The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - My Chat with Dr. Menno Schilthuizen -Urban Ecology & the Evolution of Genitalia (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_681)

00:00:00.620 Hi everybody, this is Gat Saad for The Sad Truth.

00:00:04.280 Today I have a back-to-back evolutionist and biologist.

00:00:07.860 Last week I had Colin Wright, who studied wasps and spiders.

00:00:13.680 Today I've got Menno, let me pronounce the name probably,

00:00:17.040 Skilthuizen, but please pronounce it the Dutch way.

00:00:21.700 It was almost perfect. The Dutch way would be Skilthuizen. 0.99

00:00:25.200 There you go.

00:00:25.880 We can also talk about how much I loved Johan Cruyff growing up in 1974 in the World Cup.

00:00:33.860 We can talk about that if you'd like later.

00:00:36.140 But I first want to introduce you, tell people how I discovered you.

00:00:41.600 I discovered you, by the way. I'm still reading it.

00:00:44.260 You see there's still a mark here. I'm still going through it.

00:00:47.240 It's Darwin Comes to Town, How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution.

00:00:52.260 Phenomenal book. Love it.

00:00:53.560 But some of your earlier books, Frogs, Flies, and then Billions, 2008.

00:01:00.460 The Loom of Life, 2008.

00:01:02.900 Nature's Nether Regions.

00:01:04.920 We want to talk about that, the evolution of genitalia.

00:01:08.440 And then, as I said, Darwin Comes to Town and you've got an upcoming book, Urban Naturalist, in 2025.

00:01:14.860 Anything else we need to cover, Menno, before we get going?

00:01:17.120 That is, I think that's a good summary.

00:01:21.580 But besides writing, I'm also an expedition leader.

00:01:24.960 So I also take people into the field to show them the things that I write about.

00:01:29.480 So via Taxon Expeditions, which is our scientific travel agency.

00:01:34.220 If you want to meet the stuff I'm writing about up close, you can have a look there.

00:01:38.680 And the people who are signing up for those field expeditions, they're not necessarily scientists.

00:01:45.460 They're just lay people who are interested in science.

00:01:48.640 Exactly.

00:01:49.200 Science or nature or knowledge in general.

00:01:52.800 Yeah.

00:01:53.020 So we just came back from Tuscany, where every year we do an expedition around the medieval castle.

00:01:58.280 And there were people from all over the world, from all walks of life, jointly doing a biodiversity inventory in discovering new species.

00:02:05.760 And it's usually a lot of fun.

00:02:07.580 How does that process of learning or teaching compare to in the classroom?

00:02:15.420 What are some of the key differences between, let's call them the lifelong learners versus the university students?

00:02:21.840 Well, for me personally, what I notice is that students, they're used to sitting in the classroom.

00:02:30.760 They're used to having well-trained scientists telling them about their stuff.

00:02:35.360 So they're a bit blasé.

00:02:36.580 They've seen a lot.

00:02:38.080 They've heard a lot.

00:02:38.860 But when you have people who just come out of their regular jobs and you put them in the field with a couple of passionate scientists, they love it.

00:02:46.840 And because their infectious enthusiasm makes us fall in love all over again with our own field of research.

00:02:53.200 And that's, to me, I mean, it's great to teach students.

00:02:56.060 And, of course, some students are like that as well.

00:02:58.280 But with these community scientists, the enthusiasm and the infectiousness of their enthusiasm back to myself is very rewarding.

00:03:07.960 Well, you know, one of the things, I mean, we'll dive into this book in a lot more details in a second.

00:03:13.780 But one of the things that I think came out in several of your examples that you were describing is the citizen scientists, right?

00:03:21.720 This is where professional scientists are seeking the help of everyday people to be able to actually collect the necessary data that they need to collect to complete their project.

00:03:32.880 Is this a rather new phenomenon?

00:03:35.660 Is it on the upswing?

00:03:36.640 Is it on the downswing?

00:03:37.500 Tell us a bit about citizen scientists.

00:03:39.740 Yeah, as you describe it, that is sort of the classical citizen science, which has been going on for a long time, actually, already, because even from before the Second World War, there were the famous project on trying to figure out how great tits, which is the European bird, how they learn to open up milk bottles.

00:04:07.280 I just finished that section this morning.

00:04:09.660 Oh, you did, huh?

00:04:10.440 Yeah.

00:04:11.320 But that was studied in a sort of a citizen science way, because the scientists were sending out letters to people, and they were putting ads in the newspaper, and people were asked to send in observations of birds doing this and carrying out this behavior.

00:04:26.020 So that sort of work, trying to get more data by involving the general public, has been going on for quite a long time.

00:04:33.100 It's still on the rise, but in the last 10 years, also in my own work, it's been overtaken by something much more comprehensive, which we call extreme citizen science or community science, where the general public is not just involved in the data gathering part of the research, but they come up with the research questions.

00:04:55.320 They come up with finding a method to study it, and the scientists are just there for guidance, for coming up with some ideas, but really the initiative is with the community scientists.

00:05:09.740 And that's something we've been trying to stimulate over the past few years.

00:05:15.300 That's also something that my new book is largely about, where the scientific process, or the non-professional scientist is involved in the entire scientific process, right from the conception of a question until the publication of the results.

00:05:31.140 And that's even more exciting, I think.

00:05:34.060 Wow, I love this stuff.

00:05:35.940 So have there been any studies that have compared the veracity, the methodological rigor, the theoretical sophistication that stems from what you're calling the extreme community scientists or citizen scientists to the standard professional scientists?

00:05:55.260 And if so, what are the results?

00:05:57.540 Yeah, there's a couple of people working on this.

00:06:00.320 I think Mookie Hackley in University College London has been doing some work on this.

00:06:08.280 I'm not exactly up to date on the results of that.

00:06:11.760 But in general, of course, the rigidity is less, but often this is compensated by the volume of the data that people gather, because the number of data that large groups of people can gather are so large that the enhanced error that you get in data gathered by non-professional scientists is compensated for by the bulk of the data.

00:06:40.040 So you still get a good, often you still get a good statistical signal out of it.

00:06:44.320 Now, you meant to say rigidity as a negative thing.

00:06:48.160 You didn't mispronounce, you meant to say rigor.

00:06:51.080 You really, you meant rigidity, correct?

00:06:52.820 Oh, sorry.

00:06:53.220 I probably meant rigor, yes.

00:06:54.700 Ah, okay.

00:06:55.440 No, because had you, that's what I thought you might have meant.

00:06:58.460 But had you meant rigidity, that actually would segue to something that I was going to say, which is, so I recently did a, do you know what an X Spaces is on X?

00:07:10.020 Oh, I thought about it.

00:07:11.260 Yeah, I don't have much experience with it.

00:07:13.160 Well, you should, as someone who seems to very much want to connect with the public, I would highly recommend you look into it.

00:07:20.120 So X Spaces basically allows you to, you say, okay, at 7.30 tonight, Eastern time, I'm opening my mic.

00:07:28.320 I'm going to be talking about the evolutionary behavioral sciences.

00:07:32.880 Anybody who wants to come, come open your mic and just listen, you know?

00:07:37.100 And so right now it's only audio, but I know that Elon Musk is trying to turn it into also a visual means.

00:07:44.600 Okay.

00:07:45.340 So I will open it up just impromptu.

00:07:48.620 At four o'clock, I decide, you know what?

00:07:50.300 I feel like just lecturing about whatever, evolutionary behavioral sciences.

00:07:53.320 And then, you know, 2,000, 4,000, 8,000 people just show up to hear.

00:07:57.980 Now, you could open it up.

00:07:59.380 You can have them ask questions.

00:08:01.620 I find it a bit overwhelming to try to manage the process.

00:08:05.300 So usually I only, it's a one-way lecture and people listen and then support.

00:08:09.620 And now in my latest X Spaces to the point of rigidity, I was talking about the fact that much of scientific research often misses a key metric, which is interestingness of the research, right? 0.97

00:08:27.080 You have the methodological rigor and you have the theoretical sophistication, you have internal and external ability, but the end result, forgive me for saying it, is pure bullshit, right?

00:08:37.140 We find out that consumers who are, you know, satisfied with the restaurant are more likely to return to the less restaurant. 0.92

00:08:46.300 Well, who would not have thought that?

00:08:48.600 But if you read the paper, it's unbelievably sophisticated and a lot of mathematical symbols and so on, but nobody gives a damn. 1.00

00:08:55.000 It's all bullshit. 1.00

00:08:56.320 Proving obvious. 1.00

00:08:57.000 Exactly.

00:08:58.360 So my view is that probably the citizen scientists are less rigid and might actually come up with more interesting research questions than the professional scientists.

00:09:11.440 Does that seem to make sense?

00:09:13.320 Yeah, it does.

00:09:13.800 It does.

00:09:14.140 It does.

00:09:15.480 That's certainly true.

00:09:16.880 I can't really come up with an example, but I've noticed the same thing before when you talk to community scientists about some field of research and they come up with suggestions, some of which don't make sense, but some might make sense that a colleague in the same field would never have come up with because we're trained to think in a certain framework.

00:09:38.920 And this was just outside of the framework, but it still might help.

00:09:41.920 Right.

00:09:43.360 So you may know this paper, and if you don't, please put it on your roster for your doctoral students.

00:09:50.080 There's a 1971 paper by Davis.

00:09:53.920 It's called That's Interesting!

00:09:57.460 And what he basically does is he offers a framework for how to, I mean, yes, there's an element of personal preferences.

00:10:05.300 You may like plant physiology, whereas I'm not interested in this.

00:10:10.020 So there is a personal element, but is there some quantifiable epistemological ways by which we could say this is interesting more so than that?

00:10:19.280 And to that point, let me give an example in this beautiful book right here, Darwin Comes to Town, of what I would consider that's interesting.

00:10:27.420 The study with the butts of cigarettes, whereby the people, you know, well, you tell it.

00:10:35.820 You tell the story.

00:10:37.520 Yeah, well, I think that the reason that I find that study interesting and also some other studies that we're doing now with my PhD students is that we've been trained to think of human pollution as pollution,

00:10:54.660 as something that is bad, that interferes with animals' lives, and it does, but we are not trained to think in the living environment immediately responding to whatever we throw at them.

00:11:09.880 And in this case, this was a study done in Mexico City where house sparrows and house finches were found to have large numbers of discarded cigarette butts in their nests.

00:11:20.720 And it turned out that the cigarette butts usually have a little bit of tobacco left in them.

00:11:28.620 Tobacco contains nicotine.

00:11:29.780 Nicotine is a natural insecticide.

00:11:31.740 And we know from previous work that birds often put green plants in their nests, which also have insecticide properties, to help reduce, I mean, that behavior has been selected to help reduce the parasitic mites and fleas in their nests.

00:11:49.960 And it turns out that these cigarette butts do the same.

00:11:52.140 So they probably pick up the leftover nicotine that's in the butts. 0.99

00:11:55.680 They sense this.

00:11:56.700 And that's why they also incorporate those filter tips in their nest, which we think is just trash.

00:12:05.880 But to them, it's a valuable resource for keeping their parasite levels in their nests down.

00:12:10.760 And that's something that I notice a lot of people find hard to get their heads around.

00:12:18.020 That's something that we are primed to see as trash. 0.90

00:12:21.620 It's something bad.

00:12:22.400 We've been trying to see it as negative because it's our waste that we burden the rest of nature with.

00:12:28.860 The rest of nature doesn't care what we feel.

00:12:31.100 They'll use it if they can.

00:12:33.180 And that doesn't matter to them whether it's human waste or natural waste.

00:12:37.060 And we've now been studying the use of a student of mine, Alco Florian Hiemstra.

00:12:42.620 He's studying the use of plastic waste by birds in their nests also.

00:12:49.240 And we're also seeing some tantalizing indications that some birds actually prefer to put plastic in their nest.

00:12:57.300 Possibly, we don't know exactly if that's true yet, but possibly because they appreciate the same properties that we do in plastic.

00:13:04.860 It's durable, doesn't get waterlogged, it's strong.

00:13:08.420 So what that also means, and I think that is also the interesting part, sorry if I'm going on too long, but that as soon as we interfere with the environment, it's changed forever.

00:13:23.200 And that's also why cleanup projects, if you do them too long after the fact, you're already interfering with an environment that has started to adapt to whatever we're trying to clean up.

00:13:39.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:40.620 So to go back to the that's interesting paper, there are multiple levels of interestingness in that study.

00:13:49.280 So first, that nicotine, you know, in the cigarettes are linked to the amount of parasitic mites in the nest.

00:14:00.660 That's the variable A and B that I wouldn't have thought should be related and are related.

00:14:06.720 That's interesting.

00:14:07.980 Number two, to your point, I, meaning general person, I'm thinking that in all circumstances, litter bad.

00:14:17.700 Now I find out litter good. 0.83

00:14:20.700 That's interesting.

00:14:22.060 So I can start taking all of the framework of that Davis 1971 paper.

00:14:27.340 I think he's got 12 criteria and I can show that on at least two, three, four of these, it's ticking it off.

00:14:34.620 So what a wonderful way to teach students how to not just do methodologically rigorous.

00:14:41.680 Now, by the way, it doesn't have, for it to be interesting, doesn't have to be counterintuitive always, but it certainly has to make you say, oh, wow, I didn't know that.

00:14:53.240 If it does, if all it does is validate my folk psychology, well, sometimes I do have to do that to establish that this is true.

00:15:00.460 But in most cases, it's not going to, you know, invoke my imagination.

00:15:06.200 No, no, exactly.

00:15:07.320 It's, it's, I think it's good to, like I said, to prove the obvious sometimes, because sometimes we think something is true without anybody ever having studied it properly.

00:15:15.800 So it's good to confirm that.

00:15:18.220 But yeah, as soon as you start looking at, at interactions that are more than one or two obvious steps removed from each other, then it gets interesting.

00:15:29.120 Very nice.

00:15:29.560 So maybe we could start by talking a bit more about this book.

00:15:33.580 Sure. 0.51

00:15:34.120 And then I'd love to go to the genitalia stuff. 0.56

00:15:38.020 Then go to maybe the links between evolution and evolutionary psychology, because it may or may not surprise you, Menno, that there are many evolutionary biologists who suddenly lose their minds.

00:15:52.340 If you apply the exact same principles that they use to study the finches or the tits or the whatever, the salamander, if I apply the exact same methodology, exact same epistemology for human behavior, I suddenly become a Nazi. 0.70

00:16:09.500 And so we can, we can certainly talk about that, but let's begin with this beauty.

00:16:13.720 Tell us the general premise and then we can drill down.

00:16:16.260 Well, the general premise is, is that we, again, we're often taught to think of today as a world that's in upheaval, a world that's where, where biodiversity is disappearing, where natural ecosystems are disappearing.

00:16:35.220 And those things are all true, but at the same time, I think it's very helpful and in a way comforting to realize that we are also witnessing an event in the history of life on earth that is unprecedented.

00:16:52.180 We see urbanized landscapes appearing at an increasing pace at an increasing pace all over the world simultaneously in a remarkably short period of time.

00:17:03.360 And these landscapes, these new environments have been caused by a single species, namely us.

00:17:10.620 This has never happened before in the history of life on earth, that a single species is able to, to engineer ecosystems all over the world simultaneously with, which share a lot of characteristics.

00:17:20.640 And like with all major changes in the environment, we see that the rest of the living world is evolving in response to it.

00:17:29.320 So urbanized landscapes, of course, they drive a lot of species to extinction, but they also drive the evolution of a lot of species that do not go extinct, species that adapt to the changes due to either new dangers, new challenges or new opportunities.

00:17:47.760 And there's a growing and very interesting field of research that has sprung up just in the past 10, 20 years of evolutionary biologists that are beginning to discover the urban environment as a wonderful scientific playground to see rapid evolution happening of birds and fungi and animals.

00:18:08.820 Sorry, sorry, plants and fungi and animals that are all evolving at breakneck speed in response to the changes that we are causing in their environment.

00:18:17.320 Yeah. I mean, I, one of the things that I, I think you have several of those examples where you, you know, in the same way that Darwin had the Galapagos Islands, whereby the Darwinian finches are evolving different beak structures, you know, as a result of certain selection pressures.

00:18:34.060 Well, you can take Paris that has different micro urban environments.

00:18:40.540 And even though the pigeons or whatever the species was, the mole rat or whatever it was in New York, within the same city, there are these little urban islands that are akin to the Galapagos where the singular species becomes multiple uniquely selected species.

00:18:59.580 It's, it's mind blowing.

00:19:00.420 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:19:02.020 They're not really species yet, but they are differentiating in the same way that's that Darwin's finches must have started differentiating in the beginning because they're locked up in this, in the various green islands of this archipelago of city parks, which they're really locked up in.

00:19:16.460 And they're adapting not just because they're isolated, but also because the, the ecology of all those parks is different.

00:19:22.140 So in, in central park, this is work done in Fordham university in New York by Jason Munchie South and his team.

00:19:29.200 They're really discovering that, for example, in city, in, in central park, the mice have evolved a variant of a gene that allows them to deal with an extremely fatty diet, which is a diet made of junk food.

00:19:41.160 And to them, of course, this is just as unhealthy as it is to us, but they have had 400 mouse generations of time to adapt to it.

00:19:48.400 And you really see that happening in real time in cities.

00:19:51.860 Is there some, I'm, I'm, I'm almost certain you're going to say yes.

00:19:56.100 And if, if it's yes, I'd love to hear about it.

00:19:58.140 When you look at various species and their capacity to have rapid evolution akin to what you're, I mean, yes, the, the, the, the lifespan of the species will affect that.

00:20:11.500 That's why you do the drosophilia flies and so on, because you go, okay, or bacteria or whatever, but is there a mapping that says, here are the types of species that have this very strong innate ability for plasticity versus these other species that are locked in this kind of fixed traits rigidity that doesn't allow them to do well.

00:20:37.440 And if so, what are some of the things that differentiate those species?

00:20:41.500 Um, it's not easy to, to answer that question.

00:20:45.700 Indeed, generation time plays a role.

00:20:47.560 Um, also, um, if you're talking about plasticity, so then what we see in cities, the species that do well, and that often also starts evolving as soon as they get into cities are species from, from dynamic environments.

00:21:04.480 So, um, from areas that are in nature already quite dynamic and unpredictable and could, and unpredictable, like, like floodplains, for example, um, uh, forest edges, species that live in, in much more predictable and stable environments probably wouldn't do so well in cities.

00:21:23.180 And also are not the first candidates that you would expect to start evolving.

00:21:28.120 So the whole crow family, for example, are usually, most of those are species that, that live in those dynamic environments.

00:21:34.140 And those are also the species that, that do well and that evolve and adapt to, to cities, um, species from sort of originally half open environments, uh, savannah type environments, like the house sparrow.

00:21:47.120 Um, maybe even also the house, um, the, the, the, the rock pigeon, which is the ancestor of our city pigeon.

00:21:53.660 I think those are all species that are sort of pre-adapted to an environment that is unstable and, and a bit messy.

00:22:01.720 And, and they are among the best candidates of urban species to really adapt very quickly and, and, um, become, become urban dwellers.

00:22:11.660 So, so basically, I mean, if I wanted to do that study, I would quantify the uncertainty or unpredictability of the typical environment in which the species has evolved, has evolved, give that some number zero to 100, and then correlate that with your ability to adapt in rapidly changing urban environments.

00:22:37.560 And I should be able to see exactly the correlation that you spoke about.

00:22:41.040 So, I mean, conceptually, it should be a feasible study to do.

00:22:45.540 Yeah.

00:22:45.800 Yeah.

00:22:45.980 And maybe somebody has done it.

00:22:47.080 I was just not on top of my head, but that's certainly is a, the way you describe it would for me also be the first way to start, to start thinking about it.

00:22:54.720 Yeah.

00:22:55.400 Fantastic.

00:22:55.940 Okay.

00:22:56.260 Let's, uh, move, move. 0.91

00:22:58.520 We'll, we'll come back to the evolution of genitalia in a second, but why is it in your view?

00:23:04.180 I mean, I've got my own thoughts on this, but, oh, first of all, have you, are you familiar much with the evolutionary psychology literature?

00:23:11.040 Or you don't deal with humans at all?

00:23:14.240 I, I, in my research, I don't deal with humans at all, but especially for the genitalia book, I've, I've been, yeah, there's also a bit of human, human genitalia biology in there.

00:23:24.000 And I've been dealing with, with some of the literature on, on, uh, human evolutionary biology.

00:23:29.740 And of course, it's something that I always get questions about.

00:23:33.280 So as a general evolutionary biologist, you, yeah, you're a little bit primed to answer to at least be able to discuss it with some, with some sensibility.

00:23:40.980 Yes.

00:23:41.400 And, and please feel free to answer any way you want.

00:23:43.940 You won't offend me, but are, are you of the, are you part of the taxonomy of evolutionary biologists that is perfectly happy to apply evolutionary biology for every single species except one called humans?

00:23:57.100 Or, or even worse, many evolutionary biologists are perfectly happy to apply evolutionary theory to humans as long as it stops at the neck.

00:24:07.500 So that opposable thumbs, oh yeah, sure, we'll use evolutionary theory.

00:24:11.660 The evolution of the respiratory system, oh sure, evolutionary theory, but don't you dare Nazi to explain the human mind using evolutionary theory. 0.53

00:24:21.260 And there are some very, very well accomplished scientists, evolutionary biologists who have fallen into this.

00:24:28.400 You probably know, I mean, you, your, your book is called Urban Naturalist.

00:24:31.700 So you might know the autobiography of E.O.

00:24:35.300 Wilson called Naturalist.

00:24:37.180 And he faced that kind of nonsense.

00:24:39.040 What are your thoughts?

00:24:39.580 He did, he did, yeah.

00:24:40.400 No, I'm also of the opinion that's, that there's no reason to, to, to make an exception for, for Homo sapiens in terms of evolution of behavior or, or, or, or, or body morphology.

00:24:54.080 I think our, our behaviors, our minds are just as evolvable as, as any other species.

00:24:59.540 I think we're, we're quite a special species, but I think we still follow, follow the same rules.

00:25:04.580 I think morality has evolved.

00:25:06.060 I think our, our social and sexual behavior has evolved and is actually still evolving.

00:25:12.020 It's probably evolving in these urban communities faster than we've ever thought possible.

00:25:17.700 Right.

00:25:17.900 Do you, what's the ecosystem for Darwinian thinking in the Netherlands?

00:25:25.080 You're, you're, you're housing in the Netherlands, correct?

00:25:27.280 Yeah.

00:25:27.700 Yes.

00:25:27.960 So the reason why I asked this question, I mean, I, I haven't done a formal study, but I, while there is a general reluctance to accept evolutionary thinking for human behavior, certainly in the social sciences, it is improving a bit.

00:25:43.000 But that statement applies more or less somehow in different, you know, ecosystems.

00:25:50.620 So for example, France, for whatever reason, has not really picked up evolution.

00:25:54.680 There aren't too many evolutionary psychologists in France.

00:25:56.720 I don't know why.

00:25:58.340 So what's the general, is it, is, is Darwinian thinking fertile in, in the Netherlands or what, what's the general story there?

00:26:06.380 It's fairly fertile.

00:26:08.880 Yeah.

00:26:09.780 There's this, I, I wouldn't be able to distinguish between evolution applied to humans and evolution applied in general.

00:26:16.920 I don't have any data on that, but I do know that there's this, this study worldwide, or at least it's done in many countries of the acceptance of evolution that's repeated, I think every 10 years or so.

00:26:27.540 France is actually very high, usually higher than the Netherlands, because we have a small, but, but quite strong religious minority in the Netherlands.

00:26:36.280 So I think we're, we're about 85% at the moment.

00:26:40.620 It might be dropping.

00:26:42.180 I'm not really sure.

00:26:43.180 Japan is, is, I think, very high.

00:26:45.940 Turkey and the U.S. are. 0.74

00:26:47.620 I was going to say that from the, I think this is, you're talking about the 2006, either nature or science.

00:26:53.300 It's like a two page paper.

00:26:54.960 And I, I remember that Turkey and the U.S. were the, the worst on the acceptance. 0.99

00:26:59.180 40% or something.

00:27:00.420 Yeah.

00:27:00.640 But that's evolution, not evolution in psychology.

00:27:02.340 That's evolution in general.

00:27:03.420 Yes, yes, yes.

00:27:04.240 So I don't have any data on the acceptance of evolution, of evolutionary principles applying to humans just as much as to, to other animals.

00:27:13.620 I think, yeah, the, the people I talk to, but of course that's not a cross section of the, of the Dutch population.

00:27:22.180 I think they would, yeah, they would generally accept, I think like Franz De Waal, of course, is originally a Dutch scientist and he's very well, well known in the Netherlands.

00:27:30.800 And I think a lot of people have picked up, or at least well-read people have picked up on his ideas.

00:27:34.760 So I think the notion that human behavior evolves, I think is quite well widespread.

00:27:42.040 I would say at least three quarters of the, of the country, but maybe that's too optimistic.

00:27:47.240 Interesting.

00:27:47.740 Speaking of Franz De Waal, I mean, I'm, I'm sure, you know, but maybe our viewers don't.

00:27:52.500 He was a very well-known and respected primatologist who just recently passed away, right?

00:27:58.440 Like maybe in the last month or two.

00:27:59.740 Yeah.

00:28:00.300 One of the great regrets is that I never got a chance to have a chat with him on this show.

00:28:06.260 I did go to, I can't remember which, which conference it was.

00:28:10.700 It was in the last 10 years.

00:28:12.240 I think he might've been talking about his empathy work.

00:28:17.680 And he's got a paper in behavioral and brain sciences with Stephanie Preston, I think, looking at the proximate and ultimate explanations for empathy.

00:28:26.400 That's recently come back to my mind because my next book is going to be on suicidal empathy, the, the, the, the miss, the miss application and the miss triggering, uh, of empathy in the wrong context to the wrong targets, which then results in all sorts of insane public policy decisions, whether it be in immigration or criminality and so on.

00:28:50.260 And so I, yeah, so people should definitely, uh, check out his work.

00:28:54.480 Uh, okay.

00:28:55.520 Anything else we want to cover on this before we move on to all you want to know about genitalia, but we're afraid to ask. 0.96

00:29:04.460 Let's, let's move to the genitalia. 1.00

00:29:06.100 I haven't talked about that book for a while.

00:29:07.780 All right, let's do it.

00:29:08.880 So, I mean, before, before, before I cue you up to, to take over the floor, one of the classic examples that I discussed certainly in my lectures as relating to one feature of genitalia is the famous study across primates showing that the correlation between testes size and the body size of the male of that species correlates to female promiscuity.

00:29:37.880 And that species, so that the, the, the, the, the, the genitalia of males is evolving as a adaptive response to female behavior. 0.98

00:29:48.000 Okay.

00:29:48.600 So starting with that, take it away, doctor.

00:29:52.300 Well, um, yeah, so the, the, the book, the central message of the, of the book, uh, nature's nether regions is that of all our organs.

00:30:03.800 And, uh, with our, I mean, all animals, not just humans, um, the things we use for reproduction are evolving the fastest.

00:30:13.900 As you, you see, I'm, I'm interested in fast evolution, fast evolution in cities, but also fast evolution in the nether regions, um, genitalia.

00:30:22.220 So if you, if you would, um, compare the shape of the kidneys of a wide range of mammals, they would all look pretty much kidney shaped.

00:30:31.680 But if you see then, uh, a graph of all the penises or all the vulvi of those same mammals, they would look wildly different.

00:30:39.860 So evolution in, uh, reproductive organs, especially the external ones is occurring at breakneck speed.

00:30:49.320 And that's also why, because I'm originally a taxonomist, I'm somebody who distinguishes species, describes species, describes new species, use genitalia to distinguish species that are otherwise very similar.

00:31:00.960 So I, I've, I've got a large beetle collection, also a large snail collection when two species are very similar on the outside, you can't really tell them apart.

00:31:09.380 If you look at their, at their genitalia, usually the male genitalia, sometimes also the female genitalia, you will always see very clear different differences.

00:31:16.880 So it's very easy to distinguish species and on the, on the genitalia.

00:31:20.920 And that's because evolution in genitalia is, is, uh, I mean, anything that changes the shape of the genitalia will usually affect reproduction and reproduction is the currency of evolution.

00:31:32.320 So any change there is going to have an effect either negative or positively.

00:31:37.780 And the, and the, the effect is more direct than other traits that might.

00:31:43.160 Right.

00:31:43.560 Okay.

00:31:44.300 Yeah.

00:31:44.480 Yeah.

00:31:44.660 It immediately affects the reproductive output.

00:31:47.620 So it immediately affects evolution.

00:31:49.880 So really the, the, the, the, you know, the naughty bits of species is, is really the arena where you can find lots of interesting evolutionary patterns.

00:31:59.080 So, yeah, I, I really thought since there wasn't a book for the general public about this pretty attractive, but also very revealing, uh, in many, in many meanings of the word, uh, field of study.

00:32:11.920 Um, it was really, um, it was really fun to, to, to write an entire book about the evolution of genitalia.

00:32:16.860 And there's a lot of literature, but it's all obscure and it's not really been popularized.

00:32:21.920 And that's what I've tried to do with that book.

00:32:23.420 Does that mind blowing original finding that you started with, which I want to repeat just for me to process it, because that definitely fits under the, that's interesting exclamation point framework.

00:32:35.320 So you look at many species, all these species have common organs.

00:32:42.420 We, we have eyes, we have kidneys, we have a respiratory system.

00:32:46.580 Many of those organs will exhibit homologous features to use fancy bio biological language across species.

00:32:57.680 And the ones that exhibit the greatest amount of difference across species are specific to genitalia.

00:33:04.920 Did I, did I summarize that right?

00:33:06.680 Yeah.

00:33:06.940 Yeah.

00:33:07.120 It's pretty much like that.

00:33:08.080 Yeah.

00:33:08.260 In most cases.

00:33:09.220 That's fantastic.

00:33:10.620 Yeah.

00:33:11.060 I mean, even ourselves and, and chimpanzees, we, we, when people, when you would ask somebody, what's the difference between the chimpanzee and a human, they'll come up with brain size and with, with the shape of, of hands and feet.

00:33:24.200 But nobody mentions the fact that the chimpanzee penis is, is pointed, doesn't have a glance, has a bone inside, has a little, little, um, sharp spines on the outside, um, that the female vulva swells up, um, that the clitoris is, is, is, is, 0.80

00:33:41.040 is, um, much larger. 0.70

00:33:43.600 So the number of differences between the chimpanzee genitalia and the human genitalia is much larger than almost any other organ you could, you could see.

00:33:52.280 And that's not just subjectively.

00:33:53.520 It's also, if you would measure the, the shape differences, there's simply more going on in the genitalia and it's happening faster.

00:34:00.880 Wow.

00:34:01.260 How many species, I mean, we can, we can decide which taxa you want to focus on.

00:34:07.380 It's up to you, but how many don't have a penile bone as is the case for humans where you, it's actually a blood flow hydraulic system.

00:34:19.180 Like, are there many other species that have that or is it everybody is penile bone with the exception of humans?

00:34:25.500 No, I think in the mammals, um, I don't know mammals that well, but the, um, there are certain, certain orders and families where you always find, uh, penile bones.

00:34:35.920 I think in squirrels, in, uh, in, in walruses and those groups.

00:34:40.880 Um, so it's, it's widespread in various groups and it has been, it has been appearing and disappearing in various groups of mammals as well.

00:34:47.600 Um, there is some, there is some literature about why that would be, it's, yeah, it's probably has to do with, with having an erectable penis, uh, at the ready without having to wait for, for a hydraulic response first.

00:35:02.520 Um, and that again, depends on, on the ecology of the species, on how large the groups are, how much competition there is.

00:35:09.680 So that, that's another thing that the, the ecology and the way of life of a species is, is one of the things that determines what their genitalia will look like. 0.93

00:35:17.580 Whether, whether, um, yeah, whether it is, there is a lot of competition among males or a lot of competition among females, for example, that depends on the, the density of a species, how rare they are, how easily they find mates.

00:35:29.940 And therefore this, this whole competition between sexual partners is what drives the, the, the evolution.

00:35:35.900 So we don't find this phenomenon among species that only made once in their life.

00:35:40.780 So it's right there.

00:35:42.420 The genitalia are always, always the same, uh, or nearly the same termites.

00:35:47.500 For example, these, these termites, Queens, they just made with one male and they are fertilized and they use that sperm to fertilize all their eggs for the rest of their life. 0.94

00:35:56.360 There is no way or almost no way for, for males to compete with each other or for females to exert a choice between other males.

00:36:05.000 So this pure monogamy, uh, creates in the genital region for a very boring, uh, landscape.

00:36:12.920 So that actually segues into another question.

00:36:16.220 So Robert Trivers, the evolutionary biologist, phenomenal guy, although on a personal level, we might discuss whether he's great or not.

00:36:25.980 I've had my little run into him, but, uh, truly, I mean, the stuff that he's done has been unbelievable.

00:36:32.400 One of which, and I usually use this example to demonstrate the explanatory power and parsimony of evolutionary theory, right?

00:36:39.700 So parental investment theory basically says you want to understand patterns of sex differences within a species, let alone across species.

00:36:47.760 Simply look at which, which of the two sexes provides the greater minimal obligatory parental investment. 0.91

00:36:55.440 And that's going to have all the downstream effects that you could imagine.

00:36:58.980 And the way you test that is that you take sex role reversal species where you then see the exact opposite patterns.

00:37:05.400 I mean, literally as if, I mean, you couldn't make up the data to be that perfect.

00:37:08.740 So is there a similar grand theory that one can use to explain the distribution of genitalia forms across taxa?

00:37:20.920 Well, um, it's, so, um, Bill Eberhardt, who was a scientist who has written a lot, he's written a number of land landmark publications about, about the evolution of genitalia.

00:37:35.360 He calls it the three way tug of war.

00:37:37.840 Um, and this is really what's, so on the one hand you have, um, females that are, you could say that have different interests from the males that they made with, 0.97

00:37:50.280 because of course for the, for the males, it would be best if a female uses his sperm to fertilize all her eggs and no other male sperm. 0.99

00:37:58.440 Evolutionarily that would serve the male's interest best, but for the female side, 0.99

00:38:02.360 it would be best if she has the ultimate choice of which sperm to use from which males to fertilize, which eggs with. 1.00

00:38:07.880 So that sets up a conflict of interest during, during copulation, which can drive, uh, on the female side structures that would keep the control on her side. 1.00

00:38:18.380 And on the male side structures that would override the morphological structures, morphological, but also sometimes chemical structures, hormonal structures, or home hormonal.

00:38:28.700 So, um, I mean, there, there are some, yeah, as a side, as a side note, um, so for example, the bed bug is a species where the female has all the necessary plumbing to, to store the sperm of the male and to decide for herself, whether she's not going to use it.

00:38:47.160 Um, but at some point during evolution, the male has evolved an ability to override that choice, um, simply by injecting his penis into her body wall and his sperm will completely ignore all her plumbing.

00:39:01.380 They will just swim right through her body cavity, right through individual cells, even targeting, uh, the egg cells. 1.00

00:39:07.560 So the female has lost all opportunity to control, um, what happens when she's inseminated. 1.00

00:39:14.200 There's also, um, in, in snails, there is, which are hermaphrodite, which makes it more difficult to think about, but they make, they fertilize each other simultaneously in land snails.

00:39:24.720 And they inject each other with a, with a dart, with a, really a stone dart, which they made out of, make out of calcium carbonate, which is, um, which is laced with hormones, which trigger involuntary contractions in the organ that is supposed to absorb the sperm.

00:39:42.900 So it's actually, if, if, if the dart is injected in the right way in the partner, the partner will absorb more sperm than it would otherwise have done.

00:39:52.840 So there the structure is, I mean, the structure is the dart, but there's also the, the, the, the chemical compounds that are injected with the dart.

00:40:00.180 So that's one part of the tug of war, but there's a third, a third leg to the three-way tug of war.

00:40:05.480 And that's the, uh, competition between males and other males.

00:40:08.840 So different males wants to quote unquote want, uh, because this is all an evolutionary process.

00:40:15.560 Of course, there's no actual, uh, decision-making process, but different males, um, compete with each other over access to the limited number of eggs that a female can provide.

00:40:27.160 And they use evolution has cost structures on males, males genitalia that do not just bypass, do not just target the choice mechanism of females,

00:40:37.580 but they also target the sperm of other males, the mating success of other males.

00:40:42.240 So there are some males which leave behind the plug in the female genitalia, which prevents other males from mating with her.

00:40:49.480 There are some males which scoop out the sperm of previous males before they inject their own sperm.

00:40:53.760 Those are insect species, right?

00:40:56.140 The plugs are, um, well, there are spiders, insects, but also, also us, uh, also, uh, primates, uh, produce sperm plugs,

00:41:05.860 even though there's, it's not a part of the genitalia.

00:41:08.600 So in, in spiders, there's actually an actually part of the penis that is left behind. 0.78

00:41:12.760 It breaks off and it's left behind in the female genitalia. 1.00

00:41:15.880 But in primates, um, there are, uh, proteins in the, in the semen, which, um, which coagulate and which produce a, uh, a strong plug.

00:41:27.680 And in chimpanzees, which, as you mentioned, are highly promiscuous.

00:41:30.940 So there, a sperm plug is really necessary. 0.99

00:41:33.660 This is really a very tough structure that really plugs, plugs the, um, the, the female vagina on top of the sperm that has been deposited. 0.99

00:41:43.120 So it's, it's, uh, it prevents what is known as sperm dumping by the female. 0.98

00:41:48.800 This happens a lot after mating that a female just ejects all the sperm and withholds a chance for it to fertilize her eggs. 1.00

00:41:55.540 So you, you can, as, as a male, you can prevent that to some extent by leaving a sperm plug behind.

00:42:01.520 I'm going to come back to sperm wars in a second, but I just had an idea, which if it hasn't been tested, I see a collaboration in our future.

00:42:10.080 Uh, is it the case, so has the distribution of female orgasms bit across species been studied?

00:42:23.320 So question one, is that, is, is that a yes?

00:42:26.940 Uh, to some extent.

00:42:28.620 Yeah.

00:42:29.080 Yeah.

00:42:29.260 It's not, not, not nowhere near complete.

00:42:31.760 Um, but in, in, in a lot of mammals, it has been recorded.

00:42:36.300 Yes.

00:42:36.620 Okay.

00:42:37.180 So then here is a hypothesis that I'm going to propose, and I'm sure you're going to tell me, sorry, you're 30 years too late, but let's, let me take a shot.

00:42:46.200 Uh, I would, uh, posit that the likelihood or the incidence of females having orgasms has to correlate with the extent to which the species is bi-parental.

00:43:02.900 Um, because I'm thinking that one of the ways that I establish, I male, that I'm worthy for you to keep me around is that if I am attentive enough to your sexual needs, that I will work hard enough to not just care about my needs.

00:43:19.740 And that, that, that is part of a package of the fact that we need to bond long enough as a bi-parental species.

00:43:27.080 Am I onto something or am I totally off?

00:43:30.260 Um, there, it, it might play a role, but I think all the evidence that I've seen so far points to a more mechanical role for the, for a female orgasm, where by, um, um, vacuum is produced, which, which absorbs, makes the uterus absorb.

00:43:49.720 More sperm than if there wouldn't be a female orgasm, so, um, there's, there's actually, it's, it's called the UPSOC theory.

00:43:58.060 Yeah, yeah, of course. 0.55

00:43:59.300 Yeah.

00:44:00.280 Um, so, um, so in, in a sense, so the, both things could be at play that, um, indeed it would, um,

00:44:12.360 if a male invests a lot in, in raising the offspring, then it would also, uh, be beneficial for him to, uh, to make sure that his sperm is being absorbed and therefore that the female has an orgasm.

00:44:28.640 Although I think that would also be true if, if the male wouldn't be investing a lot of effort in the offspring, but then the loss.

00:44:35.780 The upsection is true, even if he's not investing, you're saying.

00:44:39.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:41.000 But it's still something we could collaborate on, definitely.

00:44:43.920 All right, that's very exciting.

00:44:45.700 Okay, so back to sperm war.

00:44:47.180 Are you familiar with Robin Baker's work?

00:44:50.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:51.480 So I actually, so I've, I've talked about, I've even written about some of his work, uh, and when I lecture about it in class, the students, you have to see their faces.

00:45:00.580 It's unbelievable.

00:45:01.580 Now, of course, there've been others who've come back and said, no, no, no, it's complete BS.

00:45:06.180 I actually wrote to him and said, hey, please come on my show.

00:45:10.700 And he, he, he wrote back very, very nicely, very politely said, oh, you know, I'm kind of retired now.

00:45:16.100 So I'm out.

00:45:16.900 And then I asked him, I said, so what's the bottom line?

00:45:19.460 And is your, is your research been validated and we can move on or not?

00:45:23.360 And, you know, of course, maybe because it's his research, he said that the detractors are not nearly as, you know, strong in their detraction as, as otherwise.

00:45:31.920 So, but before I ask you to answer, let me just summarize what the research says.

00:45:36.160 It's basically the idea that there are three types of phenotypes that come, come in, in, in spermatozoa, human, human spermatozoa.

00:45:45.300 There is the standard one that we think of, which is kind of the fertilizer.

00:45:49.220 It's the guys running with the long tails looking for the egg.

00:45:52.720 But he argues that there are other types of phenotypes for the spermatozoa, the blockers and the killers.

00:45:59.040 The blockers are looking to block entry of incoming sperm, which of course suggests that our female ancestors would have been quite promiscuous since female, since sperm is viable for about 72 hours in the female reproductive tract.

00:46:13.060 But the killers are, don't care about the egg, are going to try to kill other men.

00:46:18.560 So today, based on what you know, where are we in this?

00:46:22.500 Is there greater support for all his stuff?

00:46:24.860 Is there lesser?

00:46:25.580 Where are we in the story?

00:46:27.380 For humans and for that specific aspect of what he did, I'm not sure.

00:46:32.620 I know that in other species, in mollusks, there's definitely multiple types of sperm.

00:46:37.120 And some of those are blockers and killers.

00:46:39.280 If it is, if it's been upheld for humans, I don't know.

00:46:45.260 I'm not even sure if he had very firm evidence for that particular statement.

00:46:50.560 But the work that he did, which I find even more interesting, is the study in which he also investigated whether or not women after having intercourse would dump most of the semen that they had received or not.

00:47:09.860 And how that involved how they rated the male that they had had sex with and also whether or not they had an orgasm during sex.

00:47:22.060 And that was really a very courageous experiment, which involved a lot of colleagues and students and condoms, which had been donated and returned anonymously.

00:47:32.300 And it's really, I think he really did a good job in at least setting the stage for doing that sort of work on human sexual behavior with a very hard biological core in it.

00:47:42.560 Actually, I once organized a symposium here in the Netherlands, that's almost 30 years ago now, in which he was one of the invitees.

00:47:50.700 Oh, wow.

00:47:52.160 So, yeah, I had spent a few days together with him.

00:47:57.380 And he was, of course, he, after the scientific work, he did write more fanciful books in which, yeah, the science and fiction was sort of mixed.

00:48:08.560 It wasn't really clear which parts were substantiated and which were just fancy.

00:48:13.580 But, and I think he's been criticized for that by, I think, by Richard Dawkins, among others.

00:48:19.360 Right.

00:48:19.740 But maybe Tim Burkhead, maybe?

00:48:24.060 Oh, yes, you're right.

00:48:24.800 Yes, it was Tim Burkhead.

00:48:25.680 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:48:27.380 Yes, but I think he, yeah, he definitely did a couple of very interesting and very courageous experiments.

00:48:35.900 Yeah, one more, one more thing about sperma, then we can move on as we approach the hour.

00:48:41.300 I talk about, again, in some of my lectures and in one of my previous books, the study that has looked at, so, polygamy is simply one to many.

00:48:56.840 Polygamy, polygamy, I mean, you may know this, but some of our viewers may not.

00:49:00.780 Usually people use the term polygamy to imply one man with multiple women, whereas really polygamy just means one with many.

00:49:09.040 Polygamy is one man, multiple women. 0.63

00:49:12.120 Polygamy is one woman, multiple men. 0.87

00:49:16.880 And so a researcher, a British researcher, had actually done a content analysis of porn movies.

00:49:25.400 And you would think, oh, the fantasy of men is, you know, to have a harem of women, and therefore, porn content should be a lot more, you know, one man having sex with multiple women, whereas it turns out, actually, there's a lot more polyandrous situations, one woman with multiple men.

00:49:44.660 And so then the question is that that triggers a visual trigger for sperm competition.

00:49:51.000 It literally, quote, gets the rise out of you.

00:49:53.240 Now, some other researchers came along to test this at the, you know, at the physiological level, if you'd like, or the chemical level, or the sperm level, where, I don't know if you know the study, where they asked men to take one of two images, either a polyandrous one or not a polyandrous one,

00:50:17.020 and then return their sample, do you know which study I'm talking about, do you know this?

00:50:24.620 I don't think so, no, no.

00:50:25.760 Okay, so get ready to experience a that's interesting exclamation point moment.

00:50:30.440 And it turns out that the samples returned from the polyandrous images had sperm with greater motility, supporting the idea that it is because of sperm competition.

00:50:49.080 So, for example, in animal husbandry, when you want your stud to be inspired, you actually show him, like, he has to see some other mating happening, and then that will kind of get him in the mood.

00:51:04.500 And so that, to me, seems unbelievable, no?

00:51:07.600 Well, it is, but the work that has been done on the evolution of human genitalia, they tend to support the fact that there must have been periods in human evolution where, yeah, multiple mating in very short periods of time must have taken place.

00:51:26.280 There's some evidence that the edge around the human glands, which is also quite unique among primates, that there's actually a device to remove sperm from previous males.

00:51:38.040 We know that it works.

00:51:39.460 There's been a very, very nice study with dildos and fake vaginas and fake sperm done by experimenters. 0.77

00:51:48.360 And I'm always wondering how they managed to claim that from their financial department.

00:51:52.000 But in any case, it shows that that shape could, in theory, have evolved to remove sperm from competitors. 0.97

00:52:00.940 But, I mean, that certainly applies to the mushroom shape of the human penis. 0.68

00:52:06.680 I mean, isn't that the argument for why it is shaped that way? 0.87

00:52:10.160 Well, yeah, that's the argument in this case. 0.99

00:52:13.100 Yeah, but it only works, of course, if the chance of meeting a competitor's sperm in your mate's vagina is high enough. 1.00

00:52:21.040 Yeah, exactly. 0.99

00:52:22.860 What are your thoughts?

00:52:24.140 I mean, again, I suspect you don't, what I'm about to ask you, you don't see as much because you're dealing with animals other than Homo sapiens.

00:52:34.140 But why do you think it is so difficult for most people to accept evolution in general and evolutionary psychology in particular?

00:52:43.980 It's as if, and I've actually argued this in some of my writings, that it's as if we have evolved to have obstacles against evolutionary thinking for a wide variety of reasons.

00:52:56.600 Does that make sense to you?

00:52:57.460 It does, of course, it is.

00:53:02.740 I think we have trouble imagining the vast amount of time that is needed for evolutionary change.

00:53:08.620 We're not used to thinking about the accumulating effects of so many generations.

00:53:18.900 We think of cause and effect on much smaller timescales.

00:53:22.340 So it's very hard to imagine the power of evolution when time is involved and when time is limitless.

00:53:28.100 So I think that is one obstacle for us.

00:53:32.180 And also in our day-to-day life, we see different behaviors which we can explain in a proximate way much more easily than in an ultimate way.

00:53:44.660 Because, yeah, the ultimate way is the way our brains are wired and the variety among them in different individuals.

00:53:52.540 And that is the result of evolution and genetic variation over a much longer time period.

00:53:58.000 And we're, yeah, we're not used to seeing that as one of the reasons why people do what they do.

00:54:04.920 And I think, so for the reasons that you've said and a few others, it gives the false illusion to most people that it is the case that because the ultimate explanation,

00:54:20.680 so for those of us who don't know what that means, that's the Darwinian why.

00:54:23.860 Why did it evolve to be like this?

00:54:26.040 It feels as though it's post hoc speculation, right?

00:54:30.700 It feels as though you sit with a cognac, with a nice cigar, and you just pontificate about just-so stories, void of evidence.

00:54:40.520 Whereas, as I've repeatedly explained with great frustration, that the evidentiary threshold that is baked into evolutionary theory is typically higher than is expected in other sciences.

00:54:56.920 But yet we're accused of the exact opposite.

00:54:59.080 We don't adhere to evidence.

00:55:01.620 We just pontificate and tell cute stories at parties.

00:55:04.980 Could we ever get over this?

00:55:09.980 Well, of course, there is a lot of vacuous speculation going on at parties, which is dressed up as evolutionary psychology.

00:55:18.700 That doesn't help, of course.

00:55:20.080 But it is good, I think, always to point people to the evidence and to the publications that show this sort of thing much more clearly than people think it's proven.

00:55:35.300 Okay, last question, since we're approaching one hour.

00:55:38.100 Please tell us a bit about your next book, Urban Naturalist, and any other projects that you'd like to use this opportunity to promote.

00:55:47.020 Take it away, Meno.

00:55:48.620 Thank you.

00:55:49.260 Yeah, well, Urban Naturalist is, in a way, it's a book that continues where Darwin Comes to Town left off.

00:55:57.780 And there is a bit of urban evolution, some new work in the book, but it's much more, the original title for it was how to be an urban naturalist.

00:56:08.160 And we decided not to use, it's going to be published by MIT Press, and the editors and me decided not to use that title because it could give the impression that it's a simple manual, a step-to-step guide on how to become an urban naturalist.

00:56:23.680 Whereas it's much more about what it is like to be a naturalist, an old-fashioned, exploratory, inquisitive, curious naturalist of the Victorian style in a modern setting, in today's world, where the most fascinating kind of biology is happening in the urban realm.

00:56:46.520 Where you could be a Victorian explorer in your own streets, discovering completely new stuff, new behaviors, new natural history, new evolution that hasn't been documented before.

00:57:00.560 And the nice thing is that, in a way, science has come full circle.

00:57:05.280 I'm trying to advocate if people start doing what I'm describing in the book, then science has come full circle in the sense that in the 19th century, in the early 19th century,

00:57:14.940 there was no such thing as a professional scientist.

00:57:18.620 The scientists were people who had, for some reason or other, time and curiosity to be independent explorers of their environment.

00:57:28.940 And they were publishing and reading their papers to their like-minded friends.

00:57:34.720 They didn't need much to do interesting discoveries.

00:57:37.820 Darwin just had his greenhouse and his wormstone in his garden, and that's where he did his work.

00:57:42.220 But then came the 20th century, and that sort of individualistic discovery was no longer possible.

00:57:49.980 You needed large institutes, a lot of money, large libraries, large labs full of equipment.

00:57:55.640 So the amateur was sort of cut out of the scientific world for most of the 20th century.

00:58:01.700 They were dabbling in the fringe, but they were not making important discoveries.

00:58:05.260 And I think now the time has come for non-professional scientists to start making interesting discoveries again, because you don't need those large labs.

00:58:15.740 You don't need large libraries.

00:58:18.480 Everything is available for you.

00:58:20.380 You can buy cheap equipment online.

00:58:23.380 You can turn your phone into a mini scientific lab.

00:58:26.780 All the PDFs of scientific publications are downloadable either legally or semi-legally online.

00:58:37.180 And there are massive open online courses.

00:58:41.300 These are called MOOCs.

00:58:42.340 I've also designed one on evolution, which has thousands, tens of thousands of students, larger numbers than I would ever have reached in my university classes.

00:58:52.700 So everybody can benefit from university level scientific training.

00:58:58.460 And I think to be an explorer of your urban world really helps you to find new value in living in an urbanized world.

00:59:11.260 Because most of today's people, and later in the century will be an even larger fraction, will be living in large urbanized conglomerations and never have access to wild nature anymore.

00:59:23.600 So if they want to be a naturalist, they can become a naturalist in their own street, in their own neighborhood, team up with neighbors who are also interested in science and in flora and fauna,

00:59:35.080 and really create new value for living in an urban environment, which most people think is completely devoid of nature.

00:59:44.020 But I think it's really the other way around.

00:59:45.680 And you can really enjoy the same pleasures that those early Victorian explorers did in today's modern cities.

00:59:52.960 Oh, I love it.

00:59:53.600 I can't wait.

00:59:54.340 That's coming out 2025, right?

00:59:56.760 Yeah.

00:59:57.180 First of April, probably.

00:59:58.880 Okay.

00:59:59.340 So make sure to have your publisher send me a copy and we'll have you back to discuss urban nationalists.

01:00:04.320 Such a pleasure to meet you.

01:00:05.960 Thank you so much for coming on.

01:00:07.140 Stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline.

01:00:10.240 Real pleasure to meet you.

01:00:11.100 Thank you, Meno.

01:00:12.080 Thank you very much for having me.

01:00:13.320 It's been a real pleasure.

01:00:14.500 Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - June 05, 2024

My Chat with Dr. Menno Schilthuizen -Urban Ecology & the Evolution of Genitalia (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_681)

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