Understanding how elephants experience time might change how we protect them

Understanding how elephants experience time might change how we protect them

Khatijah Rahmat, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Germany, says she's trying to build legitimacy around the concept of animal temporality — the ability to experience time — specifically in elephants. Doing so could have implications for conservation and beyond.

"How we envision an animal's relationship to time influences whether we see them as feeling, remembering beings. My aim is to encourage a more dynamic view of their place in the world when we recognize them as equally temporal beings."

This week on the Mongabay Newscast, Rahmat explains three key areas of evidence for interpreting elephant temporal experience and how this knowledge could be folded into how we think about protecting elephants or animals in general.

"I think it increases the depth of empathy we can have for animals," she says. "It can really push the concepts of policy … but it also can really challenge some of our current, basic assumptions about how we think about logic and evidence."

Image credit: An elephant that has just wallowed in mud in the Linyanti River in northern Botswana. Image by Roger Borgelid for Mongabay.

Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast, here.

——

Timecodes

(00:00) Why study how animals experience time?

(06:58) Elephant eco-cultural identity

(11:58) Human-impacted time

(27:03) Individual elephant history

(34:44) Getting hit with a pineapple is no accident

(39:30) How this might help conservation

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(360)

A 'coalition of the willing' to urge the world to drop fossil fuels

A 'coalition of the willing' to urge the world to drop fossil fuels

A group of 57 nations mostly from the Global South, describing themselves as "coalition of the willing" intent on making the Transition Away From Fossil Fuels, or TAFF, convened in the Colombian city ...

2 Kesä 33min

Australia claims it's 'on track' to meet its environment targets. Scientists disagree

Australia claims it's 'on track' to meet its environment targets. Scientists disagree

Australia is one of 17 "megadiverse" countries that account for 70% of Earth's biodiversity. However, Australia is unique in having the highest mammalian extinction rate in the world. That makes cons...

26 Touko 42min

The world must address pandemic threats urgently, says former CDC officer

The world must address pandemic threats urgently, says former CDC officer

"[The]cruel irony here [is] that the world cannot get its act together to address these threats … people are dying, animals are suffering, we're losing rainforest … these are all interconnected threat...

19 Touko 35min

Protest works, but it needs your help now more than ever, veteran activists say

Protest works, but it needs your help now more than ever, veteran activists say

"We are experiencing what some people call sort of a shutdown of the public square in the United States and around the world," says veteran environmental activist André Carothers. Along with the forme...

12 Touko 51min

A new Netflix documentary captures rare mountain gorilla behavior

A new Netflix documentary captures rare mountain gorilla behavior

"That might be something that you see in a decade, not in two years of filming," Tara Stoinksi, CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, tells me. The behavior she's referring to occurs in mountain gorill...

5 Touko 38min

Centering an Indigenous approach to forestry through reciprocity, not extraction

Centering an Indigenous approach to forestry through reciprocity, not extraction

Forester and scientist Suzanne Simard is well known for her landmark 1997 paper, which demonstrated that two distinct species of trees could share resources. At the time, it turned traditional Western...

28 Huhti 41min

Across oceans, seabird flyways gain recognition — and a chance at protection

Across oceans, seabird flyways gain recognition — and a chance at protection

The routes taken by migratory birds, known as flyways, often cross vast expanses of ocean. Six of these marine flyways have now been formally recognized by the U.N.'s Convention on Migratory Species,...

21 Huhti 28min

The coyotes next door: What we get wrong about America's 'song dog'

The coyotes next door: What we get wrong about America's 'song dog'

Coyotes are now present in almost every major urban-metropolitan area in the United States, yet conflicts between the canines and humans are exceptionally low. Between 1960 and 2006, only 146 docume...

14 Huhti 44min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
rss-hereilla
utelias-mieli
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-totuuden-liepeilla
tiedekulma-podcast
rss-radplus
docemilia
filocast-filosofian-perusteet
rss-laakaripodi
rss-tiedetta-vai-tarinaa
university-of-eastern-finland
sotataidon-ytimessa
radio-antro
rss-bios-podcast
rss-poliisin-mieli
rss-ilmasto-kriisissa
rss-ylistys-elaimille
rss-kasvikutsut