The Shy Baboon
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
In this podcast, a biopsychologist attempts to find an elusive bit of shared space across species lines.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Oh, wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC and NPR. All right, for the money, for all the glory, for the gold, Robert Jad take four. Hey, I'm Jad Avumrod. I'm Robert Gold. Actually. Sorry. I'm Jad Avumrod. I'm Robert Kolich. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. The podcast. So we've been talking about animals for the last few podcasts, particularly how difficult it is to find something like a shared space. We're building to the podcast that follows this one where we've got this enormous and wonderful story, but this one, the podcast you're about to hear is an elegant and kind of momentary communion between us and them. Hi, this is Michigan Radio. I have your guest. Hi. This is Barb. Hi. This is Robert Kolich. Hi. And how do you say your last name? Smuts. Smuts. So not smuts, but smuts. Barbara Smuts is a professor at the University of Michigan where I teach courses on animal behavior. And back in the '70s, she moved to Kenya in Africa to a remote area way out on the plains. Fairly open grassland. And she tried to get friendly and then get access to a troop of baboons. Now, what was the deal like? You would wake up, drive somewhere, get out of your van or whatever, walk in like the break of day. Before the break of day. And then follow them around all day. For how many days a week? Seven. For weeks at a time or a month at a time? Two years. Two years. Yeah. This troop hadn't been studied before, so they were afraid of people. But because the area was very open, it was possible to approach them from a distance. She'd position herself, you know, like about a hundred feet away. And then... And day by day I would kind of inch closer. Eighty feet away and fifty feet away. And then as soon as they started running, I would stop moving towards them.
Transcription truncated.
In this podcast, a biopsychologist attempts to find an elusive bit of shared space across species lines.