To The Best Of Our Knowledge; Animal Crossings

From PRI, Public Radio International, it's to the best of our knowledge, I'm Jim Fleming. Today we go to the dogs, literally, as we probe the hearts and minds of our canine friends. I think dominance is an overused concept. So often, people assume their dog is being disobedient because they're not respecting you as alpha. And it's just fun. And we'll meet some more exotic pets. Everyone who met this pig adored him. It was amazing. I mean, when he was tiny, he was just so cute you couldn't help but love him. Later, when he got really big and weighed 750 pounds, he had real gravitas. Also, what chimps and gorillas tell us about our own evolutionary history and our capacity for empathy and imagination. There was a famous chimpanzee named Vicki who used to like to have a pretend pull toy. Would pull behind her this something nobody could see it, of course, this imaginary toy. This hour, the

bond between humans and animals in our homes and in the wild. Dave Foreman wasn't always a hell -raiser. Back in the 70s, he was a lobbyist for the wilderness society. But he got so angry at the failure to protect America's wild lands that he traded in his business suit for the tools of direct action. With the slogan, no compromise from other earth, Foreman became the most notorious environmental activist in America. And the co -founder of the Radical Group Earth First, Foreman's band of monkey wrenches spiked trees to bust the chainsaws of loggers, sabotaged their bulldozers, and blockaded the construction of new roads. Eventually, Dave Foreman came to see these tactics as counterproductive. Today, he runs a nonprofit think tank called the rewilding institute. Steve Paulson sat down with Foreman to talk about his radical past and his attempt to bring back wolves, grizzlies, and other large carnivores

to America's wilderness. When you relieve the top carnivores from an ecological system, it begins to have repercussions all the way down in the system, begins to break down. We also know that when large carnivores are restored back into an ecosystem, they begin to heal it. Yellowstone National Park is just a stunning example of that. Now that the wolves come back, what has changed since the wolves have been reintroduced to Yellowstone? Well, in Yellowstone, it's pretty remarkable. They were killed out in 1930 by the park service. And during that time, for 70 years, no aspens have grown up. The willows have disappeared from the streams. The beavers in Yellowstone disappeared. And it was because the wolves were not managing the elk populations. The elk got big fat, lazy, not worried about anything. They became really meadow potatoes, and laying out in the meadows,

overbrowsing the willows, overbrowsing the aspens. But when the wolves were restored in 1995, suddenly the elk woke up. They were being pursued again. They were having to hide in the tall timber. And while the wolves have not really decreased the population that much, they've radically changed the behavior. And so now willows are coming back in, along the streams of beavers have reestablished themselves for the first time in 80 years, aspens are growing up to tree size again. Then recent research shows that the wolves killing off the coyotes has allowed a greater diversity and abundance of various rodents. Which has led to a greater diversity and abundance of smaller carnivores like badgers, foxes, weasels, martens, that type of thing. So it's a fabulous experience. Now I would think that the difficulty with this is a lot of these top carnivores. The really the big predators, grizzlies, wolves, jaguars need a lot of space to roam. Well they do, and

that's the other part of rewiling. They not only need a lot of space, they need relatively secure space as their core habitat. We find out through many studies that road density is a main determinant of where you're going to find wolves or our cougars, whether it's the north woods of Wisconsin or southwestern United States where we have Mexican wolves back on the ground, because they're vulnerable to poaching. So they need large, roadless areas or lightly -rooted landscape as their core habitat. But obviously in the lower 48 states we don't have those places anymore. So then the third part of the rewilding idea is that we need landscape permeability between these core habitats. And that doesn't necessarily need to be perfect habitat. It just needs to be open enough, barrier -free enough, safe enough for wide -ranging species to move through it. You see you're talking about a corridor of

land that these animals can roam on to get from. Essentially one wilderness area to another. And we're sort of moving beyond the idea of corridors, except in highly developed places, because a corridor sounds like a hallway or something, to an idea of landscape permeability, which forest -service researchers in the state of Washington have developed. And the animals will actually know where to go. I mean, if this land is available, that's one of the criticisms of corridors. Well, how do they know to use these corridors? Well, obviously try to base them on their habitat preferences. But if you have landscape permeability, they are going to find the safe places. They're going to find the routes. They're a lot smarter than we are in many ways. And so what you try to do is overcome highway barriers. There's a lot of science now on what kind of underpasses or overpasses, different species of wildlife will use. Really? So in other words, so you might have a wolf population that lives right near

a highway. What they, what they may be is they have part of their habitat is on both sides of a highway. And they periodically go under the highway. Interesting thing is that deer or elk require a much more open, spacious, well -lided underpass to go through and do wolves or cougars. Black bears will even go through culverts. But the deer and elk are nervous because there might be a predator on the other side of it. But this has been figured out to a remarkable extent. Now strategically, what is your goal behind this rewilding project? Are you actually trying to buy land? So you can essentially turn it wild again? We're trying to be the catalyst for that. We're trying to work with nature conservancy and land trust. When they look at possible land purchases or easements, they take into account landscape permeability for wolves and big horn

sheep. You know what I find interesting as you talk about this whole process and working with these various governmental agencies and mainstream conservation groups is it sounds like quite a departure from from some of the things that you used to do. And anyone who knows about your background, you know, you were at the forefront of what was typically called the radical environmental group earth first. I was reading a magazine profiles of you and typically you were described as the most environmental extremist out there. Has your philosophy changed? Well, certainly my philosophy of what is effective has changed. Many aspects of earth first were completely overshadowed by its sensational nature. The tree spiking to bust the the saws by the timber industry, the sabotaging the bulldoze and the blockades and everything else. But actually earth first, one of its original principles was to try to bring ecological considerations into conservation. And in fact, through the earth first journal in the

1980s, which I edited, we sold copies of Michael Sulay, the founder of conservation biologies, first book. The academic publisher told me we sold more copies than any other single bookseller did. And they just became obvious that everything did not fit together. I was really beginning to question the effectiveness of a lot of this stuff. And frankly, it got out of hand. Now I have to ask you about one moment in your life. And now you're saying that you've moved on from this time, but when you were with earth first, and I guess there was one morning when you were lying in bed and of half a dozen FBI agents burst into your home and you woke up with a bunch of 357 magnums writing in your face. What happened? I'm lying there and I had my sleep mask on. It was a very hot morning in Tucson. I had nothing on. And I wake up and here these guys are in body armor with guns in

my face. And there's no snooze alarm on that. And so I was taken off. I had no idea what it was for. I later found out that it was because some people with an undercover FBI agent had tried to damage some power lines and another part of Arizona and that somehow I was charged with this conspiracy. You were being accused of being the ringleader. Well, no. No, I was accused of just having conspired with him. And basically what it came out to was that the undercover FBI agent had come to me and he portrayed himself as a Vietnam vet recovering alcoholic. He played a really good game. And I sympathized with him and he said, listen, I've gotten into this situation. I don't know what to do. And so he laid out sort of the plot. And I said, well, what are you guys trying to accomplish? Who's your

audience? What's the message? And I tried to discourage him. But because he had told me the plot and I didn't turn them in, that made me part of the conspiracy. You're saying that the FBI agent was actually the one who can't mean the undercover FBI agent was actually the one who came up with the idea of sabotaging this. Well, he was the one who told me about it. He also drove the rest of the people in his pickup truck with his gas to the site to do it. But as it turned out through a trial and the other people were able to do plea bargains, the upshot was that the US Attorney's Office moved to dismiss all charges against me. And so I like to say that I'm one of the very few people around certified by the Department of Justice, not to be a criminal. They spent $3 million on this. And it was to try to take me out. And it was basically to try to discredit you. Oh, sure. That's what I've heard. I mean, you were the most notorious environmentalist

out there. And they wanted to ruin you. They wanted to put you behind. Now, the irony was that when that happened in May of 1989, I had left Earth First quietly in 1988 to do other things and was no longer in any kind of leadership role in Earth First. And in fact, was not even identifying myself as that. So the irony was I had already gone when they decided to come down. But there was a very interesting experience. Now, how do you look back on, I mean, not just that particular experience, but those days and I mean, you wait, what we're really getting at is it's sort of the philosophy of how to be effective, how to be an activist. Right. What's your thinking about that? Well, again, you have to be strategic. You have to think about what your message is, who you're trying to reach, who's the best messenger, and those types of things. And I think so often in political activism of any

sort, right, left, you name it, people become so wrapped up in their faith that they forget how they're presenting themselves. They become true believers. They become true believers. You can have deep beliefs, ethical beliefs. You can really care for things, but you have to guard against becoming the true believer and demonizing your opponents. There. A poem by Mary Oliver. It's not my track, I say, seeing the ball of the foot and the wide heel and the naily, untrimmed toes. And I see

again for emphasis to no one but myself since no one is with me. This is not my track, and this is an extremely large foot. I wonder how large a body must be to make such a track. I am beginning to make bad jokes. I have read probably a hundred narratives where someone saw just what I am seeing. Various things happened next. A fairly long list, I won't go into it. But not one of them told what happened next, I mean before whatever happens, how the distances light up, how the clouds are the most lovely shapes you have ever seen, how the wild flowers at your feet begin distilling a fragrance different and sweeter than any you ever stood upon before, how every leaf and the whole mountain is a flutter. Coming up, the intimate bonds between

humans and animals, even pigs. People love to hear about a big fat pig, and then you get a chance to invite them to come over and feed your pig. I'm Jim Fleming, it's to the best of our knowledge from PRI, Public Radio International. Simon Gummary never planned on having a pet pig, it just worked out that way. That pig, with the unlikely name of Christopher Hogwood, became a treasured companion, not just to his owner, but to many people in the little town of Hancock, New Hampshire. Simon Gummary writes about her years with Christopher Hogwood in her book

The Good Good Pig. Eventually, Chris became a very large pig, but when he first came home, he was so tiny, he fit inside a shoebox. He was half the size of all the other runts at this pigery. Our friends, George and Mary Island had a farm in Marbon, New Hampshire, not far from our house, and every year we used to visit them when the moms would give birth to the sweet little baby pigs, and we would play with the piglets. About one year, 1990, that spring we didn't come, because I was beset and frantic and going back and forth between our house and Virginia, where my father was dying of cancer. It was a miserable, miserable time for me, everything that could go wrong was going wrong, but it was not as bad a spring as it was for Christopher Hogwood. He was a runt among runts, half the size of everybody else. He had every kind of disease a pig can seem to get, and yet he just wouldn't die, and he was too cute for Mary and George to kill him. I mean, they thought

every day they'd have to put him out of his misery, and they'd take him out to the manure pile with a shovel thinking they'd hit him over the head, they just couldn't do it, because he was such a sweetie. So instead of killing him, they called my husband, and my husband would not have even told me that they called offering a piglet, except he knew my heart was breaking with my father's death, and he knew the one thing that might cheer me up would be a sickly spotted runt. I gather that something about this pig got him immediately as well as you. I think he would have gotten you as well. Everyone who met this pig adored him. It was amazing. I mean, when he was tiny, he was just so cute, you couldn't help it. Love him. When he got big, he was just so big and greedy, you couldn't help but love him. But I mean, later when he got really big and weighed 750 pounds, he had real gravitas, you know, but he had a great loving character to him, and he had a mischievousness to him too that was

so appealing. So Howard fell in love with him just instantly, although he wouldn't let me bring the pig in the house ever, and that was probably a good thing. Well, if he was going to grow to be 750 pounds, that was probably the smartest thing he ever did. That's right. Although, you know, neither one of us thought that Chris would get that big. Mary kept telling us, oh, you know, he's such a runt. He'll probably never get very big, but he began his extraordinary growth curve after Howard warmed him, and then he started feeding him beer. I mean, not so much beer that he was drunk or anything. He was, you know, but he loved beer. In fact, he loved a lot of things. He had a great relationship with food, but Chris did have definite favorites of things he liked to eat and things he liked to avoid. He never liked any of the onions. He never liked leaks or scallions or red onion or never liked any of that. And if there were some in his slots, he would spit them out

if they got in his mouth. A really picky pig. He became even picky or later on. But as a youngster, we asked people to leave that out of the slops bucket when they would come and bring him food. And also, he didn't like citrus, any kind of citrus peel, or even the inside of the citrus. He didn't like oranges or grape fruits or lemons. None of that. And we made him a vegetarian pig. We didn't want him to eat meat. One, I'm a vegetarian. My husband's Jewish. That's why the pig was so calm all the time. But besides that, we really didn't want him eating meat because we didn't want him to know he could eat us. So I gather Christopher was something of an escape artist. Oh, he sure was. He had a genius for getting out of his pen. And he would get out to go visit people. He would go visit people's lettuce garden. He would visit their children. He would go around the block. He knew more people than I did. And in fact, he ended up introducing me to a lot of of our neighbors. People love to hear about a big fat pig. And then

you get a chance to invite them to come over and feed your pig. Which I mean, it doesn't sound like that exciting, but you know, we didn't have a movie theater in Hancock. Actually watching a pig eat is a great experience. You can't watch anyone enjoy themselves this much. It's just a delight. He was like a performance artist when it came to eating. And people would stand back and just watch this. And they love to hand feed him too. And that was a great thing because he enjoyed being hand fed. And then this progress. I wouldn't think that that would be particularly appealing because he was a big, a big animal. And at one point had tusks. I'm not sure I'd want to put my hand anywhere near a feeding pig at that point. Well, you wouldn't want to put your hand in his mouth. But if you had like one of those baseball bat -sized zucchinis that always urps up out of the garden in August, that was a great item to hand feed him because you could hold it and still be several feet away from him. And he would bite this. And he'd want you to keep holding onto the other end. And he'd chew it. And then he'd

bite it again. And he would use your hand essentially like a human dino uses a knife. And for he really liked that. And of course, none of this has ever been able to figure out what to do with those zucchini in August anyway. Well, you'd need a pig. He also liked to have small objects thrown into his mouth like you'd toss a basketball into a hoop. And he would hold his mouth open with his lips quivering in anticipation and wait for you to toss in the cupcake and toss in the apple. And he just adored it. And he knew you enjoyed watching him too because he would watch you. A pig's eyes are very expressive. I gather he had something of the same effect on others as well. You had some neighbor girls who came very young to Christopher even before they had anybody else I gathered to care very much about. Yeah, this was Kate and Jane who moved next door because their mom was having really gruesome awful divorce from their dad. And in the divorce, they had lost their home which the girls had grown

up in and loved. And they were forced to rent this kind of old, cold farmhouse which was next door to us. And they didn't want to be there. And they were just sick at the thought of other little girls moving into their house and putting their dolls where Kate and Jane had their stuffed animals. And they were just in a terrible mood the first time they saw the house and realized they were going to have to live there. But then they saw this black and white thing shoot out of the barn and they thought, oh, it's a pony. Can we go see? And they ran across the stone wall separating our two properties and they saw it was better than a pony. It was a pig. And instantly we all became such good friends. But of course, there is a kind of natural lifespan to a pig's life. I guess what eventually happened to Christopher Hogwood? Well, God willing, this should happen to all of us. He died in his sleep. After a really good dinner and I closed him in and I told him I loved him, I always did. And on a beautiful spring morning, he was just gone.

And always people had asked, you know, how long does a pig live? Well, I'll pig typically live six months because sausage pigs are raised. So he had outlived all of his brothers and sisters by 13 and a half years. He'd had a really good life. But it was still just a shock for me. When someone like that is in your life, it leaves a really big void. 750 pounds gone out of your life is a really big void. He was pretty well known in the community by then. How did people react to his death? I was really shocked by this taken aback and deeply moved. We got so many flowers from people, cut flowers that we filled up every pickled jar and all the vases in the house. We got plants sent to us a hibiscus, the size of a cruise missile, a cherry tree, a giant astilbees. People brought food like they do when a person dies. Chris really would like the brownies. And we got

phone calls and letters and emails from around the world, literally because people knew him not just from having met him. But we used to send out Christmas cards, like normal people do of their children, but we'd send out Christmas cards of our pig. And so people knew him all over the world. It was not until after he died that I even realized how much he met to a number of people and why. So I was grateful to him yet again even after death. He kept bringing me more stories and more love even after he died. Were you tempted to have a service for him? Well, we sort of did. One of the little girls next door, both now beautiful young women, Kate Cabot and her mother, Lilla, drove up from Connecticut where they were then living. And we had sort of a service. We took the petals that had fallen from all of the beautiful flowers people had sent. And we put them over his grave and we all just sort of said thank you and thanked him for so

many things, thanking him for his beautiful deep grunts and thanking him for always being our friend. And the little girls used to go out and cry at his pen when they had a hard day. I didn't even know this. And I would too. Thank you for listening and thank you for letting us watch you have such a loving happy life. Every hour we spent together, lived within my heart. And when she was sad, I was there to dry her tears. And when she was happy, so sad, when she

loved me. If you've ever seen America's most famous dog trainer, don't forget that the energy is very important, right? If you touch this like hesitant and then they feel that you're hesitant about what you're doing. Oh, that's my problem. That's all I'm going to get that. You show weakness and they over. You show a certain nice people clap. That's Cesar Milan, also known as the dog whisperer. He may be the hot new thing in dog training, but his insistence on dominating your dog has its critics. One of them is zoologist Patricia McConnell, who has her own philosophy about how to train dogs. Patricia recently made a house call to Anne Strange Shams and her 10 -month -old Welsh corgi, Toby. Now I have to say there

are a few perks that come with being an interviewer onto the best of our knowledge, like getting a master dog trainer to come to your house to teach your dog a few tricks, which is exactly what Patricia McConnell did with Anne's dog Toby. McConnell is co -host of the public radio show Calling All Pets and the author of the book for the love of a dog. So now what have you noticed so far about Toby? You came in and you greeted him. He barked and then if you hadn't gotten down to his level he would have jumped up. So does he have any terrible defects so far? Oh, not a one. Toby off. Not a one. Go boy. Now did you see there when you set off? He did a little tongue flick? No. And that's a sign of either submission in a very friendly way or low -level anxiety. So he was responding to you saying Toby off. That little tongue flick, his little tongue came out for a little tiny second. And there was nothing wrong with that. It's just letting us know a little bit about what he's thinking and feeling inside. If he tongue flick and then left and went away and had his tail down and his ears a little back, that might be a little bit more

a case where he was feeling anxious about the situation. Now say his name. Toby. That was a very good boy. So his ears are up. Come on. Now do you see them back? So what is that when he jumped up and you went to pet him? That's friendly submission. Do you see his tongue just go out? I sort of hate to use the word submission just because it's such a loaded term and so many people now are talking about you have to get dominance over your dogs, an old -fashioned idea that I thought we dropped a long time ago. But when I say friendly submission, basically yes, there was a gun. There's his ears back and you'll say yes. A dog who is signaling friendly intentions, who is also signaling to you, I am not going to challenge you for any particular valuable resource. So let's just pretend I don't know what he knows. Okay. Toby, come sit. A very good boy. That's a very good boy. So I'm giving him little treats. And one of the things I love about him is that he's loving these little treats. Now they're pretty good ones. I made them myself.

They're beef stock and eggs and bacon fat and a whole wee flour and powdered milk. And you're giving him tiny little pieces because otherwise we're going to have a little fat Toby. So they don't have to be big but they have to be good. If I can just move around a little bit. He's liking these treats and that's great because because dogs frankly who like treats are easier to train. It's just there's just no way around it. So I'm just going to get down here with Mr. Toby and I'm going to ask him to lie down and I'm holding the treat down on the floor. So what I'm doing is I'm giving him our problem to solve. I have the treat held in my paw and I'm holding it right down here. Right underneath his chin and he's backing up. He's trying to figure out what he's about to lie down. It's harder with a good boy. See how he got the treat the second. Very good boy. Very nice. Good boy. I didn't say at that time. I just held the treat right down underneath him because I don't want to keep saying lie down if it's not going to

work and sometimes you have to go to plan B. One of the tricks about working with dogs as well as horses is not to mention people is to have a lot of tools in your toolbox. So let's try again. I'm not going to say the words L .I. is a very cute and that's very cute but we're just going to ignore that and I'm going to hold this down right below his nose until he goes, don't go boy. Sit. That's a good boy. Oh this is very difficult. Now he lay down and got the treat but he didn't know that you know he's not conscious of it yet. He's just sort of falling down almost almost just you are very cute. Now see what's happening right now is he's not being and this is so important. He's not being disobedient and so many people get so frustrated with their dogs. Good boy. He just lay down. Good boy. Good boy. Good boy. I'm giving you a jackpot. You see I just gave him five treats in a row. Oh we'll be teaching bummer. Good

boy. Teach him bummer. Put his head down on the floor. You say bummer and then he puts his head down. Bummer. You could teach the dogs just a circus load of tricks in three weeks. Good boy. Very nicely done. Oh very good boy. Very good boy. He's been here five minutes and he did not know the words lie down and now he lies down. Good boy. So I'm waiting for him to put his chin down on the ground because it's just too darn cute. Do you think dogs feel the same love for us that we do for them? That's a really good question. The same can't be quite. You can't be quite because they don't about past and future but do they feel something very very similar in a very primal biological way to our love? Oh yeah. You see dogs who are willing to risk their life because they I believe love their human so much. I was lucky enough to feel loved by a dog that intensely cool hand Luke and I had

what I describe as a love affair. He turned out to be an amazing dog an absolutely amazing ambassador. He loved everybody dogs and people and kids and and he saved my life and how did he save your life? I was being attacked by an enraged you female sheep which people are like sheep. Hello. How much damage can they do but if you actually work with them as a matter of fact there was a couple in Wisconsin who were killed by one of their sheep, both of them they were killed. This you had horns and she just had a lamb and I went in to give her some grain and she went in to sort of red rage her amagnolo that part of your brain that mediates rage just kicked in and she literally her eyes literally turned reddish and she began attacking me and at the time I thought of calling you which you know this let me out of the barn girl here came in to give you grain but I couldn't she had horns. He was a Scottish black face. He had big horns. I couldn't get out. I'd go to the right and she'd go after me and it was a very

small space and she was smashing into me and I didn't think that much of it except I kept trying to get out and I couldn't get out and she finally got me with her horn and ripped my thigh and I was beginning to think this is like not the videotape I rented but I literally was Saturday morning my husband was gone I was alone I was alone nobody would even know anything happened to me until Monday and I was starting to think okay this is just not what I had planned here and this getting serious and then I heard thwap and Luke leapt over this four and a half foot wooden stall jumped in got in between me and calling bit her off now remember when they attack you they're going at you with their hard bony forehead so he would bite at her forehead and actually lost the bottom fortieth that were broken off because her forehead was so hard and he kept her back until I got out and then he leapt out behind me so he really did risk his own life for years he really did and she could have killed him yeah she I mean he weighed 42 pounds and he'd work sheep enough that my belief and it's just a belief but it's a reasonable one is that he was well aware

of the danger he was in if you watch hurting dogs work they're afraid to get in between the wall and a aggressive animal one thing people talk about a lot these days is this guy the dog whisperer yeah I know so many people who have dogs who are constantly saying to me well the dog whisperer says this and the dog whisperer says that what do other dog trainers think of the dog whisperer it depends but there's a consensus among applied behaviors like I am that one this is a man with a lot of talent I mean this guy has an amazing presence he's just and that affects dogs it really really does and I give him an incredible amount of credit for that however you can't teach presence you know and I love that Caesar encourages people to get their dogs more exercise I love it I wish he'd add on mental exercise but I love I mean so right dogs need more exercise and there be a lot of problems that didn't exist if they got more I completely agree with that I completely agree that dogs need boundaries

you know there are spoiled dogs out there just like they're spoiled kids and I don't think they're happy dogs what I don't agree with and what the applied behavior said I know and many many dog trainers don't agree with is his advice about the fact that you have to get dominance over your dog in one of the ways to do that is to force them physically onto their backs and to force them into submission I've seen far too many people get bitten doing that Caesar can get away with it partly when other people can't because he has so much presence do you think it's a good idea to try to get dominance over your dog it's just that the way he teaches people to do it is risky for the person I think dominance is an overused concept so often people assume their dog is being disobedient because they're not respecting the hierarchy they're not respecting you as alpha and that's just wrong dogs don't not come when you call because they don't respect you as a pack leader there's no noise that a pack leader wolf or dog makes that says okay if all all dogs stop every dog come running back to me there's no such thing in a dog language so most of the disobedient quote

what people call disobedience that people have with their dogs is misinterpreted what I disagree with Caesar about is I would never suggest say the dog wells at you some people would suggest that you grab that dog and roll him over on his back and have basically a dog fight right there and I strongly advise against that for a number of reasons one it's dangerous they have carpet knives in their mouth and some of them are willing to use them and you don't even if you did you probably wouldn't be willing to use them it's not safe to start a fight with a dog yet also I don't like what it teaches a dog it teaches a dog either to do what you say because he's afraid of you or intimidated by you I mean you can have a boss who gets you to work really hard because you love him and respect him or you can have a boss who scares you they both could work but which would work better who do you want to keep working for and who are you going to work for really the hardest you know so I strongly advise

people to avoid physical confrontations with their dogs you can use reinforcement like we did with Toby and you don't have to be frankly you don't have to be perfect to do that the way that works is if they only get reinforced part of the time and your time is a little off still works great so you don't have to be the perfect dog trainer to get that to work when you're using punishment punishment only works if you do it at exactly the right level and 100 % of the time and so if you're not a professional trainer using punishment is much harder and you can damage your dog you can scare your dog you can hurt your dog or what most people do is they habituate their dog to graduating levels of right we start nagging our dogs so then you've got you've just up to the level of violence in the house between you and your dog that's right that's right so I would argue the first thing people need to learn to do is to is to how to use principles of positive reinforcement and again it's not rocket science it's really not look how fast we taught Toby to lie down who is by the way likely exhausted

speaking of being able to mentally tire at your dog this dog is a limp yeah he's just sacked out on the floor there that's funny thank you Patricia you're welcome that's zoologist and behaviorist Patricia McConnell co -host to the public radio show calling all pets and author of the book for the love of a dog and strange champs is happy to report that Toby still knows how to lie down and her kids are now teaching him to roll over if you want to see that recipe for homemade dog treats you'll find it on our website at ttbook .org do chimps and gorillas show the first signs of religious behavior in a minute we'll meet a primatologist who says they do and chimflemming it's the

best of our knowledge from PRI public radio how far back can we trace the roots of religion most scholars would look back to our human ancestors 20 to 40 ,000 years ago to ancient burial sites and cave paintings the primatologist barberj king goes back further much further in her book evolving god she argues that the rudimentary qualities of religion can be seen in the great apes it's provocative theory

king argues that religion didn't start out as a set of beliefs rather it's rooted in our emotional engagement with each other and our capacity for empathy and imagination and those qualities which is also our integral to the lives of gorillas and chimpanzees king has been studying ape and monkey behavior for the last two decades we can see that way back in our past literally millions of years ago in our past we have some practices that are visible to us in the archaeological record that reflect religion or at least the deepest roots of religion and when we look at apes today they're pretty good stand -ins for those very early human ancestors so in other words what I have been looking at for years when I go to the national zoo in Washington or when I spend time even in Kenya looking at monkeys it's very social it's about emotional connection and social processes that I think are at the roots of religion the very ancient roots of religion so you're not saying that the great apes you

study are religious or that they have spiritual lives but they show behavior certain emotional connections that are required if you're going to develop religion that's right and in fact if I speak to a group of people about that I start out by saying no I'm not suggesting that apes are in fact I have to say that because Jane Goodall who of course is such renowned and loved figure across the world for her chimpanzee studies has said very provocatively that she thinks chimpanzees may have an incipient sense of religious awe for example when she comes upon them looking at a waterfall something in nature that is amazing to them that they're riveted and she's wondering what's going through their mind and she's wondering if they may be spiritual in some sense I think that's a fascinating idea but that's not my approach I don't look at apes and look for things that are religious I look at their behavior and specifically for different kinds of behavior and I then relate those to the very foundation of what later became

religion what are those four kinds of behavior they're meaning -making imagination empathy and following the rules together I think they give us a sense of what religion might have started out to be and the apes have bits and pieces of all these four things but they don't have them together in a coherent pattern that adds up to religious behavior it's a pretty provocative idea that apes somehow create meaning how do they go about doing this I see them coming together and really transforming each other as they act the smallest gesture or eye gaze can cause one ape to shift its behavior towards the other and they kind of converge or negotiate on a meaning that's what I call meaning -making give me an example of that okay often there's some kind of conflict over let's say some food in the guerrilla group that I've been studying now since the year 2000 and there

may be a fight or a tussle but things don't play out the same way every time so let's say there's a female in a male who are fighting with each other and the male runs off with the food and the female hits him as he goes by and this is a fairly typical thing that happens with guerrillas the female will try to get in a squat at the male what happens next very much depends on the mood of the two participants what happened that morning how much sleep they had how feisty they're feeling so the female may walk up to the male and put her arm around his shoulders and look in his eyes and that's a very reconciling type of gesture alternatively the male may be really annoyed and just start hitting back at the female and they escalate into some type of a fight in other words they affect each other every minute and they shift very very subtly and together that's meaning -making okay now you mentioned empathy as well are chimpanzees and guerrillas empathic creatures yes they are and many people may remember an incident that happened 10 years ago with the Chicago's Brookfield Zoo when empathy of guerrillas came to worldwide notice there was a

female called bintijua who was sitting with her guerrilla family when a toddler unfortunately tumbled into the enclosure at that zoo to the real horror of onlookers here's this little kid lying on the pavement with these large guerrillas she had an infant on her body she walked over picked up this human boy carried him to the caretakers on the zoo staff and got him to safety i think there's lots of examples too in the wild from africa shall i tell you one yeah tell me about one of this there was a chimpanzee female named tina who was killed by a bite to the neck by a leopard and she'd been living with the group of chimpanzees for quite a long time and had her family there when her body was kind of there in the middle of this group they didn't just pull out at her tug at her go on their way or ignore it rather the dominant male of the group came and sat with her body for between five and seven hours and he kept away all the other infants from the body and kind of protected the body from any kind of annoyance or harm with one exception he

let through the younger brother of tina who was called tarzan a five -year -old that's the only youngster who was allowed to come forward and the youngster sat at his sister's side and pulled on her hand and touched her body and i think again that this is not just a random occurrence that the dominant male was able to recognize the close emotional bond that tina and tarzan had and acted on the basis of that recognition and acted in fact empathically you also talked about apes having an imaginative life which again sounds rather provocative yeah i spent some time at the language research center at georgia state university at the invitation of su savajrambao who was a well -known premitologist and biologist and i worked with the group of bonobos there they're very chimpanzee -like great apes and extremely intelligent and when i was watching them i noticed that not only were they very tuned into each other and very emotional with each other but they were doing some things that i didn't always understand and i talked to su about this and she explained that one of

the apes i was watching was female who couldn't herself have children and that female would often act in ways that seem to be sort of beyond even adoption behaviors with other infants she would for example take a squirrel and strap it across her belly as mothers do when they're carrying their young this is something that su explained to me and apparently enter into some sort of imaginary relationship with this other animal as if she had an infant well it sounds like a child with an imaginary playmate yeah and if you bring great apes into the home which thankfully we don't do anymore but people did in the fifties and sixties you see much childlike play there was a famous chimpanzee named vicki who used to like to have a pretend pull toy would pull behind her this something nobody could see it of course but she was very careful and precise in how she went around the house with this imaginary toy behind her well these are

fascinating behaviors but it's still not clear why you were looking at those to try to uncover the origins of religion well i think it's because it gets to this question of emotion and i think that emotion and transformation are at the heart of religion for me the question that you're asking turns on how i understand religion and in that way i want to be very careful to differentiate what we think of religion of today in twenty -first century america and how it evolved i'm really talking about the earliest origins of religion which was a social and emotional process so you're not talking about a set of beliefs because i think that is how most people would think about religion right and i'm glad you said that because it's exactly correct i'm not talking about a set of beliefs when i think about religion today the words and the senses that come to my mind are things like personal relationships with the supernatural with god compassionate action

not a set of things that you sit around and think about not necessarily books or texts that you read but some sort of action this is very much coming from Karen Armstrong's work who has affected me a great deal and in beginning to let go of that view that religion is about a bunch of things in our head that we have to feel and believe so if i'm going to think about religion in today's world is compassionate action that's well and good but how do you go out and look in prehistory for compassionate action that's the real question that i face as an anthropologist right well let me just back up for a moment because i might understand that you you don't want to get caught up in modern debates over belief and and even what we think about god but isn't the core of religion the sense that there is some transcendent realm out there something that is apart from the daily world that we experience oh yes most definitely but the emotional connection to that transcendent realm is what i am talking about and looking for

rather than a mental rational thinking up or formulating of beliefs about such a realm so in other words again to go back to that term that's so important to me embodied it's an embodied religion your whole way of being your whole way of becoming and living in the world is about the seamless connection between one world and another so it's a sense based religion and an emotion based religion okay i'm not going to ask you about whether you believe in god but i am going to ask do you consider yourself a religious person i consider myself a spiritual person because of the way that i feel when i'm around animals particularly and apes perhaps especially the idea that i am here in this world with other beings who are in different degrees conscious makes me feel part of a very big picture that causes me to feel very comfortable saying i'm a spiritual

person barber j king is an anthropologist at the college of William & Mary she talked with Steve Paulson about her book evolving god it's to the best of our knowledge and Jim Fleming if you'd like to comment on what you've heard we'd love to hear from you send us email through our website at ttbook .org you can buy a CD of the show by calling the radio store at 1 -800 -747 -7444 ask for the program animal crossings it's number 1 -21 -A to the best of our knowledge is produced at Wisconsin Public Radio this hour was put together by Steve Paulson with help from Mary Lou Finnegan Doug Gordon and Strange Shamps Veronica Rickert and Charles Monroe Kane our technical director is Carillo and