[00:00:00] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond. [00:00:13] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. [00:00:14] Dan: to see you. [00:00:16] Pia: Yes. Never get that right. We get so excited, [00:00:19] Dan: We do. We just wanna talk. We just wanna talk. But Pia, it has been a, it's been a great week for the patriarchy, for and for entitled Males hasn't. [00:00:27] Pia: Entitled males, rich males. The top of a pack. [00:00:32] Dan: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, Musk's, I thought Musk's announcement to his employees about being extremely hardcore. I didn't think hardcore had to be qualified, but extremely hardcore was sort of like some new level. [00:00:45] Pia: I think they'll be flocking. in fact, I think it'll, be lots of people want to join. I [00:00:49] Dan: In the war for talent. I reckon that was a really great move, don't you? There's gonna be people flocking, although I do think it's interesting. Probably some people are attracted to that. It's not our culture, but it's sort of probably there will be people who think, yeah, that's exactly what I want, but it will, is that culture, what is going to help them to succeed in this sophisticated world? Let's see. [00:01:10] Pia: he's rallying the troops, you know, as is Trump, throwing his MAGA hat into the ring, next presidential election. And, uh, sometimes it feels like you're watching a circus [00:01:19] Dan: Exactly. And it does feel a little bit like the topic of the day, doesn't it? [00:01:23] Pia: it does. The topic. We have someone who does watch. , these types of things, humans and animals. [00:01:31] Dan: Yes, indeed. So, Dr. Beki Hooper is our Guest this week. She is an expert in animal behavior and also human behavior through her studies as well. So, she is going, we hope through this conversation we'll be able to shed some light on human behavior and how we can connect better. So let's go over and take a listen to Beki now. [00:01:51] Beki, it's an absolute delight to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here. [00:02:00] Beki: Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. Thank [00:02:05] Dan: I have to say I've known you since you were a We Baby, so it's amazing to have you on this, uh, this show so many years later to share your incredible knowledge. So thank you for being here and just to uh, get you off to a good start as we play the conversation start a card game. So I'm just shuffling the pack. I'm sure half of our listeners think the whole thing's fake and we just make up the questions. But I've actually got a card in [00:02:27] Beki: He's really got cards. I can verify. [00:02:31] Pia: Yeah. We can see you sweating. We know it. It's true. [00:02:34] Dan: Exactly. And I'm plucking a card now and it's an orange. Oh, here we go. I'm amazingly good. And it, it's a, this is no, no time for modesty. This, [00:02:45] Beki: I think I'm amazingly good at thinking in a way that often doesn't make much sense to other people. I'm the very, I'm the very abstract thinker. which, uh, yeah, often can take a bit of explaining in terms of how my thought processes ended up where they got to. [00:03:05] Pia: Have you had that all your life? [00:03:06] Beki: Yes, absolutely. And I actually do find it very helpful in science cuz it, it means that I think I can come up with links and creative ideas in ways that maybe otherwise I couldn't. But it also means that I think sometimes I can sound like I'm not making any sense [00:03:26] Pia: But it's, anyone else is on the same wavelength. That [00:03:29] Dan: Yeah, try to tune in [00:03:32] Beki: Yeah. [00:03:33] Dan: Well, that's great. Well, I'm sure we're gonna see, we're gonna hear a little bit of that through our conversation today maybe. So let's see how we go. But, uh, that's, uh, yeah that's a good one. That's a good one. I love the way you, by the way, cleverly turned a what are you good at? And you actually said something you, where you first put it was something you were bad at, was having thoughts that other people understand. But actually it has this positive side. So we're, yeah, we're looking forward to it. So [00:03:59] Pia: So Beki, tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are. Dan's known you for years. I've just met you. Tell me what you do because it's g I think this is gonna be really interesting, really fascinating and, uh, and our listeners will really want to really want to understand your world, [00:04:15] Beki: So, uh, yeah, Dan has known me for forever, for me and I'm sure knows that I have long been very interested in the natural world and animals in general. So I naturally fell into doing zoology as my undergraduate degree through this sort of interest that I'd had my whole life in the natural world. Uh, and I ended up doing a master's in evolutionary biology because I realized that really what I was interested in was understanding humans in context. It was really understanding how we got here, how we are, and Understanding both how we are different from other animals, but also how we're the same. [00:04:56] Uh, so that masters in evolutionary biology led me to a PhD in the evolutionary ecology of animal relationships, uh, which I finished about a year and a half ago. And I now work as a researcher at the Univer University of Exter, uh, in a group that is called Friend Origins. And this group aims to understand the evolution of friendship. [00:05:18] And that's really friendship across the whole of the animal Kingdom. We're interested in how friendship evolves both in humans and in non-humans. And friendship is one of these words where I think for quite a long time it was thought to be quite anthropocentric or quite anthropomorphic to think that animals can have friends, uh, in the same way that if you say animals play or animals have personality, that's, that was thought for a long time to be anthropomorphizing animals. But actually in the last few decades with a lot of very empirically done very sort of critical research, we. Animals do have friendships they do have personalities, they do play. And yeah, understanding their evolution of our friendship across all of these species is what friend Origins is all about. [00:06:10] Why is friendship everywhere basically? [00:06:13] Dan: Yeah. And why is that? What's the value? What's the evolutionary value or the value of friendship to to, to an to animals generally, I suppose, but outside human, non-human animals. [00:06:23] Beki: Yeah, I mean, there's so much. So we get these direct benefits. For example, we get benefits like protection from predation. If you live in a group, you're more protective from predators. You also get the value of social information. So if one individual in the group finds resources, for example, food, when food abundance is low, , they can spread that information to others. [00:06:46] And so it's valuable to be in a group because it's not just one individual looking for that information, it's many, and then they share it. Also things like thermo regulation, just staying warm is really important. But then you also get. Indirect benefits. So we also know, and we know this really well in the human literature but also we're finding this more and more in other animals, is that friendship is good for you. So it reduces stress levels, it reduces disease, it increases longevity. So this is true in humans and in non-humans alike. [00:07:16] So there seems to be lots of common mechanisms. There are sort of more simple mechanisms for understanding how friendship evolved. Things like the regulation, you know, we don't really need to think about as humans now, [00:07:28] Pia: You tend to keep that person relatively, a small number of people in your life that you've snuggled up to, to keep warm at night. [00:07:35] Beki: That's very true. I maybe take advantage of regulation when I'm feeling cold. So , maybe? It's still on [00:07:44] Pia: and tell us about where your, your latest research is. So, this is what I'm, I'm, I'm learning about these primates that you are focusing on. Tell us about who they are, where they live, and what they're about. [00:07:58] Beki: Yeah, so I'm currently working with rhesus macaques, which are species of non-human primate. And I'm working with a population that live on a little island of the coast of Puerto Rico. And in this population, I'm essentially asking, What do you know about your social world? What information have you got about the social relationships in your world? And to do this, I'm running experiments, like specifically designed for individuals within social groups of rhesus macaque and, uh, they're voluntary experiments so the macaques can take part in them if they want to. Yeah, if they've signed, [00:08:38] Pia: Before you tell us like to, just so that we can paint the picture, because there may be people listening going, Rhesus macaques. What does that look like? Like, so let's paint a picture of this animal that you are talking about. It's a monkey. [00:08:53] Beki: It's a monkey. It is a monkey .So, uh, yeah, they're, uh, they're monkeys. They are sexually dimorphic, they're the females probably come up to just below my knee. So sort of a foot to two foot. Males are a bit bigger and, uh, they. Very muy, very musclely males with very big canines. And, uh, you don't wanna get in the way of them. [00:09:19] Rhesus macaque are just one species of macaque and there are many species, uh, but Rhesus macaques famously have a very despotic society. So they have this society that we would not want to be a part of. The society is based on competition. Essentially, all of the monkeys in the society have a rank, and for the males, the way that they get their rank is through group tenure. So the longer they live in a group, the more high ranking they become. The females, unfortunately, always rank below the males, and are born into their position. So the females cannot change rank. You have your alpha females who get access to the resources they want, the mates that they want, the area of the island they want, and the lowest ranking females who are constantly being vigilant because at any moment they might be attacked by a higher ranking individual who wants their food or their spot, uh, or for just some reason wants to attack them. Uh, and for females, they just have no way out of this. So there's no, there's no social mobility at all. If you are a low ranking female and you have a daughter, She'll rank below you until you die, and then she gets your rank, but there's no way she can get any higher. [00:10:37] Dan: so the despotic, you've got high ranking males, low ranking females, and the rank comes from tenure. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are thinking, I've worked for a company like that. [00:10:46] Pia: there's, there's, There's some striking similarities, I would say. And what, And what's their sort of temperament like, are they friendly? Are they, I mean, that sounds a pretty tough environment to be in. [00:10:58] Beki: I would say they vary a lot. Like I was saying earlier, we really know now that animals have personalities and when you spend the amount of time that I've spent with these animals, so I essentially lived in one social group of monkeys for six months this year. You, you really got to learn their personalities and some of them are extremely sweet and gentle and uh, really avoid fights and others, all they want is to fight like that. That's how it almost seems like that's their fun. [00:11:30] And you know, others are just really engaged, like always looking at what's going on around them. So maybe they're not super involved in their social world, but if there are two individuals who are grooming each other, or starting to fight with each other, this one individual will always be watching, always sort of taking it in. [00:11:48] Pia: And taking notes. And then is that gonna be retribution at some later point, or is it, you know, strategizing? So how was the experience for you immersing yourself into their environment? [00:12:02] Beki: So there is a wonderful colleague who works out there full time called Daniel Phillips. And he has worked with that group of monkeys for I think seven years now. So he knew them exceptionally well. He could see a monkey walking away from him and know who it was. He just needed to see their bum, and he was like, Oh yeah, okay that's that individual. For me, it took me three months to learn my monkeys, which was a whole challenge that I actually didn't appreciate how hard it would be as just learning monkeys by their faces. [00:12:34] We're so attuned to human faces, but monkey faces, they're similar, but they're not similar enough for it to be that easy to learn them. But at some point it just switches. I think at some point when you've spent more time with monkeys than humans in a given amount of time, your brain is just, it just switches over and yeah. You learn to recognize them. [00:12:54] But yeah, no, it was a wonderful experience. I became, I think, just a very integrated observer into a world that I really had no idea about before I went there. I. Had no idea how much I would have to understand their social world in order to be an observer who wasn't getting in the way. So I, I really had to be aware of the social bonds between individuals and the relatedness between individuals and the coalitions that they have to make sure that I wasn't getting in the way of interactions where I might be disrupting something that's going on. [00:13:34] So you just become very attuned to their social world, almost, perhaps more than you are attuned to human social world because there's more at stake. Like if you are getting in the way of a monkey fight, then that could end quite badly. You don't want to be in the way of a monkey fight. So you really need to have this sort of social intelligence about another species in order to navigate that world which I really found fascinating. [00:14:01] Dan: What does a group need to achieve? I mean, are they, are they under threat? Other predators? What's their environment like in terms of how they, the payoff from working as a group? What are the things they need to do to get the, the benefits of being in a group? [00:14:15] Beki: in this population, this is actually, it's not a wild population. It's free ranging. So it's a bit of a quirky place. A scientist in the thirties decided that he wanted to put monkeys on an island and watch them. So these monkeys have no natural predators. They're originally from India where they do have natural predators, and because of that, it's advantageous for them to be in a group. So they've evolved to be in a group for these reasons which actually no longer apply in this, in this population, they're predator free. But they still maintain what they have evolved as their strategy for dealing with that, which is sociology. [00:14:51] Dan: You described a very sort of hierarchical, despotic sort of society. You know, How do they, on the other end, you know, the sort of softer end, how do they connect and have that side of [00:15:04] Beki: I'm so glad you asked me this because I feel like I've painted a terrible picture of rhesus macaques as these really angry monkeys are always fighting [00:15:13] Pia: Yeah, [00:15:15] Beki: but they have this wonderful, and this is why I study them, because they have these wonderful social connections. So they, they form, sort of tolerant relationships where they will just be near each other without fighting. But beyond that, they also form these strong social ties, specifically the females. [00:15:34] Something I should mention about rhesus macaque society is the females, and this is very common in primates, the females stay where they're born, so they will stay in the group they're born into, whereas the males, when they reach being a teenager, they reach out adolescents they leave the group most of the time. [00:15:51] There was one very strange and annoying monkey who did not do that. But most of the time the males leave the group and, uh, disperse to other groups. And this is why group tenure then leads to to their dominance rank. Cuz they leave their natal group and they go to another group and then they work their way up in the ranks. [00:16:09] But the females, they're born into this group. They're born into their dominance position. They're always lower ranking than males, no matter if it's a new male in the group or a male who's been there a long time, they're always lower ranking. So these females they really use social bonds to sort of, buffer the challenges of their lives, in the same way we think that humans do. Social bonds buffer us from the hard times. Right? [00:16:37] And the social relationships look very different. So they, the way that we measure them is through grooming, reciprocal grooming. So they'll spend a lot of time just kind of combing each other's fur one way, and then they'll comb each other fur the other way. They'll spend hours doing this. But this leads to real benefits. So for example, a PhD student in our group, Melissa Pavez Fox, she's just found that the more social ties females have, the fewer injuries they get. And injuries directly relate to mortality. So the more social ties, uh, a female has, the more support she kind of has to avoid deathly conflict essentially. [00:17:15] So they do, they cultivate these wonderful bonds that are the sweetest thing to see when you're out in the field amongst a lot of angst and conflict. And that you see these little female cliques that um, yeah they, they really invest in each other um, for this, this long term advantage of backing each other up. Basically they've, they've got each other's back. [00:17:35] Pia: And are they the same ranking in these, in these sisterhoods? So if the top dog ranking, I shouldn't say dog with monkeys, but anyway, but you know, so that, so is that hierarchical, those little groups, or do they accept everyone? [00:17:52] Beki: that's an excellent question. They do not accept everyone, so it's, it's unusual to see bonds between very rank disparate diads. But it's not, Impossible that that happens. But most often these social bonds, these strong ties are formed between relatives. But they also do form strong bonds with individuals they're not related to. But they often also form these strong bonds with individuals who are close in rank. [00:18:18] Dan: So I've gotta ask Beki, so you are working with the research team. Do you ever observe that research team with, the same lens? Do you sort of, but actually either get confused or say, oh, I'm seeing a similar behavior pattern here, and how does how does that? I'm intrigued. [00:18:36] Beki: I think, to be honest, because all of my research team we're all behavioral biologists who observe behavior for a living, I think we probably will do it to each other. Like we're probably all like slightly observing what's going on, making little social networks in our minds, [00:18:52] Dan: You're the ones watching. Yeah. [00:18:54] Beki: voice, the watches, [00:18:56] Pia: Come each other's do you do a little that just [00:19:00] Beki: I'm, I can't divulge that information. [00:19:03] Pia: Way too secret. [00:19:04] Beki: Yeah, way too secret. [00:19:05] Dan: I think in England the grooming is the equivalent, is making someone and things like that, I'm sure. [00:19:11] Beki: Yes. That's a great analogy. I love it. [00:19:16] There are certainly things in general society that I observe and, uh, I think, oh, that, that's familiar. I think, especially, not that I go to clubs much anymore, but when I do go to clubs, the way that, uh, that men would dance near women, I'm like, oh wow, that's really like this animal behavior I've seen lately when, uh, when that male's been trying to court those females I wonder if he'll be successful [00:19:41] Pia: He must find it a little disconcerting to see you standing there with a notepad, taking, watching, taking notes in a nightclub. [00:19:49] Beki: I'm, I don't think anyone would know [00:19:53] Dan: So what can we learn? So, joking aside what have you seen that used to think? Wow. Okay. And I know you studied human. Behavior as well. So you can, cross into, into our, into the world where most are more familiar with, even if we don't understand it. But what, yeah, what have you, what do you observe that we could really learn, or that's really similar that that we can take into the human world of teams? [00:20:14] Beki: Honestly, from the rhesus macaques, beyond forming these, these um, sort of close alliances with others which I think generally is, is something that we're very aware of in humans now that we need these close bonds that we need these sort of high quality relationships to do well, uh, I would say the rhesus macaques maybe show us what not to do, which is not to have a very stable and unbreakable social dominance hierarchy with no social mobility. Because the ones who are stuck at the bottom have no movement and have a lower quality of life, lower lifespan, generally, sort of suffer more than those that are born into a good societal position. Uh, so yeah, maybe a bit more about what not to do from them in particular. [00:21:02] Dan: Well, you might be interested to hear Beki, but you know, we have this team diagnostic, Squadify and we ask people what's most important to 'em about working in these groups that they're. They're not macaques, so they do it all on the computer. Um, so it's a bit more easy macaques the work that you do just observing. [00:21:18] But the thing that they rank as lowest of 37 team conditions is close personal connections. We are always surprised by and maybe it'll shift, but it weirdly, people sort of them when they have them, you ask them probably in an intellectual way, in theory what's important, that gets ranked the lowest. So it's fascinating that we probably don't consciously value that as much as a macaque might do. [00:21:44] Beki: I wonder how much of that is to do with it being in a work environment rather than a sort of general life environment. [00:21:50] Pia: I think a bit of that. It's still a bit of a hangover, I think, potentially of that, you know that, I am very different at home than I am as at work, and I have my personal relationships are within that home environment or within that family, community, environment, and not at work. But we see that there is real value of having you just, they're defined differently. You can define them, and that's actually up to the team to do that. But they are equally important because of the social benefits that are created by having them. [00:22:21] Beki: No, I agree. I feel like there's a bit of a separation between um, work sociality and home sociality and um, I, I actually don't know that literature in humans very well, but it would be interesting to know whether the same patterns you see in sociology influencing health outcomes in general are true also of your work environment. Because personally I really do feel like that I have wonderful colleagues who I also consider close friends, and that makes so much difference to my quality of life. Cuz it means I'm excited to go to the office and, and see everyone, whicih must count for something [00:22:58] Dan: Yes indeed, indeed, definitely. And staying on human relationships. Beki, tell us about the work you're doing now around human connection and friendship. Ive, that sounds you were saying before. [00:23:09] Beki: Yeah, so this is really a new avenue for me. I've never worked with humans before. It's proven considerably easier than working with animals. So, that's a pro. I think language and the ability to speak probably counts for a lot. [00:23:22] Dan: think that's important? that's That's [00:23:25] Beki: You might be . [00:23:26] Dan: good to know. That's good to [00:23:27] Beki: So yeah, we're asking really parallel questions to what I'm asking in the macaques but in undergraduates. Uh, so we're essentially interested in understanding what people know about the social lives of others in terms of both how many close friends, how many friends, and how many acquaintances others have. And we're interested in knowing how people have that information. So do they need to be close friends to another person in order to know how sociable they are? Like do they really need direct information about someone's sociology or are there other cues that you can use to sort of figure that out. [00:24:05] So we're giving photos, uh, to people, uh, who self-report their own sort of, so social measures and then guess the social measures of others. And those others are either, uh, close friends, acquaintances, or complete strangers. Uh, and we are having a look to see basically how accurate people are with the expectation that close friends will have a higher accuracy because they just have more information on the social lives of those people. But with the alternative hypothesis that potentially there's something in our faces that gives something away about how sociable we are. [00:24:45] Uh, so it could be that we are relatively good at getting the sociability of everyone, whether they're close friends or strangers. I think that's the more unlikely result. But we shall see. We shall see what happens. [00:24:56] Dan: fascinating. Um, Be very interesting when you've done that, come back and tell what you've learnt you. [00:25:01] Beki: I will let you know. [00:25:03] Pia: I mean, you said it, it took you three months to get to know the monkey faces. Could you recognize some of those traits being a human, that cross species? Could you recognize more sociability traits in their faces as you got to know them? [00:25:21] Beki: That has such a good question. [00:25:23] Pia: Some of them look more appealing than others or there was, there was Mr. Angry face and there was. [00:25:29] Beki: Well, this is such a good question. I think there's actually a proxy you can use in rhesus macaques because the ones with the more attractive looking faces tended to have less injuries. But those are also, we know the more sociable ones, the more sociable rhesus macaques just get injured less. So, yeah, I think maybe I could say sort of, this rhesus macaque has a pleasant looking face. And it probably would correlate to it being more sociable, but through a mechanism that is sort of unconscious to me. Yeah, exactly. [00:25:59] Dan: It's like the people with a broken nose. They're fighters, aren't they, generally, so they. [00:26:04] Beki: Exactly. But yeah, this is like sort of basically what we're trying to get at with people is, Is there some kind of proxy that we are using? Is there some kind of general rule that's a bit unconscious to us, but we can look at a face and kind of be like, Yeah I think you're a friendly person. I think you're a really sociable. [00:26:21] Pia: I mean, I, I see it just in my kids' classes that you know, because we all look very different and the kids all look very different. And you can see the ones that are attracting more attention because of the way that they may look or the way that they may interact. And then maybe some of the ones that are finding it more difficult to get that interaction because of a, they may look or feel more awkward or. [00:26:50] And it is, you get a layer of the land and thank God we are just much more inclusive in the way that we actually, we we are more attuned to realizing that some of those biases actually may not serve us. And I think that's probably, we've sort of overridden it a little bit now to go, okay, maybe that might be something that you know, has been imparted since we've been evolve or in our evolution, but it's actually not necessarily helpful. We can override it. [00:27:19] Beki: Yes, absolutely. And I, I actually generally think this is a really important point when talking about what we can learn from animals is when we're thinking about animal society. evolution has come up with lots of different ways to solve the problem of animals being in harsh environments, and some of those solutions are social. And then within sociality you get new problems arising. And evolution has come up with ways to deal with those problems. But those problems are not solved necessarily in ways that. Would be good for a human to take on board as advice for how to deal with issues, right? Like evolution has no moral imperative. It has no idea of what we think is right and wrong. [00:28:03] So yeah, sort of looking at how evolution has made things to be, there's no common in whether or not it should be that way, and we should accept it to be that way. It just says why that thing is, why it is. [00:28:16] Pia: I have, I dunno that you know anything about duck behavior, but I have four ducks that we have recently taken on, and I have, I have observed their behavior. And it's fascinating because actually if you do sit in a duck pen for a couple of hours watching them, you do see a completely different side to almost yourself. You can see their behavior and the correlations, but it gets you to question things about the way that, that we relate. Now, whether that's just me with too much free time on my hand, but anyway. [00:28:43] Beki: No, I completely agree. Animals teach us a lot about ourselves. I, uh, all the commonalities, right? Things you see and you think, ah, I see a parallel to that in humans. It makes you realize that we're maybe not so special. [00:28:57] Dan: Oh, that's very good. And I'm gonna leap on that, Beki, and ask you our sort of closing question, which is of course, that our listeners love to take things away from our conversations and do something a little bit differently to help them to connect with others and get things done. What have you learned from either your studies of human behavior, animal, animal, whatever that you would say? What's your guidance? Would you say a tip that someone could do differently on what you've seen? [00:29:23] Beki: So something that really comes to mind for me that I have been thinking about a bit lately is actually nothing to do with monkeys or humans. Uh, and it comes from British bird species. So great tits. blue tits and marsh tits. This study came out, I was looking at social networks in these species of birds and, uh, access to information. And found that individuals who are central in their social network, so who have the most social ties and are just like the most sociable. In terms of their phenotype, their personality. They tend to get information about valuable resources, so in this case, food patches quicker than individuals on the edge of those groups. Because there are quicker pathways to get to them through all the social ties. [00:30:13] I think that's quite important in terms of thinking about, if you are a central individual in a group, especially in human teams, and maybe especially for leaders in human teams, because you tend to be more central if you're the leader, because everyone's reporting to you, to think about how information spreads in a team. If you have access to that information and you're only sharing it with individuals that you're, like, bumping into in the office or the hallway or over coffee, you're probably only sharing that information with other very sociable individuals. Whereas maybe you should be reaching out to those on the periphery who otherwise it will take a long time for that information to get to and sharing it with them and sort of saying, I'm reaching out to you because I got this valuable information and I think you should know it because otherwise they might not get it and that actually might really hinder them and their work. [00:31:07] Dan: So I've been sharing this information with the people faces, but I'm now gonna share it with you. [00:31:12] Beki: Exactly. ex, I've [00:31:13] Dan: a sort of [00:31:14] Beki: a bit peripheral and so I'm giving you this information, [00:31:17] Dan: It would make a cracking email I reckon that. [00:31:22] Pia: But it's so true. That's so true. And we also tend to congregate around people that are maybe similar to ourselves or have features and qualities that we like and admire. And so I think that's a really valuable insight [00:31:35] Dan: And I love that idea of that sort of observing how century you are and that's a responsibility. Not just something to be kept to you, but actually what does that mean for your, the role that you play in the group? It's a, it's a, a great one. And thank you to the British birds for giving us that one and whoever researched it. Wonderful. [00:31:52] Beki: Yes. Lucy Aplin is her name. [00:31:54] Pia: what's next then, Beki? What's next on the horizons of research for you? [00:31:59] Beki: Oh, good question. I take the advice of my PhD advisor who wrote in my card after I completed, to make sure I always had fun. So I'm just gonna go wherever the research takes me and ask exciting questions about sociality and cognition. I don't necessarily know what that looks like right now, but I'm hoping it involves lots of different species and lots of different places. [00:32:21] Pia: And a lot of fun. Well, I would love for us to catch up with you again and see what your latest insights are. Cuz it's fascinating [00:32:29] Beki: I would love that. It's been great. [00:32:31] Pia: Really good insight for all of us. [00:32:33] Dan: Yeah. Thank you so much, [00:32:34] Becky. It's been great having on the show. [00:32:35] Beki: It's been so much fun. [00:32:37] [00:32:37] Pia: Wow. That was so refreshing and terrifying at the same time because, you know, when we were talking about the likes of, uh, Musk and Trump, uh, there's no degree of separation there. We had a all male despotic ecosystem system, no social mobility, [00:33:02] Dan: Especially for females. Yep. [00:33:03] Pia: Cast the side, and based on tenure. [00:33:06] Dan: Well, even just you hang around long enough, you're going to get senior. Boy. I, I know we joked about it, but honestly there are companies that describes exactly. And it, it, it's so interesting cuz we obviously the, the similarities are stark, but we have the possibility to do better, don't we as humans. We have advanced, we have big, a big prefrontal cortex that they don't have the benefit of. So that should give us higher order thinking to get, think a little bit bigger than that mammalian brain, which is much more about those status ranked despotic things. But we maybe not, don't always engage it as we [00:33:43] Pia: No. And if we allow division and competition and that survival of the fittest, which is really where this sort of fits into, then uh, we're all led into a bit of a Darwinian trap. [00:33:53] Dan: yeah, exactly. [00:33:55] Pia: It would just be, it'll just become a glad gladiatorial pit to the end, which is not, well, not gonna do good for anyone really. [00:34:03] but I just thought it was, I did like the of the fur. [00:34:06] Dan: Yes. A little. Yeah, I think, I think we can all learn from that. Preen a teammate today, I say. Just, yeah, see how that goes. But but yeah, very interesting out. And there are probably, there are probably um, as we said, a cup of tea. There are probably other things that we do as humans to sort of effectively honor someone else and preen them. There's some of that probably goes on as well. But, uh, yeah, really interesting, but also at the same level, social level. [00:34:29] Pia: I think it goes back to Marsha's point of when you look at your 25 top contacts. Is there a difference of, you know, the people from their socioeconomic background, their color, their race, their views there? Or is it just actually a version of you in your top 25 [00:34:46] Dan: And someone who can do you a favor socially as well. You know, that thing about, that she's studying now with the undergraduates. We managed to steer away from how much of an advance an undergraduate is from a rhesus macaque. We were very polite there, but you know, that is about sort of possibly also about advantage. You meet someone, oh, you've got a big social network. If I'm your friend, I am, I'm advanced, so I'm sure there's some of that at play as well. [00:35:10] Despite all that rank, social connection is still important in those, it's really, it's, it probably is even, it's weirdly part of their cohesion, but that basic connection that comes from printing is sort of, is going to allow you to get more information. It's going to keep you safe, keep you fed. And so, even with the rhesus macaques, that social network is a phrase that we use about humans, really important. [00:35:36] Pia: Yeah, that reduces, injuries, which I think was really, that was really important too. [00:35:41] I felt like she was the next David Attenborough and so I think we should get her back, as her observations continue to feathered friends and other animals, I, I that we could be learning a lot. [00:35:54] Dan: I think we really could. And yeah, that'll be wonderful. Let's get back to see what else she's got to say, which will be loads, I suspect more. We'll see lots more of Dr. Beki Hooper. I am sure, which will be wonderful. [00:36:04] But that's it for this episode. You can find show notes and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show and we very much you, hope you have, please share the love and recommend it to your friends. Also, please do give us a rating on your favorite podcast platform. We Not Me, is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye for me. [00:36:26] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.