going to talk about basically the subtitle of this book.

This book came out two days ago, so it's brand new.

And we're going to start in a kind of familiar place.

Many of us have animals at home, and we've often asked ourselves

these questions, right?

How many people have asked themselves

if their cat or dog really loves them, or just

wants food, or whatever, right?

That's pretty common.

And we think, well, it's impossible to know.

But is it really?

Is it really impossible to know what's

going on in the mind and the heart of our pets?

Well, in a way, no and in a way, yes.

What's really going on in those minds is the question.

Another question is-- it's not showing up very well

there-- how are they like us?

But I don't like that question so much.

It's an inescapable question because they

are in many ways like us.

But when we say, how are they like us,

we put the attention back on us.

And us is our favorite story.

We like to talk about ourselves.

And what we're really supposed to be doing here

is asking, how are they like us or not?

Who are we here on Earth with is really the point.

And what is going on in these minds that

are our co-voyagers on planet Earth?

Is there any way to get into the mind

of an elephant, for instance, or any other kind of creature?

Well, I think there are actually several really good ways

of seeing in.

You can look at their brain and their mind.

You can look at their body, at the logic of their behavior,

at their evolution.

So the first thing is if we're interested in minds

is to know where is the mind?

In many parts of human history, people

have thought the mind is in the heart or the mind

is in the soul.

The mind is a disembodied spirit that

is our eternal presence in the universe, all

these different kinds of things.

So first of all, where is the mind?

And a hint is that if you have a heart surgery,

it's not going to damage your mind.

But if you have brain surgery and something goes wrong,

it's going to damage your mind.

Your mind comes from your brain.

The mind is in the brain.

And we might say, oh, we have no idea if animals

are experiencing anything.

But we use their experience all the time.

For instance, if we want to know if cosmetics

are going to sting us, we test them on the eyes of rabbits

to see if they sting the rabbit.

So if they sting the rabbits, the rabbits

are having exactly the same experience

of pain, the sensation of stinging, as people have.

When dogs are depressed, or if dogs

have obsessive-compulsive disorder,

they respond to the same drugs in the same way

that we give to people-- antidepressant drugs.

Why?

Because the part of the brain that gets depressed

and the chemicals that create depression

or obsessive-compulsive disorders are exactly the same.

They're not experiencing an analogous problem.

They're having the same problem in the brain of a dog.

Or even as low as down below vertebrates

on the evolutionary timescale, or before vertebrates,

something like a crayfish, you can

make crayfish develop anxiety by giving them

little electrical shocks and making

them feel nervous and tense.

And so they retreat into their burrows.

They stop exploring.

They won't eat.

You give them the same anti-anxiety drugs

that work on people, the crayfish relaxes,

comes out of its burrow, and starts exploring again.

So these are ways we can manipulate minds

with different kinds of tests and drugs

to see if they respond the same way ours do.

And that's a good way in.

Now you can say, well, we can see brains,

but we can't see the mind.

And that, in a sense, is a fair enough statement.

I mean, it's true, right?

But I can't see your mind.

You can't see my mind.

It's always true.

But where is our mind from?

Where is the human mind from?

The human mind is from the minds of non-humans

that were here before us.

When evolution created-- in a sense-- humanity,

humanity evolved from something.

We had to use the parts that were already in stock

and make a few tweaks.

And the parts that were in stock are the highly developed brains

of the other mammals from which we evolved.

So if you look at a mouse brain, and you look at a human brain,

it's a very similar, very recognizable kind of thing.

The human brain looks different.

It's got lots of convolutions in the forebrain.

That's where a lot of thinking happens

in humans-- human thinking.

If you compare our brain with a chimpanzee brain,

you see basically that we are apes,

so it's not too surprising that the human brain is basically

a very big chimpanzee brain.

So it's not logical to think that the human brain only

does things that only humans do and nothing that

happens in any other brain.

It's just completely illogical.

We're all very insecure, we human beings.

We can soothe our insecurity with the thought

that at least we have the biggest brain, right?

Except, uh-oh, there's a dolphin brand.

It's not only much bigger.

It has way more convolutions than ours.

It's doing something with all of those neurons

and all of those networked connections.

We can see the working of the mind

in the logic of behaviors of other animals, the fact

that their responses and emotions make sense to us.

We don't see-- well, we'll go through a few, OK.

We say these albatrosses here, they're dancing in courtship.

And why do we say they're dancing in courtship?

Because that's a very recognizable thing.

It happens at the same time that humans dance in courtship.

It's something that we do, pre-bonding and pre-mating--

same with them.

We look at elephants like this.

Now, elephants don't do this if they're surrounded

by all kinds of dangers.

And they don't do this if they're famished.

They do this if everything is cool and nice,

and they're relaxed.

And the parents are still a little bit on guard

while they let the babies lie down and not worry

about anything.

That totally makes sense to us, and it's totally

appropriate to the situation.

So we can tell by the logic of their behavior, something about

what's going on in their minds.

They are protective and parental,

like we are protective and parental,

whether they are humans or elephants or mammals in water.

The differences between us are mostly the outer contours

and a few internal tweaks.

So one analysis is only humans have human skeletons.

But it's not true that only humans have skeletons.

And only humans have human minds,

but it's not true that only humans have minds.

When help is needed, help is provided.

They're not trying to eat their baby.

They're trying to help it to its feet.

I love this picture.

This is the cover of the book, actually.

That's a newborn elephant that has never stood up before.

And its mother and two cousins are helping it

to its feet for the first time.

When animals are very young, they're very curious.

They don't know what things like egrets are.

They check everything out, because they

have to learn what's in their environment.

And many animals have to learn just about everything.

Baby elephants don't even know that lions are dangerous.

They have to be taught by their parents

and by example that lions are dangerous, that bees can sting

you, and these kinds of things.

But when we're young, we do lots and lots of exploring.

And as we get a little older, and we

know what's going on in our environment,

and what we have to do, we tend to be less playful than when

we were children.

We tend to do less exploring.

You can see that in others.

And when something goes wrong, or something

might be dangerous, you see a very different set

of behaviors.

And you see them paying attention

in very different ways.

When it's time to relax and have fun,

they relax, and they have fun.

Now, no one would look at this and say,

I have no idea if the baby is frightened out of its mind,

right?

It's not what you'd say.

You can see that they're just having

a nice time in the water.

And that not all of their behaviors

are driven by the need to survive in the next minute,

that there are other things that help us to survive.

A lot of these deep motivations like love and like bonding,

these things, we don't just do it in the minute it's needed.

We develop relationships before these things

need to come into play.

So the love and bonding of family members

is something that provides ongoing benefits in many ways.

But we don't think, OK, let's see,

I'm going to get ongoing benefits in many ways,

so I better love my siblings, and my parents,

and my family members.

That's just not how our minds are equipped.

We just feel these motivations, and then they

do what they are supposed to do, what they're evolved to do.

Albatrosses have these bonds and maintain these pair bonds

in ways that are a bit unusual among birds, actually

even a bit unusual among mammals.

Because their pair bonds are very, very long-lasting.

They can live many decades in the wild.

They mate with the same mate every year.

And if a mate dies, it usually takes them two or three

years to court and re-mate.

So you see the deep maintenance of these bonds in them In a way

that I find quite touching and really quite beautiful.

All right, there are other things that are unexpected,

I guess.

Only unexpected because our assumption

and what we've been taught is that animals

have very, very simple minds, and they're not

really aware of much.

And they just do things without thinking about it,

without feeling about it.

But it turns out that if you broadcast the recorded

conversations of tourists, farmers who farm away

from where the elephants live, and pastoralist herders who

walk around with spears and get into trouble with elephants

around water holes, and fairly frequently hurt the elephants,

that the elephants ignore the conversations of the tourists.

They ignore the conversations of the farmers.

And when they hear the conversations

of the herders broadcast out of hidden speakers,

they react with alarm.

The family bunches up, and they run away.

They can actually tell the difference

between human languages.

And they know which ones are dangerous to them.

They react exactly the same way to clothes