December 30, 2013

Animal Instinct

54 minutes

Mooooove over, make way for the cows, the chickens … and other animals! Humans can learn a lot from our hairy, feathered, four-legged friends. We may wear suits and play Sudoku, but Homo sapiens are primates just the same. We’ve met the animal, and it is us.

Discover the surprising similarity between our diseases and those that afflict other animals, including pigs that develop eating disorders. Plus, what the octopus can teach us about national security … how monkeying around evolved into human speech … and the origins of moral behavior in humans.

Guests:

Rafe Sagarin – Marine ecologist, Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona, author of Learning From the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz – Professor of cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, and co-author of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing

Kathryn Bowers – Writer, co-author of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing

Asif Ghazanfar – Neuroscientist, psychologist, Princeton University

Christopher Boehm – Biological and cultural anthropologist at the University of Southern California, director of the Jane Goodall Research Center, author of Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame

Descripción en español

First released July 9, 2012

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By Big Picture Science

4.5

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