Radiolab - Killer Empathy

Sometimes being a good scientist requires putting aside your emotions. But what happens when objectivity isn't enough to make sense of a seemingly senseless act of violence? In this short, Jad and Robert talk to an entomologist about the risks, and the rewards, of trying to see the world through someone else's eyes.

Duration: 18m
Broadcast on: 06 Feb 2012
Audio Format: other

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RIDILEB is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in. Any condition. It has the ultimate pro camera system and big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. 3, 2, 1, hey, I'm Jada Boomerock. I'm Robert Quillwich. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. And today on the podcast, well, first, we've got a story from our old producer of ours, Lulu Miller. She's not old, she just has been with us and now is at school. Right. She's actually kind of young. Chronologically, she's not old. She's old to us. It's an old soul. In any case, this is a story about some of the sticky issues that result when you try and empathize with another being. It's a very different story than one we've ever told. It started for Lulu when she spoke with them, well, she'll handle the introductions. Can you introduce yourself? Oh, award-winning author. Fantastic husband. Dad of the year. Dad of the year. No, I'm Jeff Lockwood. I'm a professor at the University of Wyoming. Jeff is an entomologist. You mean like a bug guy? He's a bug guy. And mostly he studies crickets and grasshoppers. And this story involves a kind of cricket that's, well, different. The gorillas. They had the gorilla critters, yeah. And are they related to Katie Dids? The way to think of a gorilla critter is like a cricket. On steroids. Okay. Sort of like the Hulk Hogan of crickets. First of all, he says they're a little bulkier than your average cricket. And they tend to have very strong jaws. Very strong jaws. And mandibles that are really sharp. Sort of like a serrated knife. And most of all, they're vicious. They all had to be caged separately. If you put them together, they would fight. To the desk? Yeah. Wow. And so when I would go in in the mornings and reach into one of their cages, as soon as they saw him coming, they'd fly into this rage. It's really sort of a showstopper. They'll sort of rear up on their hind leg, beat their abdomens on the ground, flare out their wings, and then clamp onto his fingers. They would draw blood. Wow. So I use this, this glass probe on the big boy, at least until the point at which he snapped off the end of the glass rod. Holy moly. So I ended up with, actually, there are two that were very large. I would just take their cage when I went in and pop it in the refrigerator and go get a cup of coffee. And within 15 minutes, because insects are cold-blooded, they would be anesthetized by the cold and I could lift them out. That's cheating. Well, that was my solution for them. The little guys, I could manage the big ones. A little bit of chill in the morning is all it took. So the point is, these creatures were completely alien to him. There's like nothing about them he can relate to.

But over time, the more he studied them, the more he started noticing things that made them seem way less foreign. See, I kept these in these. For example, as soon as he'd put one into a new cage, it would make itself a little nest. And once it has that little nest built, that's home. In a very real way, because by moving them around to different cages, he soon realized that they could differentiate their nests. They can actually tell the difference between their nest and another. And how do they do that? They secrete a pheromone, a chemical. And each cricket is able to self-identify its own odor. It gave me the sense, and I think there's something to this, that they had a kind of capacity to recognize self. We don't see that much in insects, but they had what appears to be a capacity to say, "This is mine."

And then he began to think differently about that crazy rage, too. Because if you think about it, here's this creature. It's completely vulnerable to attack. They really don't have a very good defense for themselves. They don't excrete nasty chemicals, and they don't sting. And it can't fly, so it's not going to go flying away either. So maybe that rage is their only strategy. Which, again, drew me into thinking that I understood them. Perhaps these little guys were more like me than many other insects that I had worked with. So he grew to really like them. But then, one day... I'd been working with this particular gorilla critter. Trying to move him from one cage to another. And he was agitated and had decided to go on the offensive, which involved trying to come out of the cage. So he was scrambling up the side of the cage. And to keep him from getting out, Jeff slammed the lid down. As he was just at the edge. And caught him between the lid and the edge of the cage. And I quickly lifted the lid up and he fell back into the cage. And I looked down at him and what had happened was I had ruptured his abdomen. A split right down his belly.

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