July 28, 2020 • 30 mins
Back in the early 20th century, retired teacher Wilhelm von Osten had a dream -- to exhibit the gifts of his brilliant horse, Clever Hans, to the world. Wilhelm believed Hans was capable of solving pretty advanced math problems, working out the sums in his head and communicating them to humans through a system of hooftaps. And Clever Hans took the German public by storm -- what could this mean? If animals like Hans were this intelligent, could they also have a consciousness or a soul? Some people were over the moon about Hans... and others remained unconvinced.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. We are recording on what was
once called Friday, and what a week it's been. Uh.
This is an episode that I think all three of
us have been looking forward to, and we kept we
kept needing to push it off further and further. So
(00:49):
we've had a lot of time to think about weird
tangents and that may show up in today's episode. Uh my,
my weird tangent for this is related to peep Show.
I love it, Mitchell and Webb production. Uh, the entire time,
always watching Peep Show, I was certain that one of
the characters was named Super Hand, like his hands were
(01:10):
super anyway, I'm Ben, I'm no, yeah, but in fact
he's Super Hans, like the German name, the name that
I associate with Hans Brinker and the silver skates. Do
you know that story? Yeah? I think more Hans a Gretel,
but yeah, the silver skates. What's that? I I don't
remember what happens and m I just know he's he's
a he's an ice skater and he has these silver skates.
(01:31):
And they're somehow blessed with the power of the gods.
Then there's Hans Christian Anderson. He's a big as well. Right. Uh,
who's you have? We've got Hans Zimmer. Uh, the famous
film composer, Hans and Franz. That's yeah, well that one
has an aged very well. That one's a stereotype. But
you know always ages very well. As our super producer
(01:54):
Casey Pegram. You know, no, I always think of Hans
and Gretel. Uh, hansl Wait, it's Hans and but you
can call him Hans for sure, no doubt. If you're
if you're friends, right, Uh, yeah, it's it's strange. I
think it's a cool nickname. We actually have a new
coworker in our virtual office named Hans. I believe am
(02:14):
I making that up? We have a Hans. You've got
a Hans. He's he's in charge of all the Will
Ferrell stuff, the Big Money Players network. That's right, That's right,
We'll go you Hans. Uh. Hans is a great name.
I still think super hands. It's a funny name. Today's
episode is about a Hans, a very intelligent Hans, Hans
(02:36):
who was so intelligent in fact, that he was known
as Clever Hans uh, and it was all due to
his mathematical prowess. I don't know how cool would it be,
like if you had a descriptor for your name like
blank case your blank knoll or uh blank bend, like
you know, magnificent casey or uh numismatic Noel. I don't
(02:59):
know that's that's like it sounds like the type of
nickname one might give themselves, and the hopes that people
did not realize that was the case. But that was
definitely not the case with Clever Hans because surprise, surprise,
Clever Hans not a human a horse, right, A horse
is a horse? Of course, of course, remember Mr Ed.
(03:20):
I think they made him look like he was talking
by putting peanut butter on his teeth, so he would
like eat the peanut butter off his teeth and then
they would like, you know, do bad like lip syncy
kind of horse lines. Well, a lot of the a
lot of the plot points seemed relatively anticlimactic upon a rewatch,
But you know, I missed those days where TV executives
(03:41):
were apparently like just catch us on a good day
and throws the craziest things you can imagine at us
we might say yes to what kind of like how
podcasting used to be. But things things are tightening up
a little bit, I would say, largely for the better.
But speaking of you know, golden times, you know, for culture. Uh,
there was a time in the early twentieth century when
(04:03):
the public was fascinated with this idea of wonder animals,
which were domesticated animals that could do everything from uh,
solve riddles, um, do math problems, even somehow you know,
have discourse with their owners about things as high minded
as as philosophy, or even predict the weather in some
(04:26):
cases tell people's fortunes by you know, pulling a strip
of paper with a message on it, forth from some
collection of strips of paper. This story takes place in
that era, in the realm of the wonder animal fad.
It's almost it was almost too extreme to be known
as of fad because it was so prevalent, was so
(04:48):
ubiquitous at the time. So Hans, as you said, Noel
is a horse, and according to the public at the time,
he was a very very, very very lever horse. According
to a German math teacher named Wilhelm Vaughan, Austin. Just
(05:08):
see that's the right pronunciation. Is it with an O?
Or with it? Probably with an oh? Isn't it Osten?
Maybe it's astin Osten. There we go, it's got that Austen. Yeah.
So Vaughan Ousten is is a guy who is determined
to prove the full potential for intelligence in the animal kingdom.
(05:30):
And he went through a number of phases, a couple
of also rans. Right. He he taught a cat, or
he tried to teach a cat and a bear how
to add and then he came up with his like
crowning success, which was this horse Hans. And we have
to mention too that before this time, psychologist and the
(05:50):
general public, experts and layman alike didn't really think about
whether animals had all those kind of those cognitive pieces
that we just considered part of the human existence, like emotions, consciousness, intelligence.
I know, every pet owner out here is like, my
dog has all three or my cat is a monster
(06:12):
or something. Well, and you know we've talked about this
and got all the time. I mean, how humans kind
of have this desire to make everything human like and
to kind of anthropomorphize you know, animals. Um, that's why
I like animal cartoons that like walk around and where
pants are so popular. I remember that guy that that
drew the cats wearing pants. That was a huge craze
that we talked to Gabe about. I've already forgotten his
(06:34):
name because I'm a bad person, but I remember the
cats wearing pants and how popular they were, And it's
because people love to do that, to see ourselves in
cute and cuddly creatures, even when none of those traits exists. So,
for example, you know, we'd like to think that that
a horse or a raccoon or some other creature could
do these things and we are able to imbue them
(06:54):
with humanlike powers. But chances are they've been heavily trained
and are responding to very specific cues and are essentially
just you know, performing wrote tasks at the behest of
a trainer or master. Um. Not to spoil anything, but
this whole thing does kind of blow up, uh in
the face of of von Austin and also the whole
(07:16):
culture of animal wonder animals um as well. Yeah, so
Clever Hans is sort of the harbinger or the catalyst
for what would come to be this enormous wonder animal
fat or era. So in the early nineteen hundreds, Clever
Hans starts getting into the news, the media of the day, because,
(07:41):
as you would alluded to knowl he could solve math
problems or appear to do so, and pretty complex ones
like not just adding four plus seven plus nine divided
by two or something like that. But he could apparently
also do square roots and carry on simple conversations, all
by a primitive of uh form of communication. He would
(08:03):
tap his hoofs so, hey, Hans, how many garbonzo beans
are in this line? And Hans would be like and like,
WHOA three beans? That's amazing. And if I'm not mistaken,
when Mr Ed didn't want to be heard by other
humans besides his master, he would do stuff very similar
(08:24):
to that. If you wanted to communicate with Wilbur but
someone else is in the room, he would buck his
head or stomp his foot to like indicate. So I'm
pretty sure that that character was probably inspired by all
this wonder animal business. But that's just me conjecturing there. Yeah,
I think you're on the spot there, because the creators
had to be aware of it. Because Clever Hans is
early nineteen hundreds, Mr Ed is nineteen sixties. I still,
(08:48):
you know, I'm not the expert on the world building
or mythology of Mr. Ed, but I don't understand why
they had to keep him a secret, you know what
I mean? Why can't it just be like, hey, this
worse can talk to you. People love that. People love animals,
and they love the idea of animals talking, except for
maybe cats. I said, I know, I sound like I'm
being in on cats, but I have to here, and
(09:09):
you've probably heard them on the show. So clever Hans
is not the first of these incredibly intelligent animals, at
least to the mind of the German public. He's just
the most popular, and he's kind of writing a trend
in the Zeitgeist. People were interested in seeing the intellectual
(09:31):
abilities of non human animals because they thought it could
imply further things, things that went beyond intelligence to the
realm of the metaphysical. If an animal can debate philosophy
with us, the reasoning goes, might it not also have sentience?
Might it not also have something like a soul? It's
(09:53):
a profound and noble question. But also, you know, this
is a world where um magitians and like traveling shows
had trained horses, dogs, parrots, peacocks, things like that to
appear to be capable of reading and writing. Ben, I
(10:18):
remembering a hard time remembering all of the details. And
we do a lot of these and they get a
little fuzzy over time. But we did an episode about
like a farm that was stocked with these kind of
show animals that would do tricks and like a chicken
that could solve math problems in sort of like a
skinner box type of situation by pecking on things. Remember this?
(10:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, what was the deal with that one?
I feel like I shouldn't even bring it up if
we don't have any remotely identifiable characteristics about it other
than they were like smart animals. It turned into a
TV phenomenon and then like it all kind of like
fell out of fashion, and I feel like, yeah, exactly,
someone screaming the name about this at us right now,
(11:00):
But hopefully it's endearing, dear ridiculous historians that we sometimes
cannot remember our own show. But it's I bring it
up because this was part of kind of a traveling
showman type world. You know, before TV, um magicians and
traveling performers had often trained horses and dogs and pigeons
(11:21):
to do all kinds of things ranging from you know,
tricks and climbing up you know, those kind of poles
with the little rungs on the side, and diving horses
and all of that kind of thing that we probably
remember from movies. And also even like the idea of
having performing flee circuses, which is usually like a total
ruse I believe, where there was no actual fleas in
(11:42):
there and it was just little things attached to fishing lines.
Don't ruin this, don'll ruin this for me, dude, I'm
really sorry, dude, I hate to be the best. Also, also,
bro wrestling not real. That's fine, that's kind of series
that's not near the level of entertainment that a flee circuses.
That's totally fair. But we start seeing these tricks getting
a little more advanced, like teaching uh, some of these
(12:04):
animals to appear to be reading or doing arithmetic. There
was even a quote learned English dog that could supposedly
lecture on ancient Greek poetry in the seventeen fifties. I
don't know how they could confirm that. Um, we'll have
to do more research than that point. Well, well, uh,
(12:27):
we can confirm that it probably wasn't, you know, a
college level discourse. But also that's not the only smart
dog in town or in the world. At this time,
there was a French lecturer who had what was described
as a little savant dog that would assist him in
demonstrating properties of physics. And at this point, you know,
(12:52):
I think a lot of us here in twenty have
a different association with the phrase wonder, because wonder now
is sort of always automatically a good thing, right, But
back then, wonder referred to something that didn't quite fit
in to the natural order of things or the divine orders.
(13:13):
So it could something that's wonder, wonderful or wondrous, could
be a miracle like sprouting wings or healing suddenly from
a wound, but it could also be infernal, diabolical, dark,
and occulted. So wonder animals were kind of edgy too.
That's really interesting, Ben, I think of like this, the
Eight Wonders of the World and stuff like that, So
(13:35):
I guess you're right, it could have a negative condition
with the nails. To think of Professor Martfolio's House of Wonders,
you know, almost a stand in for like the word
oddities or like a freak show or something. Right, Um,
so this sort of does skirt that line, doesn't. It's
not as despicable and abusive as like say Carnie freak
show type situation where you're literally exploiting human beings. But
(13:58):
it's also not the best for you know, kind of
exploiting these animals and making on making them kind of
prants around for the amusement of others. I feel as
though they prefer to do other things than that, you know,
But I guess the livings a living if you're a schnauzer,
No cat food for you until you can fully explain
the concept of the of Plato's cavern or or the
(14:20):
very least the Pythagorean theorem, right, jeez uh, we all
have to have jobs. Why what about you, Fido or
Tiger or whatever your name is. So this is there.
There's another factor here that's pretty interesting, and it's one
that I don't know about, you guys. I had not
given a lot of thought to this previously. I never
thought about when widespread pet ownership began because growing up
(14:45):
here in the West and in this day and age,
it's even if you don't have a pet. It's common
for other people to have pets, you know, they have
their dogs, have their cats and their paracats, They have
their serpents, their cockatoos, their rocks, their herm craps. Whatever.
Point is, a lot of people have pets. But back
at this time, widespread pet ownership was just becoming a thing.
(15:07):
Animals were around as sources of food and labor, as livestock,
and you had to be pretty upper crust to just
have a dog because you liked the dog, you know
what I mean, Like a shizu uh shizu was just
for the elite. Schissy as a companion dog doesn't really
do anything, right, Shissy doesn't really apply here because I
(15:30):
believe it's from ancient China. But but that's the point,
Like you have to be doing pretty well in life
to just afford this distraction, this companion that doesn't do anything.
You're not gonna eat it. It's not gonna work for you.
Oh well, let me let me get an extra mouth
to feed. How about that? That's a flex right there,
you know, I mean talk about weird flexes, historical or otherwise,
(15:53):
literally choosing to have this kind of useless thing. Okay,
I'm clearly not a pet person when it's say this
prancing around with you that you have to feed and
clothe and take care of, and you know, sometimes in
the case of very extra pet parents clothes, put a
little sweaters on him and stuff. Victor Hugo of Les
miserab fame um was was such a pet owner. He
(16:16):
had a beloved poodle whose name seems to be lost
to the historical record or at least this Atlas Obscure
article that we're looking at, but apparently so beloved was
Victor Hugo's poodle, and so well treated was this beast
that it actually escaped and made the homeward bound esque
journey from Moscow back to Paris to be reunited with Hugo.
(16:40):
So we definitely know that that there is a bond
between animals and their owners that's kind of approaching something
like love. Is it, you know, just pure survival instinct?
I don't know. I mean, if a poodle would make
that journey just to get back to the master's probably
for more than just you know, self preservation, right sure. Well,
(17:03):
way before there was widespread middle class ownership of pets,
dogs had been so so profoundly domesticated right there. It's
interesting there. We there are a lot of animals that
can be tamed, but the number of animals that we
would consider domesticated, that that number is actually very very small. Uh.
(17:23):
You know, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, by the way,
domesticated themselves, They're not even really on the list. So
dogs do experience, as will come to find, dogs do
experience emotions similar to those of humans. But this wasn't
something that the scientific community really grocked or got their
arms around at this time. We just knew that pets
(17:46):
appeared to be able to do some remarkable things. But
in any testing case in the eighteenth and nineteen century, uh,
it turned out that these are incredible claims didn't hold
up to scrutiny. A lot like people claiming to be
um mediums or to exercise some sort of supernatural power.
(18:10):
You see numerous reports of otherwise very very intelligent people saying,
you know, my dog knows philosophy, not just in German
but also in Latin. My dog knows Latin. And and
then when someone tried to exhibit this for a critical audience,
they would find that those claims just didn't didn't bear up.
(18:32):
And that's the world in which Wilhelm Vaughan Oustin. Very
good then, thanks man, thanks, I was in my head,
I was practicing this. Uh, this is the world in
which van Oustin emerges. He is he's already had a
long career as a high school math teacher, he's retired.
He's a nineteenth century Berlin, and he gets fascinated with
(18:55):
this idea, right, He's desperately looking for something to fill
his twilight years. Where uh so why not you know,
teach animals to like do math and and and teach
classes for him? That'd be fun. Um. So, you know,
he definitely believed it seems that animal minds were very
similar to those of children, human children. And he actually
(19:19):
used some of the classroom techniques that he had, you know,
uh learned as a teacher himself, to work with his
Arabian stallion hans Um and his his notion was that
he was teaching hans not training him. So it's one
of these things too where it's like I think he
believed what he was doing. I don't think he was
(19:41):
setting out to like, you know, built a bunch of
rubes out of like, you know, their nickels or whatever. Um,
But let's see, let's see how the story goes. So
within a couple of years, Hans learned to count and
then do like basic math, and like you said at
the top, been using that uh, that series of hoof
(20:01):
taps uh. New York Times reported on this in nineteen
o four and was pretty glowing in their reviews. He
said that he could do what that, Hans could do
almost everything but talk, uh, and that included he could
tell time, UM, he could differentiate between different objects. Um,
you know, like like different coins made of different material,
(20:23):
whether it be silver or gold, etcetera. And Von Austin
Um really wanted to separate Hans from all that other
stuff we were talking about before. Hans was different. Hans
wasn't one of these like weirdo oddity freak show animals.
He really was a learned of course in the in
the in the eyes of of his of the mind
(20:44):
of his owner. Um. And so he really kind of
pushed that line, which I think is what got it
so much more attention, because you know, those traveling Carni
type shows we were talking about, that's just part of Americana.
Everyone was used to that. There was something special about
that this kind of elevated into the next level, to
the point where the fricking New York Times is writing
about it, right, yeah, and this becomes something that is
(21:05):
debated in Salon's intellectual meeting places of the day. Let's
build out further one of the profound implications of this.
If science is proving that animals possess something like a
(21:26):
consciousness and therefore possibly something like the metaphysical concept of
a soul, then religious figures get involved, and scientific figures
get involved, often with contradictory aims. Because Charles Darwin's theory
of evolution still real hot new thing. This is before
everybody kind of forgot that his weird serial killeresque habit
(21:50):
of eating every animal he cataloged, he uh, he had
proposed in eighteen seventy two that animals and humans had
a share emotional inheritance from evolution, that all animals are
all you know, mammals at least could experience surprise, grief,
and pain, And for some religious figures this could be
(22:13):
seen as a threat to humanity's previous special status as
the only creature on earth with thoughts and feelings, which
seems like a lot to pull from you know, tap
tap tap tap tap kind of conversations. But there we are. Okay,
so we've basically established how clever Hans would communicate. But
(22:37):
maybe we can go in a little more detail about this.
So he had, as he said, it was very important
to him, very important of an Ousten that he was
teaching Hans right, not training him, and he did this
for more than a decade. Typically he would ask Hans
a question and Hans would either not his head for
(22:59):
a year us or a no, or he would tap
his foot his hoof rather to indicate numbers. He was
also said to be able to show directions by turning
his head. He could tell the difference between left and right.
He could recognize colors, he could read clocks, he could
identify playing cards, and he understood a large number of concepts.
(23:22):
Uh So, von Oastin would ask something like how much
is two fifths plus one half? And then Hans would answer,
I barely know the answer to that. I'd have to,
you know, do some do some figure And math's never
been my strong suit. But yeah, it's true. I mean
it's certainly for a guy like me, you know, who
can barely add fractions, I certainly be impressed. I mean,
(23:44):
it's it's weird right that this horse says appears to
be pretty great with fractions. Hans would answer that question
how much is two five plus one half by tapping
nine times? Oh wait, now I have to count the
taps by tapping nine times, probably not that fast, and
then tapping ten more times, and that answer would be
(24:06):
interpreted as two fifths plus one half is nine tenths
And people were like, whoa do you do you think
there was ever a moment where clever Hans maybe hesitated
before the ninth tap, and people were just on the
edge of their seat, like, is he gonna get it?
So the only taps eight times, I'm no longer impressed. Taps,
(24:28):
I hope for fun. I love the idea of being
entertained by math. You know what, there probably was a
little bit of that tension. Uh, we'll see why. Well,
we'll see why that probably existed. But apparently Hans was
even good at word problems. Like the bane of so
many grade school kids. He seemed to have a pensant
(24:50):
for recognizing language, recognizing even cleverly worded questions. And this
comes from a fabulous article on amusing and it dot
com clever Hans the horse who could do math um. So,
for example, let's say I said to Hans, I have
a number in mind. I subtract nine and have three
(25:10):
as a remainder. What is the number I had in mind?
And then he uses this pregnant pause followed by twelve
riveting hoof taps. Okay, and that's the answer. Boom, the
crowd goes wild and again. These are examples from this
amusing planet article. Here's another hypothetical. In the number three
hundred and sixty five million, two hundred eighty seven thousand,
(25:32):
one forty nine, I place a decimal point after the
eight how many are there now in the hundreds place,
to which Hans would would tap five times and just
to peep behind the curtain, you guys, I could not
even decipher what this number was without the decimals um
and the the commas. I had to resay it several times.
(25:53):
Had finally been very generously came to my aid. So
again I would have been blown away by this horse. Dude,
maybe you should get a horse. Maybe you should reverse that.
You're you're you're not super bullish on on pets, but Hamster,
you can teach my hamster. Have you teach my hamster
to do math? And instead of clos that could just
(26:13):
be like scratches, cage cage taps. Yeah, I think that's great.
Or like have the hamster you know, maybe throw food
pellets or count with food. Well, that's tough because they'll
eat them. Probably all should you shouldn't do it with
juvenile hamsters now, But sure, I definitely need a math
hamster because you know, not like my phone has a
calculator on it or anything. I want a math raven
(26:34):
or a math octopus. I would also accept a math tiger.
But well we'll see why it is second. So like
you said, I want to I want to harp on
this for a second. Clever Hans then was not just
uh gifted in the realm of mathematics or arithmetic. He
also wowed crowds by spelling out words and names of people.
(26:57):
And this must have taken forever. Talk about tent so
that each tap would be a letter of the alphabet.
So one tap, that's a two taps that's be imagine
if someone's name is like uh Zachariah, that's gonna take
forever to spell. And he also appeared to have a
(27:20):
great memory. You could ask him something like, clever Hans,
if the eighth day of a month comes on Tuesday,
what is the date for the following Friday, and boom,
boom boom, he would tap it out. He would tap
that out for you. The weird thing is he also
seemed to have all these other abilities as long as
(27:42):
van Osten was with him, spoiler. He could recognize tones.
He could recognize people in photographs, which is very unusual
for a non human animal to do. He could tell
you what time and day it was. He could tell
the difference between straw and felt hats, which was maybe
a bigger deal back then. I don't know. And of
course we said he knew different um common colors. This
(28:06):
led some people to say, you know, clever Hans might
be as intelligent as a thirteen or fourteen year old child.
That's certainly a shade further than Von Austin was even
willing to go, because he initially thought that animals had
the same propensity for logic and reasoning and math as
a small child. So we've graduated from small child to
(28:28):
like tween at least with his crowning horse achievement. Uh,
Clever Hans. Pretty impressive stuff. Oh, hold the hold the horse,
Hold your horses. That's the expression. We're having, that kind
of you know moment where we're struggling because we want
to keep going, but we also, like, you know, this
(28:48):
is supposed to be a thirty minute is show, and
this episode is very clearly going to go over an hour,
so hopefully you don't mind. I think we're gonna cut
it into two. Yeah. I think I'm just gonna start,
you know what I'm gonna start doing for for everybody
and us especially, I'm just gonna start saying that we're
doing a two part series whenever we do an episode,
and then we could just cut that line out if
(29:09):
we if we get back to a one partner. But
you're right, all the story of Clever Hans needs the
full treatment. We have to go with the whole shebang.
We have to give him the whole stable here. We
didn't we we we didn't even talk about later studies.
In cognition, there's a parrot we want you to meet, yes,
and not to mention. Uh. This story has got a
pretty fascinating twist round about the end, so stick around
(29:33):
for that. In the meantime, gosh huge thanks to Gabe Luzier,
researcher extraordinary hipped us to this topic and many others
that you enjoy here on this show. Um, he's a
real mention. I'd love to have him back to talk
about something other than anthropomorphized cats. But that was a
fabulous two partner as well. I think it's about time,
don't you think, Ben? Yeah, fully agreed well with thanking people,
(29:54):
I'd like to give out one of the coveted Ridiculous
History thank you Awards uh to our good friends super
producer Casey Pegram Casey. I'm going to replace our usual
verbal award with an actual award. So this may look
like an unopened jar of vegemite, but I want you
to know this is gonna be the official thank you
(30:16):
Award for Ridiculous History. Uh. Don't fantastic, don't get too excited.
Uh awesome, it's in the mail. Uh. And also thanks,
of course, thanks of course to our our own clever
Hans Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. He's always trying
to stay a half ahead of us, but we're gonna
(30:37):
have him on some more episodes coming up sometime very soon.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. We are recording on what was
once called Friday, and what a week it's been. Uh.
This is an episode that I think all three of
us have been looking forward to, and we kept we
kept needing to push it off further and further. So
(00:49):
we've had a lot of time to think about weird
tangents and that may show up in today's episode. Uh my,
my weird tangent for this is related to peep Show.
I love it, Mitchell and Webb production. Uh, the entire time,
always watching Peep Show, I was certain that one of
the characters was named Super Hand, like his hands were
(01:10):
super anyway, I'm Ben, I'm no, yeah, but in fact
he's Super Hans, like the German name, the name that
I associate with Hans Brinker and the silver skates. Do
you know that story? Yeah? I think more Hans a Gretel,
but yeah, the silver skates. What's that? I I don't
remember what happens and m I just know he's he's
a he's an ice skater and he has these silver skates.
(01:31):
And they're somehow blessed with the power of the gods.
Then there's Hans Christian Anderson. He's a big as well. Right. Uh,
who's you have? We've got Hans Zimmer. Uh, the famous
film composer, Hans and Franz. That's yeah, well that one
has an aged very well. That one's a stereotype. But
you know always ages very well. As our super producer
(01:54):
Casey Pegram. You know, no, I always think of Hans
and Gretel. Uh, hansl Wait, it's Hans and but you
can call him Hans for sure, no doubt. If you're
if you're friends, right, Uh, yeah, it's it's strange. I
think it's a cool nickname. We actually have a new
coworker in our virtual office named Hans. I believe am
(02:14):
I making that up? We have a Hans. You've got
a Hans. He's he's in charge of all the Will
Ferrell stuff, the Big Money Players network. That's right, That's right,
We'll go you Hans. Uh. Hans is a great name.
I still think super hands. It's a funny name. Today's
episode is about a Hans, a very intelligent Hans, Hans
(02:36):
who was so intelligent in fact, that he was known
as Clever Hans uh, and it was all due to
his mathematical prowess. I don't know how cool would it be,
like if you had a descriptor for your name like
blank case your blank knoll or uh blank bend, like
you know, magnificent casey or uh numismatic Noel. I don't
(02:59):
know that's that's like it sounds like the type of
nickname one might give themselves, and the hopes that people
did not realize that was the case. But that was
definitely not the case with Clever Hans because surprise, surprise,
Clever Hans not a human a horse, right, A horse
is a horse? Of course, of course, remember Mr Ed.
(03:20):
I think they made him look like he was talking
by putting peanut butter on his teeth, so he would
like eat the peanut butter off his teeth and then
they would like, you know, do bad like lip syncy
kind of horse lines. Well, a lot of the a
lot of the plot points seemed relatively anticlimactic upon a rewatch,
But you know, I missed those days where TV executives
(03:41):
were apparently like just catch us on a good day
and throws the craziest things you can imagine at us
we might say yes to what kind of like how
podcasting used to be. But things things are tightening up
a little bit, I would say, largely for the better.
But speaking of you know, golden times, you know, for culture. Uh,
there was a time in the early twentieth century when
(04:03):
the public was fascinated with this idea of wonder animals,
which were domesticated animals that could do everything from uh,
solve riddles, um, do math problems, even somehow you know,
have discourse with their owners about things as high minded
as as philosophy, or even predict the weather in some
(04:26):
cases tell people's fortunes by you know, pulling a strip
of paper with a message on it, forth from some
collection of strips of paper. This story takes place in
that era, in the realm of the wonder animal fad.
It's almost it was almost too extreme to be known
as of fad because it was so prevalent, was so
(04:48):
ubiquitous at the time. So Hans, as you said, Noel
is a horse, and according to the public at the time,
he was a very very, very very lever horse. According
to a German math teacher named Wilhelm Vaughan, Austin. Just
(05:08):
see that's the right pronunciation. Is it with an O?
Or with it? Probably with an oh? Isn't it Osten?
Maybe it's astin Osten. There we go, it's got that Austen. Yeah.
So Vaughan Ousten is is a guy who is determined
to prove the full potential for intelligence in the animal kingdom.
(05:30):
And he went through a number of phases, a couple
of also rans. Right. He he taught a cat, or
he tried to teach a cat and a bear how
to add and then he came up with his like
crowning success, which was this horse Hans. And we have
to mention too that before this time, psychologist and the
(05:50):
general public, experts and layman alike didn't really think about
whether animals had all those kind of those cognitive pieces
that we just considered part of the human existence, like emotions, consciousness, intelligence.
I know, every pet owner out here is like, my
dog has all three or my cat is a monster
(06:12):
or something. Well, and you know we've talked about this
and got all the time. I mean, how humans kind
of have this desire to make everything human like and
to kind of anthropomorphize you know, animals. Um, that's why
I like animal cartoons that like walk around and where
pants are so popular. I remember that guy that that
drew the cats wearing pants. That was a huge craze
that we talked to Gabe about. I've already forgotten his
(06:34):
name because I'm a bad person, but I remember the
cats wearing pants and how popular they were, And it's
because people love to do that, to see ourselves in
cute and cuddly creatures, even when none of those traits exists. So,
for example, you know, we'd like to think that that
a horse or a raccoon or some other creature could
do these things and we are able to imbue them
(06:54):
with humanlike powers. But chances are they've been heavily trained
and are responding to very specific cues and are essentially
just you know, performing wrote tasks at the behest of
a trainer or master. Um. Not to spoil anything, but
this whole thing does kind of blow up, uh in
the face of of von Austin and also the whole
(07:16):
culture of animal wonder animals um as well. Yeah, so
Clever Hans is sort of the harbinger or the catalyst
for what would come to be this enormous wonder animal
fat or era. So in the early nineteen hundreds, Clever
Hans starts getting into the news, the media of the day, because,
(07:41):
as you would alluded to knowl he could solve math
problems or appear to do so, and pretty complex ones
like not just adding four plus seven plus nine divided
by two or something like that. But he could apparently
also do square roots and carry on simple conversations, all
by a primitive of uh form of communication. He would
(08:03):
tap his hoofs so, hey, Hans, how many garbonzo beans
are in this line? And Hans would be like and like,
WHOA three beans? That's amazing. And if I'm not mistaken,
when Mr Ed didn't want to be heard by other
humans besides his master, he would do stuff very similar
(08:24):
to that. If you wanted to communicate with Wilbur but
someone else is in the room, he would buck his
head or stomp his foot to like indicate. So I'm
pretty sure that that character was probably inspired by all
this wonder animal business. But that's just me conjecturing there. Yeah,
I think you're on the spot there, because the creators
had to be aware of it. Because Clever Hans is
early nineteen hundreds, Mr Ed is nineteen sixties. I still,
(08:48):
you know, I'm not the expert on the world building
or mythology of Mr. Ed, but I don't understand why
they had to keep him a secret, you know what
I mean? Why can't it just be like, hey, this
worse can talk to you. People love that. People love animals,
and they love the idea of animals talking, except for
maybe cats. I said, I know, I sound like I'm
being in on cats, but I have to here, and
(09:09):
you've probably heard them on the show. So clever Hans
is not the first of these incredibly intelligent animals, at
least to the mind of the German public. He's just
the most popular, and he's kind of writing a trend
in the Zeitgeist. People were interested in seeing the intellectual
(09:31):
abilities of non human animals because they thought it could
imply further things, things that went beyond intelligence to the
realm of the metaphysical. If an animal can debate philosophy
with us, the reasoning goes, might it not also have sentience?
Might it not also have something like a soul? It's
(09:53):
a profound and noble question. But also, you know, this
is a world where um magitians and like traveling shows
had trained horses, dogs, parrots, peacocks, things like that to
appear to be capable of reading and writing. Ben, I
(10:18):
remembering a hard time remembering all of the details. And
we do a lot of these and they get a
little fuzzy over time. But we did an episode about
like a farm that was stocked with these kind of
show animals that would do tricks and like a chicken
that could solve math problems in sort of like a
skinner box type of situation by pecking on things. Remember this?
(10:39):
Oh yeah, yeah, what was the deal with that one?
I feel like I shouldn't even bring it up if
we don't have any remotely identifiable characteristics about it other
than they were like smart animals. It turned into a
TV phenomenon and then like it all kind of like
fell out of fashion, and I feel like, yeah, exactly,
someone screaming the name about this at us right now,
(11:00):
But hopefully it's endearing, dear ridiculous historians that we sometimes
cannot remember our own show. But it's I bring it
up because this was part of kind of a traveling
showman type world. You know, before TV, um magicians and
traveling performers had often trained horses and dogs and pigeons
(11:21):
to do all kinds of things ranging from you know,
tricks and climbing up you know, those kind of poles
with the little rungs on the side, and diving horses
and all of that kind of thing that we probably
remember from movies. And also even like the idea of
having performing flee circuses, which is usually like a total
ruse I believe, where there was no actual fleas in
(11:42):
there and it was just little things attached to fishing lines.
Don't ruin this, don'll ruin this for me, dude, I'm
really sorry, dude, I hate to be the best. Also, also,
bro wrestling not real. That's fine, that's kind of series
that's not near the level of entertainment that a flee circuses.
That's totally fair. But we start seeing these tricks getting
a little more advanced, like teaching uh, some of these
(12:04):
animals to appear to be reading or doing arithmetic. There
was even a quote learned English dog that could supposedly
lecture on ancient Greek poetry in the seventeen fifties. I
don't know how they could confirm that. Um, we'll have
to do more research than that point. Well, well, uh,
(12:27):
we can confirm that it probably wasn't, you know, a
college level discourse. But also that's not the only smart
dog in town or in the world. At this time,
there was a French lecturer who had what was described
as a little savant dog that would assist him in
demonstrating properties of physics. And at this point, you know,
(12:52):
I think a lot of us here in twenty have
a different association with the phrase wonder, because wonder now
is sort of always automatically a good thing, right, But
back then, wonder referred to something that didn't quite fit
in to the natural order of things or the divine orders.
(13:13):
So it could something that's wonder, wonderful or wondrous, could
be a miracle like sprouting wings or healing suddenly from
a wound, but it could also be infernal, diabolical, dark,
and occulted. So wonder animals were kind of edgy too.
That's really interesting, Ben, I think of like this, the
Eight Wonders of the World and stuff like that, So
(13:35):
I guess you're right, it could have a negative condition
with the nails. To think of Professor Martfolio's House of Wonders,
you know, almost a stand in for like the word
oddities or like a freak show or something. Right, Um,
so this sort of does skirt that line, doesn't. It's
not as despicable and abusive as like say Carnie freak
show type situation where you're literally exploiting human beings. But
(13:58):
it's also not the best for you know, kind of
exploiting these animals and making on making them kind of
prants around for the amusement of others. I feel as
though they prefer to do other things than that, you know,
But I guess the livings a living if you're a schnauzer,
No cat food for you until you can fully explain
the concept of the of Plato's cavern or or the
(14:20):
very least the Pythagorean theorem, right, jeez uh, we all
have to have jobs. Why what about you, Fido or
Tiger or whatever your name is. So this is there.
There's another factor here that's pretty interesting, and it's one
that I don't know about, you guys. I had not
given a lot of thought to this previously. I never
thought about when widespread pet ownership began because growing up
(14:45):
here in the West and in this day and age,
it's even if you don't have a pet. It's common
for other people to have pets, you know, they have
their dogs, have their cats and their paracats, They have
their serpents, their cockatoos, their rocks, their herm craps. Whatever.
Point is, a lot of people have pets. But back
at this time, widespread pet ownership was just becoming a thing.
(15:07):
Animals were around as sources of food and labor, as livestock,
and you had to be pretty upper crust to just
have a dog because you liked the dog, you know
what I mean, Like a shizu uh shizu was just
for the elite. Schissy as a companion dog doesn't really
do anything, right, Shissy doesn't really apply here because I
(15:30):
believe it's from ancient China. But but that's the point,
Like you have to be doing pretty well in life
to just afford this distraction, this companion that doesn't do anything.
You're not gonna eat it. It's not gonna work for you.
Oh well, let me let me get an extra mouth
to feed. How about that? That's a flex right there,
you know, I mean talk about weird flexes, historical or otherwise,
(15:53):
literally choosing to have this kind of useless thing. Okay,
I'm clearly not a pet person when it's say this
prancing around with you that you have to feed and
clothe and take care of, and you know, sometimes in
the case of very extra pet parents clothes, put a
little sweaters on him and stuff. Victor Hugo of Les
miserab fame um was was such a pet owner. He
(16:16):
had a beloved poodle whose name seems to be lost
to the historical record or at least this Atlas Obscure
article that we're looking at, but apparently so beloved was
Victor Hugo's poodle, and so well treated was this beast
that it actually escaped and made the homeward bound esque
journey from Moscow back to Paris to be reunited with Hugo.
(16:40):
So we definitely know that that there is a bond
between animals and their owners that's kind of approaching something
like love. Is it, you know, just pure survival instinct?
I don't know. I mean, if a poodle would make
that journey just to get back to the master's probably
for more than just you know, self preservation, right sure. Well,
(17:03):
way before there was widespread middle class ownership of pets,
dogs had been so so profoundly domesticated right there. It's
interesting there. We there are a lot of animals that
can be tamed, but the number of animals that we
would consider domesticated, that that number is actually very very small. Uh.
(17:23):
You know, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, by the way,
domesticated themselves, They're not even really on the list. So
dogs do experience, as will come to find, dogs do
experience emotions similar to those of humans. But this wasn't
something that the scientific community really grocked or got their
arms around at this time. We just knew that pets
(17:46):
appeared to be able to do some remarkable things. But
in any testing case in the eighteenth and nineteen century, uh,
it turned out that these are incredible claims didn't hold
up to scrutiny. A lot like people claiming to be
um mediums or to exercise some sort of supernatural power.
(18:10):
You see numerous reports of otherwise very very intelligent people saying,
you know, my dog knows philosophy, not just in German
but also in Latin. My dog knows Latin. And and
then when someone tried to exhibit this for a critical audience,
they would find that those claims just didn't didn't bear up.
(18:32):
And that's the world in which Wilhelm Vaughan Oustin. Very
good then, thanks man, thanks, I was in my head,
I was practicing this. Uh, this is the world in
which van Oustin emerges. He is he's already had a
long career as a high school math teacher, he's retired.
He's a nineteenth century Berlin, and he gets fascinated with
(18:55):
this idea, right, He's desperately looking for something to fill
his twilight years. Where uh so why not you know,
teach animals to like do math and and and teach
classes for him? That'd be fun. Um. So, you know,
he definitely believed it seems that animal minds were very
similar to those of children, human children. And he actually
(19:19):
used some of the classroom techniques that he had, you know,
uh learned as a teacher himself, to work with his
Arabian stallion hans Um and his his notion was that
he was teaching hans not training him. So it's one
of these things too where it's like I think he
believed what he was doing. I don't think he was
(19:41):
setting out to like, you know, built a bunch of
rubes out of like, you know, their nickels or whatever. Um,
But let's see, let's see how the story goes. So
within a couple of years, Hans learned to count and
then do like basic math, and like you said at
the top, been using that uh, that series of hoof
(20:01):
taps uh. New York Times reported on this in nineteen
o four and was pretty glowing in their reviews. He
said that he could do what that, Hans could do
almost everything but talk, uh, and that included he could
tell time, UM, he could differentiate between different objects. Um,
you know, like like different coins made of different material,
(20:23):
whether it be silver or gold, etcetera. And Von Austin
Um really wanted to separate Hans from all that other
stuff we were talking about before. Hans was different. Hans
wasn't one of these like weirdo oddity freak show animals.
He really was a learned of course in the in
the in the eyes of of his of the mind
(20:44):
of his owner. Um. And so he really kind of
pushed that line, which I think is what got it
so much more attention, because you know, those traveling Carni
type shows we were talking about, that's just part of Americana.
Everyone was used to that. There was something special about
that this kind of elevated into the next level, to
the point where the fricking New York Times is writing
about it, right, yeah, and this becomes something that is
(21:05):
debated in Salon's intellectual meeting places of the day. Let's
build out further one of the profound implications of this.
If science is proving that animals possess something like a
(21:26):
consciousness and therefore possibly something like the metaphysical concept of
a soul, then religious figures get involved, and scientific figures
get involved, often with contradictory aims. Because Charles Darwin's theory
of evolution still real hot new thing. This is before
everybody kind of forgot that his weird serial killeresque habit
(21:50):
of eating every animal he cataloged, he uh, he had
proposed in eighteen seventy two that animals and humans had
a share emotional inheritance from evolution, that all animals are
all you know, mammals at least could experience surprise, grief,
and pain, And for some religious figures this could be
(22:13):
seen as a threat to humanity's previous special status as
the only creature on earth with thoughts and feelings, which
seems like a lot to pull from you know, tap
tap tap tap tap kind of conversations. But there we are. Okay,
so we've basically established how clever Hans would communicate. But
(22:37):
maybe we can go in a little more detail about this.
So he had, as he said, it was very important
to him, very important of an Ousten that he was
teaching Hans right, not training him, and he did this
for more than a decade. Typically he would ask Hans
a question and Hans would either not his head for
(22:59):
a year us or a no, or he would tap
his foot his hoof rather to indicate numbers. He was
also said to be able to show directions by turning
his head. He could tell the difference between left and right.
He could recognize colors, he could read clocks, he could
identify playing cards, and he understood a large number of concepts.
(23:22):
Uh So, von Oastin would ask something like how much
is two fifths plus one half? And then Hans would answer,
I barely know the answer to that. I'd have to,
you know, do some do some figure And math's never
been my strong suit. But yeah, it's true. I mean
it's certainly for a guy like me, you know, who
can barely add fractions, I certainly be impressed. I mean,
(23:44):
it's it's weird right that this horse says appears to
be pretty great with fractions. Hans would answer that question
how much is two five plus one half by tapping
nine times? Oh wait, now I have to count the
taps by tapping nine times, probably not that fast, and
then tapping ten more times, and that answer would be
(24:06):
interpreted as two fifths plus one half is nine tenths
And people were like, whoa do you do you think
there was ever a moment where clever Hans maybe hesitated
before the ninth tap, and people were just on the
edge of their seat, like, is he gonna get it?
So the only taps eight times, I'm no longer impressed. Taps,
(24:28):
I hope for fun. I love the idea of being
entertained by math. You know what, there probably was a
little bit of that tension. Uh, we'll see why. Well,
we'll see why that probably existed. But apparently Hans was
even good at word problems. Like the bane of so
many grade school kids. He seemed to have a pensant
(24:50):
for recognizing language, recognizing even cleverly worded questions. And this
comes from a fabulous article on amusing and it dot
com clever Hans the horse who could do math um. So,
for example, let's say I said to Hans, I have
a number in mind. I subtract nine and have three
(25:10):
as a remainder. What is the number I had in mind?
And then he uses this pregnant pause followed by twelve
riveting hoof taps. Okay, and that's the answer. Boom, the
crowd goes wild and again. These are examples from this
amusing planet article. Here's another hypothetical. In the number three
hundred and sixty five million, two hundred eighty seven thousand,
(25:32):
one forty nine, I place a decimal point after the
eight how many are there now in the hundreds place,
to which Hans would would tap five times and just
to peep behind the curtain, you guys, I could not
even decipher what this number was without the decimals um
and the the commas. I had to resay it several times.
(25:53):
Had finally been very generously came to my aid. So
again I would have been blown away by this horse. Dude,
maybe you should get a horse. Maybe you should reverse that.
You're you're you're not super bullish on on pets, but Hamster,
you can teach my hamster. Have you teach my hamster
to do math? And instead of clos that could just
(26:13):
be like scratches, cage cage taps. Yeah, I think that's great.
Or like have the hamster you know, maybe throw food
pellets or count with food. Well, that's tough because they'll
eat them. Probably all should you shouldn't do it with
juvenile hamsters now, But sure, I definitely need a math
hamster because you know, not like my phone has a
calculator on it or anything. I want a math raven
(26:34):
or a math octopus. I would also accept a math tiger.
But well we'll see why it is second. So like
you said, I want to I want to harp on
this for a second. Clever Hans then was not just
uh gifted in the realm of mathematics or arithmetic. He
also wowed crowds by spelling out words and names of people.
(26:57):
And this must have taken forever. Talk about tent so
that each tap would be a letter of the alphabet.
So one tap, that's a two taps that's be imagine
if someone's name is like uh Zachariah, that's gonna take
forever to spell. And he also appeared to have a
(27:20):
great memory. You could ask him something like, clever Hans,
if the eighth day of a month comes on Tuesday,
what is the date for the following Friday, and boom,
boom boom, he would tap it out. He would tap
that out for you. The weird thing is he also
seemed to have all these other abilities as long as
(27:42):
van Osten was with him, spoiler. He could recognize tones.
He could recognize people in photographs, which is very unusual
for a non human animal to do. He could tell
you what time and day it was. He could tell
the difference between straw and felt hats, which was maybe
a bigger deal back then. I don't know. And of
course we said he knew different um common colors. This
(28:06):
led some people to say, you know, clever Hans might
be as intelligent as a thirteen or fourteen year old child.
That's certainly a shade further than Von Austin was even
willing to go, because he initially thought that animals had
the same propensity for logic and reasoning and math as
a small child. So we've graduated from small child to
(28:28):
like tween at least with his crowning horse achievement. Uh,
Clever Hans. Pretty impressive stuff. Oh, hold the hold the horse,
Hold your horses. That's the expression. We're having, that kind
of you know moment where we're struggling because we want
to keep going, but we also, like, you know, this
(28:48):
is supposed to be a thirty minute is show, and
this episode is very clearly going to go over an hour,
so hopefully you don't mind. I think we're gonna cut
it into two. Yeah. I think I'm just gonna start,
you know what I'm gonna start doing for for everybody
and us especially, I'm just gonna start saying that we're
doing a two part series whenever we do an episode,
and then we could just cut that line out if
(29:09):
we if we get back to a one partner. But
you're right, all the story of Clever Hans needs the
full treatment. We have to go with the whole shebang.
We have to give him the whole stable here. We
didn't we we we didn't even talk about later studies.
In cognition, there's a parrot we want you to meet, yes,
and not to mention. Uh. This story has got a
pretty fascinating twist round about the end, so stick around
(29:33):
for that. In the meantime, gosh huge thanks to Gabe Luzier,
researcher extraordinary hipped us to this topic and many others
that you enjoy here on this show. Um, he's a
real mention. I'd love to have him back to talk
about something other than anthropomorphized cats. But that was a
fabulous two partner as well. I think it's about time,
don't you think, Ben? Yeah, fully agreed well with thanking people,
(29:54):
I'd like to give out one of the coveted Ridiculous
History thank you Awards uh to our good friends super
producer Casey Pegram Casey. I'm going to replace our usual
verbal award with an actual award. So this may look
like an unopened jar of vegemite, but I want you
to know this is gonna be the official thank you
(30:16):
Award for Ridiculous History. Uh. Don't fantastic, don't get too excited.
Uh awesome, it's in the mail. Uh. And also thanks,
of course, thanks of course to our our own clever
Hans Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. He's always trying
to stay a half ahead of us, but we're gonna
(30:37):
have him on some more episodes coming up sometime very soon.
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.