S4E6: Voice with Eva Meijer

Claudia talks to Eva Meijer about voice as a concept that helps us to think about animal sounds and practices in a more politicised way. Eva touches on how a broader conception of politics and voice allows for a more nuanced actions in response to animals and the lives they are trying to lead. They also touch on the usefulness of a variety of languages, mediums, and disciplines in becoming proficient in listening to animals. 

Date Recorded: 25 January 2022

Eva Meijer is a philosopher and writer. Meijer works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam (NL), on the four-year research project The politics of (not) eating animals, supported by a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council. She is the chair of the Dutch study group for Animal Philosophy. Recent publications include Animal Languages (John Murray 2019) and When animals speak. Toward an Interspecies Democracy (New York University Press 2019). Meijer wrote eleven books, fiction and non-fiction, that have been translated into eighteen languages. More information: www.evameijer.nl

Featured: 

 When Animals Speak: Toward an Interspecies Democracy and Zwaan Eva Meijer; Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights  by Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson; Inclusion and Democracy  by Iris Marion Young; Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice by Pauline Oliveros; Living with Birds  by Len Howard;

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Sonic Arts Studio
The Queen’s Sonic Arts Studio (formerly Electroacoustic Music Studio) was founded in 1970.

Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory (SAPLab)
The SAP Lab provides workspace and equipment for students engaged in sound related activities.

iROAR Network
iROAR brings together podcasts that aim is to make the world a better place for animals.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

This is another I Raw podcast.

SPEAKER_04: 0:04

What I do think is that we already can do is recognize that they have voices, that they say things, that we stand as humans in certain relations to them, and that sort of acknowledging that reality should be the starting point of discussing worldly matters with them, but also further investigating what voice can mean in a multi-species context. And this is very much related to the question of sound.

SPEAKER_01: 0:45

Welcome to the Animal Turn Podcast. This is season four, episode six. As you know, in this season we're focusing on animals and sound. And so far in the season, we've been looking a lot at ecological and method-oriented concepts, and it's been really fascinating learning about how sound is collected and some of the ethical questions with regards to getting such sound. And as the seasons progressed, we've been moving towards, I think, more theoretically dense and complex concepts. And today we're going to be looking at one of those, and that's voice. Now, of course, voice is connected to sound, but it's something much more than sound, and it's political. And if you've ever thought about animals and voice and how animals speak and communicate, you've probably come across the work of Ava Meyer. Now, Eva Meyer is a philosopher and a writer, and she works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam on a four-year research project titled The Politics of Not Eating Animals. This is supported by Vennie Grant from the Dutch Research Council. She's also the chair of the Dutch Study Group for Animal Philosophy, and some of her recent publications include Animal Languages, When Animals Speak, and Toward an Interspecies Democracy. She has written over 11 books, both fiction and non-fiction, that have been translated into 18 languages. Beyond being a researcher, Ava is also a musician and a singer. And this comes up a bit in the interview itself. It shapes a lot about how she thinks about animals and the ways in which they can voice what they want to voice and how we can learn to better listen to what they're saying. It's a really interesting episode. I had a lot of fun talking to Ava and I learned a great deal. And she does she does a really good job in constantly bringing me back to the politics of what voice is. So I hope you really enjoyed the episode. And before I let you go, I just wanted to say thank you to the sponsors, to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics Apple for sponsoring the podcast, and to SAF Lab and the Sonic Arts Studio for sponsoring the season. If you're interested in sponsoring a season of the Animal Turn, feel free to reach out to me at any point. Alright, that's it. I hope you enjoy listening to Ava and I. Hi Eva, welcome to the Animal Turn Podcast. Hello. It's so great to have you. We're going to be talking a bit about voice today, which I think is a really important concept. So far in the season, we've discussed sound uh in a number of different ways. And I think voice has a slightly different connotation or understanding in relation to sound. So I think, yeah, I'm really keen to see where our conversation goes today in terms of thinking about animals and politics and sound. But before we get into that, uh I like to start each episode with kind of getting a sense of of you and how you came to know or think about animals and uh what got you interested in in kind of the relationship between I want to say animals and sound, but I think for you it's particularly animals and and language.

SPEAKER_04: 3:45

I think that for me, I've always been in conversation with non-human animals or other than human animals or more than human animals, and uh this has been a very fundamental part of my life, and I think that many of my views and the way in which I experience the world are shaped by these encounters and relationships, and uh this has informed my thinking as a philosopher, but also simply my experience as a human. And when I began to study philosophy, I soon found out that there was not a lot of space for this type of um knowledge about animals or simply animals at all within the uh the discourse, and that's unfortunate because it's it provides us with um a very narrow picture of reality. So it's problematic uh theoretically, it's also problematic because it reinforces stereotypes about other animals as mute and incapable of speaking, um, and it reinforces a view of the human as kind of separate from the other animals, but it's also unfortunate simply philosophically, because there are very many interesting questions that come up when you start to think about language or politics through the lens of our relationships with other animals, their experiences, their perspective on the world, uh, their languages, uh, all of these things. So I think that it sort of followed naturally from my own experience and also from my philosophical interests, because maybe I should mention that I'm uh um I was initially trained as a uh visual artist and a musician, uh, and I also work as a novelist. Um, so I kind of and and in many of these fields I um in some sense or the other uh um think about language or do things with language. And um, so I'm very used to switching between different language games, and I've always had a strong interest in language. So maybe that is also why the the language aspect and following that the political voice aspect of um our interactions with other animals um yeah sort of got my attention.

SPEAKER_01: 6:26

And and this led you to doing a PhD. So had you had you written these novels before entering a PhD, or have you kind of jumped between writing novels and doing academia and music kind of at the same time? Is it all how does it how's how does it all work?

SPEAKER_04: 6:42

It's it's it's I like doing things at the same time. And I'd uh I'd done art and music and uh writing novels before I began doing the PhD, but also as I wrote the PhD, I wrote some books about animals, some non-fiction books and some uh novels. And now I still uh working as a postdoctoral researcher and uh still writing books and uh doing art projects and other things. And I think that the um sort of switching between language games is helpful uh in uh thinking about other animals as well because it asks you to be attentive to the multiplicity of ways in which we can create meaning as humans in a multispecies context and so on. So for me that that works well, and I also feel that uh in different fields there are different things that you can um draw attention to regarding the human-animal relationship. So academic work is very suitable for answering certain questions, and then there's activism and uh uh political, practical political stuff, uh, which is a different discourse in which you can get other things done, and uh art and literature and these ways of um singing the world, as Merleau-Ponty calls it, is uh are are yet another um uh way of yeah, saying something about the world and also encountering the world in a in a different way.

SPEAKER_01: 8:22

Yeah, and I think even so so with our focus today on on voice, that you know, the the idea of how voice is used in these different spaces is also really interesting. So, even just as human voice, how how we, you know, the the use of I in academic language is a fairly you know, feminists kind of brought feminist literature and scholarship kind of brought to attention the use of I and how significant I is in writing academic work. Yet so often that voice is is absent in academic work or in scientific work, yet it's employed quite overtly, I think, in the writing of novels. Um, and and kind of the the manufacturing of voice is also different in these in these different spaces. When you're when you're writing fiction or non-fiction, how you how you give voice. And I think give is an interesting thing there too. How you give voice in in music or novels or academia is really um fascinating. So when so yeah, let me sorry, I'm getting too excited about what you're saying. Um when we talk about voice and sound, so this whole season has been focused on sound, and and so far in the season we've realized that animals make sounds and that these sounds are ecologically important and that they're in relation to other sounds, that the world, you know, the dawn chorus, animals sound together, we make the world together. But something seems to be slightly different in in voice and in how we talk about voice. What is voice?

SPEAKER_04: 9:53

Well, maybe I should um uh first say something about how uh something more about the uh interconnection between politics and language and voice. So I can make a little detour um uh to get to the uh understanding of voice that I am using. So I already said something uh about uh the fact that other animals were not so very recognized as subjects and speaking beings uh in philosophy, and that was something that I encountered as a philosophy student, and that was also where I saw sort of an opening in the field, like, oh, here's some work that needs to be done, because quite it's it's quite obvious that other animals express themselves, uh, but it's not so obvious if this is language, if it is political voice, and how we should uh understand that simply because the research has not been done, because animals have been neglected in fields of study like linguistics. I mean, people are picking up on that now, but uh it's it's all fairly new. And even in biology, there have been, of course, many studies about ways in which animals express themselves, also of the stick of the systems that they use, and uh very often reinforcing uh sort of mechanistic understandings of animal languages and voice. But only recently there's been sort of structural attention for this as language, it's similar to culture, yeah. The animal cultures have long not been studied because it was simply assumed that they would not have culture, because culture is a human thing. And I think something very similar can be said about language. So uh, and and this is a political question, it's not simply an empirical uh question. So when we think about the voices of animals, uh perhaps they're actual voices with which they make sounds, but also the the sort of I mean animal voices uh bigger than sound because it also involves colors, uh gestures that they may use of many, many ways a sense, perhaps habits even. There are many ways in which uh other animals create meaning, and these should all, I I mean, yeah, these should all be considered as a part of their voice. So I think it's quite obvious, and most people would uh agree that uh animals express themselves, that they communicate, what people call uh communicate, but uh it's it's not so obvious how we can speak with them. So when I um uh did this um uh study of philosophy, there was uh suddenly uh attention for animals from political philosophy, which is also a field in which they were uh ignored for a long time. And there it was some scholars argued that animals are not simply beings with interests that we should take into account in our democratic systems for reasons of justice, but that they are political agents, that certain groups of animals uh have certain relations with uh human political communities. And this is, for example, of course, put forward by Sudan Sinamuel Kimlika, who wrote the book Savopolis, but also other people, and there was were also uh people working about political uh on the topic of political agency in different fields like animal uh geography. And there's I think that um in all of these sort of new developments in thinking about animals, animal subjectivity, uh, human-animal relations, and the politics of human-animal relations, there was and is a growing understanding that they are subjects with whom we humans are entangled in relations, that they are agents, but also kind of a question mark when it came to uh questions of language and uh political communication. And uh I think that the when you connect these two fields, so the kind of biological and empirical ethological studies that study how animals express themselves, how they form communities, um, questions of animal language, question of culture, and the field of um uh political philosophy that's becoming increasingly open towards the uh understanding that other animals are also agents with whom we might form uh multispecies communities, uh, then you you sort of then the question of uh animal voice and animal political voice sort of is opened up. And uh I think that's that's kind of where my research began, and uh for my PhD thesis, in which I wanted to uh uh develop a theory of political animal voice. And basically, when you ask me what is animal voice or what is political animal voice, then I should tell you that I don't know at this point because we've not yet, and it's also not up to me, right? I mean it's a little bit weird to um uh decide for others what voice means. But what I do think is that we already can do is recognize that they have voices, that they say things, that we stand as humans in certain relations uh to them, and that sort of acknowledging that reality should be the starting point of discussing worldly matters with them, but also further investigating what voice can mean in a multi-species context, and this is very much related to the question of sound and and the other um questions of language and translation, because it asks, I mean, on the one hand, it's a kind of critical work and it it's also a political project because we need to change uh laws and political practices and institutions to accommodate this kind of interaction. Uh, but it's also a question of learning to be attentive to animal sounds, animal voices, and I think that for this reason it's also always an interdisciplinary project that in which different kinds of knowledge can sometimes translate, but also sometimes shed light on um what is happening in a uh certain situation, and because our research questions have for a very long time been shaped by human prejudice about other animals, there's also a need to be creative because I think that a lot of um uh I think that because of the way that academia is set up, it's sometimes hard to be creative because there's there's always so much you can do. You know, there's a certain step that you can take, and then you sort of hit the border of okay, after this, it's it's it's art or it's just incomprehensible. Um and and that's I guess that's all right, you know, because it's it's the but it's sometimes I think for animals it's not always so good because it means that you can only make very small steps and that you need to be anthropocentric in uh in some senses as well. But still it allows us to uh to discuss these questions. Um uh but yeah, when it comes when it comes to voice, I think there's a lot of trial and error, and um doing different types of research, um, setting up different kinds of communities with other animals, uh, or yeah, simply seeing them differently. That should be the basis of further thinking about this question, also because um I uh yeah, I'll I'll just leave it at that.

SPEAKER_01: 17:45

I you know, I I actually really appreciate this the kind of fuzzy edges of of voice. So even when I was speaking to Martin Ulrich about music, kind of in in talking about music, I know that one of his his his conclusions was actually we don't know. And the more we don't know, and the more we kind of appreciate that it's fuzzy edges, the more we can ask interesting questions and actually come to appreciate the ways in which music is entangled in our in our lives and our worlds. And I think it's something similar here with with voice, but but then I start to think about voice and the the ways in which I employ the idea of voice in my day-to-day, right? Voice is something that I think about as an individual. I've I have a voice, a physiological voice that I associate kind of with my identity and how I sound and how people expect me to sound. Um and there are a variety of I think expectations that come with that, like how people expect me to sound you know, based on my gender, based on producing a podcast, etc. But then, and I think this is where where what a lot of what you're saying here is is really important, is my voice as part of a broader community, my ability to vote, my ability to have an opinion, my ability to be heard. And I know that this is something that's really important to you. And I think something we haven't really touched on a lot yet in the season is that there's making sound, there's putting your voice out there, there's saying something and demanding something, and then there's being heard and being listened to. So, how do you view this kind of connection between sounding and voicing a want and being listened to and heard?

SPEAKER_04: 19:25

This is one of the biggest problems that the other animals encounter, I think, because they are obviously uh all the time voicing their claims, opinions, uh, and so on, even though they might choose to ignore humans, which is also very understandable. And also because sometimes they they might operate in other systems of knowledge and are or or cannot be bothered or whatever. But um I think that's because sometimes that's that's one of the things that people sometimes write about my work who have not read my work, they they say, Oh, she wants to give animals voice. But that's that's really problematic in my opinion, because that's first of all, it presupposes a power hierarchy that in which I can give the animals a voice. And I'm not denying that there is a power hierarchy, and I'm also not denying that when I have an option to enter public discourse uh to speak about animals, that it might sometimes be my responsibility to take that position and uh do the best I can in order to improve their position because they are in such a bad political position. Um, but I I think that at the core, I mean, there's no way in which I can even give other animals voice or not. So I think it really should start with the recognition that they have voices and that they um that they speak, and that that that is kind of the the basis on which we should enter the conversation with them. And I've been I'm currently working on a research project that connects questions of political voice in the case of humans and um uh animals. So I look at conflicts around uh eating animals and try to analyze case studies uh in which there are conflicts. I, for example, uh just finished um a chapter about protesting farmers and protesting cows in the Netherlands uh in um uh and sort of analyze that in in uh terms of deliberation and um embodied understandings of deliberation. Um but I I think that um another article that I'm working on, which is related to this research project as well, is about developing new political practices that are not so focused on speaking but more on listening. Because very often there's uh an idea that uh speaking is active and listening is passive, uh, on the one hand, and on the other hand, that in order to ensure justice and equality, we should ensure that everybody has the same amount of voice. And in existing political discourse and conversations, there is usually certain styles of expression are favored over others. So a certain type of arguments are repeated and repeated in political discourse, in public discourse, um, and get much more attention than other perspectives and other voices, and feminist deliberative philosophers, decolonial scholars, uh also environmental philosophers, have drawn attention to other modes of communication that we should take seriously in order to improve political deliberation and a public discourse. For example, Iris Young famously uh wrote that we should look at greeting as a political uh practice and uh storytelling, and what was the third thing? Uh, rhetoric, and sort of that if we would take these other styles of communication that perhaps uh fit people from different genders or uh different backgrounds, marginal formerly marginalized groups, that that that would make forms of deliberation more inclusive and more just. And that is all right, and I accept that. And I've written about multi-species deliberation that in which I also draw attention to the situated and embodied processes of deliberation that go on between humans and other animals. But I think in addition to this, sort of this emphasis on um uh speech and voice and ensuring that everybody gets a chance to speak, maybe we can discuss what speaking and deliberation means in relation to other animals in uh more more later. But first I will finish the thought about listening. Yeah, in the so, in addition to this, I think we need more active models of listening. And this has, for example, a time um uh in existing political practices and institutions, we should uh a lot of the decision making is instant. So everybody gets a chance to speak and then there's a vote or there's a decision. Um, and I think that in addition to that mode of doing politics, there should be uh spaces where uh there can be testimonies and listening, and there should be a different time scale. So there should not immediately be a vote, there should be another round, or there should be um because if you um if you put more time in the system, you can never force people to listen to others. They might think their own thoughts in their head, and that's wonderful because we do not want to control that. But I think that um uh really sort of um uh setting up the encounter different in terms of time and also in terms of spaces in which there should not be a fixed outcome is one thing that can uh be changed in institutional uh politics in order to facilitate listening. Then there's a second form of listening uh that is much more connected to acting. So when you are listening to animals or to small children or to someone you completely don't understand, or when you read a poem that you don't understand, or uh when you listen to music that you don't understand, you engage with it, you do something with it, you sort of go with it. And I live with laboratory mice, and one of the things we do is sit together, and I have to sit still because otherwise I step on them. So it's a meditative practice. But this sort of this sitting, and they climb on me and they chew on my leg hair and they do these kinds of things. Uh, and sitting with them is a form of listening to them and to sort of to learn about them, to attend to them. Uh, but with the dogs, I think that walking with them uh is is also a kind of listening uh practice because they they will communicate things during the walk using the surroundings and the beings we encounter as objects to talk about. Um, and it's more, and I have two, um my sister has two young children, and with them it's it's yet another kind of listening that's also, I mean, I'm not just going to sit and listen to them because then they don't say anything. So it's when I want to find out something, it's sort of an engaged listening. So that's a second model, perhaps, and then I was thinking about a third uh third model, which is based more on uh music and uh on uh Pauline Oliveiro's account of uh deep listening. Uh, she was uh an experimental composer, a feminist, and she um she's written about uh listening as, on the one hand, a meditative practice, but at the same time as necessary for developing a political attitude that makes sense. And what she writes is that when you begin to listen, you know that there are a lot of things, um, you notice that there are a lot of things that you didn't hear before, and for her, it's actual listening. So, as a as a musician, and so taking the time to listen, learning about the voices or the new things that you didn't think were voices, but that might turn out to be voices, um, is yet another kind of, and I think it's a political practice, and I'm not completely sure how we can uh institutionalize that. Maybe we don't have to, but there's something very important in this uh connection between listening and what we do not know yet. And maybe these are the fuzzy edges that you uh spoke about earlier as well, but but especially with other animals, we need to be really attentive, and but it's not um it's it's very real, you know, because it's not something like, oh yeah, we don't know what we're going to hear, whatever. You know, that's not the attitude. Yeah it's really more um we know that there's a lot being said, uh, but we don't always know precisely what I mean, very often we do know, uh, that's also a misunderstanding about animals that there's a lot unsure. Well, there's a lot sure as well. You know, for sure. If you sort of if you're critical about your own prejudice and your uh the unlearning of kind of the stereotypio stereotypical things, then there's you know, there's a lot that you can simply know. And for them it's the same because they are listening to us and they're thinking, oh, what's she up to now? And now what's happening today. So it's uh yeah, these are these are um these are some of the ways I think in which we can think about learning to listen, not just as individuals, but also collectively. And uh I think that's very intimately tied up with the question of what it means, of what voice means when we uh think about other animals.

SPEAKER_01: 29:19

Yeah, I I think I think you saw I think you're so right. Um, because I do think listening and learning are so intertwined. Even, you know, us as infants, a lot of how we learn to be in the world and think of the world is through listening to others and engaging with what we've what we've heard and and possibly adapting and altering it. Uh and something that's always bothered me about politics, at least politics today, in terms of the like traditional sense of you vote and here's a leader who's going to become your president or prime minister or whatever it is, is so often I feel like they're boxed in their views. Um, so let's say a leader viewed an opinion 10 years ago, and now 10 years later, they say something. That seems to contradict that. Somehow we seem to say, Oh, they're flip-flopping, they're changing their views. How dare they? Whereas for me, there seems to be something intuitively uh wrong with that. Surely you would want someone's views to shift and change over a period of 10 years. Surely, if they were listening to their people, um, if they were listening to the world and the ways in which the world has changed, your views would change. Uh, I know certainly my views in the last 10 years have undergone dramatic changes. So that that temporal aspect of voice, I think, is and and of listening, I think is really uh important and and kind of having the space to grapple with what this means, both uh personally, but also like you say, politically. Uh, what does it mean to to listen? And then of course we we come into that that encounter of, well, like you said, how do we how do we institutionalize this? Uh and I know I've encountered this constantly when when I talk to people about animals, is they say, well, we have to speak for them. And we animals can't vote. They can't go into a ballot box and vote. So how do we do this? And and that's really tricky. And I know in your your thesis and and in some of your work, you've given some examples uh to illustrate how you've listened to animals as a means of trying to understand how we might politically engage with them. Perhaps you could give us a tangible example here to kind of unpack some of these ideas of voice and listening and politics.

SPEAKER_04: 31:27

I think that when you think about politics and uh other animals or whatever group, because there are also other groups that have um altered the scope of how we uh think about uh politics, um it's not simply uh a lot of people begin with this idea of human politics as politics, and then uh wonder how we fit the other animals in. And then you get the the drawings of uh animals in in parliament, or many people refer to kind of the animal animals being brought to court in the Middle Ages as sort of an example of animal politics. But I think that that relies on a very narrow understanding of uh politics, even in the human case, because there are of course all the uh official settings in which uh humans come together to make political decisions. For example, in a representative democracy, you have the parliament and you have city councils and you have many other spaces uh in which humans officially come together to do politics. Uh, but next to that, there are many other um political deeds and political spaces and um uh political dialogues that inform these more official uh spaces of politics. For example, in the case of humans, there are street demonstrations, there are uh protest songs, there has been in the past time um the political activism on the internet or social media, Me Too is a good example, but also the Arab Spring. Politics is not uh simply what happens in official institutions, it's um everywhere. Um, also uh I think that what the Black Lives Matter movement uh drew a lot of attention to was that a lot of political um or or power relations are also inscribed in in uh sort of daily encounters between human citizens in the same land. For example, in the Netherlands, um, there's really this attitude oh, I'm not racist, so this act is not racist. You know, that's kind of the the uh the Dutch way of uh dealing with racism. And there has been a discussion about this in the past couple of years, and um a lot of black activists have uh sort of made it a point to um uh to make clear what institutional racism entails and how um uh certain forms of racism are inscribed in certain practices, and that the powerful group does not experience that as a as a problem, but that for many block black people it is a real problem, and uh and it's very interesting to witness this dialogue, and it's actually um we used to have this caricature called Black Pete, and uh who is a racist uh stereotype, but it's uh for a children's feast in December, so everybody's very attached to it. Um, and it it and the opinions of uh people changed. So now a majority of the Dutch citizens are actually against Black Pete and been abolished. But it was a big thing, you know, it was just huge in the and now there's COVID, but before that we had Black Pete, that was kind of the same event. Um years and years, and people, you know, black activists were arrested. It was crazy, even though they weren't doing anything. It was just this huge um uh but it's it's a good example because it's I showed something about power dynamics, and uh uh I think it taught us something as a uh as a society. Maybe I'm too hopeful, but I I think that's that something um something happened in that regard. So um, first of all, politics is not simply the political institutions, it's also demonstrations. Second thing, our um uh encounters with other animals have always influenced our uh politics. And this can range from uh conflicts that there are um between humans and certain animals that informed legislation. You know, it's a very small um example, maybe personal encounters that uh humans have, um certain attachments to specific animals that led to specific kinds of um uh political uh practices. The cow and farmer example that I uh briefly mentioned before is connected to a uh discussion of uh nitrogen pollution in the Netherlands, uh, which is a big problem, and uh the Dutch government now wants to um uh change animal agriculture in the Netherlands. But cows and specifically dairy cows are seen as a um kind of uh symbol for the Netherlands, and people are really attached to it. So it's not simply a discussion of economics or uh whatever. There are also ways in which relationships with certain animals shaped uh collective identities and uh all of these things matter. So one politics is more than official politics, two other animals um have informed in in smaller and bigger ways uh the um existing uh anthropocentric politics, and three, um in these encounters, animals are active um participants. Uh, one of the examples I describe in the book When Animals Speak is that of wild geese. And there are a lot of wild geese in the Netherlands. Uh, they were actually asked to come here when the Oostwarders Plasse, which is a nature reserve, was made, because they were seen as um they were even uh described as architectures of that uh nature reserve because they would eat the plants before they grow into uh trees and sort of keep the land flat so that undulates and others could um uh roam there. So, but now there are too many geese. It's also because uh the grass has been made very juicy and uh green. It's also because we have all of these wonderful new uh areas where there are um houses but also water and also grass uh close to cities, so either new towns or uh suburbs or all of these things, and all of these places are really, really suitable for uh geese, so it's perfect. They fly over and they think, wow, that's a really but then they are here, and it's always that's also a Dutch thing when there are too many animals of a certain species, the Dutch start uh killing them because that's kind of their natural uh response. And with the geese, it wasn't different. And when you uh look at the encounters between humans and geese, you can see that there is a lot of deliberation or political communication happening between different actors. So farmers play an important role because they um they can get money from the government when the geese are uh on their fields, but they also get money from the government when they are shot by hunters. It's a it's a very it's a whole system and it's different for different parts in the Netherlands as well. Um, politicians play a role, activists play a role because they uh geese are protected in the Netherlands, but you can get many um uh when they are a threat somewhere, people can still shoot them. So there's a lot of back and forth between uh different human groups, but what humans often forget is that the geese themselves are also a deliberative actor because um they respond to changes uh in the landscape. When a field is um mowed in a certain way, they don't like it. They do like it when it's done in another way. So that is one means of communicating with them. Another way is um uh scaring them away by um with robot birds or dogs, or now they have pigs at uh Schiphol Airport uh to uh scare away the uh the geese and other uh birds. And sometimes there's also kind of back and forth uh in communication between farmers and uh geese who might tolerate them on their land or who might ask them to come to another piece of land where they are welcome and then not on the other piece of land. So um uh taking into account the actions of the geese and the voice of the geese that is sometimes a literal voice when they are making sounds or um uh uh collectively uh making sounds or acting, and which is sometimes more of a symbolic voice when they simply uh sit somewhere. And it's the same in the human case, you know, humans also squat houses, or uh we had the occupy movement where uh humans would not really voice alternatives but simply occupy a certain space in order to protest economic uh things. So um taking seriously the geese in this process is of course necessary for reasons of justice. It's uh uh um you can't shoot the geese, but it's also important to um uh yeah, to speak about it in a in a normal way and and not simply uh and and also respect their claims to the territory. I mean that sort of that differs from situation to situation. You can't say they're welcome everywhere because in some spaces it's unsafe for them, and in other spaces it's just it harms others. So you need to sort of make an analysis of every space. Um, but there are geese biologists that uh show that geese have an extraordinary learning uh capacity. They have also cultural learning, so they can tell others about the situation. So you can uh engage with them democratically and uh and come to better solutions. This, of course, means that humans need to uh uh change their attitude, which is a huge um uh problem, I think, because humans are not really willing to do that, but we're also going to have to do it in relation to the to the climate crisis and ecological threats that um now pose a very big problem for humans. So it's going to have to happen anyway, but that could take a while. Um, and I think that precisely through revising these encounters with other animals, we can learn it, you know, and it's also there's a lot that we can learn from the other animals, specifically about sharing the land, uh um living on the planet in a way that is that is more just. And the example of the geese is just it's it's not very there, there's not really an alternative yet. But I think it does show that the encounters are uh political, that they can be done uh differently, and that again this begins with uh taking seriously their perspective on the question.

SPEAKER_01: 42:36

I think this is uh absolutely fascinating because here again we kind of get to the idea that voice is not just what I say, but also what I do and the spaces I occupy, which I think is really profound and and the play of space in kind of politics, I think is really interesting uh and and something that I know geographers have done a fair bit to unpack, but where there's a lot more attention, as you said, and attentiveness to why are particular animals in particular spaces without reducing it to some sort of, I don't know, instinct or physiological kind of explanation that doesn't take into account their their culture and the reasons why they might choose this. And you you mentioned the the the climate crisis, you know, um environmentalists for the longest time have been saying, well, animals are moving in different ways because they're responding to kind of heat and different changes. And had we listened in a different way, maybe maybe we would be talking about politics in a in a kind of uh altered way here. And again, with with with with listening, I mean we've spoken about it on the show before, but the speed with which killing is the option or the choice, and this talks to what you were saying about time, taking more time before you react to something. Killing is just so regularly the the the solution, which it strikes me as as bizarre. Surely in in human cases, we would choose to kill even you know, killing is I would hope, in in the the the last resort. Of course, that's not always the case. And I don't know, maybe this killing is a symptom of exactly what you're talking here: a lack of listening, a lack of trying to attend to what different animals need. I suspect here though that one kind of retort or or pushback on this idea would be well, how do we start to navigate the multitude of animals' claims, uh political claims, their political voices, they're not always in alignment. Um, how do we respond to different animals laying claim to the same space, for example? Um or is that completely the wrong way to ask the question? Should we not be saying it's not up to us to always determine who gets claim to a space?

SPEAKER_04: 44:49

Yeah, I think I I was thinking that as you were saying it, I think there are two uh two um answers uh and both options need to be, and and and both answers sort of are are are important. So, on the one hand, of course, as humans, we have uh a responsibility to make certain decisions uh because we now occupy all the land of or most of the land that also belongs to the other animals. So we need to think about how to give it back to them and how to uh I don't know, uh reduce our footprint to sort of use a weird uh uh sentence, uh uh but also to um discuss with each other how we can change our attitude and take a step back. I mean it's not it's very easy to say, okay, my life is already multi-species, so that's uh that's a the uh a different starting point now as humans, um, and also if we are going to transform existing political systems, the humans need to begin to transform it because uh we are so um for dominating uh the the complete planet. So, yes, there's definitely a responsibility to think about these questions and to look at existing relations, historical relations uh with other animals, and some things are very easy to uh establish, and other questions are much harder. But there will also be there will also come up new questions uh in the in the process uh and relationships with other animals will change a lot once we start stop hurting and uh killing them, so they will be able to respond to our questions in in new and unpredictable ways. Uh so but I do think that, for example, we spoke about deliberative democracy um uh before, and um I'm not saying I'm a deliberative democrat, but I do think that I am in a certain way, and also because I take seriously the relationship between language and and politics, and also see the encounters that we have with other animals as dialogues and as uh or or think that we can see some of these encounters as dialogues and that they can inform existing practices. So um when we think about the human responsibility, I think that one of the things that we can do as a first step in transforming political systems is to take seriously existing encounters, first of all, the type of the geese that I spoke about before, but also, for example, research that's being done in animal sanctuaries where animals are not seen as passive recipients of human care, but really as co-citizens, co-beings that uh determine the uh day-to-day life, but also the setup uh of the sanctuary in terms of government and whatever uh other questions are connected to um uh living with others. I think that these kinds of insights can also inform existing official settings of um uh of politics. And that can be a first step, right? To sort of connect these different layers of conversation uh that already exist. This also shows us that um it's not a fiction uh doing multi-species politics. There are already, on the one hand, conflicts, but on the other hand also sort of proposals and other ways of living with other animals that uh that makes sense. Maybe we can discuss Len Howard also uh briefly hereafter. But the second answer that I would give is that when you think about determining what kind of rights animals should have, or claims to space, or how to how to share the space with others, it's very important to realize that also, as you said, in the case of humans, these questions are not fixed. And I think precisely when it comes to voice. So when I was uh a teenager, when I was 13 or 14, I began to write songs and sing them, and this was very fundamental to me. I needed to do it because I um felt like my I needed this form of expression also to be able to take up space in a world that was somehow hostile towards my expression, and of course, I didn't think about it in these terms precisely, but thinking back now, because I think that the physical voice I've I've always been a singer, so I've always that's also one of the reasons I think I came to uh to to this this um concept of voice, and it's um uh but when you start to perform songs on a stage when you are young, you know, you also get a lot of sexism, and it's it's a weird industry and a strange. So it's it's um I think that that also from a very personal level I felt that um I needed to you need to kind of conquer the world all the time, and uh your voice can be a um uh a tool in this uh or something, and when and that also questions the we who are granting something to some kind of other because I think that for me the we has always been me and the other animals, and then the humans sort of come after, you know. So um when I'm thinking of of making space, it's not as a human for animals, but it's more me and a certain group of animals that try to uh live, yeah. In not in yeah, maybe live in peace, but also in um freedom or in um uh it's very basic. I mean, there uh in a sense many of the systems that we are um taking sort of that we are so used to as as humans are in some sense uh violent, and uh and that's not the way it has to be. It can be different, and the uh dealing with others can be a source of comfort and uh make your world much richer, and that's that's a different kind of narrative, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 51:32

For sure. And and yeah, I know I I like that you also you you kind of constantly bring in history and your own experience, and that this isn't something, you know, we're not studying animals at arm's length. It's not to say that we can't look at animals or understand animals who aren't in our immediate surroundings either, but that we inhabit the world with other animals and and like you said earlier in the interview, it's not that we're giving them voice as much as starting to acknowledge that we've always been in relation with with a variety of animals and that these relationships have always been political. Um, but how do we start to, I think, uh, like you said, attend to and take seriously. This is not just um, you know, uh fancies. These are these are real conversations and really important matters for animals themselves, for their, you know, for their bodily integrity, for their ability to have their own cultures, uh, and and for us too, to kind of imagine a world that is less violent, that that has more space for more interactions and possibly less interactions with with fewer interactions with other animals. Maybe that they don't want to interact with us. And and I think this conversation has just really highlighted for me how significant voice is as a as a fulcrum, as a as a as a point for any animal study scholar to really take seriously that voice is not just the the sounds that animals make, but the political claims and our political reactions to them, which I think is really powerful. And in kind of bringing it back to the season of animals and sound, I think, and and having this kind of political lens that you've started bringing here, it makes me think about the silences as well, the the spaces where we're no longer hearing humans, uh humans, yes, and and animals, the the exclusions, the the silences in our political systems, the silences in our environments. Uh, and I think this also speaks to some of the interdisciplinarity you were talking about earlier, that that some of the ethologists and ecologists have spoken to earlier in the season have all of them have said the world is getting quieter in many, many places. And this is this is something really important that some voices are heard and not heard, some voices are enabled and not enabled, and some voices have gone silent and are and have no longer opportunities to be heard. And I think, yeah, this is really thank you so much. You've you've given me so much to think of here, like voice and um it's not just for I mean physiological voices, I think really fascinating. So I don't want to use the word just, but yeah, anyway, I'm going all over the place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 54:07

Yeah, and I'm I'm also thinking that sometimes the um because I wanted to say something about Elena Howard who studied uh birds, because I think that's very connected also to what you are uh saying now. Um uh Howard was a violinist, so she uh and she was interested in bird sounds in uh music, and she um uh uh wanted to study birds in the 1950s, and at that time both the birds were mostly studied in laboratories and um uh um in in uh experiments in which they were kept from other birds, and and Howard thought this is not right because they uh are social beings and they need to be able to fly, so I should study them in their own uh habitats. Um, and she uh bought a cottage in Ditchling and uh decided to um uh to open her windows and um uh just sort of see how it how it would go. But her idea was to uh study their songs, and she did. So she wrote that down and she had very good ears because she was a musician. But what happened was that she got to know the birds, uh she made friends with them. One of the things that uh happened really early on when she only had lived there for a couple of months was that there were two uh blue tits uh coming into her kitchen, and um uh the female was really um uh uh like this, like, oh um you need to come, you know, making nervous movements. And um, so she followed the birds, and then it turned out that the uh lid or the the the thing uh um uh the the nesting box uh uh fell down, something happened, and the eggs had fallen out or something. Uh and uh and she fixed it. So she put it back and and uh knew how to fix it, and that and the eggs were still um whole, so that that was good. But for her, that was kind of the realization that yes, they sing, and you can map that and you can write it down, but they're actually talking to each other, and um that sort of opened up a new way of uh studying them, writing about their personalities, their relationships with one another, their love affairs, everything that went wrong in their lives and that went well. And they um and she also writes how they learn her language and her tone of voice and her habits, and um this was a whole sort of and I like the example also because she never domesticated the birds, they were free to go. Some stayed their whole lives, others just uh went away after a season or even one day. Uh, and there was cultural learning as well. So the birds took their uh their children to her and um uh told her, okay, this is uh taught them this is a nice human and uh you can get food here and you can ski on her pillow and uh uh do things in her hair. And so there was this um, and I think it's a very good example of how sound and an attentiveness to sound of others can be uh can can open up a whole new world. And this is I think also something that music uh does, but in a in a different way.

SPEAKER_01: 57:11

Uh but yeah, so that's one of the that's a beautiful example, and I think the I think uh mean Carl Safina's written a bit about this, and I think the internet is awash with just examples of animals seeking out humans to say, I've got a fish hook stuck here, or I'm stuck in a net, or um, you know, there's a problem come. And we watch these m videos and we marvel at them. I mean, we're sad because of the destruction that we see in them, but we also marvel at them in that we realize in those videos that one, animals are watching us too, and they're listening to us. They've they've realized that we perhaps have skill sets that they could use or that we could help them with, and that they are keen for connection. Uh and this for me is I'm funny, I've actually I've got goosebumps now. I think it's one of the sometimes the the tragic things to goodness, I'm getting like emotional about it. Um, one of the tragic things to to contend with because they make themselves so vulnerable. They so often say, Hi, um, can you help me? or like let's connect, or they they look at you. And I think the we marvel at those videos because it is it's beautiful. Um, and I think it makes me sad because it's also yeah, there's there's just so much goodness, there's so much trouble in the world too. Um, I can tell you now that this is a first. I've never cried during an interview. Um, but that it just yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 58:37

No, but it's true, and yeah. Yeah, I know completely what you mean. And it's also the kind of day-to-day things that you witness when there's a a dog and a human, and you kind of see the dog wanting to do the right thing, and the human just either not attending to it or even being uh mean about it, and it's with farmed animals as well, you know. It's and and I think that's that's also why we should keep doing what we do, uh and uh and keep explaining this to others and connecting it to the larger discourse. I mean it's always this is uh always something that I I end my uh talks with, you know. We are very uh fortunate to have these other animals to show us the way, you know, and it's never a matter of them having to learn something because they are already speaking and they are already doing all of these things, and it's uh and it is very vulnerable, and it's something that's is sometimes easy to forget when you read about numbers or be it in the context of climate crisis or animal agriculture or laboratory animals or whatever, these are all these individuals, and that's also with me. The fact I'm living now with those uh laboratory mice. Um I've won. Group that uh has been with me for one and a half years. There's uh three of them left, and I have a new group of nine. Uh, they are very wild, I call them the white devils. Um, but it's uh living with them and learning about their practices of care, their uh personalities, uh, the ways in which they help each other, the ways in which they learn about life, because they've not they were just put in a box, laboratory box when they were really young and and were there for months, and then they came to live with me. So they have no uh culture or social context. Um, but it's again made it very clear to me that it's much worse than we think it is because they are full beings, they have they are they have their own community, they have their own perspectives, they have deep feelings about things, they have a lot of ways in which they communicate things to me and to each other. Um and uh it's uh and there are so many of them, so it's uh yeah, it can be it's a difficult reality.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:07

It can be hard to sometimes, I think when when you really start to appreciate that they are individuals and they've got opinions on the world, and and sometimes the the callousness with which those are disregarded, I think can sometimes be hard. But as you've spoken about a lot through through today's episode, deliberation is a duty, I think something we should be doing, but it can also be a joy. It can be a real joy to to interact and to to view um and and and to take this type of responsibility and to acknowledge voice, I don't think has to be viewed as something that's somehow deficient. Uh, you know, throughout the interview today, you've mentioned numerous animals who are in your life and who've shaped your world. And and I know I've got lioness in my life and and a variety of animals who I interact, I saw squirrel running on the tree earlier, and I had to say hello. Like the squirrel can't hear me, yet somehow I said hello. It felt it's a joy to be in the world with them. And I think that acknowledging their voices is really, as you've said, it's it's it's a political thing and it's rightfully a political thing. But before I get uh too derailed, um perhaps we can switch now to talking about uh your quote. I I know you said at the beginning in the green room that you've you've got a poem instead of a quote today, which I think will be lovely.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:23

Yeah, I I actually have two poems. Um, also because I wanted to I think that that being attentive to different ways in which we as humans create meaning uh helps with learning about animals. And I think that human language is um uh uh sometimes sort of seen as one block, and of course there are different languages, and I mean English is not my first language, so I'm already translating uh myself in a sense, but I also think that for academics and uh students it's wise to um wise and also nice and and and enriching, but also important to think about other ways in which language can teach us things because it's it's the same uh with uh animals as well. So the first uh poem is by uh Stefan Thamerson, he's a Polish world, a Polish British uh poet, filmmaker, philosopher, uh person who did many things. And it's called We Are All of Us Guests on This Planet. We are all of us guests on this planet, and with guests, you know how it is. Some are nice and some are tiresome, and some behave as if they were hosts, and even as they die, believe that they have owned the sun and the air and the history that took place even before they were born. I think that's a really nice description of uh uh philosophical tradition, in a sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:02

Whoa, that's amazing. Because I was literally imagining a dinner party and kind of starting to think about the different people, and some are also just enjoyed to have at the party, some are just there to party, which is that's a great quote.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:15

And I think for animals it's the same, right? I mean, some animals are are really polite, and others are just like, you know, whatever, this is my uh space. Uh and then the the second uh poem is by E. E. Cummings. It's from a book that's called uh 73 Poems, it's his last uh collection, I think, and this is number 43. May I be gay like every lark who lives his life from all the dark, who wings his why beyond because and sings an if of day to yes. And this is one that people should maybe read, because you can spend some time with it. But the idea of um singing an if of day to yes is I think very hopeful. I mean it has in it the sort of you know, sometimes you get up in the morning and you think, oh god, it's another day. And then it's it's the bird that sings, and you think, yes, we are both entering this new day, and that is hard because life is hard, but it's also hopeful because it's a new day and we are singing it together.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:29

That's beautiful, and and yeah, um, to make an if a yes, I think is powerful also in terms of the the political projects we've been speaking about today. So instead of talking about if animals can speak, yes, they can speak. Instead of talking about if we could make a more just world for animals, yes, let's make a more just world for animals. I think that the the the shift from if to yes is a really powerful, powerful one in many ways. Um and yeah, I really love that. Uh and and again, the idea of singing, I've I've been meaning to say throughout the the episode today. I watched one of your videos with your your doggo, um, and he went on a train ride. And I I don't understand Dutch. I know I grew up in South Africa, but my Afrikaans is not good enough to do those multiple translations. Um, but I watched the video, and and I think this says a lot about what you've been saying about language and understanding. I didn't necessarily understand the words you were saying, but I understood the tone of the video, and I watched as your your dog woke up and was in your bed and then munching some food on the table and on the train. I think the train ride shots were my favorites. His his absolute contentedness on on the train and then standing, you know, on the beach. And and it was just a beautiful, I think, ode to him. That's how I interpreted it as as him saying yes to that day, right? Saying he he yeah, I just thought it was such a romantic, beautiful song. Uh and and and I just wanted to encourage listeners to really go over to your website and watch some of these videos because there are that was listening to him without without without kind of reducing listening to kind of only having to hear a voice, um, or or maybe like we've spoken about today, lifting voice from only being my my voice box, but voice being a much bigger, more meaningful thing.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:29

Yeah, I think so. I think that's uh uh that's certain um and it's also uh you can see it in in in the in the video, but also I think when you simply begin to pay attention to the other animals uh that live in your neighborhood or that try to do something. Um I when I lived in Amsterdam and I live in a smaller town near Amsterdam, but when I lived in Amsterdam, there were a lot of pigeons um in my garden and watching them, watching their relationships um uh is that had a certain poetry to it, but it was also um yeah, learning about their voice and about their uh position in society without interfering with them or uh being too too obvious uh about it. So thank you for saying that about uh the video and for um pointing out that there are many ways of learning about others.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:42

And and I think the my word that I'm really enjoying these days is centrifugal, kind of the idea of pushing out from is I don't know the extent to which I can be attentive to all beings I encounter all the time. Um that might be hard, but the the absolute shift with which the way I see the world has I mean, I I became, I think, vegan now some four or five years ago, and that seemed as though it was just a political project in terms of what was on my plate. But kind of the strands from which that has opened in terms of how I view my relationships, not only with other animals, but with other humans and with other products and with other commodities, um, has been massive. And it's even the early days of it versus now, kind of the beginning it was I didn't want to cause violence, and now it's more a matter of seeing animals as really whole beings, something you've spoken of. So watching your pigeons or looking at your dog or marveling at the ants crawling up your wall is not just a matter of seeing those individuals, and they deserve to be seen and interacted with, but that that has the potential to completely alter and shift some of the dichotomies and some of the foundations of the way you understand the world, the way you interact with the world, and that could have ripple effects, uh, which are very hopeful, I think. Um so thank you so much for all of the work you do in helping us create ripple effects, positive ripple effects. We're closing, we're starting to round up the interview now. Um I don't know if there's anything uh else you want to add, but perhaps also telling us a little bit about a little bit more about what you're working on now and if folks are interested in learning more about your work uh where they could go to do so.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:28

I think that we've been talking for a very long time, so uh our listeners will now think let's end the conversation. So I will I will leave it at this. People can go to my website and uh new things will always appear on there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:44

Okay, excellent. Well, uh, thank you so much for being uh such a generous gift uh gift. Thank you for being a gift and thank you for being a guest.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:54

Well, thank you very much, and I think that in terms of ripple effects, uh, this podcast is also one of the things that can help people change their views about their own life, about the animals and uh the other things that matter.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:14

Hi Hannah, welcome back to the Animal Time Podcast. Hello, it's great to be back. So I know that you're gonna be speaking to us about uh dolphins today, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:28

Yeah, so I thought I was thinking about animals who have who we know have quite strong kind of communication um skills that we've kind of that scientists have studied and wanting to highlight some kind of cool uh communication and and voices amongst animals. So I came to to dolphins.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:50

Um that's so cool. And they do, they make such a distinctive sound, don't they? Um I went snorkeling in Mozambique actually, and we got really lucky. We we were surrounded by a pot of dolphins, and I'd never snorkeled before, so my ability to actually see was unbelievable. But we were in relatively shallow water and they were just swimming under us, and I heard them long before I I saw them, and they yeah, it was they really are very they really do communicate a lot, so um yeah, I'm looking forward to what you have to say.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:22

Yeah, so one thing I have never been lucky enough to hear dolphins in person, but I've heard their voices before, kind of on you know, TV shows and and online and things like that. And one thing that I found interesting is that dolphins don't have vocal cords, um, they make their sounds through their blowholes. And there's a few different so so one theme of this animal highlight is there is so much we don't know about dolphin sound. Um, and there are all these different hypotheses of how dolphins make their sound, because we've never actually been able to observe kind of the inside of a dolphin while it's making its noise. And so there is one hypothesis which is a nasal sac theory, which is that there are three pairs of air sacs located underneath the blowhole. And after the dolphin takes a breath, it closes its blowhole and the air returns from the lungs into the channel leading to the blowhole into one of those air sacs. So complicated.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:31

Wait, wait, wait, that's really wait, that's confusing. Hang on. So you're saying there's a there's there's some possibly some sort of sack by the blowhole, and air is passing between the lungs and the blowhole, and that's kind of that click sound we hear. Is that kind of they're controlling that that pressure or that movement of air?

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:50

They plug the the air sacs and release them, and then that's through the blowhole, and that's kind of what makes the sound this contracting. Um, and it's similar to filling up a balloon and then squeezing the end to let out the air. And then there are some other hypotheses too, but that's kind of the mainly accepted one. And so dolphins have all of these different ways that they communicate, and the the kind of sounds made through the blowhole are one, but they also are quite proficient in kind of body language as a way of communicating, and also because of the kind of consistency of water, um, using like their bodies to kind of send waves to each other kind of through the water as kind of a way of communicating, which is really cool. And obviously, dolphins are some of these animals that really capture our commun our imagination, and we think of them as being quite intelligent, and for that reason, there's been quite a lot of research into how dolphins communicate with each other and ways of kind of decoding their language and kind of trying to speak dolphin, and people haven't gotten that far with that. There's been kind of some research about the idea that they might giggle to each other, which is kind of quite cute, and also some recent research has shown that uh dolphins learn languages in a similar way that we do. So um babies will kind of babble, like dolphin babies will babble like human babies babble as they're kind of learning the language.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:33

So they don't quite get it right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:37

Yeah, they don't quite get it right, they just kind of try out different things, and it's not kind of for many months until they get kind of proficient in dolphin language. Um so that's really cool too. And yeah, and so hopefully, kind of as as dolphin language study develops, we'll get to kind of have a better idea about how proficient how animals in general communicate with each other and kind of this more nuanced understanding that they're not necessarily just kind of saying, Oh, you know, I want I want food or or I I want to reproduce, but that there is a lot more more nuance in that too, which I think is one of the things that uh you talked about in this interview too. You know, we can't just kind of boil down animal communication to these really sort of survivalist understandings that um they really are incredible. And I think one of the things that I found really interesting when I was kind of doing this kind of you know, quick research into it is that dolphin communication, the way they communicate in captivity is very different to how dolphins communicate in the wild. Um, and so there is these very different sounds. So dolphins in captivity will make a lot more sounds above water because they're also kind of trying to communicate with the humans too. Whereas dolphins in the wild, much more of their sounds are made underwater. So I think that's really interesting too, and thinking about how dolphins communicate with us as well and things that they might be trying to communicate to us.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:09

Yeah, they're trying to figure it out too. Because they're they're social beings and they're they're figuring out how to communicate in the places that they are, right? So who's in those places, which is really and how and how do they get heard, I guess. Um, like how do how do we start to take seriously what they're asking for? So uh thank you so much for the the highlight today, Hannah. I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, that's it, everybody. Thank you to Ava for being a fantastic guest, to Hannah Hunter for a wonderful animal highlight, to Jeremy John for the logo, and Gordon Clark for the bed music. And thank you as always to Animals and Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics for sponsoring this podcast, and to the SAP Lab and Sonic Arts Studio for sponsoring this season.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:01

This is the Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hurtenfelder For more great iRule podcasts, visit irulpod.com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.