you're aware of anything, you are conscious, and they are conscious.
Cando vos poñen anestesia xeral, quedades inconscientes, polo que non sentides nada. A consciencia séntese coma algo. Se vedes, oídes, sentides, dádesvos conta de algo, sodes conscientes e eles son conscientes.
Some people say well, there are certain things that make humans humans, and one of those things is empathy. Empathy is the mind's ability to match moods with your companions. It's a very useful thing. If your companions start to move quickly, you have to feel like you need to hurry up. We're all in a hurry now. The oldest form of empathy is contagious fear. If your companions suddenly startle and fly away, it does not work very well for you to say, "Jeez, I wonder why everybody just left."
Algúns din que hai cousas que fan humanos ós humanos e unha delas é a empatía. A empatía é a facultade de comprender o estado anímico dos compañeiros. É algo moi útil. Se os vosos compañeiros se moven rápido, sentides que necesitades apurarvos. Todos temos présa agora. A forma máis antiga de empatía é contaxiar o medo. Se os vosos compañeiros se asustan e foxen, non sería útil pensar "pregúntome por que todos marcharon".
(Laughter)
Empathy is old, but empathy, like everything else in life, comes on a sliding scale and has its elaboration. So there's basic empathy: you feel sad, it makes me sad. I see you happy, it makes me happy.
A empatía é vella, pero a empatía, como todo na vida, ten distintos graos e a súa elaboración. Está a empatía básica: se estades tristes, síntome triste. Véxovos felices, síntome feliz.
Then there's something that I call sympathy, a little more removed: "I'm sorry to hear that your grandmother has just passed away. I don't feel that same grief, but I get it; I know what you feel and it concerns me."
Logo está o que chamo simpatía, un pouco máis distante: sinto que a túa avoa finara. Non sinto a mesma dor, pero enténdoa, sei o que sentes e preocúpome. E se estamos motivados para reaccionar á simpatía,
And then if we're motivated to act on sympathy, I call that compassion.
chámoo compaixón.
Far from being the thing that makes us human, human empathy is far from perfect. We round up empathic creatures, we kill them and we eat them. Now, maybe you say OK, well, those are different species. That's just predation, and humans are predators. But we don't treat our own kind too well either. People who seem to know only one thing about animal behavior know that you must never attribute human thoughts and emotions to other species. Well, I think that's silly, because attributing human thoughts and emotions to other species is the best first guess about what they're doing and how they're feeling, because their brains are basically the same as ours. They have the same structures. The same hormones that create mood and motivation in us are in those brains as well. It is not scientific to say that they are hungry when they're hunting and they're tired when their tongues are hanging out, and then say when they're playing with their children and acting joyful and happy, we have no idea if they can possibly be experiencing anything. That is not scientific.
Lonxe de ser o que nos fai humanos, a empatía humana está lonxe da perfección. Reunimos criaturas empáticas, matámolas e comémolas. Quizais pensedes "son especies diferentes. Só é depredación e o humano é depredador". Pero tampouco tratamos ben á nosa propia especie. Quen parece que só coñece algo sobre o comportamento animal, sabe que non se deben atribuír pensamentos e emocións humanos a outras especies. Creo que é unha parvada, porque atribuír pensamentos e emocións humanos a outras especies é a mellor e primeira idea sobre o que fan e senten, porque os seus cerebros son os mesmos cós nosos. Teñen as mesmas estruturas. As mesmas hormonas que crean o estado de ánimo e nos motivan, tamén están neses cerebros. Non é científico dicir que cando teñen fame, cazan ou que están cansos cando as súas linguas colgan e que cando xogan coas súas crías e están ledos e felices non temos nin idea de se están a experimentar algo. Iso non é científico.
So OK, so a reporter said to me, "Maybe, but how do you really know that other animals can think and feel?" And I started to rifle through all the hundreds of scientific references that I put in my book and I realized that the answer was right in the room with me. When my dog gets off the rug and comes over to me -- not to the couch, to me -- and she rolls over on her back and exposes her belly, she has had the thought, "I would like my belly rubbed. I know that I can go over to Carl, he will understand what I'm asking. I know I can trust him because we're family. He'll get the job done, and it will feel good."
Un xornalista díxome: como sabes que os animais poden pensar e sentir? Comecei a buscar nos centos de referencias científicas que puxen no meu libro e comprendín que a resposta estaba no cuarto comigo. Cando a miña cadela deixa a alfombra e vén onda min, non ó sofá, a min e dá a volta sobre o lombo e expón o seu ventre, ela pensou "quero que me rasquen o ventre. Sei que podo ir onda Carl. El entenderá o que lle pido. Sei que podo confiar nel porque somos familia. Fará o traballo e sentireime ben".
(Laughter)
Ela pensou e sentiu,
She has thought and she has felt, and it's really not more complicated than that.
e non é máis complicado ca iso. Pero vemos a outros animais e dicimos:
But we see other animals and we say, "Oh look, killer whales, wolves, elephants: that's not how they see it."
"candorcas, lobos, elefantes. Non o ven así".
That tall-finned male is L41. He's 38 years old. The female right on his left side is L22. She's 44. They've known each other for decades. They know exactly who they are. They know who their friends are. They know who their rivals are. Their life follows the arc of a career. They know where they are all the time.
Ese macho da aleta alta é L41. Ten 38 anos. A femia á súa esquerda é L22. Ten 44 anos. Coñécense desde hai décadas. Saben quen son eles. Saben quen son os seus amigos. Quen son os seus rivais. A súa vida segue unha traxectoria. Saben onde están todo o tempo.
This is an elephant named Philo. He was a young male. This is him four days later. Humans not only can feel grief, we create an awful lot of it. We want to carve their teeth. Why can't we wait for them to die? Elephants once ranged from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope. In 1980, there were vast strongholds of elephant range in Central and Eastern Africa. And now their range is shattered into little shards. This is the geography of an animal that we are driving to extinction, a fellow being, the most magnificent creature on land.
Este elefante é Philo. Era un macho novo. Este é el catro días despois. Os humanos non só sentimos dor, tamén causamos moita. Queremos tallar os seus dentes. Por que non podemos esperar a que morran? Os elefantes habitaban desde a beira do Mar Mediterráneo ata o cabo de Boa Esperanza. En 1980 había grandes redutos de elefantes en África central e oriental. E agora o seu hábitat está desfeito en pequenos fragmentos. Esta é a xeografía dun animal ó que estamos extinguindo, Un compañeiro, a criatura máis magnífica da terra.
Of course, we take much better care of our wildlife in the United States. In Yellowstone National Park, we killed every single wolf. We killed every single wolf south of the Canadian border, actually. But in the park, park rangers did that in the 1920s, and then 60 years later they had to bring them back, because the elk numbers had gotten out of control. And then people came. People came by the thousands to see the wolves, the most accessibly visible wolves in the world.
Claro que coidamos máis a nosa fauna nos Estados Unidos. No Parque Nacional de Yellowstone, matamos todos os lobos. Matamos todos os lobos ó sur da fronteira con Canadá. Pero no parque, os vixías fixérono nos anos 20 e 60 anos despois tiveron que traelos, porque a poboación de alces estaba descontrolada. Logo veu a xente. Miles de persoas viñeron ver os lobos, os máis visibles e accesibles do mundo.
And I went there and I watched this incredible family of wolves. A pack is a family. It has some breeding adults and the young of several generations. And I watched the most famous, most stable pack in Yellowstone National Park. And then, when they wandered just outside the border, two of their adults were killed, including the mother, which we sometimes call the alpha female. The rest of the family immediately descended into sibling rivalry. Sisters kicked out other sisters. That one on the left tried for days to rejoin her family. They wouldn't let her because they were jealous of her. She was getting too much attention from two new males, and she was the precocious one. That was too much for them. She wound up wandering outside the park and getting shot. The alpha male wound up being ejected from his own family. As winter was coming in, he lost his territory, his hunting support, the members of his family and his mate.
Eu fun alí e vin esta incrible familia. Unha manda é unha familia. Ten adultos reprodutores e novos de varias xeracións. Vin a manda máis estable e famosa do Parque Nacional de Yellowstone. Cando vagaban fóra da fronteira, dous dos seus adultos foron asasinados, a nai incluída, á que ás veces chamamos femia alfa. O resto da familia sumiuse nunha rivalidade entre irmáns. As irmás expulsaban a outras irmás. Esa da esquerda intentou durante días volver coa súa familia. Non llo permitiron porque tiñan celos. Estaba chamando a atención de dous machos novos e ela era a precoz. Iso foi demasiado para elas. Acabou vagando fóra do parque e recibindo un disparo. O macho alfa acabou expulsado da súa familia. Cando chegou o inverno, perdeu o seu territorio, o seu apoio de caza, os membros da súa familia e a súa parella.
We cause so much pain to them. The mystery is, why don't they hurt us more than they do? This whale had just finished eating part of a grey whale with his companions who had killed that whale. Those people in the boat had nothing at all to fear. This whale is T20. He had just finished tearing a seal into three pieces with two companions. The seal weighed about as much as the people in the boat. They had nothing to fear. They eat seals. Why don't they eat us? Why can we trust them around our toddlers? Why is it that killer whales have returned to researchers lost in thick fog and led them miles until the fog parted and the researchers' home was right there on the shoreline? And that's happened more than one time.
Causámoslles moita dor. O misterio é por que non nos fan máis dano? Esta candorca acababa de comer parte dunha foca gris cos seus compañeiros, quen a mataran. Esa xente do bote non tiña nada que temer. Esta candorca é T20. Acababa de partir unha foca en tres con dous compañeiros. A foca pesaba tanto coma a xente do bote. Non tiñan nada que temer. Aliméntanse de focas. Por que non nos comen? Por que podemos confiarlles os nosos fillos? Por que as candorcas van por investigadores perdidos na néboa e os guían durante quilómetros ata que a néboa desaparece e o seu fogar aparece aí, na costa? Isto pasou máis dunha vez.
In the Bahamas, there's a woman named Denise Herzing, and she studies spotted dolphins and they know her. She knows them very well. She knows who they all are. They know her. They recognize the research boat. When she shows up, it's a big happy reunion. Except, one time showed up and they didn't want to come near the boat, and that was really strange. And they couldn't figure out what was going on until somebody came out on deck and announced that one of the people onboard had died during a nap in his bunk. How could dolphins know that one of the human hearts had just stopped? Why would they care? And why would it spook them? These mysterious things just hint at all of the things that are going on in the minds that are with us on Earth that we almost never think about at all.
Nas Bahamas, unha muller, Denise Herzing, estuda os golfiños manchados e eles coñécena. Ela coñéceos moi ben. Sabe quen son todos. Eles coñécena. Recoñecen o barco de investigación. Cando aparece, é unha reunión feliz. Agás unha vez, ela chegou e eles non querían achegarse, o que era moi raro. Non sabían que pasaba ata que alguén saíu a cuberta e anunciou que unha das persoas a bordo finara durante unha sesta na súa liteira. Como sabían os golfiños que un dos corazóns humanos acababa de parar? Por que lles importaba? E por que os asustou? Estes misterios apuntan a todo o que pasa nas mentes que están con nós na Terra sobre as que case nunca pensamos.
At an aquarium in South Africa was a little baby bottle-nosed dolphin named Dolly. She was nursing, and one day a keeper took a cigarette break and he was looking into the window into their pool, smoking. Dolly came over and looked at him, went back to her mother, nursed for a minute or two, came back to the window and released a cloud of milk that enveloped her head like smoke. Somehow, this baby bottle-nosed dolphin got the idea of using milk to represent smoke. When human beings use one thing to represent another, we call that art.
Nun acuario en Suráfrica había unha pequena cría de arroaz chamada Dolly. Estaba lactando e un día un vixiante nun descanso estaba a mirar pola fiestra á súa piscina, fumando. Dolly achegouse e mirouno, foi onda a nai, lactou un minuto ou dous volveu á fiestra e soltou unha nube de leite que lle cubriu a cabeza como o fume. Dalgún xeito, esta cría de arroaz tivo a idea de usar leite para representar o fume. Cando os humanos usan algo para representar outra cousa, chamámolo arte.
(Laughter)
O que nos fai humanos non é o que cremos que nolo fai.
The things that make us human are not the things that we think make us human. What makes us human is that, of all these things that our minds and their minds have, we are the most extreme. We are the most compassionate, most violent, most creative and most destructive animal that has ever been on this planet, and we are all of those things all jumbled up together. But love is not the thing that makes us human. It's not special to us. We are not the only ones who care about our mates. We are not the only ones who care about our children.
O que nos fai humanos é que, de todo o que as nosas mentes e as súas teñen, nós somos os máis extremos. Somos os máis compasivos, os máis violentos, os máis creativos e o animal máis destrutivo que houbo neste planeta. e somos todo iso xunto. Pero o amor non é o que nos fai humanos. Non é especial para nós. Non somos os únicos que nos preocupamos polos demais. Non somos os únicos que nos preocupamos polos nosos fillos.
Albatrosses frequently fly six, sometimes ten thousand miles over several weeks to deliver one meal, one big meal, to their chick who is waiting for them. They nest on the most remote islands in the oceans of the world, and this is what it looks like. Passing life from one generation to the next is the chain of being. If that stops, it all goes away. If anything is sacred, that is, and into that sacred relationship comes our plastic trash. All of these birds have plastic in them now. This is an albatross six months old, ready to fledge -- died, packed with red cigarette lighters.
Os albatros voan nove, ás veces 16.000 quilómetros durante semanas para entregar unha comida, unha gran comida, ás súas crías que os esperan. Aniñan nas illas máis remotas dos océanos do mundo e así é como son. Pasar a vida dunha xeración a outra é a cadea do ser. Se se para, todo remata. Se hai algo sagrado, é isto, e a esa relación sagrada chega o noso lixo de plástico. Todos estes paxaros teñen plástico neles. Este é un albatros de seis meses listo para emplumar, morto, cheo de chisqueiros vermellos.
This is not the relationship we are supposed to have with the rest of the world. But we, who have named ourselves after our brains, never think about the consequences. When we welcome new human life into the world, we welcome our babies into the company of other creatures. We paint animals on the walls. We don't paint cell phones. We don't paint work cubicles. We paint animals to show them that we are not alone. We have company. And every one of those animals in every painting of Noah's ark, deemed worthy of salvation is in mortal danger now, and their flood is us.
Esta non é a relación que se supón que temos que ter co resto do mundo. Pero nós, que nos identificamos logo do noso cerebro, nunca pensamos nas consecuencias. Cando damos a benvida a un novo humano no mundo, damos a benvida ós nosos bebés na compañía doutras criaturas. Pintamos animais nas paredes. Non pintamos móbiles. Non pintamos espazos de traballo. Pintamos animais para amosarlles que non estamos sós. Temos compañía. E cada un deses animais en cada pintura da arca de Noé, considerados dignos de salvación está en perigo mortal agora, e o seu diluvio somos nós.
So we started with a question: Do they love us? We're going to ask another question. Are we capable of using what we have to care enough to simply let them continue?
Comezamos cunha pregunta: quérennos? Imos facer outra pregunta. Somos capaces de usar o que temos para coidalos o suficiente para deixalos continuar?
Thank you very much.
Moitas grazas.
(Applause)