Learn about how dolphins and whales may experience the world as a group; why you go blind thousands of times a day; and why kids are more prone to grudges than gratitude. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Dolphins and Whales Might Experience the World as a Group — https://curiosity.im/31UId1v You Go Blind Thousands of Times a Day Thanks to Saccadic Masking — https://curiosity.im/31K7FqF Grudges Come More Easily to Kids Than Gratitude — https://curiosity.im/31Crlwq Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about how dolphins and whales may experience the world as a group; why you go blind thousands of times a day; and why kids are more prone to grudges than gratitude.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/gratitude-must-be-learned-you-go-blind-every-day-and-passive-echolocation-of-dolphins
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how dolphins and whales may experience the world as a group; why you go blind thousands of times a day; and why kids are more prone to grudges than gratitude.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Dolphins and Whales Might Experience the World as a Group — https://curiosity.im/31UId1v (from Saturday 8/31) (Cody)
If you didn’t already think that dolphins and whales are cool, then wait’ll you hear this: they might experience the world as a group. Dolphins (and other creatures that use echolocation) may share a bond that's beyond our human understanding. Here’s the science behind this speculation. Dolphins and whales both thrive in the dark depths of the ocean. And the reason they do so well is because they evolved to use echolocation to perceive objects around them. That means the sea mammals emit high-pitched clicking noises that are focused into a sound beam by passing through a fatty part of the forehead called the melon. If the sound beam hits something, it's reflected back and received by another fat deposit in the animal's lower jaw, then transmitted to the ears. The returning sound beam carries a ton of information back with it; the size and speed of the beam can tell the echolocator how far away an object is, how big it is, how fast it’s moving, what direction it’s moving, and how dense it is. Dolphins can echolocate an object as small as a golf ball more than 90 meters away, and the clicks of both dolphins and whales can travel a distance many kilometers away. All that data likely makes the echolocated things as vivid and real as the way we humans see them. What's more, studies have shown that dolphins can eavesdrop on each other's echolocation calls, which leads the eavesdropping animal to experience the object in the same way as the echolocator. Because of this, psychologist Harry Jerison theorized that eavesdropping, also known as passive echolocation, might lead dolphins to share a "social cognition" where they experience the world as a group. He wrote that, quote, "The communal experience might actually change the boundaries of the self to include several individuals," unquote. In other words, dolphins, as well as other echolocators, may share a bond that's beyond our human understanding. And there is other evidence for dolphins and whales having an advanced level of social and emotional intelligence. Some cetacean species (including some whales and dolphins) have a special type of neuron related to emotions and social interaction, called spindle cells. These neurons are commonly thought of as a uniquely human feature that sets Homo sapiens and some non-human primates apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Neuroscientists suggest that animals with especially large brains are more likely to develop spindle cells as a fast-track for responding to emotional cues. These neurons serve as the physical wiring for empathy and social intelligence, so their presence in whales and dolphins suggest that these animals have a capacity to feel for others. So maybe we could learn a thing or two from these sensitive sea mammals — at least, when it comes to basic human decency.
[alternate: For example, some dolphin and whale species have a special type of neuron that serve as physical wiring for empathy and social intelligence. That suggests the animals have a capacity to feel for others. So maybe we could learn a thing or two from these sensitive sea mammals — at least, when it comes to basic human decency.] [ad lib]
You Go Blind Thousands of Times a Day Thanks to Saccadic Masking — https://curiosity.im/31K7FqF (from Saturday 8/31) (Ashley)
You go blind for 40 minutes every day without even realizing it. Seriously! I’m talking about Saccadic masking, which is a thing that’s pretty important to have. Without it, our world would be a constant blur and we’d pretty much be dizzy and motion sick all the time.
See, when you think about it, motion and human vision don’t mix well. Objects in motion look like blurs, and when you’re moving quickly, everything around you starts to blur. Theoretically, the world should blur every time your eyes move. See the problem?
So the human brain has evolved to prevent constant blurring. The brain shuts off visual processing while your eyes are in motion, and restarts it once they're still again.
That brief window of eye motion when your glance is darting from one thing to another lasts about 50 milliseconds, or about a thousandth of a second. That blip of time is called the “saccade,” and during the saccade, we can miss even major visual events, like a flash of light. Less than a second of blindness might not sound very serious, but keep in mind that these tiny bursts of blindness happen thousands of times a day. That’s just the price we pay to avoid chronic motion sickness.
The thing is, there’s always a gap between what you perceive yourself to "see" and the raw visual data that actually enters your eyeballs. Before you "see" anything, your brain integrates data from both eyes into one picture, compensating as well as possible for your natural blind spots and the fact you see much better in the center of your vision, or the fovea, than you do at the sides. With Saccadic masking, your brain just takes a little more control of the visual editing than usual — and on top of that, your brain edits your perception of time, too. It essentially edits out the break in your vision.
We trust our eyes a lot, so it's hard to believe that we just THINK our day-to-day vision is continuous. In reality, it’s secretly full of holes. What a real-EYE-zation!
[NHTSA - DRUGS]
CODY: Today’s episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
ASHLEY: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed. But let’s take a moment to look at some surprising statistics.
CODY: Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes.
That’s one person every 50 minutes.
ASHLEY: Even though drunk-driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades,
drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year. And many people are unaware that driving while high can be just as dangerous.
CODY: In 2015, 42% of drivers killed in crashes tested positive for drugs. Not so harmless after all, is it? And get this, from 2007 to 2015, marijuana use among drivers killed in crashes doubled.
ASHLEY: The truth is driving while high is deadly. So, stop kidding yourself. If you’re impaired from alcohol or drugs, don’t get behind the wheel.
CODY: If you feel different you drive different. Drive high get a DUI.
ASHLEY: Drive sober or get pulled over.
Grudges Come More Easily to Kids Than Gratitude — https://curiosity.im/31Crlwq (Republish) (Cody)
Research suggests that grudges come more easily to kids than gratitude. Though fortunately, it seems it’s easy for kids to LEARN gratidude. This research concerns the idea of direct reciprocity — that’s when you pay back those who have helped you in the past. Direct reciprocity has evolved as a moral foundation of how humans interact with each other. This may lead you to expect that it should come naturally to young children. But as reported by The Conversation, recent experiments suggest quite the opposite.
Researchers designed a couple experiments to test positive and negative direct reciprocity.
For positive reciprocity, researchers designed a simple computer game for 4 to 8-year-olds, where children interacted with four avatars they were told were other children. Initially all the "other children" received a sticker, except for the child. Then one of the players gave their sticker to the child.
Next, the child received a second sticker which they could give to one of the other players. The expectation was that the child would return the favor and give a sticker to their prior benefactor. That one avatar gave the kid a sticker, so why not give one back? And yet! That’s not what the kids did.
The researchers then tested for the negative form of direct reciprocity with a different group of children playing a "stealing" version of the game.
Here, the child’s sticker was stolen by one of the four computer players. Later, the child had the chance to steal a sticker, and sure enough, the child retaliated when given the opportunity, snatching a sticker from the thief, with relish, in order to even the score.
But in one final study, a group of children was told a story of reciprocity prior to playing the same game as before. The control group heard a positive story not involving reciprocity.
It turned out children in the first group, who heard the reciprocity story, were much more likely to "pay back" the person who gave them a sticker, in kind. In other words, it seems young children must learn the principle of direct reciprocity before they apply it.
Perhaps, then, the reason there are so many fables about reciprocity isn't because the behavior comes naturally. Instead, we need the fables precisely because it doesn't.
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that dolphins and whales might experience the world as a group thanks to echolocation
CODY: And that you go blind thousands of times every day because your brain “edits out” blurry movement when your eyes move around
ASHLEY: And that kids have to learn gratitude; fortunately, there are plenty of stories to help them do just that
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!