Can Your Nose Pick Your Friends?

you're in the wrong universe. Jason Pargeon, Welcome once again. I have to remind myself this is a family friendly show that fans know. Uh. I go to strange and unusual places being a infamously dark and devious brain. It's there's the issue. I write different genres. This one's a horror novel, so I for the interviews, I have to be horror guy. Um, and then when the next book comes at its sci fi, then I'll be I'll just

be a nerd again. But so right now I'm trying to really play up how dark and devious my mind is. I mean, this is the show where I talk about parasites that like crawl out of your skin. So I don't think that's so much of a problem. Although I guess this topic is somewhat toilet toilet based horror. Uh, that's perfect for anyone who's read any of my books. There's a I have to confess a lot of toilet stuff in there. I mean, you know, toilet. The toilet

is such a siminal part of our existence. I don't know why it's so taboo to talk about it. You know. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of seminal stuff in there too. Um. I apologize for that. Uh, but the to be serious for a second. One thing about horror is it relies very very heavily on our base kind of instincts for disgust, you know, because we we are instinctively afraid of certain things. And it's a lot of

that is driven by evolution. Of course, things we are afraid of because we the ones who were not afraid of it did not live on to reproduce. Um. So a lot of it is just you know, we're for example, um, a lot of aliens in order to make us disgusted by them, the very slimy well why you know, we have a visceral reaction to slime. We we viscerally want to reject it. We are very scared of zombies, even though in the entire history of the planet no one has ever been injured or killed by a dead body.

But we are viscerally disgusted by rott and rotting and rotting flesh. Because of course those sayings could make you sick if you were too close to them, or you know, you could be contaminated. So this fits right in because when you see anything about in the animal kingdom, the first thing you notice is they of course, even if you just have a pet, they are not disgusted by the same things we are. It is very hard to keep my dog from eating the pup it finds in

the yard. Uh, and it seems to enjoy it very much. Yeah, my dog tried to eat a turd that had like a cigarette butt squished in the middle of it, like a candle on a little birthday cake. And she was very upset that I didn't let her just like, you know,

eat that thing. And yeah, actually, you know, when you're bringing up the fear of like aliens and the fear of zombies, I think there was some I heard at least somewhere that like clown makeup can appear kind of scary or menacing because it looks somewhat similar potentially like a rotting corpse where the eyes are sunken and the mouth kind of uh discolors or something, and in the super pale white skin discoloration on a body or something, and so that can that the weird proportions of a

clown and the weird facial coloration could like be reminiscent of this strange coloration and strange proportions of like a

moldering corpse and equally weird. Um, when people have what you know, I assume like sleep paralysis episodes where they think they're being abducted by aliens and they imagine these alien faces with very pale gray skin, very big dark eyes, um that there's something in the side, because many different people have described the same faces all over the world, and UFO people say, well, see, that's evidence that the aliens are real, when in reality is that that is

evidence of when your mind is in a certain state and you're imagining being assaulted by something, there's a certain type of face you put on it. When when you're in a position where you're very afraid or whatever, and for some reason we imprint like big emptied our guys. Uh and like a skin tone that's not healthy, right, like that's grayish or pale or something like. There's these visceral reactions where like it kind of doesn't make logical sense.

It's like, well, why would you be afraid of a clown? It's like why would you be afraid of any of these things? It's like, well, there's some kind of primal thing. It taps into in the same way that there's all these series about why fingernails on a chalkboard, they care our hair stand up on end. I guess they're like, why would that tone, why would that specific you know, vibration or noise be so upsetting to us? Um And I don't know what they've ever landed on a theory,

but it has something to do with that. If you go back a million years, you'll find a species that is equally upset by that noise. Yeah, I mean it does sound a little bit like a bird of praise call or something. I'm just speculating. I don't know, of course, but yeah, I mean it is interesting because the alteration of some of a face, like a face that's out of a portion, with eyes that are too big or

too small, or a mouth that's too big. It's like that, I think when something deviates from our mental map of a face, which we actually when we're very very young infants, we already have kind of a schema of what a face should look like, and infants will look at things that represent like a human face and are much more concerned when the when the face is kind of out

of proportion, and they don't really like that. And so yeah, I think like if something is sort of out of order or kind of off, we feel very unnerved and interestingly like this idea of being able to identify a friend, identify one of your species, but also identify someone you know is something that we share with animals. Like animals can identify individuals, they can get upset when something is bizarre about a situation when it comes to identifying individuals,

and it can be pretty gross. Also, So I do want to talk about dolphins now. I feel like dolphins are interesting because they either get a really bad rap of people saying, well, don't you know that dolphins are evil? Or they're seen as this beautiful graceful, sort of philanthropic wonder animal of the sea. Well, yeah, and also I think the reason we have those attitudes towards them is because it's weird having a creature that is supposedly intelligent

but doesn't express it in any of the same ways. Yeah, Like like it's it's kind of similar to you know, how our attitude towards you know, primates um there when you see them doing something distinctly human, like their facial expressions or their gestures, you can either think that's cute or if, depending on how large and muscular the thing is, you can be find it terrifying because it's like the thing is too smart to not also know the rules of human behavior. So it's kind of the same thing.

It's like dolphins, if you don't know anything about how they behave it's like, oh, they're just the humans of the sea. It's like, well, no, they they something can be very intelligent. Same thing with aliens, you know something, they can be very intelligent but have no knowledge of any of the things that we think of as universal laws of behavior. It's like, no, those are distinct to

our time and place and in culture. That's dolphins would not would not understand any of that right, And like some of the things they do that seems cruel to us, like they will just smack the dickens out of octopuses.

So they'll take an octopus and smash it against the water against rocks to like pulverize this poor octopus, and it seems like it's just an act of cruelty, like it already seems dead and they keep smacking it, and it seems like it is these dolphins being sadistic, But in reality, it's because they have to make sure that this octopus, if they swallow an octopus that's still a little bit alive, it's tentacles can like reach out and try to prevent itself from getting swallowed and choked the

dolphin to death. So they've learned that they have to absolutely tenderized and pulverized and octopus before they can safely eat it. But to us it seems cruel like they're just torturing an octopus before eating it, and torturing a creature that is also shockingly intelligent for something that again

does not look anything like people. But for example, they've recently started factory farming octopi as food and there's a big protest movement saying this is not a creature that should be herded into giant pins, you know, in closed spaces and made to breed. And because they're like to they're too smart for that. That is a whole other episode we could do about at what point does a creature become too intelligent to put it in a farm and turn it into just something that breeds to be

to make food for us. Yeah, I mean I agree with that, and also that I mean it's like, uh, you know, with octopuses, it's just it seems very difficult to create a setting that they could live happily before being slaughtered. And you know, we could obviously the ethics of slaughter as a whole other beast, but like, it is feasible for some animals to like maybe not with factory farming or cafoe farming, but it is feasible to have an animal be able to live a relatively regular

life on land before slaughter. But for something like an octopus, I'm not sure how you could do that. Like there pasture is like the open ocean, so that's a little strange. Yeah, they are very intelligent. There's some um, some researchers think they might be able to dream. They're really good problem solvers. And yeah, their lifespan is sad quite short, but the and it is, but it is really fascinating because they're

very close to being aliens on Earth. They evolved completely independently from us since the time we were both like some kind of flatworms. So their brains, their eyes, all this stuff evolved independently, and yet they still have these recognizable intelligent behaviors. So that's it's very interesting. But you know, the dolphins when they're smacking these octopuses, they're not thinking

about all these things, or so we think. Um. But yeah, I mean, like they can be brutal, like a lot is made out of like that they kill other species of dolphins. Again, this is probably because they're like competing for food. Um. They'll sometimes ram sharks. Um. But I think it's a little bit reductive to see dolphins as evil. After all, like humans do a lot of messed up stuff. But I wouldn't write off on our entire species is being evil. Um. And in fact, dolphins have a sweet side.

They can be very friendly with other species and they can be really friendly with each other. Um. Sometimes bottle nose dolphins will actually coexist and even form pods with other dolphins species or other cetaceans like the short finned pilot whales. So bottlenose dolphins aren't just all antisocial assholes as sometimes people say they are. Yeah, it's that's the

thing is. It's kind of in the Internet era, I think, is when the whole thing spread around it because the whole thing was a lot of you know, young girls grow up with like dolphins stickers on their on their school supplies, or they you know, they get dolphins tattoos on their ankles. It's like they're beautiful. So I think people consider it very cool in the early Internet days to point out but yeah, it's silly to have that kind of binary for we were always projecting like human

morality onto other creatures. It was a very silly thing to do. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's fun to like point out, like, dolphins are not the Lease of Frank version of the animal. But yeah, they're not. They're not I think seeing them as like secretly evil animals, they're they're they're just animals, you know, They're there. Some aspect of them are cruel, Some aspects of them are actually quite sweet. They can explain, you know, and it varies from individual to individual or from pod to pod.

Uh And there are some examples of dolphins actually being extremely empathetic. In two thousand and eight, there was a bottle nose dolphin named Mocho who lived off the east coast of New Zealand and who saved a pygmy sperm whale in her calf who were stuck on a sandbar, reportedly by calling out for them and leading them to deeper water. Uh. And in twenty nineteen, it was observed that a female bottle nose dolphin had adopted a young melon headed whale and was caring for it as her

own offspring. And in Laguna, South Brazil, fisherman and dolphins have actually been fishing together since the late eighteen hundreds, with dolphins driving fish into the nets of fishermen, which benefits both the dolphins and the fisherman. The dolphins even make specific body gestures to tell the fishermen to deploy their nets, and so, you know, all these cases, it's it's interesting because it shows that dolphins are quite capable

of pro social behavior. Even with the fishing example. If you can see that as like, well, they're doing it because it also benefits themselves. I mean by it's basically this happens actually quite a bit with cooperation between two species and hunting. You're driving your prey into a bottle neck where either they escape towards one predator or towards

the other. Actually, coyotes and badgers do this a little bit with groundhogs another burrowing prey, where there's a coyote at one entrance to the borrow and a badger digging out the other entrance of the borrow. So the the little burrowing animal has to either go towards the coyote or towards the badger. And so this is what's happening

with the dolphins and the fisherman. The dolphins are driving the fish towards the net, and so the fish are kind of cornered between either the fisherman or the dolphins, and so it gives these fish less avenues for escape. It kind of balls them up into these clusters, and both the fisherman and the dolphins can just kind of

scoop them out of the water. Interesting. Yeah, and so yeah, so you know they're they're very intelligent animals, but within their species, they are seemingly capable of sustaining friendships, and they can identify their friends through their unique whistles almost like these aren't names. But I did promise some gross stuff rather than all this cute, touchy feely stuff, because there is another way that they can identify their friends and leave a calling card, and that is ppe which,

as we know, the ocean is one gigantic toilet. Yeah, and in fact that's what the word ocean means really in um in French means toilet, God's toilet, God's toilet

in old um Latin will say uh so uh. Dolphins have been observed exploring the warm spots behind other dolphins, which is the p p plume um, you know, because they're they're they're down for pretty much anything, apparently, and so of course, whenever something gross is happening in nature, there's always a bunch of researchers clamoring to study it and investigate it more closely, because when it comes down to it, if you think the dolphins are freaky for

sniffing each other's p or even freakier for being really voyeuristic and wanting to watch the dolphins sniffing each other's p So what do they get of that though? Is it? Is it that every dolphin has distinct urine and that's how they like How does that determine whether or not they want to be friends with that dolphin? Yeah, so this is really interesting. Researchers put this to the test by dumping p into these pools with these dolphins that

live at like these captive lagoon facilities in Hawaii and Bermuda. Basically, the researchers would put a test subject dolphin in a test pool and then dump either ice water, urine of one of their friends, like a dolphin that they're familiar with, or urine of a stranger into the pool, and the dolphin would investigate this this new liquid introduced to the pool, and they were super into tasting their friends urine, but not so much the ice water or the urine of

the stranger dolphin, which means that they can recognize their friends urine by taste and they are really interested in invest to gating it. How did the researchers collect the friend here and from the friend dolphin? I mean, you know, that's a really good question. I don't know, but what I assume is they like waited for a dolphin a p Maybe they had like a thermal camera or something

and then just scooped it out with a cup. I don't know, I am only guessing maybe there's like a little dolphin diaper you can put on and then kind of squeegee out. Yeah. I'm gonna search YouTube later to see how, because that sounds like by far the most difficult part of that experiment. Yeah, that's a safe thing to search how to collect dolphin p um you know, on the internet. Definitely recommend searching for that. But I feel like every listener right now is saying, well, now,

hold on, my my dog does this? Like if my dog comes along and another dog is p there, my dog runs over and smells it intensely and maybe p's on top of it, or it runs over and smells at other dogs. But is this the same thing? Like is that are they getting the same thing out of it that my dog gets when it's trying to read it, Like when it meets a new dog, the first thing that wants to do is smell it's But yeah, yeah,

I mean it's probably very similar. The only differences are that the it's probably tasting the P the dolphin, not just smelling it. And also they're able to recognize the connection between the P and their dolphin friends whistle. So, like I mentioned earlier, every dolphin kind of has a unique whistle, which is kind of you could think of

it as like the dolphins name. And dolphins are really interested when you present them both with the urine of a friend and the whistle of their friend, like they they taste even more P. I guess when they hear the whistle because they think that this really means that they're friend is nearby and they're they're really excited, um, and so you know, I think it is. But it is very similar to the whole dog butt sniffing dogs

sniffing pea kind of phenomenon. I guess. The I think the issue is that we, because we're so humans, are so based on site. We are thinking, well, couldn't you just see that your friends, like if you're close enough to drink as urine, like clearly you can see he's right there. But I think and I think we may be overestimating how well dolfice can see each other at the depths they're at. Is that is that possible? I mean,

I think that it's just the there their vision. They can use their vision, but I think like their sense of hearing and their sense of taste and smell are just much more um accurate and more um usable under the water than their vision. Like vision underwater is a little tricky with like how light reflects, Like see, creature

can see underwater, but you can't see very far. So if your friend peas and then moves on kind of you know, just like a several meters away, it might be harder to see them because of how thick water is compared to air in terms of how light can pass through it. So making use of uh, taste and smell and sonar and you're hearing underwater can be really really useful compared to vision. And it's interesting because even uh some terrestrial animals really capitalize on smell over vision.

Like dogs have decent vision, but they have incredible smell. And so when you take your dog on a walk, you might notice that they're much more interested in smelling things getting their nose around than just looking around. And that's because their perception is based on smell primarily and also hearing. And then you know they do have okay, vision, but they're less visual creatures than we are, and they're

much more interested in the smells of things. That I think is secretly what this episode is going to be about, because I think as humans were so heavily like everything is by sight and then you know, second secondly by sound, and you know, as you're going to get into later, the concept of identifying your friends by smell is like serial killer stuff, like that's what Hannibal Lictor did, the idea that a dog's nose is so sensitive that can

smell a spot and instantly know everything that happened in that spot over the last few days, like it's getting a news report on that spot we can't really comprehend because you know, we we can look and visually see, oh there was a rainstorm here, or oh there was you know, there's something there's this thing has been damaged or whatever, and you can kind of reconstruct what has

occurred there. But whereas a dog can say, hey, you know, a pair of squirrels had sex on this spot seven two hours ago, where it's almost like a look into the past because all of these traces remain of everything that is urinated there. Stepped on that spot, you know, somebody dropped a hot dog here two days ago, but then they picked it up again. Um, and they can

get there getting so much information out of smelling. And so when they do smell each other's butts or whatever, I always felt like they're getting like a version of that other dog's life story or that. You know, when the a dolphin, you know it gets when it ingests that urine. It's not just like m P like it presumably is sensitive enough and to be able to detect all sorts of things about hormone levels, you know, what state of fear is it in? What state of health

is it in? It almost would I would assume that through those chemicals it can deduce not it's not conscious of all this. It's a form of communication. And since that it can get like an update on its status, right, because if it was unhealthy, if it was you know, if it's kidneys were failing or whatever, that would be apparent. And it's urine, it would be different. Yeah, that's super possible.

In fact, researchers their next goal is to see like what compounds in the urine dolphins can detect and what they're using to identify their friends, so they may very well find that there's a lot of information these dolphins can use from from this sampling this year. And even though it sounds gross to us, it's like, we use that kind of system in zoos, like zookeepers will test the feces of animals to check on their health. And so you know the fact that dolphins maybe using urine

to determine details about other dolphins. You know, it's it's it's gross, but it gets right to the point. Earlier we were talking about the kind of these uncanny valley situations for humans, like weird faces with clowns. One of the things for me is like when you think you see a friend, uh, and then but it's not that friend, where you think you see your own doppelganger, and it's it's not really them. Like those kinds of situations really

like send a chill down my spine. And actually, with urine, we have created an uncanny valley situation for elephants uh in experiments. So there's this case of elephants where they they can identify their friends from smelling their urine um and they there was there are these researchers trying to

see if this was the case. They would collect the urine from an elephant in like a group of elephants that were traveling together and put it in like a tupperware container and then later put it like in front of the group of elephants. And so for these elephants, sometimes they would smell these and it if it belonged to an elephant that was like at the back of

the parade of elephants. They get really confused and stand there and smell and like kind of make a commotion because to them it seemed like that elephant just teleported. They're smelling this year and in front of them, and then they look behind them and they see, like George's urine is here, but then George's way back there. How did he get in front of them without them seeing him move in front of them and like p there,

And so they get they freak out. They get really confused, which I think is Uh, It's interesting how that kind of sensation of like wait, this is not possible happens to elephants. And it makes me wonder sometimes like we mess with elephants like that. I wonder if aliens ever

do weird experiments on us. And that's you know, when we were seeing a doppelganger or you know, weird unexplained occurrences, and it's just some kind of like alien researcher doing the equivalent of collecting elephant urine and tupperware and putting it somewhere doesn't belong. And I know, I'm sure some people get annoyed at the talk of like aliens because of course there's no evidence we've been visited by aliens

or whatever. But I will say this, Uh, if they were as intelligent to us as we are to elephants, like if they were that far above us, they would find it just as easy to deceive us, Like like the elephant would never figure out, oh, they collected the yurine and a type of ware container and just put it here in the same thing like we are. We we kind of cannot comprehend the idea that a creature could be way more intelligent than we are, because how

can you imagine something smarter than you? It just doesn't work. And we always assume, like, well, we figure it out, like we would notice, Like no, not really, because our thought patterns would be just as simplistic to them as the elephants are to us, like we would be mysterious to them in the same way that we don't completely know how dolphins work, but at the same time, it's not like a thing where we would for sure figure out what they were doing. That's one of the creepier

concepts I know. Um. The second creepiest concept you mentioned, like when they saw the urine of the elephant is back there and they're like, hey, that's that's George's urine. The concept of animals having names, like you mentioned earlier that the that the dolphins had a distinct whistle that

almost served as a name for them. That is a fascinating concept to me because when you're like training a dog, the first thing they tell you is that the name you gave the dog, the dog doesn't know that's their name. To the dog, that is a command that means look, attend to me, look at me, do what I'm asking you to do. So if you shout rufus, the dog does not think, oh, rufus, that's me. The dog thinks, oh, that's the noise the human makes to to make me

return to them. So the idea of the dog having a a like, are they conscious enough to have a personal identity and no like I have I am a distinct individual and these other dogs are other distinct individuals, Like do they have a concept of the mind, like these are other dogs? So that is a whole rabbit hole you could go down and probably its own episode because when they smell the urine, like they know the concept of how many elephants are in the herd, they

know which one is which. But in their minds whatever serves as an animal's mind, and they have something of a mind. We humans have names we assigned to people, but how would an animal who they don't have, you know, a verbal language, So how do they conceptualize? Are they just imagining a series? Is like? Is it literally in their head? As just a pie smell? You see what

I'm saying. Like if you took the elephant we just called George and painted him a different color, but as Peace smelled the same, his roar from his trunk sounded

the same, everything else was the same. Would they have no problem recognizing that as George because it's like the fact that he's a different colors is irrelevant because in their minds, elephant, in their minds, the name George is instead of in an elephants mind, it's just a series of sense or calls or noises or vibrations through the ground or however however else you know elephants do what

they do. I mean, it's such an interesting question because I think that, like what you're talking about in terms of consciousness is like, I think something can be fully conscious but not have a meta cognition of thinking about itself. So I feel like a dog, it is very intelligent. I think it's conscious, like very conscious, very aware, but I don't think it has a meta cognition, or at least there's no evidence that it has a meta cognition

about its own existence. So it like it just kind of exists and feels things, but doesn't necessarily think about itself as a unique individual. That doesn't mean it doesn't have uh emotions connecting to itself, Like it can want things and love things and dislike things. But that sense of self might be kind of unclear to them. It may it's like something they it doesn't even occur to

them to really think about. And I think they recognize other individuals, like their owners or other dogs they like, or even other species that they recognize, again without thinking of this concept of self versus other However, we do know they understand things like visual perceptive fields. So there are these hilarious experiments with dogs where they have an experiment or in the room, and there are a few

different types of situations. One in which they leave treats out and they order the dog to sit and to not take the treats. And so these are dogs that

are trained, who know that, who know what these commands mean. Uh, And when the experiment er is looking at the dog and looking at the treats, the dog will often sit there and not try to steal the treat because it knows that supposed to do that to behave if the experiment or turns their back on the dog, and I'm sure dog owners kind of recognize this behavior, Like if you're not looking at your dog, and your dog can tell you're not looking at it, then it will often

take the chance of being naughty, So then the dog might go for the treat sometimes. And like most of the cases of the dog that's experimented on, like if they if the owner gives the command and then leaves the room, almost all of them just immediately go and take the treat um, but some of them will even

like try to be sneaky. So if the experimenters in the room but with their gaze not directly at the treat but sort of off to the side, the dog will take sort of the circuitous path, how ding behind things to try to get at the treat without the observer watching them. So they can have complex concepts like understanding that the observer can have it has a different visual field than they do and is observing things without

necessarily conceptualizing the self and then the other person. So or you know, they may have some kind of rudimentary understanding of that. It's probably very different from our own, but that is one of the it's one of the key questions I think that animal behaviorists look at. It's like, to what degree does an animal have that concept of self? And there's some evidence that like dolphins may have that developed more. They're very interested in mirrors, you know, they're

they're highly intelligent. There's also some research trying to find out if elephants have that concept of self like they sometimes like this. There's this famous thing known as the mirror test, where you do something to animals face or put a dot on them and you see if they like, uh, investigate that dot that's on themselves in the mirror, which would indicate that they understand that there's a connection between

themselves and the thing in the mirror. And I think, if I remember correctly, elephants have on occasion done something that indicates that they make that connection to the mirror where they like ad just they have like a piece of hay on their head or something, and then they see that in the mirror and then they try to

pull it off of themselves. But yeah, it is I don't think we have a definitive answer to that, and once we do, we're going to know way more about animal cognition and probably our own consciousness, which we barely understand us. It is well right because when we try to imagine being an animal, we imagine things like having an internal monologue, which is something that didn't develop in

humans probably until we had language. Like you don't have to go back that far in our own evolutionary treat of find humans that don't have like this internal thought processed the way we the thing that we think of that that that like defines a human is a fairly recent development. As far as we know, no other creature has it. And you can function just fine without it. You can function just fine as an intelligent being without that, without having the internal you know, thoughts and all that.

Um that because our thinking the way, you know, when we're trying to make a decision about what do we do this or do we do this, we're running through it in our head almost verbally or you know, and we think that's the only way to process thoughts or the process cognition, and of course it's it's not. Um you know, we have machines that can make those decisions now, and they're not They don't have an internal monologue or an identity. They just they can judge, you know, a

self driving cars like do we turn here? Do we turn here? Do we have to do this to avoid this obstacle? But the car is not thinking to itself like okay, okay, Tesla, now this thing the things about to get into our way in the roads, we better slow down, Like it doesn't need to do that. It just does it. But it's still intelligent. It's still going through the you know, all of the steps of processing and information, but without anything like what we would call consciousness.

And these are all things are going to come up as we make smarter and smarter machines, Like, again, at what point do they do? We have to treat it like a person, and that's going to be difficult because we will probably never have one that has like an internal monologue or thoughts the way we have. But the question is going to be, well, okay, but why is that the thing that defines whether or not we mistreat

a creature or or an entity. I mean, it's interesting because even within humans, like that inner monomologue that you described, it doesn't describe every humans experience, like there are exactly there are you know, people who um function and like socially you know, totally socially acceptable ways where it's you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell this about them just from talking to them, But they report not having that inner monologue. They like don't talk to themselves in their head,

even though they can speak perfectly well. Um, but they experience like images, emotions, sensations as sort of their inner thoughts. But it's not organized as like a voice or words. Um, which is it's I think it's a form of a fantasia where it is you you're when you are sort of in your mind, you're not thinking in sort of images um, like clear, clearly constructed images. That's like the typical sort of form of it. But I guess also not thinking in terms of words or a voice is

a form of it. And it's interesting because people I've I've read experiences of people where they're shocked to find out that people you have like an inner voice, and that sounds weird to them. Um. And so this concept that you know, animals aren't aware because they don't have a language, it's like, well, no, I think they can

definitely have coherent thought without a language. But it's just it's so once you have that inner monologue and that's how you think, it is really hard to conceptualize how someone thinks without it, even though it happens. Yeah, And so example, all these creatures, which is, you know, more than the creatures that are like us, the ones that base everything on smell, Like if they had a version of an internal monologue, it would be a series of smells.

But that's that's almost incomprehensible like to a human because we we've devalued what our nose does to the point that you know, we still use it, but in terms of like how we socialize, we we don't ever again, think of it as being unless you're detecting how much someone has bathed or something obvious wearing much cologne. Um, the idea of interpreting the entire world through how it smells and how its smell has changed. You can try to imagine it, but you you know, you really can't.

And on that note, we're going to take a quick break and then when we get back, we're gonna talk about whether your noves can pick your friends? So we uh, we're just talking about how for some animals, their sense of smell is integral to the way they think, the way they communicate, in the way that they identify their friends. But is this the case for humans at times? I mean consciously, um, you know no, unless by saying pick your friends it's like, well, I don't want to hang

out with someone who's too stinky. But in terms of the more subtle things of like can you recognize your friend's smell? Um, and like can you tell anything really about a person based on their smell when it's a really subtle scent and it is not it's not something that has to do with their perfume or the soap

that they're wearing. Because humans, we have a sense of smell, but it is not nearly as sensitive as a lot of other animals, and in social interactions were extremely visually um focused as well as audio focus, so we rely on hearing, sight, or touch, but we hardly use smell at all and social interactions, if anything, we kind of try to avoid smells human smells, or use like deodorant or artificial smells to cover up our natural body odors

because we find them unappealing. So you know, our main way of communicating is not through smells, but through like facial expressions or language or sounds or touch. This is I'm not trying to send us on down too much of a rabbit hole here, but this is one of my i unpopular beliefs, truly unpopular, to the point wherever you expressed this in polite company or on the internet,

people just pile pile on you. Which is that the our thing, our American Western thing, of showering every day and shampooing your hair every day and putting on delorant at least once a day, that is weird, Like through all of civilization, through all of the civilizations that have existed, the idea of bathing every single day and then like socially shunning anyone who doesn't because the completely normal smell of a human being that is functioning that we consider

that disgusting. That is a curious and weird thing that I know dates back to living in cities and then and then being you know more, having to be more afraid of like disease outbreaks and germs, things like that, having to be obsessive about controlling like sanitation. All these

are very recent inventions. And so as a result of this, being afraid of any kind of a foul smell, any kind of a hint of uncleanliness, it makes sense that in this era, this very recent era of our evolution, where we're living in close proximity two hundreds of thousands of other people, when you're sharing the subway with all these people, that it would make sense to develop a kind of superstition around anyone who doesn't smell like they just washed, which is but it is a superstition like that.

That's not that's not the natural, healthy way to live. And in fact, we have shelves full of products that have to put like the moisture back in your skin because you're drying yourself out by constantly by bathing too much, or or this shampoo that restores the oils that you

just washed out of your hair. Um. But and this the reason it's a source spot with me is because there are certainly some countries on Earth where people do not bathe that often, and when we visit there as tourists, we talk about what a filthy, terrible third world hellhole this is because the people stink. It's like, no, they smelled like people. It's a smell you're unfamiliar with because you're in a you're in a you're in one of the rare unique cultures that had the luxury of this

much fresh water to just waste with relentless bathing. It would agree that it's almost like a religious thing with us to the like that we considered a moral failing if you don't bathe enough. Yeah, which you know, there's a lot of sociological problems too with that, where you know, it's like bathing is associated with being um more more well off financially, because you have access to a shower,

you have the time to bathe. Um, you work in an in a sort of a field where you're not getting too stinky, and so we kind of associate it with like, oh, you're you're a well to do person and so this is a good thing. And yeah, but but you're right, like overwashing like our body Like I'm not saying you never should wash, but our bodies do produce a lot of natural oils um called like sebam that of course, it's like it gets a bad rap because an excess it can cause acne and it can

get infected. But it uh is a protective, uh sort of greasy substance that is generally good for your your skin and your scalp. That's why we produce it, and so over washing can actually cause problems skin problems, scalp problems. UM.

Sometimes it's sort of spirals into a vicious cycle. Like for me, I have to um shower almost every day or my scalp gets really itchy because I am like allergic to A. I think it's like a it's this common human sort of fungus that normally is fine, but some people are sort of allergic to it and it's got it's called support dermatitis UH, which is a fancy name for like you get an itchy scalp and dandruff, but probably you know part of that is you can dry out your scalp and that can leave you more

vulnerable to things like that. And so, UM, now I'm I'm trapped in a cycle of needing to shampoo all the time. Uh, but you know, so, yeah, it is it is interesting that we we uh really are sort of an uh kind of an unusual animal because we reject so much our natural smell, but we also don't

use it socially that much. Um. But there is research that suggests we have not completely ditched the smellier side of our evolutionary history and may subconsciously use odor as a way to determine who our friends are and what our compatibility is with people. And um, there there's been

a lot of studies on this. Uh. Sometimes they're like, uh somewhat uh flimsy, like I think the uh there's like a body odor and like compatibility with like romantic partners study, but that it just had an extremely small sample size. Um. And and these studies as well, they're they're not concrete, but it isn't an interesting line of inquiries.

So researchers conducted as study looking at people who described their friendships as instantly clicking, and they dragged them into an old factory lab harvested their body odor and compared them chemically, and they found that the body odor of these friends were more chemically similar than that of two random strangers. And in the second part of their study, they brought together groups of strangers and had them do bonding activities and then they observed these interactions and ranked

the friendlyness of them. Which sounds like everyone who has social anxiety, that's like your worst nightmare that there's some observer watching you ranking how friendly you are. UM. But that's exactly what they did, and they found that in the pairs that were ranked as having more positive interactions also had more chemically similar body odors. Now here are the um issues with the study. Uh, it had a very narrow definition of friendship, and it had a very

small sample size around like twenty people for each study. UM. And Also, if you're thinking like, oh, this means that people who are like physiologically similar must also you know, be compatible be friends, I had don't think this study finds that body odor is not completely determined by like genetics.

It's also determined by diet and lifestyle. So it's possible that like a similarity in lifestyle could predict both body odor similarity and also your personality being similar with other people and being able to click with them, um and actually have nothing to do with people subconsciously enjoying each other's smell. So I think, like, I would really like

to see more research in this area. I don't think it's I don't think these studies are convincing to me that we like can smell out our friends, But I do think it is interesting that there may be some kind of link between body odor and compatibility and whether it and you know, like, I would like to see if there's like if you did a study and you blocked participants ability to smell each other, but you still

found these results. I think that would be really interesting because it'd be indicating that somehow your body odor is linked to maybe lifestyle that signals compatibility rather than being able to smell each other. But I think those are I would guess, and I'm no expert in any subject. To be frank, I think that those aren't necessarily saying the things that if you said that in our early in our evolution, we used to back before we bathed, the way all of our natural oils and all the

things that we secreted our hormones. All that that if you ran into another primitive human in the wild, that your that their scent would tell you this person eats a similar diet. They eat a lot of fish, means they live by the river. You know, um, all of the other things you can smell about a person that they are from a similar background to you. Oh, this is another of the river people, right, because they've got the smell of of the moss on them, or the

smell of the there from the beach. They've got the smell of the salt water on them. These are the coast people. They've got Um that it doesn't necessarily have to be you know, you're a genetic scent that it's it's like genes identifying genes. That it could be like I'm identifying a lifestyle here, whereas if I smelled someone who smelled of a hunter, those are the hunting people. We hate them. He smells like animals, He smells like

animal guts. He smells like you smell and you get an animal and you get there the bio and all the stuff in your hands, Like that's the scent of the hunter tribe, and I'm it seems it seems implausible that we wouldn't use all of our senses. Humans are social animals. We survived by being able to identify, that's why we're so tribal. We survived by being able to quickly decide who we wanted to be friends with, who

we wanted to ally with. Things like that. It seems like it would be weird, especially in a pre language stage of our evolution, if we didn't use sent the way all of these other creatures do. Because you know, we have sent for many reasons. It's not just for finding food. It's for all sorts of things, you know,

detecting when something is on fire. But I think my personal theory, again not a scientist, I think today when culturally we do everything we can to cover up our scent so that we try to use like we try to manipulate our sense to send signals Like I'm wearing an expensive perfume, I'm signaling that is a social signal. But I've chosen that rather than letting this the natural musk from my armpits signal to potential boyfriends. What that

I'm that I'm ready to mate? Um that I would think that now and again, please This is me speculating now. A lot of times when we meet one and instantly decide we don't like their vibe. If and if it's not like, well he had a giant tattoo of a spider on his neck, I don't mean that, but when but go on right that, when you sense the you know that the you you sense that there's something off.

I think a lot of people credit it to like intuition or instinct that I think a lot of it is things like their scent, that it's subtle enough that it doesn't he you consciously like, oh, this person reads of alcohol, not like that, but enough that it's this is a person that drinks a lot, like they've not drink today, it's not on their breath. That there may

be some subtle thing in there. And the thing about whether or not, like men can detect if a woman is ovulating stuff like that, I don't know at the experiments, And I know that the people who used to read Cracked probably are saying, well, didn't you guys post a out of articles on Cracked with that factory down it? Look,

we didn't know that none of the stuff replicated. At the time, we thought if there was in a scientific American like, hey, they just didn't experiment women can detect, you know, different men by their their body odor, that by putting, and that we didn't know that. When you try to repeat those experiments, they fall through. It is extremely difficult to do those experiments because things like collecting sweat and then adding it with a dropper to a shirt, well,

that's not exactly the same thing. And I don't think it's smelling the scent on a piece of clothing in

a room. That doesn't. I think it's seeing the person face to face and getting the whole picture, all the little micro expressions on their face, all of their gestures, the way what they do with their hands, and you're seeing all these little signals about what type of person they are, with their fingernails look like, all the stuff that you're not consciously you're not like Sherrock Holmes, like

going through is like, ah, he has plucked eyebrows. That means he's They that are the whole picture of the person, including their scent. I think that's the thing we call vibe. Before you've talked to them, before you've noticed what brands they're wearing, before you asked them what they do for a living. You see what kind of car they drive. I think that that sometimes when you instantly feel at ease around a person, I think some percentage of that

is there is their scent. It's what it's what scientists refer to as the vibe check. Um. Yeah, no, I mean I I tend to agree, So I don't know, right, Like the research on our on humans ability to pick up these things from odor is a little bit fraught and definitely not complete, But just looking at the kind of more obvious behaviors of people, I do think smell

plays quite a role in our society. I mean there's a lot of things where it's like the smells of um, of food that is unfamiliar to you, Like people will sometimes complain about food that's from another country, like the smell of it, and they will use that as sort of a way to be maybe like xenophobic or or complain about like this other group, whereas like it can also be something more positively social, like you, um, you kind of like identify certain smells and have a memory

linked with them, Like there are certain smells that I whenever I smell them, I like remember something like my kindergarten class, Like smelling a glue stick brings me right back to kindergarten. And so I think that there's still a lot of things that smell do in terms of our socialization. Even though we have a much weaker sense of smell than say a dog or an elephant, we I think that it does make these highly emotional links and we can like, like everyone knows what the smell of,

like say, fall is in their culture. Like for some people it's like, you know, the smell of cinnamon or something. For other people it may be the smell of sort of wet dirt or something. But we have these kind of categories of smells, and so I do think it is it's very plausible that we do the same thing

with people. And even if you know, I mean, I think it even counts when we're using like artificial smell, Like you may have a family member that always uses the same perfume or something, and then you associate that perfume with that family member, and then you have a positive or negative reaction to that perfume. So yeah, I think, um,

I think it is. I think that smell is something that is it's so such an interesting sense right, because it's so it's very hard to describe a smell other than just like making the connection to that thing, like what is the smell of cinnamon? Well, it smells like cinnamon, but actually describing that smell kind of in detail is

really difficult. Like, um, it's easier to describe taste, maybe even than smell because it's such a complex sensation, and so it's really hard to kind of incorporate that in our language. But there are all these subtle emotions that can come up with the smell that is really hard to describe in in our linguistic monologue. But I think it's still a very core part of the human experience.

I mean, that's kind of everything. The fact that we don't have a lot of words that can convey to someone else a smell, or the fact that I can close my eyes in picture what my first car looked like, pretty almost exactly that nine blue Mustang. I cannot bring to mind its smell. I cannot make myself smell what it smelled like. I can't, you know, like if and if you try to tell me to imagine the smell of cinnamon, I can't bring that scent into my nose.

But I can bring a picture of a cinnamon stick into my mind and can close my eyes and I can see it. I can generate a site, and I can hear a song if you ask me, you know, uh so, if you ask me to imagine the song Babies Got Back by Sir Mix a Lot, I can hear the whole song in my head, word for word

right now, But I cannot remember the smell of that song. Um. And so there's some there's something weird about how our cognition and our our mental thought processes is more disconnected from our our sense of smell dan from almost anything else. Because like visually, we can describe things we see. We have a million different words for for color and contours and shapes. You know, all of our poetry is based

about seeing things and feeling things. But trying to write a poem about how something smells, you're just like the smoke. It smells smoky. It smells like smoke, like it's You can throw words in there, like acrid or something, or stings in your nose or whatever, But in terms of trying to verbally recreate a smell for a person, the best you can do is say, well, it smells like frying onions. It's something you've smelled before. It smells like that.

But like, well, yeah, but what what does frying onions smell like? It's like, well, it's kind of smoky. Yeah. And so this, this is the reason I bring this up is because I think that's why so much of if I'm looking at somebody and I'm judging them by the shirt they're wearing, by their grooming, by their haircut, all that stuff is visual. If they're saying a bunch of annoying pickup lines at me, that's that's all audible. I can you know, I can describe those words as

being stupid or corny or creepy. But the sense stuff, because we don't connect it to our thoughts and our language and our internal monologue, that stuff almost just always plays as instinct. I think, for example, you said, what,

why smell a glue stick that reminds me of kindergarten? Um. I think for every one time you smell a glue stick and you consciously think, oh, this reminds me of kindergarten, I think there are a hundred times when you have suddenly had your mood change because you smelled something that brought back a memory, but not consciously. It was just a smell that brought a sense of dread. And you don't remember necessarily that this is the same disinfectant they used in the hospital when my dad was in the

hospital or whatever. But it's it's a subconscious thing. I think there are all these associations where you find yourself your mood shifting, or you find a certain house that you just like being in. It's just and again you would say it's just a vibe, and you can talk about what is the function is that the arrangement of the fur nature is this or that It's like, no, it's it's the smell. You just you're not conscious of it unless it's like an overwhelming like vanilla candle smell.

But sometimes a house just smells welcoming, whereas no hospital smells that way. I think that's what they sometimes, like realtors will like bake cookies in a house, um, but like a few days before, so it's not super obvious, but it's just kind of like they're hanging in the air. You know that. It's interesting because you mentioned that you can't imagine smells like you can't conjure that smell sort of like to your you know, in a similar way that you can visualize like a car. For me, that's

actually very different. I have an extremely sensitive sense of smell, which sounds cool, except like I can smell tuna from like five rooms away and it makes me want to like pass out, So I and I hate, Like, there are certain smells that I just like hate, Like I hate the smell of a banana, and I can smell it if someone's eating it across the room, and I

absolutely hate it. But I think like I can sometimes in dreams, I can like taste or smell things, and that can be either great or terrible, depending on the context of the dream. But I can also like imagine smells, which I think that's It's just interesting because I kind of had assumed other people can also imagine taste or smells. Um am I the only one who can't. I don't know. I have to google it, I doubt well, let me, Yeah, like,

who can people? Can you imagine smells? Like I've never had a taste or a smell in a dream in my life. I didn't. I didn't think that was possible. Yeah, I mean, I've talked to other people who say they can't do that um as well as people who said they can. So I would assume it's something that is um that it is something that kind of just varies from her into person. Do you do you have like a very sensitive sense of smell or not? Not at all? No, not at all. I mean maybe that's the that is

like the difference. Well, it's just like there's a specific region of the brain, right, like that's it's it's more developed. It seems like it's as simple as that, Like it's it has the horsepower to process that memory more vividly than like I don't completely forget what pizza tastes like like I'm not. I know exactly why I see a pizza. I know exactly what to expect. But I can't bring the taste of pepperoni into my mouth the way I can bring the song Babies Got back into my mind

anytime I want. That's interesting because yeah, for me, it's like sometimes even not um intentional. I remember in high school we had to do dissections of like fetle pigs and frogs, and uh, the worst part for me was the smell of the formalde hyde, and I was imagining it was such a strong and unpleasant smell that for like a week after we had done it, I kept imagining that. It's like, my clothes smelled like it. Everything

smelled like it. And you know, my poor mom like washed my clothes like twice and she's like, there's no smell of formalde hyde on these clothes. You're you're it's not there. But I could like still smell it, and it was psychological because it was such a strong smell. I think it just kind of like embedded itself in my old factory memory and I kept um sort of conjuring it up because it was probably like mildly traumatic to have to like smell such a strong, unpleasant thing

while looking into the face of a dead baby pig. Yeah, I mean that that is I feel like we've just, like remember at the beginning, we were talking about some people don't think in an inner monologue and how shocking it is to like find out that other people think in a different way. I feel like we're experiencing that right now. But in terms of imagining smells or not imagining smells, and of course the mechanism what we know is there because there's the thing that people are about

to have a stroke. They will smell like a burning smell, like burnt toast or something, and they'll ask if something is burning. Then they'll have a stroke a moment later because of some misfire in the part of the in that part of the brain. So it's certainly something that

can happen. And also, I think every single person listening this has had some the exact thing that you just described, where their wife or their roommate is swears like something stinks in here, like there's something rotten in the refrigerator, the amouse's diet. I can smell. I can't smell anything, And no matter what you do, you open the windows, you lie at a candle, it's like I can't smell, And the other person will just insist, and it's like, well,

is it something inside your nose? Is it? And it? Maybe? Are they just more sensitive? Are they picking up little scores of oils or whatever that's embedded in the fabric of the curtains that it's just too subtle for the

other person. That's the weird thing about being a human being is you just don't know what it's like to live inside someone else's audi and brighten and senses I think it would be shocking to the point of if you could Freaky Friday somebody else and feel like impulses the way they feel them, and perceptions the way they perceive them. I think it would you. You would faint from from the shock of it. I think how different other people, how much more tired some people are, how

much more energy some people have. I'm always fantasizing about, like whether everyone else has more energy than I do, because I feel sleepy all the time. Um. But I think we can sum up this episode by saying I smell good and you smell bad apparently so um. Before we go, I want to play a quick game called guests Who's Squawk and the Mystery Animal Sound Game. Every week I play a mry animal sound and you the listener, and you the guests, try to guess who is making

that sound. It can be any animal in the world. Last week's Mystery Animals sound hint was this. In the winter they wear white, in the summer they wear brown, but all year round they sound like dinghis is oh? I mean it clearly. I'm trying to think of the because it sounds to me like some sort of a frog or something. But they the whole clue with them wearing white in the winter and brown in the summer um and I'm not sure. Gosh, dude, I can't. Yeah, I'm not picturing there's some sort of a bird or

a gull or something. But no, I that that didn't sound like anything. I'm familiar it there or would want to be familiar with. Well, you are correct that it is some kind of bird. It is a rock ptarmigan, and it is a ground dwelling bird found all over the world in arctic and subarctic regions. And even though it sounds like some kind of like weird alien that has a tentacle that like goes up your eye and reads your brain, it's actually just a little fluffy bird.

They go from brown to white from summer to winter, so they they molt and their brown feathers are replaced by white feathers for the purpose of camouflage. They're actually pretty cute. Their feet are fluffy and covered in feathers then look like little bunny paws, and that works as snowshoes in the winter, and they like to live inside snow caves that form around trees and rocks. And what

you heard is their mating call. And remember that birds are just modern day dinosaurs, So I love to imagine that back in dinosaur times there are a bunch of you know, big scary looking dinosaurs making just a weird giggling sounds like this bird. Congratulations to Joey Pete, Bob, whichever bob that was. I mean, if you're that bob, you probably know which bob you are. And Emily am Yeah. And again, anybody who successfully guesses these you win a

gift card to Hooters for ten thousand dollars. And you might think that it is to the restaurant with problematic themes, but no, it is actually an owl um sanctuary that he is talking about. This Hooters, the restaurant still exists. Is that still a thing? Oh? I think it does. Yeah, yeah, that's inspirational. They're still hanging in there. I yeah. I feel like they could definitely rebrand though, and make it completely owl themed. Oh so um, are you ready for

this week's mystery animalsound? Yeah? And again if I if I do successfully guess that, you just bleep it so it doesn't ruin the whole thing. That's exactly right. All right, here we go. So here is the hint, you've been lied to. These guys don't have wings al right, so can you guess who is squawking? Like? You are absolutely correct and therefore you you you will be bleeped out, um, although the listener will know that you're victorious, so you know,

oh yes, uh. And if you think you know who is squalking right to me a creature feature pod at gmail dot com. Also, hey, you know what right to me? About whether you can imagine smells and taste or if you don't imagine smells or taste, or if you have a fantasia or if you don't think in a monologue. I am curious to know. Um. And hey, Jason, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you? And when? When? And where can people get your book?

The book For those of you who know me from before this show, it's UM in the John Dies at the End series of adult horror sci fi novels. The title of this one is if this book exists, you're in the wrong universe. You can get it anywhere. It's got a big, lime green cover. It's available on audiobook anything like that. UM in any format out October eighteenth. I don't know exactly when this episode airs. But either way it's close enough that it's either out or it

will be within days. Otherwise, I'm on all of the social media's that just that name, Jason Pargeon p A r G. I n searched that name on Twitter or TikTok, sadly or Instagram, any of them. I'm on their Facebook. I'm on all of them. I'm not on Snapchat. That's one that I'm not on. You on TikTok, That's well, that's not something we like to adi. That's not something we like to admit in public. But yes, we have

become I have gone viral on on TikTok. I have a lot of I've now more followers there than I have on Facebook, even though I've had that Facebook account for like twenty years. TikTok, I've been on there for two months. I've got like twenty thou followers and like one of their own. Yeah, um and anybody have there. Was worried about because a lot of people in my age, you know, because I'm seven, ask how do you get

into TikTok. Because the thing is if you go to best Buy and you get like they have like the TikTok vlogger kits. Now for the kids. It's like in a little pink box but like a little ring light in a little camera and stuff. It's like to get you set up on TikTok And it's like, well, how can I purchase that with? Like won't they call the cops or something if I try to buy something like that? But again, you can tell them it's for somebody else. I can say it's my niece's birthday. You know, I'm

getting it. She's twelve and you know she wants to be an influencer. I'm getting it for her. You don't have to admit that you're using this equipment for yourself. Yeah. I mean it's like Lego Land and Chuck E Cheese rules like you cannot purchase a TikTok kit as an adult, but if you have a child with you, then you can buy it. And you just have to say it is for that child, yeah. Or like the guy who goes to the dog park but without her dog. Yeah, you know, I just like to sit here in commune

with the dogs. That happened to me once and it was a magician also, and that was interested, to say the least. Did you say he was a magician? Yeah? He literally, this is not a joke. He had cards in his pocket and like a little piece of string for his tricks, and it it was scary. Did I wish the whole episode had been about this? Did this happen in America? Or did this happen where happen in America? Good old American magician? All right, yeah, no dog either.

I guess he made the dog disappear and probably me too if I hadn't gotten away from that park. If any of you out there are amateur magicians, we are not trying to cast us persions on the type of there's just certain there's certain pastimes, like the like minds, like they've gotten a certain reputation. Yeah no, I I um, you know fully support the magician profession, just not at dog parks when you don't have a dog. That's when, uh it drives terror into my heart. Well, thank you

so much for joining me, and thanks to you the listener. Uh, if you're enjoying the show, and you know you do those things that people are always demanding you do, like leave reviews, and you're probably sick of it, like stop at asking me for my opinion. Well, I'm going to do it one more time. If you have an opinion on the podcast and you want to say it, especially if it's a nice one, I'm not gonna lie. Like those the best. I appreciate them and I read all

of them. And hey, thank you to the Space Classics for their super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature Feature is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what where avery he listen your favorite shows? I genuinely don't care. See you next Wednesday.