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Hey, Wowzer fans. Mindy and Guy here. And before we start the show, we have some very exciting news to share that involves you.
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That's 1-888-7wowwow. Seven Wow Wow. Now, let's get back to the show.
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We wow on the weekend, we wow on the weekend, we wow on the weekend, cause this is what we do on the weekend.
Laughin', laughin', and then we, oh wait, no, I said laughing twice.
Ah, whatever. We wow on the weekend. Wow on the weekend Cause this is what we do on the weekend Hello and welcome to Wee Wow on the Weekend.
I'm your host, Dennis. And that's Reggie, my co-host and a giant pigeon.
Reggie, look. Mother made me pancakes with my name spelled out in chocolate chips.
Yeah, they're Dennis cakes. Ah, Reggie, no!
These are my Dennis cakes. Besides, you can't have chocolate chips.
Those are bad for birds. Here, Mother made your own Reggie cakes.
Yeah, they're blueberries. Okay, let's move on to the Q&A segment.
The Q&A segment. All right, let's just get the old answering machine pulled up here.
Okay, here we go. Hi, you've reached Dennis from WeWow on the weekend.
That's me. Do you have a question? Well, I do too.
Lots of them. And who's going to answer all my questions?
You? Probably not. But I guess I can answer yours.
Leave me a message. Hey Janice, so how do scents get concentrated into containers like perfumes and body sprays?
Oh wow, that's a great question. Because Reggie, think about it, perfumes smell huge, but their bottles are teeny tiny.
How'd they get that huge smell in that tiny bottle?
Now, I obviously have no idea how they do it, but I have come across some wild perfumes.
Yeah, like one time I tried a perfume that smelled like pizza.
Yes, exactly like pizza. I could smell the cheese and the sauce and everything.
How'd they get a whole pizza into a tiny bottle?
And another time, I smelled another one that smelled like dirt.
No, there was no dirt in the bottle, Reggie.
My thoughts exactly. Perfumes are a mystery.
Next question. Hi Dennis, my name's Matt and I was wondering, what does baby Dennis think of skydiving?
Wow, great question, Matt. What does baby Dennis, my ventriloquist dummy that looks just like me, think of skydiving?
Well, let's ask him. There we go. Hi, baby Dennis.
Hi, big Dennis. Hi, Reggie. Reggie, say hi to baby Dennis.
Okay, baby Dennis. My friend Matt has a question for you.
Matt wants to know what you think of skydiving.
Oh, wow! I can dive into the sky like Reggie?
No, no, no, no, no, no. Skydiving is where you dive out of the sky from a plane.
What? Yeah, you fly up in the sky in an airplane and you jump out of it with a parachute.
Oh! No, thank you. You don't want to skydive?
That sounds like sky falling. Yeah, I guess.
Baby Dennis does not like to skyfall. Next question.
Hi, Dennis. I was wondering, do you want to hear a riddle?
Oh, boy, do I. Baby Dennis loves riddles!
Okay, the riddle is... I am an ocean... With no water.
I am a forest with no trees. I am a desert with no sand.
What am I? Oh, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's, uh, oh, I know, it's, oh, wait, never mind.
Right! Reggie, don't interrupt me. I'm thinking.
It's a forest with no trees. It's got to be...
A map! What? Baby Dennis thinks it's a map.
Nuh-uh. A desert with no sand? Yeah, maps have desert and no sand.
That can't be right. Reggie, play the answer.
Hey, Matt. Ha-ha, Big Dennis. Oh, whatever.
Thanks for your calls, everyone. Yeah, thanks for your calls, everyone.
If you've got a question for me, or me, Call and leave us a message.
The number is 1-888-7-WOW-WOW. I just might answer your question on WeWow on the weekend.
Okay. Bye, baby Dennis. Bye. Okay. Now it's time for a little segment I like to call Inside Dinkercast Studios.
Inside Dinkercast Studios! This is the part where we revisit an episode of one of my favorite Tinkercast shows.
And this weekend, we're revisiting episodes from the very first season of Wow in the World.
Let's see, today's episode is called Sharing Caring Chimpanzees.
In this episode, Mindy and Guy talk about how humans learn to cooperate.
Yeah, just like us, Reggie. You and me cooperate all the time.
Okay, fine, let's do an example. Reggie, can you please hand me that piece of paper over there?
No, Reggie, not that one. The other one.
The one with my notes on it. Reggie, no!
That's not a piece of paper. That's a dirty napkin.
I know I said I'd throw the napkin away yesterday, but I forgot.
Reggie, would you cooperate, please? You know what?
This is a bad example. Let's just play the episode.
Okay, here we go. And play. WeeWow will be right back.
Grownups, this message is for you. That's it.
Now back to the show. But mom, it's not going to be forever.
Dangerous? Mom, they're my relatives. And actually, as a human, they are yours too.
They are our closest relatives here on Earth.
I'm not making this up. Lonely? Mom, they know how to give hugs and kisses, just like a real family.
We have a... Mom! I promise you, we have a lot in common.
I mean, we both like the outdoors, we both like bananas, and we both don't have tails.
Oh, I gotta call you back. Guy Raz just walked in.
No, he's not wearing the flamingo suit. We don't talk about it anymore.
I know, you thought it was adorable. I gotta go.
I love you. Bye, Mom. Hey, Mindy, what are you doing over there?
Hey, Guy Raz. I was just on the phone with my friend. mom trying to convince her why it's a good idea for me to move to Gombe National Park in Tanzania to live with a bunch of wild chimpanzees.
Uh... Can you believe she thinks that's crazy?
Okay. You know, Tanzania is pretty far away.
I mean... All the way in East Africa. And besides, there is no way your carrier pigeon Reggie is going to make it that far without getting lost, Mindy.
I know it's far, Guy Raz, but the more I learn about chimpanzees, the more I just really want one for a best friend.
Uh... I mean, I just feel like we have a lot in common.
Well, that's true, Mindy. I mean, as you know, chimps are our closest relatives on planet Earth, but...
I'm not sure it's such a good idea to live with them.
For one thing, you really love to talk. I don't think you speak chimpanzee.
Guy Raz, chimps can learn to speak sign language.
I'll just have them teach me. I'm not really sure that's how it works.
Besides, you'll be living in the middle of the Gombe National Park.
No humans to play with. No one to join you in a game of Apples to Apples or Twister.
I mean... Don't you think you might get bored?
Bored? Guy Raz chimps know how to organize and make up their own awesome games.
They do it all the time. Okay, well, what about... personal hygiene.
I mean, you know they don't have hairbrushes in the wild, Mindy.
Garaz, chimps take grooming very seriously.
In fact, they even use grooming as sort of a way to show friendship.
So as far as personal hygiene and grooming goes, I'll just let them show how much they love me by picking the bugs and dirt out of my hair.
Ugh, OK. And I hear it's very calming, which is good for someone like me who breaks out all the time.
Mindy, what even brought this on? I know the chimps and humans share a lot of the same characteristics, but we're still a very different species from them.
Well, that's the thing, Guy Raz. It turns out that we're even more alike than we ever thought before.
Really? More than we ever thought before?
Yeah. So for a long time, scientists have been looking for clues as to how humans learn to cooperate.
You know, working together instead of just looking out for number one.
Well, I think it's safe to say that most of us humans learned how to cooperate from our parents and our teachers.
Yeah, but how did our parents and teachers learn to cooperate?
In other words, how did our earliest ancestors learn to cooperate?
I mean, when you think about it, cooperation is sort of the bedrock, the foundation, the basis of our human civilization.
It's why we Homo sapiens were able to... spread all around the world.
Yeah, I mean, pretty much everything in our lives is dependent on cooperation, like how our cities and countries work and how we make and follow all of our rules and laws and even big inventions like computers spaceships, and waffle tacos, they all require cooperation.
Because without it, life as we know it would be very different.
Wow, imagine that kind of world. Okay. Wow, Mindy, sometimes your imagination is so loud, even I can hear it myself.
Sorry. I know that chimps also cooperate with each other, but what does that have to do with why we humans cooperate?
Well, remember how I said that scientists have been looking for clues to explain how we learned cooperation?
Yeah. Well, it looks like chimpanzees might just hold the clue.
Well, if they're holding the clue, can't scientists just, you know, tickle it out of them?
Get it? Tickle it out of them? Hey, Ross, they're not literally holding the clue.
Well, but did you like my joke? Oh, boy.
Here's the deal. So while scientists have known for a long time that chimps could cooperate, they weren't sure about their motive for cooperation.
You mean they thought it was possible that chimps only help other chimps if they get something out of it?
Exactly. Which would be selfish, right? I'll say.
So now the question is, could chimps be altruistic?
Could they be willing to help other chimps even if there was nothing in So could the chimps be kind and caring and altruistic?
Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye. place and I gave you a band-aid and didn't even ask for a prize in return I don't know if I'd call that altruistic I
I seem to remember that for months after that, you'd go around telling people that you saved my life and introduce yourself at parties as Guy Raz's personal hero.
Huh? Hi, I'm Mindy, Guy Raz's personal hero.
Now, I don't want to make a big deal out of it, but I did totally save his life from a freak roller skate accident.
Good one. Yeah, it was really scary. Kind of touch and go there for a while, but in the end, I really pulled through.
Oh, I guess I did. Okay, so bad example, but you get it, right?
I mean, altruism is doing something nice or helpful for someone else without getting anything in return. or even bragging to everyone about the nice thing you did yeah sure so these scientists wondered that if chimps could be altruistic then maybe this could be a as to how humans evolved to be altruistic too.
Well, how did they go about trying to find this out?
Okay, so there were two big experiments.
The first one was conducted by Martin Schmelz and Sebastian Gruneisen at the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
And what was the experiment? OK, so pay close attention because this can get a little tricky.
OK. So the first thing they did was create a little chimpanzee sharing game.
That sounds like fun. What was the game?
They took two chimps from the Leipzig Zoo and put them in two rooms next to each other with a window dividing them in between.
Okay. imagining it. And the first chimp, a girl chimp named Ty, had four choices of ropes to pull.
Okay, then they had a bunch of partner chimps play one at a time and these were boy chimps interesting So the boy chimps knew that Ty had four choices of ropes.
If she pulled the first rope, a banana would drop down and Ty would get to eat it all by herself.
Bet she liked that. But if she pulled the second rope, the boy chimp would get the treat all to himself.
This is getting really interesting. And then if Ty pulled the third rope, she and the boy chimp would get a banana.
And can you guess what happened if she pulled the fourth rope?
A piñata full of smashed bananas would explode all over the lab?
Nope, but that's what I'm planning for your surprise party.
My what? Oh, I didn't say anything. Anywho, if she pulled the fourth rope, she would pass her turn to the boy chimp, who would then get to choose a rope to pull himself.
So did Ty always pull the first rope and get the banana all for herself and only herself?
Well, that's what you would think, but there was a twist.
A twist? And the twist was that Ty was encouraged by the scientists conducting the experiment to always pull the fourth rope and give the boy chimp the choice.
So did the boy chimps know that the scientists were encouraging Ty to give them the rope?
Nope. As far as they knew, Ty was just being nice and giving her turn to them.
But Mindy, that meant that if she... When she gave up her turn, the boy chimps could simply pull the first rope and keep all the bananas to themselves.
Well, they could, but the scientists began to notice that the boy chimps understood that Ty was doing something nice for them.
So did that mean that the boy chimps were nice back to Ty?
Yes. In most cases, without even being encouraged, the boy chimps would pull the ropes that gave both them and Ty a banana.
What a bunch of pals. I know, right? And there's more.
What? After Ty passed on her turn, The boy chimps had only two choices.
They could pull the first rope and get four treats just for themselves, or pull the second rope and get three treats, Three for themselves and three for Ty.
And what rope did they pull? Welp. Almost half the time, the boy chimps pulled the second rope, meaning that they would get one less banana for themselves.
But enough to share with their friends. Yep, those boy chimps were totally thinking of their friend Ty.
Mindy, would you like my last banana? Well, it does look appealing.
You get it? You get it? Okay. Let's just move on to the second experiment.
Okay, so in the second experiment, Kevin Langergraber, a scientist from Arizona State University, studied why chimps go on patrol missions.
Patrol missions? Yeah, so in the wild, chimps live in big groups just like we do.
Like in towns or cities or neighborhoods.
Exactly. And just like in our towns and cities, chimps basically take on the jobs of community helpers.
So one may volunteer to be the group's police officer or security guard.
And then go on a patrol in the wild, keeping their eyes out for bad guys?
Yeah. and they walk around the very edge of the group's territory and look out for rival chimps who might want to attack the group or steal their food.
Well, that sounds like a pretty risky job.
I mean, if predators came along or hunters, those patrol ships would be the first to get hurt or even killed.
I know, crazy, right? So this scientist, Kevin Langergraber, wondered if these patrol chimps would only volunteer if there was something else in it for them.
Isn't it for them like if they were only protecting their own family members?
Yeah, and this is kind of what the scientists expected.
But? But it turns out that after 20 years of studying almost 4,000 chimps in Uganda...
The researchers discovered that more than 25%, or one in every four patrol chimps, had no relatives in the group they were protecting.
So they were protecting other chimps even if it meant sacrificing their own safety?
Yep. The scientists call this idea group augmentation, which is just a fancy way of saying that chimps know that if they have to sacrifice themselves to protect the whole group, then everyone else in the group is better off too.
And that also means that the group has a better chance of growing and surviving because they'll be able to make more baby chimps.
So does any of this help us to better understand how humans learned to cooperate and be altruistic?
Well, we're still learning exactly how we became a species where millions of us live and work together, but these studies do help us understand the basic ideas behind cooperation and, of course, putting others before ourselves.
And so what does it mean for people who still find it kind of hard to share or play fair or to be nice?
I really don't know what that means, and it's safe to say that we all have these moments.
But when it comes to putting others first, it doesn't hurt to ask ourselves the question, what would a chimp do?
Or more specifically, what would Ty do? Yeah, she's my North Star.
So are you still thinking of moving to Tanzania to live with the chimpanzees?
Well, that depends. I mean, you're basically my best human friend in civilization, so what are the chances you would be willing to altruistically put on this ape suit and pick bugs out of my hair?
Uh... Yes! Mindy, the last time you put me in an animal costume, I ended up in the flamingo pond at the zoo.
There's no way I'm getting in that ape suit.
Yeah. That flamingo thing was bananas. That was so nice.
Yeah, the chips shared with each other. Hey, Reggie.
If we were in the experiment from the episode where you pull ropes to get bananas, what rope would you pull?
Oh, you're joking. Okay. Yeah, I'd pull the third rope, too.
Oh yeah! I forgot I don't like bananas because they taste like banana flavor.
Baby Dennis likes bananas! No you don't!
You can't eat food! Okay, I think it's time to wrap this up.
Thanks to all you listeners out there for tuning in to WeeWOW on the weekend.
Remember, if you have a question for me, call and leave me a message at 1-888-7WOW-WOW.
That's 1-888-7WOW-WOW. I just might answer your question on Wee Wow on the weekend.
All right, Reggie. Let's go take baby Dennis for a walk.
Hooray! Hey, can we go to the park? No.
Can we go to the library? It's pronounced lie-berry.
No, wait. I mean lie-berry. Wait. Library.
Why can't I say it right? Library! Grownups, if you like Wow in the World, you can listen early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.
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Thanks for joining us for this edition of WeWow on the Weekend.
Our show is written by Ruth Morrison and Jed Anderson.
Original sound design and production is done by Henry Moskal and Marion Lozano with help from Jed Anderson and Tyler Thull.
Original music for WeWow on the Weekend is composed and performed by Tyler Thold.
Special thanks to Steph Sosa, Rebecca Caban, and all of the other tinkerers at Tinkercast HQ.
There's still time to share your WeWow Crafternoon challenges with us.
Grownups, you can upload pictures and videos of your projects to us at tinkercast.com slash share.
Or call us at 1-888-7WOW-WOW. Our website is Tinkercast.com.
There, you can learn more about becoming an official member of the World Organization of Wowzers, learn about upcoming events, shop our shop, And pick up a copy of the latest edition of our number one New York Times bestselling book series, Wow in the Wild.
Thanks again for thinking, tinkering, experimenting and exploring. exploring with us this week.
Meet us back here on Monday for Wow in the World.
And remember, who wows? We wow! Wow in the World was made by Tinkercast and sent to you by Wondery.
