From Conventions to Culture: Social Cognition in Techno-Baboons with Dr. Nicolas Claidiere

Episode Transcript
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Andrew MacIntosh (00:00):
After the tune comparative cognitive scientist
Dr Nicolas Claidiere on sociallearning, culture and
conventions, right here on thePrimateCast.

Nicolas Claidiere (00:15):
Evolution, communication, cognition,
conservation, behaviorPrimatology Primatology To be
primates.

Become the monkey.
Hey everyone, welcome to thePrimateCast.
I'm your host, andrew McIntosh,now of the Wilder Institute
Calgary Zoo.
Before we get into theinterview I've got lined up,
today I have a little bit ofpodcast housekeeping to do.

(00:52):
I want to remind everyone that,as I laid out in great detail
in my last episode APrimatologist's Journey from
Japan to the Wilder West, thispodcast is no longer brought to
you by PSYCASP and KyotoUniversity.
The Primatecast is nowindependent and, as such, I've
been asking for your support tohelp keep the podcast going.
I realized that you just heardthat in the pre-roll, but I
bring it up now because I havethe pleasure of thanking our
very first set of podcastsupporters.

(01:14):
A monumental shout out to Cecil, paula and Melanie for becoming
members of the Prime A cast.
Your support means a lot to meand your contributions are going
directly into the running costsof this program.
So thanks so much.
I've also seen a few newratings here coming in on apps
like Apple Podcasts and Spotify,and there's a new review on
Apple that reads I love the show, so many great episodes and I

(01:38):
use it in my teaching inprimatology too.
So my thanks to Sarah McKecafor that review.
I love that practicingprimatologists are using the
primate cast as an educationaltool, either in or outside the
classroom.
I did that myself from time totime when I was teaching at
Kyoto University, but it startedto feel a bit like I was asking
my students to buy my owntextbook.
So I used it kind of sparingly.

(02:00):
Oh, and not that there'sanything wrong with assigning
your own textbook.
If you're doing that, I meanheck.
If you're Karen Stryer teachingprimate behavioral ecology, you
cannot go wrong with your owntextbook.
Or maybe you're Joe Setchelassigning your own book studying
primates for a course onprimatological methods.
By all means, I've never evenwritten a textbook and you know,

(02:20):
maybe that means I'm just beingsour, but the point is I'm
super thrilled that others findthe material I produce here of
practical use.
And if you're out there and ifyou've also used the Primatecast
in your teaching, or if youfind yourself being assigned or
having been assigned the podcastfor additional learning in your
own classes in primatology,definitely reach out to me and
let me know.
Really cool.

(02:42):
Anyway, thanks again to Cecil,paula, melanie and Sarah for
your support.
I'm looking forward to makingthis a staple part of the show's
introductory notes.
So if you're out there and canmake a contribution.
I look forward to thanking youin this space as well and
sharing your thoughts with theworld.
Right, so on, with the episodeIn December of 2023, I had the

(03:05):
pleasure of sitting down with DrNicolas Clédié.
He's a cognitive scientist atthe Center for Research in
Psychology and Neuroscience atAix-Marsaille University in
France, and I first met Nicomany, many years ago at one of
the International PrimatologicalSociety conferences.
But he was in Japan at the endof last year 2023, with his
friend and colleague, hugoMercier, who had never and

(03:28):
they'd never been to KyotoUniversity's Primate Center.
So I invited them for a visit.
So we talked briefly about Hugoin the conversation, but I also
just wanted to give him aspecial shout out here and
recommend to the listeners thatyou check out his book Not Born
Yesterday, which argues thathumans are not gullible I know
definitely feels like many of usare many of the time, wait much

(03:49):
of the time, but not so in thetraditional sense and that we've
actually evolved pretty strongmechanisms to evaluate
information when we seemingly gowrong or fail.
The common sense test is muchmore about the social dynamics
of communication than any innatelack of sophistication in our
ability to tell the differencebetween accurate and inaccurate

(04:10):
information, which is prettyinteresting.
It's a great read and it's alsoreally relevant to the
conversation that I had withNico, who does comparative
research with primates,including humans, on social
learning, social cognition andcultural evolution.
We ran out of time during hisvisit to Japan so the interview
was actually recorded over Zoomand I want to warn listeners
that, especially during thesecond half of the interview,

(04:32):
sometimes the audio quality getsa bit spotty.
I don't think it'll make adifference or make the
conversation too difficult tofollow, but I did want to
mention it to set yourexpectations.
But I had a lot of fun with thischat.
You'll see that Nico has thiskind of easygoing way about him
when he talks and you can reallyfeel his excitement, for
example, when he talks aboutdiscovering the presence of

(04:53):
conventions in a study troop ofbaboons that he works with.
He talks about designing atotally different experiment for
a totally different purpose andthen scratching his head at the
results but then having thisaha moment.
So conventions, they're reallycommon in human societies, and
by convention I don't mean thosegatherings where people in a
field or trade get together toshare products, inspiring

(05:15):
stories or the latest andgreatest in their respective
industries, but rather thecollective behaviors that allow
us to solve these so-calledcoordination problems, like when
all people traveling by car inthe same direction do so on the
same side of the road and ifthey don't look out.
But we also spend a good deal oftime in this chat talking about

(05:37):
cultural evolution and itsrelation to biological evolution
.
A lot of animal behavior isexplained by natural selection,
which is one of the mainmechanisms of biological
evolution.
That leads to adaptations whichhelp the animal survive and
have lots of babies.
But animals are also capable ofinnovations.
These are novel behaviors thatappear spontaneously and then

(05:58):
others are able to learn thoseinnovations from one another.
And a really interestingquestion then comes up that
whether this type of sociallearning can build upon itself
in the same way that we humansstack innovations one on top of
the other, leading to cumulativecultural evolution.
A great example of this inhumans is Moore's law, which has

(06:19):
been generalized to describethe kind of exponential nature
of technological innovation andadvancement that we see all
around us.
But, as Nico describes, thekind of technological reasoning
that would allow other speciesto stack their socially learned
behaviors in this way doesn'treally seem to exist, especially
when it comes to using tools,which is also a widespread
behavior across the animalkingdom, but by no means does

(06:41):
this mean that animals areuncultured beasts.
Nico and I chat at length aboutsocial learning, culture and the
cognitive mechanisms thatunderlie them in this meandering
and good-natured conversation.
I hope you enjoy it as much asI did, so here's my conversation
with Dr Nicolas Clédier.
What I like to do, though, isstart with a little bit of an
off-the-wall question.
What I like to do, though, isstart with a little bit of an

(07:02):
off-the-wall question, and Ithink for you.

Maybe the one that I came up with is what is
the deal with bloodletting?
What is the deal withbloodletting?
Ah, that's a very interestingway to start.

Yeah, so tell me about bloodletting what?

is it and what's your involvement in it?
So that study was done withHugo Mercier, who is a very
close friend of mine, who isworking at Jean-Nico in Paris,
and the idea was to think aboutfactors that would influence
cultural evolution and that werenot adaptive in the sense that

(07:50):
you wouldn't get behaviour thatwere adaptive for people, that
would improve their welfare,their life and so on and so
forth.
And Hugo came with this idea ofbloodletting.
So this practice that seems tobe very intuitive in a sense.
So if you feel sick, you havethis sort of intuitive theory

(08:13):
that you have some bad blood,that you have something that is
wrong within you, and the ideato let the blood flow out is
sort of intuitive idea.
To let the blood flow out issort of intuitive and it's also
very shocking because you seeblood coming out of people and
so on and so forth.
And we realised that this wasone possible explanation for why

(08:34):
bloodletting was spread, waswidely used all over the place,
in different places in the world, and so we started doing
studies on how people wouldremember stories of bloodletting
, following the work of Bartletton memory, and we realized that
this was a very importantfactor.

(08:54):
So when people have a tendencyto memorize and remember better
stories with bloodletting thanstories without, and that could
be a contributing factorexplaining why blood is evolved
and spread in so many places inthe world but that was that was
completely off track.

(09:14):
That was one idea that came fromego.
Really, it was like oh my godI've got an idea and that was
that was really funny and, ofcourse, bloodletting is very
it's not adaptive at all,because when you see, the last
thing you want is to lose blood.
So people were doing this andthey were, in fact, making
people even worse.
But that continues.
That's still ongoing,apparently.

Yeah, and from what I understand about it,
maybe you can mention too Ugoand Nico.
You were both in Japan not thatlong ago and we had the chance
to hang out for dinner and bothof you gave talks to the
graduate program here at KyotoUniversity and Ugo's was about
the book writing.
It was a science communicationtalk, but in one of his books,

(09:58):
not Born Yesterday, he talksabout this bloodletting.
So I made a point of readingthat and I find there's a couple
of things interesting and maybea couple of ways we can
transition from bloodlettinginto your line of research.
But one thing I'm interested inis that idea that it's
counterintuitive spreads reallywell and I think that the fact
that it's counterintuitive seemsto be a really key point about

(10:20):
why it's interesting to studyright.
So it's kind of like whenyou're interested in why people
perform certain behaviors,behaviors that have like a
really clear advantage to usseem to make a lot of sense,
right, and especially if we wantto extend it to think about how
other species behave in naturalenvironments, if there are
things that have a realadvantage to them, you know,

(10:43):
make them survive better, havemore babies then those are
things that can evolve bynatural selection.
But then the more kind ofpotentially even damaging
behaviors like bloodletting,which I imagine would be a
damaging behavior to a wildanimal at some point it can
still spread, at least in humans, because of certain mechanisms
that we have, probably relatedto how much we like to copy each

(11:06):
other.
So I wonder if you can maybecomment on that.
Why is it being so maladaptiveor a potentially damaging
behavior and counterintuitive?
An interesting thing to study.

So I think you're right.
Part of the interest for me instudying blood leading was this
aspect about cultural evolution.
So there are two ways in whichyou can get adaptive behaviour
in humans and also in certainother species is through
biological evolution, of course,but also through social
learning and cultural evolution.

(11:39):
And if you look at the way inwhich cultural evolution works,
when you transmit behaviorsbetween individuals over

(12:03):
generations, then progressivelybecause you're transmitting this
bias it's going to accumulate,and then people are going to
change and go for red all thetime.
So the small biases are goingto accumulate over time.
And so the question is, whenit's counterintuitive and it
goes against your expectations,is trying to explain how

(12:23):
cultural evolution can work incases when it goes against what
you would naturally orspontaneously do, and that's
something that we've beenworking a lot with Hugo on,
especially in the case ofreasoning problems.
So sometimes you can ask simpleproblems to people and they have
a very intuitive answer, butthat is wrong.

(12:43):
And then you're trying todescribe how they can change
their response based on theinformation that they get from
other people.
So you can explain how culturalevolution works when it becomes
counterintuitive.
And the idea I mean the generalidea behind this is to go even
beyond that.
So, if you think abouttechnological evolution, for

(13:05):
instance, that changes all thetime and we are very far now
from where we were just a few,even 100 years ago.
And the question is how do wemaintain this constant influx of
new technologies going againstour sort of natural and

(13:26):
spontaneous behaviors?
We are adapting all the timeand that's a big part of
cultural evolution and that'ssomething that is quite
difficult to study and tounderstand in humans in
particular.

Yeah, so we had Andrew Whiten give a lecture
for us a couple years ago nowat a symposium we ran for
PSYCASP for our internationalkind of lecture series, and one
of the questions I asked himbecause he was so important in
this development ofunderstanding culture in animal
societies and one of thequestions that I asked is
related to the fact that in theearlier days, I guess and you

(14:01):
could say maybe the 90s is whenI could be wrong, but I think
when most of this started tolate 90s, early 2000s, when most
of this, from a comparativeperspective, started to converge
and a lot of that was based onthis chimpanzee study of
multiple sites and thesedifferent behaviors that they
perform.
But at the time it was reallyimportant to be able to show how
variation behavior couldn't belinked to something clear in the

(14:25):
environment, right Like it hadto be something that's almost
irrelevant right To the kind ofsurvival or fitness of the
animal and I wonder if that'shis answer to that question was
obviously in the beginning thatmight be true, because we have
to be able to demonstrate thisis not clearly linked to
something that could be asimpler explanation for it, like
an evolved behavior, but now itseems to be much more accepted

(14:51):
that there are culturaldifferences and there is social
learning and animals can kind ofdiverge in that way, and then
that can still affect fitness,right, so yeah, so I wonder if
maybe that's a good way to gointo thinking about cultural
evolution as well, and maybe itwould be nice if you kind of
defined that and maybe talkedabout its relationship to

(15:13):
natural selection, so theregular way we think about
evolution happening.

No, I agree with Andy.
So at the beginning, becauseeverybody was skeptical about
the idea of cultural evolutionand social learning in non-human
primates but in animals ingeneral, people had to come up
with very clear demonstration ofcases where you couldn't
possibly argue for anything elselike biological evolution or

(15:42):
simply individual learning.
So in many cases people weresaying, if you find a nice new
technique to open a nut using astone, maybe individuals are
learning that on their ownwithout any form of social
transmission and social learning.
So people had to come up withvery clear examples that were
very on one extreme of thecontinuum.

(16:04):
But of course, culturalevolution.
So if we define culturalevolution as the fact that
behaviors, artifacts, aretransmitted between individuals
through social learning, so thatthese are behaviors that you
learn from other individuals,then it becomes clear that there

(16:28):
is a mix of factors that canintervene in social learning.
There is a bit of individuallearning.
So think about I don't know I'mgoing to take a simple example
for instance, think aboutlearning to cycle.
Okay, so we know that cycling,you know it's something that is
very cultural.
Obviously you learn that from abit of your parents and your

(16:49):
friends and you know you have alot of social context, but there
is also a lot of individuallearning.
You need to, you know, learn tobalance and to get the right
kind of equilibrium and to turnand so on and so forth.
So there's a mix of factors.
There is genetic disposition,there is individual learning and
there is social learning, andit's a combination of all that

(17:13):
that makes it possible forcultural evolution to go on.
But the more important is thesocial learning part, the
clearer is the cultural aspectof the behavior or the artifact
that you're looking at.
So if you take a computer, it'svery clear.
Now, if you take something like, say well, for instance,

(17:35):
Nutcracker, or you know, inChinese, there's a bit of
individual learning and there'sa bit of social transmission.
So it's sort of shaping thebehavior and giving a bit of a
push from the social learningside, and then you get this sort
of transmission acrossgenerations.
So you get the whole spectrumfrom purely individual learning
to very strongly social learning.

I think I also asked Andy in that presentation
if he had some examples fromanimals in the wild of, let's
say, cases where we see thiskind of culture potentially even
impacting fitness.
But I think you've looked atthe interface or the feedbacks

(18:18):
between potentially cultural andbiological evolution.
So do you have any maybeexamples from other species
about where that would behappening and how we should
think about it?

Right.
So, for instance, there was a,if we think I mean in many cases
it's going to impact fitnessbecause in many cases that we
know of, there's food involvedand there's extracting resources
.
So the nut cracking inchimpanzees obviously they're
getting the nuts, so that's veryimportant.
There are examples, forinstance, of rats in Israel

(18:53):
doing social learning and theyare learning to use a particular
technique to get the seeds ofpine cones, for instance.
That's also very obviously veryimportant for their survival
and when they don't have thistechnique, it takes them like
hours to get the seeds and whenthey have the technique, it
takes them like a minute whenthey get the seeds.

(19:14):
Uh, so these are very clearcases where there is a big
impact on on biologicalevolution.
Uh, but the question is, I thinkso, as long as we are focused
on on on behavior that do notevolve over time, uh, so in many
cases in in animal culturalevolution, there is no evolution
to speak of.

(19:34):
So you're simply learning abehavior, say, not cracking, uh,
but it's this behavior versusnothing.
It's not like you have.
You're learning several stepsof nut cracking and you're
getting better and better, orusing different hammers or
improving the technique.
It's either one or nothing inhuman evolution, the the

(19:55):
interaction between biologicalevolution and cultural evolution
is more complex, because thereis cultural evolution and then
the problem becomes throughcultural evolution you can sort
of flatten biological evolutionbecause you can learn new
behaviors that are going to beadaptive and that are going to

(20:17):
release the selection pressureon biological evolution, and
that makes a huge difference.
So the interaction betweenbiological evolution and
cultural evolution is veryimportant in humans but it's
less clear in non-human animals.

Yeah, that's exactly where I wanted to go
with it.
I know you've spent a fairamount of time thinking and
writing about the accumulationof cultures.
I think if you look around us,anywhere you are listening to
this, you can see massiveexamples of it in human
societies from the places welive in, the clothes we wear,
the technologies we use.
I mean almost everything I washaving a discussion recently

(20:54):
about I think it was related tothis idea of long-termism.
But basically, if we suddenlywere thrust into a
post-apocalyptic situation, itwould take forever to get back
to the place where we are nowbecause there's so much
knowledge I mean fundamentalknowledge that's just kind of
locked up in some time period inour history and it's really

(21:16):
hard to go back to kind offundamentals or first principles
and start building the thingsthat we have already.
So it's very clear, as you said, how our kind of cultural
evolution and technologicalevolution kind of would flatten
the biological part of it.
But are there any kind ofexamples of this in other
species where there is a kind ofclear building of different

(21:39):
kind of learned, sociallylearned behaviors upon one
another in a way that would kindof matter?

Yeah, I think , I like the question, but in
the end in a way that would kindof matter, is very important.
I mean, people have been lookingvery hard to try to find cases
where you get accumulation ofcultural evolution, and people

(22:05):
were so excited so there are afew examples.
There is one, for instance,that I like from dora bureau,
studying pigeons and pigeonsflying from point a to b.
And if you take completelynaive pigeon they are going to
look all over the place to to gofrom a to b and then
progressively she makestransmission chain, so pigeons

(22:26):
are flying with a friend andthen the friend is playing with
another friend, and so on and soforth, a bit like a telephone
game.
And what she says is thatprogressively the pigeons are
finding the route that is thequickest, the most
straightforward between point Aand B.
So again, I mean, if you thinkabout it in natural environments

(22:48):
, you could imagine that thishas an impact because they, they
, they are gaining energy flyingfrom A to B.
They have to do this all thetime.
Then it's faster, right, so itit kind of matters, but it's not
.
It's nothing, nothing liketechnological evolution.
I think everybody agrees.

(23:08):
I mean there is no evidence thatthere is anything, especially
using tools or things like this,that even resembles cultural
evolution, technologicalevolution in humans, and that's
a big problem and people havebeen arguing a lot about it.
Some people think that this islinked to our social learning

(23:31):
capacity, that we are very goodsocial learners and that we can
copy any kind of behavior.
We can imitate many differentthings, and that this capacity
is a reason why we gettechnological evolution.

other people like me and François Durillac
for instance in Lyon.

I've been trying to argue that the main
reason or at least one veryimportant factor is that we are
very good with tools andtechnologies to start with and
that we've evolved likebiologically evolved
technological reasoning capacity, so we understand cause and
effects and you know thedifferent properties and physics
of technology, and that's themain reason why we get

(24:16):
technological evolution, and Ithink the joy is still out there
somewhere.
You know, but it's so.
Typically, I mean, it's acombination of the two things
you need social learning and youneed technological reasoning to
get technological evolution.
The question is, what evolvedfirst and what is the most

(24:37):
important?

There's a few different ways we can go with
this, but I am interested tomaybe pursue the tools a little
bit in non-humans.
One thing that's beeninteresting and I can't say I've
followed it that closely, butthis school of primate
archaeology, and so maybe partof that is based on the fact
that there is a material culture.
So in great apes andchimpanzees most spectacularly I

(25:00):
suppose, where even in the wildthey're shown to use not only
all kinds of tools but also toolsets, where they use different
kinds of tools in the samesequence in order to access
different types of resources.
And unfortunately things likesticks, which would be their
main tools, don't preserve in anarchaeological record in any
way.
But I suppose there's thepossibility that you have

(25:25):
progressive improvements in theway those animals are using
those sticks to access resources.
That could be one possibility.
And across the communities oracross Africa, the extent to
which different chimpanzeecommunities use tools is also
quite different.
One hypothesis could be that'sjust different stages of this.

(25:47):
I don't know if it would be acultural evolution of using
things like sticks.
You could maybe comment on that.

The tricky part is to show the fact that
there is improvement in usingtools is fine.
You can find that they'regetting better because they're
using, for instance, they'remaking brushes at the end of
sticks to pick up termites.
They are doing severalmodifications of tools, ok, and

(26:18):
you find this in other speciesas well.
So new Canadian neon crows aregoing to do several steps and
modify things several times inorder to fish for lavas, for
instance, and you can also findthis in capuchin monkeys.
I mean, capuchin monkeys havean impressive repertoire of tool
use, stick use and so on and soforth.

(26:38):
But the tricky part is to showthat this improvement is
transmitted.
It is socially learned.
You need to socially learn theimprovement and that's where
everybody's stuck.
So there has been a fewexperimental studies I'm
thinking of Dean and colleaguessome time ago, maybe 10, 15

(27:00):
years ago, I think it was 2012.
And they were doing a studywhere you could open a box and
you know you could do severalmodifications and that would
bring you more and more rewards,more higher value rewards, uh,
and what they found that wasthat chimpanzees were attracted
to the box.
So there was this kind of, uh,social attraction to the box and

(27:24):
they would manipulate the box,but each individual would learn
independently to open thedifferent stages of the box.
So the modifications happen,there is no doubt about it.
So the chips are getting betterand they're finding more
complex behavior, more efficientbehavior.
As far as we know, they don'tseem to be able to socially

(27:45):
learn the modifications of thebehavior, and that's where the
technological evolution begins.

The second part of that that I was really
curious about, and of course Ihave some background.
I mean, we talk about this insome of the classes that I teach
as well, but it seems that it'snot at all clear how much
understanding some of theseanimals have of how the tools

(28:14):
actually work.
And so it's.
It's all good enough to be ableto socially learn a behavior
that uses a tool, but whether ornot the animal actually
understands its uh, maybe itsfunction, but actually how it
actually achieves that function,um, so there were some clever
experiments, I think, withcapuchins that show, um, they,
they don't seem to understandwhy the tools that they're using
work If you kind of change theapparatus so that they end up

(28:36):
losing a nut based on whichdirection they're pulling
through a tube.
So it seems like there's somebits of information there that
are missing, and I know thatyou've done a little bit of work
on technological reasoning aswell, and so I assume this kind
of causal relationship betweenthe tool that they're using and
the function or the outcome thatthey get is.
So where are we at on that now?

(28:57):
Do you think that thechimpanzees or New Caledonian
crows, I mean, is it still thatwe're unsure whether they
actually understand whysomething like that works.
Or have we gotten past thatalready?

I think it's a very tough question trying to
know if an animal understandswhat she's doing In humans as
well.

right, Because a lot of times we do things and
have no idea why it works.

One interesting way, I think, to
approach the problem, and onethat we've been using, but
mostly with humans in the caseof technological reasoning.
The one that we've been using,but mostly with humans in the
case of technological reasoning,is to try to have individuals
solve the problem.
When you do small modifications, the question is if you
understand how it works really.
If you change something, thenpeople non-human animals are

(29:46):
supposed to adapt their behaviorto the changes that you've done
, and some of the changes can becompletely irrelevant, in which
case they shouldn't changeanything.
Some of them should be relevant.
In that case, you expectindividuals to adapt in a
certain way and I think in NewCaledonia and cross, for
instance, there has been manystudies showing that they I

(30:09):
wouldn't interpret it as theyunderstand what they're doing.
So if you change something,they're going to change their
behavior.
I mean, maybe they're going totry once, but then they're going
to adapt very quickly and finda different solution to solve
the problem.
Now, with my experiments, withmy experience in non-human
primates, it's not so clear.
It seems that as soon as youchange something, it's going to

(30:30):
take them a long time to adaptto the new conditions.
I mean, we've been seeing thatrepeatedly in many different
kinds of experiments and it'syou know, it seems like it takes
a really, really long time.
It's not this kind of intuitiveperception of what's going on
and adaptation to new conditions.
You know.

(30:51):
They do the same thing.
It doesn't work.
They do it 10 times and thenthey start changing thinking.
I don't know what they'rethinking.
They start exploring newbehaviors to try to find a
solution to a problem.
It seems to be very, verydifferent, I think one aspect of
human technological evolutionis this capacity to understand

(31:12):
cause and effects and how itworks, and that's very powerful
for us to build new technologies.

Yeah okay, I know a lot of these are kind of
hard concepts and I've seenthere's a lot of debate, even,
you know, going back to theorigins of social learning
studies, like all of thedifferent, I always got put off
a little bit by all of thedifferent definitions and how
careful people are aboutdefining what it means to copy,
and it seemed to be so manydifferent variations on that

(31:41):
theme.
But I want to transition alittle bit because you, as you,
you just started talking aboutyour own experience and a lot of
that, at least for sure in thelast 10 years and more than that
, has been with baboons and Iwonder if you could answer for
me why are baboons a good modelfor studying social cognition?

So we study guinea baboons and I have become
quite fond of them.
I think they're veryinteresting for social learning
experiments and social cognitionin general because they have a
sort of very complexhierarchical social structure.
So they form this beautifulwork by Julia Julia Fisher at

(32:31):
the DPZ in Germany and sheshowed that they have one male
units.
So you have usually one bigmale with several females and
kids around and these one maleunits are forming bigger units,
like five, six of them, and thenthey form even bigger units

(32:51):
with a lot of different gangsgetting together up to 200 or
300 individuals in the wild, andso they have this sort of
complex hierarchical structure.
But the Guinea baboons also havehorizontal transfers between
units, so the females are goingto move from males, from
different males, and males arealso forming coalitions.

(33:11):
So there is a lot of socialdynamics compared to some other
species of baboons or non-humanprimates, and there is a very
interesting social dynamics andcomplex social relationships.
I think that's one of thereasons why baboons have been
the object of studies you know,dating back to the 80s the work

(33:32):
by Dunbar and Whiten and Byrneand so on and so forth, trying
to study human evolution andthinking that baboons were a
good model of human evolutionBecause they have this complex
social structure that is also abit flexible and that's very
interesting to understand.
I think human social evolutionflexible.

That's very interesting to understand, I
think.
Human social evolution yeah,that's right.
Even decades before that,people studying wild baboons as
a model for human evolutionbecause they assume they occupy
similar ecological niches in thekind of savannah transitions in
Africa.
They do have a very specialplace, I think, in the history
of primatology, but I don'tnecessarily see that many labs

(34:14):
investigating cognition inbaboons.
And so are there.
Sorry, I think we're the onlyones.
You're the only.
Okay, I was going to confirmthat.
Do you have any other?
Any comments out there?

Well, I mean again, julia Fisher is doing
some very interesting work withbaboons in Senegal, and she's
also interested in cognitiveevolution, for sure.
But the sort of experiment thatwe do with touchscreens and
everything, I mean we are theonly lab using this with baboons
.

So can you maybe describe how that place
got started?
So I believe that this was, ifI'm not wrong, was started by
Joël Fagol, it was.

So Joël has been developing systems to study
non-human primates more or lessautomatically.
So at the beginning it wasjoysticks on a computer and then
progressively move totouchscreens.
And in 2008, he opened thisamazing place close to Marseille

(35:16):
in France, where you have agroup of baboons and they can
freely go into these sort oflittle testing cubicles where
you have a touchscreen and thebaboons are recognized by the
computer.
They can go there whenever theywant.
It's completely free andthey're recognized by the
computer and you can performexperiments on on a touchscreen.

(35:37):
And when joel opened this in2008, it was the only one who
was being able to have this sortof free ranging group of
baboons interacting with thecomputers.
And since then a few teams havestarted using this system.
But it's proved very successfuland very interesting because

(35:58):
there are a lot of constraintsthat just disappear with this
system so often when you'restudying non-human primates in
the lab you have testingsessions.
So twice a day, say between 10and 12 and 2 and 4 usually when
you're studying non-humanprimates in the lab, you have a
testing session.
So you know, twice a day saybetween 10 and 12, and 2 and 4

(36:18):
usually you're either taking themonkey and bringing them to a
testing chamber or you're askingthem to come over.
So you know you're in yourtesting lab and you're asking
the monkeys can you come, pleasedo an experiment for me?
And they come and they go whenthey want, if they want.
Um, so that's one way of doingit and it's very time consuming
and it's very thoughtful anddifficult.

(36:39):
Uh, and Joel's lab iscompletely different, because
the baboons can go whenever theywant and therefore what you
realize is that they're going togo maybe for one hour, two
hours a day.
They get a small foot or what.
Every time they do something, acorrect response, and they are

(37:00):
going to come and go all daylong.
You know they come maybe forone minute and then they leave.
They come maybe for fiveminutes and then they leave, but
that's very natural, that'svery spontaneous.
That's very spontaneous.
That's what you observe in thewild.
You know they're walking aroundand then they start foraging
for a bit and then they move onto something else.
So when you think about the wayin which we are doing research

(37:21):
in the traditional way, whenyou're taking the monkeys for
like 10 minutes or 15 minutes,it's way too long.
I mean they want to dosomething else, so they're going
to pay attention for a veryshort amount of time and then
you put them back in the groupand you can't test them again
and they want to come back butit's gone.
I mean you know the opportunityis gone.

(37:42):
So I think a lot of thedifficulties we have in a
traditional way of conductingexperiments are linked to that,
to the fact that the way inwhich we are doing them is not
adapted to the sort of natural,spontaneous behavior of the
non-human primates.

Yeah, this is fascinating.
So just a brief kind of tripback to the joystick there.
This is maybe something you'vespoken with him about, but how
tricky is it to get a baboon touse a joystick, and for what
purpose?
You'd have to ask Joanne,because I have no idea.
I know that we have the guythat I started this podcast with

(38:20):
, chris Martin, working now atIndianapolis Zoo.
He's trained his orangutansthere not his orangutans, the
orangutans that inhabit the zoohow to play some
touchscreen-based games thatthey can then play with zoo
visitors as well, so like pong,for example, where a ball is
passing between, and that's kindof interesting.
So obviously there's ways toget the animals to perform the

(38:41):
behaviors for rewards once theyunderstand what the task is.
But how then have you or maybeyou can comment on, like, if the
animals are only comingpotentially for a minute, I mean
, how does that affect how youdesign, is not as motivated to
do it?
But if there's the chance thatthey only come for like a few
seconds at a time or as as up tolike I don't know five or ten

(39:14):
minutes, how does that affecthow you actually design the
tasks?

um, so it it makes a big difference.
So you have to think aboutexperiments in terms of very
short trials, uh, and we'reusually between five and ten
seconds.
So we we don't do like minutelong things because they're not
going to stay for one minute inmany, in many cases.

(39:40):
So it's it's very short trialswhere you're asking them a sort
of very simple question can youmemorize this?
Can you detect a difference?
Can Can you respond based onwhat the other individual has
just done?
Things like this.
But that's right.
So, if you think, a lot of theexperiments in humans because

(40:02):
we're doing comparative work, sowe're also studying humans and
children, and a lot of thestudies in humans and children
are based on like, and a lot ofthe studies in humans and
children are based on like Idon't know, 10 minutes, 15
minutes, trying to do the sametask over and over again, like
learning to discriminate betweencolors or something, and we

(40:22):
can't do that with baboons.
So you have to think of muchshorter trials, just one tiny
question that they can do inlike 5 or 10 seconds.
The big advantage is that weare going to get thousands of
trials.
So what you do is you'recutting the long experiment into
a shorter session, and thenyou're asking the question

(40:43):
repeatedly.
And literally, our baboons aredoing on average close to a
thousand trials a day perindividual.
So you know, I mean you cannotsend a lot of these tiny
questions, it's incredible.

I was reading an abstract for one of your
papers from a while ago aboutit's going back to the cultural
evolution part, but it was likehere, using nearly half a
million experimental trialsperformed by a group of.
I mean, you don't usually seethings like half a million data
trials performed by a group of Imean, you don't usually see
things like half a million datapoints in primatology or just
anyway, animal cognition studies.
So in that sense it really isremarkable, isn't it?

(41:20):
It is.
I think it's amazing.

I was completely blown away.
So the first time I visitedJoel's lab, I was just amazed by
what we could do.
I had so many ideas, but thispaper is the outcome of this
meeting.
I came to the lab for half aday I was giving a seminar and I
visited the lab and I came outof it saying, look, I mean we

(41:44):
have to do this experiment.
I have this experiment oncultural transmission.
This is the only place I can doit.
I would never dream of doingthis in my lab, because it takes
so much time to train themonkeys to do stuff, but here
it's finally possible.
We can do amazing stuff, andthat's right.
We did this experiment severaltimes over the years and we
realized at some point that wehad half a million trials of

(42:08):
this memory task.

Well, I think you have to explain the task now
, just for people that have aperspective.
Yeah, so it's it's a.

It's a very easy task.
So we are talking about shorttrials and, uh, what happens is
you, you have to memorize theposition.
It's a sort of memory game.
You have four squares that arered in a grid of 16, so it's a
4x4 grid.
All the squares are white,except four of them that are red
, and they appear and disappear,and then you just have to touch

(42:37):
the square that were readpreviously.
Okay, so it's like finding, youknow, finding the cards in the
memory game.
And the baboons learned to dothat.
It took us a month to trainthem to learn to do this.
So we have very progressivestages.
They first have to remember theposition of one square, and
then two squares, and then threesquares, and then finally four

(42:57):
squares.

Uh, but once they've learned that they, you
know it's it's a very easy task.

They like it, it's, it's, it's fine.
I mean, it's funny.
And uh, you know the squaresare always in a different place,
they're random positions.
So they learned to do that andthey were.
You know, the squares arealways in a different place,
they're random positions.
So they learned to do that andthey were.
You know, they loved doing it,and so we managed to get them to
do that for several sessions indifferent experiments, and then
we had this huge number ofrandom trials.
And what comes with this hugenumber of trials is that you can

(43:24):
look at things in a verydetailed way.
So what I find is that youoften get many effects of an
experiment.
So in that case what we wantedto see was what kind of shape
they would memorize better, andthen what we can study.

(43:45):
That is very difficult to studyin other labs where you have
less.
A smaller amount of trials issort of secondary effect.
So we realized in someexperiments that you have an
effect of the presence ofanother individual.
So if you're alone, you'rebehaving slightly differently
from when you're next to anotherbaboon, and that depends on the

(44:07):
status of the baboon.
If it's dominant or notdominant, it's going to affect
your own behavior and looking atthis is only possible when you
have a huge number of trials,because you become very, very
precise at estimating reactiontimes or the amount of correct
responses and so on, and becauseyou become very, very precise,
you can start describing verysmall effects that are secondary

(44:29):
to your experiment, that arestill there and exist that's
fascinating and I imaginethere's both advantages and
disadvantages of that.

So I mean, I just wonder if you researchers
are ever out there at the windowlike, oh, this, you know, we
need this baboon to do sometrials today.
But then there's like anotherdominant individual right there
and you're thinking, no, don'tget closer because it's going to
mess up the.
So you can't control thatsocial dynamic, right, and the
benefit of having so manydifferent trials is you can

(44:58):
eventually control for thosekinds of compounds, I guess.
But the advantages are also youget.
I think when you were here inJapan, you were talking about
how you can recreate to a highfidelity the social networks of
the animals as well, and so whatare the kind of other not even
related to the cognitive studiesthat you're doing, but what are

(45:19):
the kind of other data that youcan get from this kind of a
system?

so we, we started realizing.
So you're right.
I mean, one of the one of thedifficulty or main limitation of
the the system is that you, youcan't control what the baboons
are doing.
Uh, so literally they do whatthey want.
So you have to make theminterested in your experiment.

You want them to come to your experiment and
then, by the way, I have a funnystory about that baboons doing
what they want.
I was in northern ghana duringmy master's degree research and
I visited this national parkarea called Mule and they have a
little tourist like a hotelresort place that I was staying
at and there was a I think therewas a.
There was a pool or kind of adeck area with a bunch of tables

(46:04):
and then the baboons the localbaboons would roll through
pretty much daily and one got upon a table, really scared the
tourists away, grabbed one ofthe glass bottles of Coca-Cola
and started sipping out of thestraw.
So I imagine when baboons havethe free right of way to do
whatever they want, it can get alittle funny.
But I'm sorry for interruptingyour story.

No, it's a funny story, but that's right,
because they're doing what theywant, then we can't impose I
mean, we even have to makeexperiments that are attractive
to them.
So if you think about thememory that I was describing,
then after a while they're justboth doing the same thing.
So after three weeks, fourweeks doing these memory tasks,

(46:50):
they're just bored by it andthen they are going to stop
doing the experiments becausethey're afraid to do whatever
they want and therefore whathappens is we have to renew and
change the experiment becauseotherwise they just stop coming,
they just stop doingexperiments.
So that's one of the mainlimitations, and I forgot the
rest of your question.
That's one of the mainlimitations and I forgot the

(47:10):
rest of your question.

I think we were talking about the
advantages.
So what were the other kind ofbits of information that you can
pull out of doing these kindsof experiments.
But having all of the animalsare, I imagine they're chipped
so they have wearable tech.
They can track movements.
You can track interactions andthen you can track when they're
using the machines and who withthat's right.
Movements.
You could track interactionsand then you can track when
they're using the machines andwho with things like that.

Yeah, so, yes , I mean so we realized because
of this spontaneous dynamics, uh, one of the one of the
advantage of the system is thatyou can actually know where the
individuals are and when they'recoming to do experiments, uh,
and based on that, you canextract information from the
group.
So we realized very early on,um, when I started working at

(47:54):
the lab, that we start studyingsocial network uh, because
baboons uh behave as a group.
I mean, they behave like intheir natural environment, so
they, their behavior issynchronous.
So when one individual startsgoing to, uh to cubicles, then
it's going to attract otherindividuals, so they go in a

(48:16):
group and with their closefriends, so you can look at who
is coming next to whom at whattime, and then you can
reconstruct the social network.
And we've been doing this bylooking at, you know, having
people looking at the beehivesand who's grooming whom, and you
realize that, based on thegrooming network, you realize

(48:36):
that you can get the samenetwork using the computers.
At the same time, we also lookedat when an individual is doing
an experiment and gets replacedby another one very, very soon,
in 30 seconds.
So that's a displacement andthat's something that is typical

(48:58):
of a sort of agonisticinteraction, dominance
interaction, one individualcommit to replace another
individual in a spot and,looking at this, you can
reconstruct the dominancehierarchy of the baboons.
So that means that the baboonsare using this system.
This system is part of theirenvironment.
I'm going to say naturalenvironment.

(49:19):
It's a natural fake environment, but it's part of their place,
it's their house, it's wherethey go every day for a few
hours to gain some food and dosome experiments.
And again, we're starting a newPhD project on curiosity and
I'm very excited about itbecause I think a large part of

(49:40):
why they're coming they'reinterested in the experiments
and they want, you know, to havethis experience and these
cognitive tasks and cognitivechallenges that are stimulating
in a captive environment.

Yeah, do you see a lot of variation?
I mean, I guess you must.
You have a lot of individuals,so there should be a lot of
variation in who's using thetasks.

Some are not.
Dominant males are notinterested in experiments Not
very surprisingly.
Following the groups andlooking at the females and so on
, that's right.
And you get a lot of variationwith age as well.
So you have a sort of peakadolescence crisis where
individuals are very keen tocome and do experiments.
But we get individuals from allage ranges, but they come more

(50:45):
or less.
It's also very dependent ontheir social position, because
that also gives them access tomore interesting food or not, so
they tend to adjust based onthat.
So there is a lot of variation.
But when we do an experiment forlong enough I would say about a
month you realize that you getall the individuals to come and

(51:06):
do the experiment.
Even the dominant males woulddo like one trial a day, maybe
two to 1,000 for their neighbor,but after some time they come
in and they do some.
So we get everybody and we alsoget everybody next to everybody
else.
So even though there is thissocial structure, they have

(51:27):
their close friends and theyhave the individual they're
quite far from after some time.
We get every pair, everycombination of individuals
coming next to each other indifferent testing cubicles.
So that means that it's alsovery flexible.
I mean it's not like a verystrong repulsion for individuals

(51:48):
.
They like each other.
They just tend not to be nextto each other, but it's not a
very strong repulsion.

When you were here in Japan it's about a month
ago now, I guess you gave atalk about I guess in a way it
was kind of an unconventionalstudy, because I don't think you
that word, unconventional mightbe relevant to the topic, but
it was unconventional in thesense that I think you started,
if I'm not wrong, you startedtrying to test something else
that didn't work, but then theresult was something potentially

(52:19):
even more interesting, whichwas the finding that there may
be conventions in the baboonsthere.
So can you talk about that?

Yes, I mean, for me it was a very exciting
moment because you're very happyin science when you discover
something and you're like, wow,this is exciting and you have to
keep an open mind and that'syou know.
That's what I'm trying to do,and so we really wanted to do an

(52:49):
experiment on imitation.
Because of this social learningliterature, I wanted to check
if the baboons could imitateeach other.
So I gave them a task where youhave two baboons and they are
very close to each other andthey can see each other's screen
, and you present two colourssay blue and yellow to one
baboon and the baboon can pickwhatever she wants, and then the

(53:11):
two colours appear on the namescreen and the other baboon has
to choose the same colour as thefirst one to be rewarded.
So the first baboon choosesyellow and the other baboon has
to choose the same color as thefirst one to be rewarded.
So the first baboon choosesyellow and the other one chooses
yellow.
They both get a reward at thesame time.
They choose the same color andthey're not rewarded.
And my idea was that they weregoing to look at what the other

(53:32):
individual is doing, so thesecond one, the chooser, would
just look at what the otherindividual is doing and choose a
color based on what the firstone was doing.
But at the end of theexperiment we used an opaque
partition that we slided inbetween the two baboons so they
couldn't see each other anymore,and we realized that they were

(53:55):
as good as, even better than,with the transparent partition,
when they could see each other.
So obviously it wasn't anythinglinked to imitation or looking
at the other individual and werealized that they had developed
this sort of systematic buildto allow them to choose a
different color.
So, for instance, they wouldchoose yellow over all the other

(54:17):
colors, so yellow over blue,yellow over purple, and so on
and so forth.
Blue, for instance, was theleast chosen color, so it was
almost never chosen, and so onand so forth.
So they organized the color ina form of structure that allowed
them to solve the task.
That is very typical ofconventions, and we did several

(54:41):
experiments to show that it wassimilar to human experiments.
But I think there was thisincredible moment where you
realised the experiment didn'twork as planned.
You were not studying the thingthat you were supposed to do.
They found something moreinteresting in your experiment
that you didn't think about, andit was very exciting to study

(55:03):
and to work out what was goingon.
How did they manage to solvethis task?
At the beginning, I didn'tunderstand what was going on and
it was a sort of eureka momentwhen you ah, now I understand
what's going on.
So that was a very interestingmoment.
I think it's one of the thingsthat we you know, we leave for

(55:24):
scientists to discover newthings you don't expect.
Yeah, that was one of them.

Yeah, so I mean, why?
Why do you think so?
Maybe you presumably did theseexperiments or repeated them,
but yellow, you said, was kindof this dominant color that came
out.
Do you have any idea?
What is it that would bias themin that way for this case?
So maybe I'll throw out anexample, and I don't know, you
can tell me if this is also aconvention or not.

(55:51):
But humans, when we're orderingthings, we tend to order things,
and especially maybe this istrue of people who have writing
systems that move from left toright, but we tend to order
things, and especially maybethis is true of people who have
writing systems that move fromleft to right, but we tend to
order things from left to right.
In Japan, where I'm based, theremay be some variations, because
the traditional way to write isfrom the top to bottom and

(56:12):
right to left, and so there maybe ways of ordering things based
on that, but it seems to bepretty universal that we kind of
order things from left to rightand top down.
And then some of my colleagueshere in Kyoto University showed

(56:32):
with the chimpanzees that theyalso seem to order things from
left to right and top down,especially when it comes to like
hierarchies too.
So they had some cleverexperiments where they either
match the expectations of thesubject or mismatch them by
putting a dominant individual ontop of a subordinate individual
on a touch on a screen Right,and then they had to like, match
some image.
It was just a matching task, um, and then they showed that that
was fine when they reversed it.
So the subordinate was on topand the dominant was on the

(56:53):
bottom.
The chimpanzees were slower atmatching, and so it seems to be
a violation of the expectationof dominance.
Individuals should be on thetop.
If we number things or orderthings in a list from left to
right, that, I guess, would bean example of a convention.
If we share it with otherspecies that are not humans, I'm

(57:14):
not sure it satisfiesconvention anymore, because it
might be something morefundamental convention anymore,
because it might be somethingmore fundamental, but right.

So the, the conventions are based on a
coordination problem.
So the, the very typicalexample is driving on the right
and side of the road on the left, and it's a coordination
problem, because if you'redriving on the left when
everybody's driving on the right, you have a problem, uh.
So, for instance, in writingsystem, uh, you have a
coordination problem becauseeverybody needs to write in the

(57:44):
same direction in order to solvethe task.
But if we are talking aboutordering books on your
bookshelves, then it's not acoordination problem.
It just depends on what youprefer.
So there's this sort of subtlechange between coordination to
individual sort of preferences.
Of course, a lot of Somepreferences are more or less

(58:07):
universal.
They could be based on lots ofdifferent things the fact that
you're right-handed, or manypeople are right-handed versus
left-handed.
It could have an impact in yourwriting system and that could
have an impact on the way inwhich you order things and so on
and so forth.
But in the case of the baboons,why yellow was chosen, I think,

(58:30):
is I have a very banal and notinteresting intention.
So in our system, we use red asa sign.
That is a thing to reward.
So it's often a target that youhave to touch to solve the task
, and green is used as afeedback, negative feedback,
saying you missed.
You missed the task.
So I think they simply theysimply went for the thing that

(58:52):
was closest to red.
So we got orange and yellow ontop and blue at the bottom,
which makes a lot of sense whenyou think about the environment
and the way in which they'vebeen using these computers.
So I don't think there's.
I mean, there might besomething that is, you know,
generally shared with baboonsabout, or non-human primates
about, red or something likethis, but we can't say anything

(59:15):
about it.
You know, in our setup, I see,but more generally in
conventions, they're governed byindividual preferences.
Solving this coordinationproblem is going to rely on sort
of intuitive ideas that peoplehave on how to solve them.
So if you think about a simplecoordination problem, you need

(59:35):
to set up a meeting with someoneyou know you're in a city
Suppose you don't have cellphone.
You know, back in the old dayswhen we were very, very young,
you need to find a place whereyou're going to meet that person
.
The first idea that comes tomind would be the center of the
city, the church, whatever thetemple, something that is very

(59:57):
clear and you can meet thatperson there because you're
thinking that she's thinkingthat you know.
So you're going to solve thatcoordination problem based on
your intuitions.
So what I'm saying is thatconventions can be based on
intuitions because they aregoing to be based on this
solving this coordinationproblems, but they can also go

(01:00:21):
against.
So you can also set up aconvention that is against your
intuitions and then, once it'sset up, it's very hard to change
because everybody is solvingthe coordination problem in the
same way, therefore changing it.
Think about driving.
If you want to force the UK tochange their driving practice to

(01:00:42):
the right side, as it should be, then it's going to be tough.
That's it.

Andrew MacIntosh (01:00:51):
I was wondering and I didn't think of
it when you were presenting, butI did ask that question about
the colors but had youconsidered replicating with
different kinds of stimuli?
So what if you used symbols,for example?
Would you expect similar kindof results in this emergence of
conventions?

Nicolas Claidiere (01:01:10):
That's right.
So at the beginning we werethinking that, I mean, we
weren't sure it was linked tocolors.
So we replicated it with blackand white shapes, of different
shapes, and we did, you know,around 10, with different
stimuli every time, and wealways get the same result.

(01:01:30):
That's because we have a veryclear understanding of what's
going on and how they solve thisproblem.
They get a reward when theymanage to solve the task and
that's going to inform theirprevious choice.
So it makes a lot of sense.
We know how they solve thecoordination problem and where
we get the results.
But you're right, I mean, atthe beginning, your sort of

(01:01:51):
intuitions about what the otherperson chooses is going to
inform the outcome of the study,that's for sure.

Are there now other examples of this, of
conventions in other species, inother situations or conditions?

I think that's one outcome of the paper.
There are very few examples ofconventions in the white.
I think one study by SusanPerry on conventions in
white-faced monkeys is probablythe most well-known and
emblematic study about white.
So we know there are someexamples.
But I think, given that it wasvery spontaneous in our setup, I

(01:02:31):
mean they came up with theseconventions very easily, very
quickly, and they're not basedon very complex thinking.
I mean you can explain them insort of simple reinforcement.
You don't need to have ideasabout what the other individual
is thinking, so you don't havetheory of mind like this.
So we expect conventions to bevery widespread.

(01:02:51):
I think they just understudied.
I think one outcome of thestudy that that should be
everywhere.
But I don't think people havetried to study them very softly.
But if we do, my expectation isthey're going to be everywhere.

Yeah, that's really interesting.
It seems so often that we makethese discoveries that just show
how potentially unremarkablethe behaviors are, or at least
the kind of root of the behaviorseems to be something so simple
that we hadn't consideredbefore, which means, of course,
other species are going to haveit.
So it'll be really interestingto see as we go there.

(01:03:30):
So I think we can start to kindof wind this conversation down
a little bit, but before we dothat I have some questions that
I was given by an oldacquaintance of yours
potentially by Melanie.
Duvall.
I asked and she provided me afew questions that I'm going to
throw at you here Someone who'sgoing to be coming to work with

(01:03:52):
me a little bit starting inJanuary, and so we were
surprised to learn that we eachhave relationships with you and
thought it'd be a goodopportunity to kind of share.
So one thing that she asked,which I thought was kind of
interesting and it might help usunderstand this conversation as
well, is what's the kind ofpathway for you between
queenless ants and guineababoons?

(01:04:13):
It's very complicated.

It's not a straight line.
It's a very complicated.
It's not a straight line, it'sa lot of detours?
We don't like straight lineshere on the podcast, so that's
okay.
So I was okay.
When I started my studies, Iwas very interested in biology.
I've always been interested inbiology and I wanted to study

(01:04:37):
the evolution of social behaviorand in particular, in insects,
bees, wasps.
I really wanted to understandhow individuals were capable of
forming groups and how evolutionwould favor the evolution of
groups, and I was really goingfor that.

(01:04:59):
I was super keen.
I did my going for that.
I was super keen.
I did my internships on that.
And then there was this randomthing that happened I had to
take a course because I neededmore credits and I couldn't find
anything that I wanted to do.
So my wife convinced me tochoose cognitive science because
she was doing something incognitive science.

(01:05:19):
I knew nothing about cognitivescience, I had no idea
whatsoever.
So I took cognitive science andpart of it was an internship,
and I chose neuroscience and Iwasn't really excited with that.
And then there was philosophy.
I said, oh, let's go forphilosophy.

(01:05:40):
And I met Dan Sperber and I hadto do an internship with Dan.
And that was a life-changingmoment because Dan absolutely
convinced me that we could studyhuman behavior.
You know this interactionbetween biological evolution and
cultural evolution andunderstanding this would really

(01:06:00):
benefit from people interestedin biological evolution and
cultural evolution, andunderstanding this would really
benefit from people interestedin biological evolution.
And so he suggested that Icompletely change my career and
start studying social learningin humans and cultural evolution
.
And I found this reallyexciting because at the time
nobody was working on this.
So all the things we've beentalking about the work by Andy
White on non-human primates wasjust coming out.

(01:06:24):
I think it was almost the sameyear I decided to start working
with Dan, so it was really thevery, very early beginning and
there was a lot of theoriesworked by Rob Boyd and Patricia
Son and Cavadis, fawza andFeldman, and there were
biologists interested inmodeling control evolution.
But that also was very smalland nobody was looking at it.

(01:06:46):
So it was very exciting.
We could feel that there wasthis very interesting
interaction that was going totake place and I wanted to be a
part of it.
And by the end of my PhD, youknow, they were starting to get
studies on non-human primatesand social learning and so I
managed to do a postdoc withAndy Whiten.
It was the first time I met amonkey.
That was very late.

(01:07:09):
I was doing my postdoc.
I wasn't introduced toprimatology before that.
He was kind enough to take meon board with absolutely no
experience whatsoever, and I metValérie, who was now a
researcher in the CNRS inStrasbourg, and she taught me
what I know today aboutnon-human primates.

I had no idea.

She taught me how to train them, how to
perform experiments andeverything, and that was
incredible.
I mean, I learned so manythings.
It was really exciting.
And then, finally, I met JoëlFagot, where I said, oh my God,
all these experiments I'vealways dreamed about.
That was the start of mycomposition.

(01:07:53):
So it's a long, winding roadthrough biology, philosophy and
finally psychology and creativescience.
Yes, Fantastic.

I love the.
In some ways it can kind of looklike a pinball bouncing between
these really influential peopleyou know, but along the way it
sounds like you've had somereally great mentorship as well,
and so I wonder maybe this isnot her question, but my
question is like have you triedto kind of sit down and
integrate all the ways thatthese people influenced you and

(01:08:27):
how you kind of take thoselessons and apply them in your
own lab now?
Um, because it's presumably youalso have your own set of
students and ways to influence.

They influenced you so I, I found the
three, so my three uh mentorswere dan sperber, andy whiten
and joel fago, and they're very,very different.
They're completely uh, and everytime it it works so well.
I learned so much, uh,different levels that I don't

(01:09:04):
know I can't say by them.
I feel like I'm between thethree of them.
I'm trying to be, you know, I'mtrying to be, but I think
everybody is different.
So I think I have my own kindof mentorship.
But what I would recommend forpeople like Melanie who are

(01:09:24):
coming is to get differentpeople, because you can learn
very different experiences andthat's very important, because
you see things you know fromdifferent perspectives and that
opens your mind to a lot ofdifferent possibilities and also
you don't get focused on thesame thing.
So by the end of your PhD youknow you have that particular

(01:09:47):
question you're reallyinterested in and you don't want
to see anything else.
And then you broaden your mindand you realize that you know
the world is bigger than thatand you can study many different
things and there are otherpeople who are doing things
differently and they're alsointeresting.
You can study many differentthings and there are other
people who are doing thingsdifferently and they're also
interesting For me.

Yeah, that was really important for me that's
great advice and you alsoanswered one of her last
questions, which is really youradvice for students.
But I totally agree with thatone and I myself have kind of
bounced around a little bit, notonly in topics but also the
species Never studied queenlessants.
So that's something you've goton me, but maybe there's still

(01:10:25):
time, right, there's still time.
So maybe last question from meyou mentioned a little bit
earlier on you're gettingexcited about some new
experiments that you'redesigning to work on and have a
new student coming in to work oncuriosity.
I think you know stayingcurious is part of the theme
coming out of the last couple ofminutes of this episode, but do

(01:10:46):
you want to just maybe leave usoff with what's the deal with
curiosity, what's the angle forthe studies and what do we know
and not know about?
And, to be honest, I think I'veseen on Twitter some people
advertising positions forgraduate students to come and
study curiosity and species X ofprimates somewhere in the world
.
So yeah, I wonder if maybe thisis something that's emerging
now.

I wonder too.
I mean, we've been, we'vewanted to to study.
So oftentimes people come to meand they ask me so why are
baboons coming and doing yourexperiments?
It's a food reward, okay, sothey get food and that's one
aspect of it, but I'm convincedit's not the exact and I think a

(01:11:31):
lot of it is linked to this uhstation that you get when you're
actually solving a problem oryou know, know, managing to find
a solution, and that's also oneaspect of it.
And I think we've always wantedto study this and this is
linked to curiosity.
Do you want to explore yourenvironment?
Do you want to find new things?

(01:11:56):
And that student came up withthis idea of studying curiosity,
so maybe it's the right time todo that.
I saw also ads after we started.
So the same, as you know,studying curiosity is.

X.

So I think it's an interesting aspect to
link to social learning though,because, again, to get cultural
evolution going, you needinnovation and the transmission
of innovation.
And innovation are going to bebased on individuals who are
exploring the environment andfinding new ways to solve old

(01:12:31):
problems or new problems thatthey can solve, and that aspect
is certainly linked to curiosity, but right now I don't know
what's going to come out of it.
I have no idea what we're goingto do.
I don't have a very cleardefinition of curiosity or
anything.

We're going to see Sounds fascinating, and it
made me wonder have you ever soyou have?
These baboons are capable ofcoming to these experimental
booths whenever they feel likeit.
They get the food reward.
You assume, or you hypothesize,that maybe they get a cognitive
reward as well.
Have you ever allowed, did the,have you ever allowed the

(01:13:10):
baboons to choose the tasks thatthey have in front of them, or
are they always kind of set withuh?

no, that's one of the things that we want
to do, uh is is to look at, uh,what would they choose when they
have the choice?
So we need to teach them thatthey can choose the task, yeah,
and then, uh, you know, givethem different choices.
Uh, do you want to do this taskor that task?
Are you going to change or areyou going to sit there on the
same one?
If I give you an easy but very,you know, boring, I don't know,

(01:13:40):
touch the right square.
There's just something that is,uh, more challenging but also
more exciting.
Uh, try to solve this problem,memorize this, or find the
target in the environment, orsomething like that.
Uh, so that's the sort of ideaswe're going for.
That, you know, I don't knowwhat we're going to do.

Yeah, that sounds cool.
I was thinking or it justpopped into my mind these
studies by Rob Hampton's groupabout metamemory as well, where
the animals have the option toeither take a test or kind of
phone a friend in a way like geta little bit of memory helped
if they're not confident intheir own abilities.
And I wonder if maybe thebaboons would have some of that

(01:14:22):
as well, Like if you had achoice in front of them.
They may be more interested insome tasks rather than others,
but they also may feel moreprepared to do some tasks over
others as well, and so I wonderwhat kind of information can
come out of that line ofexperimentation.
I'm curious, you're curious,well, and I was very curious.
So thank you for satisfying mycuriosity here.

(01:14:43):
Nico, on the podcast, hope totalk to you soon.
Me too.
Yes, thank you so much.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Conventions to Culture: Social Cognition in Techno-Baboons with Dr. Nicolas Claidiere