Is Punch the monkey really just like us?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, I’m Flora Lichtman, and you’re listening to Science Friday. You may have noticed that primate news has been popping off.

DAVID MUIR: Tonight, the baby monkey who has captured the attention and the hearts of the world, the viral star Punch the monkey.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Punch is a macaque about seven months old living in a zoo in Japan. He was rejected by his mother, so zookeepers gave him a stuffed-animal substitute. Pictures of Punch snuggling with his stuffie went viral. Families flocked to the zoo to see him, and now Punch updates like whether the monkey has a girlfriend or if he was bullied are a regular feature of ABC News.

Why? Why do so many people identify with this little monkey, and how do primate researchers manage that impulse? Here to talk Punch, primate feelings, and our feelings about primates is Dr. Christine Webb, who studies primates and teaches at New York University. She’s also the author of The Arrogant Ape– The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters. Christine, thanks for talking with us today.

CHRISTINE WEBB: It’s a pleasure to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You’re a primatologist. Is this Punch story exciting for you or very annoying?

CHRISTINE WEBB: Well, I’ve been forced to pay attention to it because I teach undergraduates, and their interest in it has gotten me a bit interested because they are so curious about Punch, how he’s doing, what he’s feeling. So for that reason, I guess I’m OK with it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, well, I mean, millions and millions of people are way more than OK with it. They’re obsessed with it with Punch. Why do you think people can’t get enough of this story?

CHRISTINE WEBB: Well, as our closest living relatives, other primates, they’ve always kind of straddled this supposed boundary between human and animal. And so many of their behaviors are identifiable to us. They have similar body plans. They’re visually dominant, and they’re a highly social species with very complex social relationships and group structures. And I think it’s our fascination with this latter point, this complex sociality is one of the reasons why Punch strikes a chord so much with us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, it’s interesting. You hear in the news coverage, you can tell that we’re projecting a lot onto this monkey. People are talking about his love life with his new girlfriend or whether or not he’s being bullied at the zoo. That projection piece, what do you make of it?

CHRISTINE WEBB: In science, we have this word. Really, It’s a taboo called anthropomorphism–

FLORA LICHTMAN: The A word.

CHRISTINE WEBB: –the projection. Yeah, the A word. It’s seen as a cardinal scientific sin. It’s when we are projecting human characteristics onto other forms of life. And there’s a lot to say about whether those projections are real or not, if they’re merely projections or they’re actually reflecting a deeper similarity and continuity between species.

In the cases of our closest living primate relatives, it’s often more straightforward, and we could use the term like parsimonious, right, to assume that there are shared mental characteristics and experiences between humans and other primates. This criticism of being anthropomorphic is coming from this idea in science that we should always defer to the simplest, most straightforward, and parsimonious explanation.

And traditionally in science, that has been to assume that other forms of life lack rich internal worlds, lack rich emotions and cognition and social experiences. But what the primatologist Frans de Waal offered us is that, actually, you could argue that the most parsimonious, straightforward explanation is to assume continuity among species, not just in physical forms and characteristics but also in mental characteristics, in emotions and relationships and cognitive faculties.

So when we’re talking about a characteristic, let’s say, like joy or grief or empathy or jealousy as being anthropomorphic, why are we assuming that humans have a premium on that capacity and that it’s only derivatively not human? We might instead use a term like “primatomorphic” or “mammalomorphic” when we’re talking about characteristics that are common to one or several species.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Where did we get that idea that complex emotions are just for people?

CHRISTINE WEBB: It traces back to this idea of human exceptionalism, this idea that humans are somehow separate from and superior to other forms of life. And this belief system has a very long and fraught history in Western thought. You can trace it all the way back to Greek philosophy, to Aristotle, and through medieval Christianity into the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. And it still certainly has a foothold in modern science because much of what we consider to be science today has a history in Western thought that intersects with this history of human exceptionalism.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How does this show up in science? I mean, does this create for bad science and how?

CHRISTINE WEBB: One of the main ways I can just speak from my own experience as a primatologist in my field is that ideas about human uniqueness, about capacities that separate humans from other forms of life, often stem from studies that will compare the cognitive abilities of human beings to the cognitive abilities of our closest living primate relatives, say chimpanzees. And these studies are often done in captive environments, not wholly unlike the one where Punch is kept but maybe even more like a scientific laboratory, right?

So we’re studying these other animals in highly deprived environments and measuring their social cognition or their physical cognition on tasks that are made by humans, right– they’re like plastic puzzle boxes or computer touch screens, on things that humans are far more used to than other forms of life. We’re stacking the deck against them in these kinds of comparisons because of the way that we’re studying them, the tasks that we’re giving them, and then concluding that humans are superior in a particular cognitive faculty.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So the problem is that we do studies that are– even though we’re trying to get away from anthropomorphizing, we’re actually doing studies that are very weighted towards our own abilities and then saying that these animals don’t measure up.

CHRISTINE WEBB: Precisely. By taking a human-centric view of the world, we’re not able to accurately and adequately understand other animals’ lives and capacities.

FLORA LICHTMAN: At the same time, we’re taking a human-centric view of the world, and we’re also not willing to ascribe human characteristics or complex emotions we associate with humans to other animals. And so, in one way, it’s a very human point of view. In another way, we won’t let other animals in. Do you know what I’m saying?

CHRISTINE WEBB: What helps clarify it for me is this idea of human exceptionalism that, on some level, we still want to hold ourselves in higher regard to other forms of life, and that might mean trivializing what other animals are doing and capable of and not understanding them in their own right, in their own unique ways of being and the richness of a way of being that could look entirely different from ours but be equally complex.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do we have to consider the possibility that animals have feelings outside of our own? Lots of animals have these crazy sensory abilities that we don’t have. Could they also have interior worlds that we can’t even really imagine?

CHRISTINE WEBB: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. I mean, we know that other animals can see colors that we can’t and detect electromagnetic forces and rays, so why would we assume that that ability stops or that difference stops just at sensory capacities? Perhaps there are emotional experiences that are wholly unknown to us that other forms of life are experiencing. I’m very open to that possibility.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I guess I’m wondering like, do you hear the counterargument from people that humans are different? We’ve reshaped this planet in unique ways. We use technology in ways that are different from other organisms, other creatures. Is there anything to the argument that, yeah, we are different from other animals?

CHRISTINE WEBB: Absolutely, just as every animal is different from every animal. I mean, I would not necessarily argue against this idea of human uniqueness.

I would just say that many of the characteristics that we long thought made humans unique have been found in other forms of life, or those same arguments about human uniqueness have been used to exclude an array of human beings who don’t fit the sort of ideal human archetype.

But if we want to stress a narrative of human uniqueness, I’m fine with that, so long as we do so for all forms of life. Every form of life has developed specific characteristics adapted to a particular ecological niche. The difference between human uniqueness and something like human exceptionalism is that human exceptionalism suggests that what is distinctive about humans, what is unique about humans is somehow more worthy than the distinctive features of other forms of life.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, that’s so interesting. And I wonder if that’s just an intrinsic challenge of science. Science is done by people, and I think we can work against it. But I guess I wonder how much of that is just sort of having some humility about the fact that it’s people doing experiments? And so we’re going to be working through a human lens to some degree.

CHRISTINE WEBB: Absolutely. I mean, I think that’s true of science in general, not just with respect to this particular bias of human exceptionalism but to all different forms of biases. I mean, we like to think that science operates in isolation from bias, but if we were just more open and honest about the fact that science is not value free and that cultural ideas and norms can affect science, just like it can affect any other way of knowing and method of knowing, then I think we would actually do better science if we’re just more forthcoming about that with ourselves and with each other.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Christine Webb studies primates and teaches at New York University. Thanks for joining us today.

CHRISTINE WEBB: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This episode was produced by Annette Heist. If you think that nerdy science shows that talk about viral monkeys should also go viral, we invite you to tell your friends about Science Friday. It really does help. Please spread the word. Thank you for listening. I’m Flora Lichtman.

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