#598: Primatologist Isabel Behncke on Play, Sexual Selection, and Lessons from Following Bonobos for 3,000 Kilometers in the Jungles of Congo

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Isabel Behncke (@IsabelBehncke) is a field primatologist and applied evolutionary ethologist who studies social behavior in animals (including humans) to understand our urgent challenges with each other and the planet.

Isabel grew up at the foothills of the Andes mountains in Chile, where she developed a life-long love for nature and wildness as well as culture and the arts. An explorer-scientist, she is the first South American to follow great apes in the wild in Africa. She walked more than 3,000 km (~1864 miles) in the jungles of Congo for her field research observing the social lives of wild bonobo apes, who, together with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives. Isabel documented how bonobos play freely in nature and has extended this research to study how human apes play—at Burning Man, other festivals, and in everyday life. Isabel has observed how play is at the root of creativity, social bonding, and healthy development, findings that have relevance in education, innovation, complex risk assessments, and freedom.

Isabel holds a BSc in Zoology and an MSc in Nature Conservation, both from University College London, an MPhil in Human Evolution from Cambridge University, and a PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology from Oxford University. She has won several distinctions for her public communication and knowledge integration, which range in formats from TED, WIRED, the UN, BBC, and Nat Geo to rural schools in Patagonia and traveling buses of schoolchildren in Congo. She is a senior fellow of the Gruter Institute, a TED fellow, and currently advises the Chilean government, working on long-term strategies in science, technology, innovation, and knowledge for Chile’s president. She can be found in Chile and New York City.

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[08:11] Baco and Jiro

[13:05] What is an applied evolutionary ethologist?

[15:43] Lorenz vs. Skinner

[18:23] The brilliance of consilience

[19:11] Humboldt vs. Darwin and the origins of evolutionary thinking

[29:42] Recent revolutionary thoughts about evolution

[36:16] Complexity and niche construction

[41:33] What’s more fun: a barrel of chimpanzees or a barrel of bonobos?

[49:19] Chimpanzee geography

[59:29] Magnificent bonobos

[1:02:11] Female mammal problems and solutions

[1:09:17] Sexual dimorphism

[1:12:18] Avoiding naturalistic fallacies

[1:13:52] How accurate is it to call the Congo the Heart of Darkness?

[1:18:24] Why are the Japanese so interested in animal behavior?

[1:21:23] Potato-washing monkeys

[1:23:28] Why do breakthroughs seem to come in clusters?

[1:28:29] Animals at play: the adaptive joker hypothesis

[1:38:59] The overlap between flow states and play

[1:41:39] What the natural world can teach humans about optimizing play

[1:43:43] The everlasting tango between energy and time

[1:47:19] Post-pandemic play

[1:50:09] How much do we understand about the way animals communicate?

[2:03:05] The drunken monkey hypothesis

[2:04:07] Parting thoughts

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