The Infinite Monkey Cage - Should We Pander to Pandas?

Episode Date: December 16, 2013

This week, Brian Cox and Robin Ince wonder if the world would be better off without spending an undue amount of time and energy trying to get giant pandas to mate and instead concentrated on saving species which let's face it, are a lot less cute but probably more important for the planet. Should we make a distinction between the organisms we want to save as opposed to those we need to save? The science and politics of biodiversity and conservation, explored and explained (sort of) with the help of Sandy Knapp, Simon Watt and comedian Sara Pascoe. Producer: Rami Tzabar.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcast. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And welcome to the podcast version of the Infinite Monkey Cage, which contains extra material that wasn't considered good enough for the radio. Enjoy it. On my left, a man who used to be that rarest of species,

the disco scientist. But now they're ten a penny. You can barely get Richard Dawkins to mention God nowadays. He's so busy either getting down low or bussing a wine with Melvin Bragg. Sick man. Yeah. Look at me, I'm twerking. It's Brian Cox. What does bussing a wine mean?

We have no idea what bussing a wine means. We were going to say bust a fat move with Richard Dawkins, but we realised that was probably very old language, so we wrote to Radio 1 Extra. Genuinely, we asked Radio 1 Extra. Brian Cox and I are both in our 40s. We're not really sure what bust a fat move would be nowadays. They wrote back saying, you've spelt fat with an F.

We were immediately feeling foolish. Anyway. But apparently this is what's said. Bus a wine. Bus a wine. So there we are, bus a wine. Frank, bus a wine. What is your definition?

Right. And on my right, you will always find him in the kitchen at parties. Great song, appropriately from the 1980s, that he's turned into a dress code. It's Robin Ince. Today we ask, is our love affair with the panda over? And we should make it clear that when we say

our, we mean humanity, not just Robin and me. We've not been keeping a panda in a secret love nest at a licence fee payer's expense, or at least we've submitted receipts for the bamboo and are therefore accountable. Is conversation

too often focused on the natural world's photogenic icons, or do polar bears and pandas provide an alluring gateway to a broader discussion about conservation? Is there any real point in human intervention to save what, let's face it, are a few pretty useless animals when so much of our current civilisation is defined

by destruction. Is there any way human progress will not be at odds with nature? We have a panel to help us decide. Simon Watt is a biologist, presenter of Channel 4's Inside Nature's Giants and a curator of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. He sees the goal as promoting diversity in ecosystems rather than focusing on the individual creature. The winner of their most recent ugliest animal poll was the blobfish, an animal impossible to describe on radio. If you haven't seen the blobfish,

basically it looks like the closing down sale of a candle shop, right? It is just the most... Sandy Knapp is a plant taxonomist and head of life sciences plant division at the Natural History Museum. On her latest trip to Brazil, she discovered five new species of plant and says that discovering a new species is better than having sex. The only thing that tops it is discovering a new plant while having sex. As I know from a time when I was courting a triffid.

Anyway. Sarah Pascoe is a comedian, writer and also a bear trapper, big game hunter and ivory collector. I'd like to apologise for this, Sarah, by the way. We know that you're none of those things, but the BBC said for balance we had to say that you were. As well as killing animals, she is also a vegan. That's the only bit that's true. As Sarah says, I never eat them, I just like to shoot them to see

their faces. And this is our panel. Simon, we'll start with you now. First of all, I mean, imagine, I want you to imagine a world without pandas. How would society change? imagine a world without pandas. How would society change? China would change a lot. Like a panda, wait for wit, is China's most expensive export. So pandas are big business. That's one of the strange things to get your head around. They've got a kind of monochrome charisma, which meant that we just love them. The reason why that's the WWF's logo, and this isn't a joke, this is genuinely serious, is because it's black and white. It saved them so much money in photocopying. This isn't a joke, this is genuinely serious. It's because it's black and white, it saved them so much money in photocopying.

That is honestly one of the reasons they picked it. But the reason why I suppose I found it interesting is because its greatest evolutionary advantage was that it does happen to look like a teddy, and that is the thing which has ensured its survival. What we're doing effectively is the cult of celebrity in the wild, in species. The next thing we have to look at when we think of pandas is that they are expensive. You know, they're the charismatic megafauna.

They cost an awful, awful lot. WWF, they're not stupid. They know exactly what they're doing. This is a poster boy, and it's a poster boy that works. So although they're using the panda as the way to grab the attention, they're actually using it to conserve the bamboo forests in China. And through doing

that, they're conserving the red panda and a whole host of other species. Well, as you say, it's quite a... The figures here, it costs £700,000 per year to keep a panda in a zoo. And of that, about £630,000 or so goes to the Chinese government. So it's rental. Panda rental.

It's really expensive. But as you say, they use that money to conserve the panda habitat because it's rental, panda rental. It's really expensive. But as you said, they use that money to conserve the panda habitat because it's such a valuable export. So joking aside, it's not a bad thing to conserve and promote and a way of generating money in order to conserve a habitat in China. We could take this a bit further because if we are going to start thinking that it is only famous because of how it looks, then that gets a bit patronising.

I don't know, I think it's fine by me. I'm not 700 grand a year, by the way, to the licence fee payer. There is sometimes sake to Ed in Brazil to try and impregnate, but you don't need to know about it. That's why he dyes the hair. Anyway, so... I would just rather

that we appeal to minds instead of just hearts, because we're missing and we're glossing over the extent of the problem in the world as it is. If we think of 200 species that are going extinct every single day, I'd rather protect some of the things that are rather useful or the things that we haven't even seen yet. Sandy, you're obviously involved in the world of plants, where, of course, there are plants in danger as well.

We're talking here about predominantly animals. But how do you think we could entice people to also realise the importance of that element of biodiversity? Well, the thing about plants is that people think of them as not behaving because they do things on a very different timescale to us. And one of the things about vertebrates is that they do things on basically exactly the same time scale as us. We can kind of understand what's happening.

They kind of saunter along and stuff. And insects go fast or slow and freak people out. But plants sort of just sit there. But if anyone's ever seen David Attenborough's Life of Plants and seen the bramble speed it up, plants behave in all kinds of ways. They turn towards the sun, they grow, they do all sorts of things. And I think it's a question of thinking about it as

an integrated whole. So I always try to describe the forest as sort of the fabric in which everything else is. And I mean, in a way, we kind of have it with the Amazon. The Amazon is like the panda. We all think the Amazon rainforest is absolutely fantastic, and the Amazon rainforest is absolutely fantastic. But there's lots of other habitats on Earth which are equally fantastic. And it's like kind of trying to say, which of your children do you love the most? Which is almost impossible. If you really sat down and said,

OK, I'm going to cull one of these kids. Maybe that's what it is, because it seems to me like, actually, this way of developing things is because this is the way to get most money out of people. So rather than saying this amount of species are going extinct every day, which seems like too big a problem, or all of these habitats, you focus on one thing and it seems doable. It's like saying you have to kill one of your children because you've got 16 million children and suddenly they don't care that much.

I'm entirely with Sarah, because actually this is something that whenever we have debates about this kind of stuff has come up an awful lot. But the thing is, the people who are going to have their hearts convinced are already convinced. They're on our sides. So we need to have the data for this stuff. We have to understand the information so we can convince corporations and politicians,

because they're the people who are really going to make the difference. But even more so, hearts are not always the best way to view it. Funny, Brian and I, we've been fighting about this backstage because I hate cats, right? Cats are rubbish because they're an ecological disaster. Like, at least 30 species... And pandas, your cards are on the table. Yeah, OK.

I have never heard such a deafening, dear Radio 4 in my head as I just heard at that point. But we can see there that that's an emotion thing. We like pets because we've evolved to be like this. We are a social animal, therefore we apply social animal laws to other animals. It doesn't mean it's good for the planet. No. So I have something like you, and it's very unpopular to say,

because I don't dislike cats, obviously. If one was to walk in, I would stroke it and think it was lovely. But I'm against domestication. And I think, I probably think, that it's better to be extinct than in a zoo. But I wonder, because you brought that up as well, and when I originally just scribbled down the question, why are you a vegan,

you can't ask that, because I know that you're normally asked it like this. Why are you a vegan? Eat this sausage roll. But I don't mean it like that. First of all, I tried it as an experiment, and I have to say that underlying all of it is a selfish thing, that if I found being a vegan difficult or made me feel ill, I would have stopped. And I had the exact opposite.

I became so full of energy all of a sudden, rather than the opposite, which is what you'd expect, and suddenly my digestion was so much better, so that's what's kept me doing it. So I have to say that, first of all, I'm not this martyr, miserable every day, crying into my hummus. I'm sprightly and... Then you can't eat it, can you? Because then it's got animal product in it. Oh, I've ruined

my own hummus with my own tears. Self-cannibalism of melancholy. That's the catch-22 of hedonism, yeah. But I guess, when I think about animals, and I think I have exactly the same feelings towards humans, I'm just trying to respect life as much as possible. I think, I probably think, that it's better to be extinct than in a zoo. Sandy, we're talking about conservation. Could you just, you mentioned the Amazon rainforest. Could you just set out the scale of the problem in terms of habitat destruction, in terms of why we should be concerned?

Well, so it depends on where you are. So I worked for a while in Paraguay, in the Chaco of Paraguay, which is not the Amazon. It's a dry forest. And so it's an area that's full of spines and people call it the green hell, but it's absolutely fascinating. And it was one of the places where a new mammal species was discovered quite recently, this kind of large peccary. And in the Chaco, an area seven football pitches is being deforested every day. And in the Chaco, an area of seven football pitches is being deforested every day. So pretty soon it's going to be completely gone, which is actually terrible.

It's terrible to think that all of that won't be there anymore. So there are half a million species of flowering plants, and we depend upon between 8 and 10 for 80% of our caloric intake. So we really don't use very much of the rest of the diversity of life on earth. But I kind of think that that's what feeds the human imagination. So that's where poetry comes from and novels and our imagination as humans comes from the diversity of life around us. Simon, it's interesting to explore that further. There are two ways you can argue about conservation. We've touched on them both. One is from an emotional standpoint or an aesthetic standpoint

or just this self-evident statement, I suppose, that it would be sad if this animal or this plant were lost forever. But then there's the practical point about biodiversity and what it really means for us practically. Yeah, I guess because both of them do matter. I think Margaret Atwood put it very, very well. She said if you want to save the planet, then you must love it. And I think she's on

to something there, which is where inspiring species do come in. They've got a role to play. It's half the reason why we should just talk about more of them actually, study biology more, so you can see how inspiring the stuff that isn't initially interesting is. But there's so much practicality. So the UN made an estimate back in 2008, I think it was,

and they say that threats to our biodiversity are now a bigger threat to international business than terrorism. Trillions of dollars. So for a start, you get these things called ecosystem services, which is a very ephemeral, dodgy kind of viewpoint, but basically means you cut down trees in a certain area, then you're eventually going to have flooding

because they're not keeping the water out of the area. There's a valley in China where they realised this. They worked out roughly the economic cost of so many people dying and flooding every year, which sounds like a very harsh way of doing it, but it works, believe me, and they just decided we're not going to deforest that hillside anymore. So there's that kind of aspect.

So then you've got the aspect of things like pollinators. I'm sure we've all heard in the news about all the issues that there are with bees. Flies are more common pollinators than bees and things. All the tiny little workers of the world, all the things that recycle dead stuff, they really, really matter. And it's going to have major impacts on us.

Because this is what we really have to focus on. What we have to appreciate here is that we are not going to be able to save everything. We have to look now where we can get the most biology for our buck. And there's so many cures and things. Again, there's an estimate by the US Cancer Research Institute that

70% of current anti-cancer promising drugs come from rainforest plants. So that's only one environment and plants. We're going to have to make tough choices. What we need to preserve is a dynamic planet because the planet has been changing. It's changing under our feet. I mean, it's changing

now. Things are changing and all the little bacteria that are under the carpet are multiplying and dividing and changing and the bacteria that's in our gut is changing. And so in a way, what we need to conserve is a planet that will be able to kind of sustain life,

and arguably perhaps our life, if we're going to be selfish about it, but that's what species are, is they're basically selfish about things, is we need to preserve a dynamic planet. And that doesn't mean having one of this and one of this and one of this and one of this. It's not like a shop where you can have each of these things.

It's more like you need to have a shop where you can go in and get lots of different stuff and that it all can help you live. Well, that's an interesting and rather less sentimental view of conservation, isn't it? Because conservation to many people, I think, will be, well, the polar bears or the pandas or whatever. As you said, the fluffy animals. But what you're really saying is that life changes, species come and go, they always have done. It's a very good thing that the dinosaurs were wiped out for us

60-odd million years ago. They would have been kind of nice, you know. So you're essentially making the case that what we need to preserve is the ability of the biosphere. So, I mean, in kind of big words, it's evolutionary potential. So, I. So I mean places where I mean I've been lots of places collecting plants and looking at things and I mean there are some groups of plants that I've studied recently like the wild relatives of the tomatoes for example. There's some of them you can't really figure out what the species are because they're still becoming species. They're still changing and they interbreed and

it's complicated and messy. So people often ask me as a taxonomist, okay, what are you going to do? You're going to name everything and then you can go home and have tea. But it's not like that. It's not like you can have a list of everything because it's in a way, it's an idea about how all of that variation, which is generated by natural selection among many other things, how that can be parceled up and how we can talk about it. And the only reason to parceled up and how we can talk about it and the only reason to name anything is to be able to talk about it really isn't perhaps the problem that it's very hard to engage people at all in this i mean sarah people will cry they'll cry if

you know a hairy bike has voted off strictly come dancing they'll you know they'll cry when the butler in downton abbey loses his leg to a ham slicer, whatever it might be. But actually, how do we engage in a much more important and far more tragic than an actor miming the loss of a leg? I think that's the thing. Actually, we have to acknowledge how selfish we are and how, actually, if our life seems unaffected by what else is going on, as in our physical generation, our own children,

I don't think... I may be just talking for myself. Maybe I can't talk for everybody, but I don't think people care that much or there isn't that much space in their day-to-day lives to care. Actually, this is another problem we have, is that most of the conservation movement is deeply anti-human. There's a general thing of animals good, humans bad. Oh, OK.

Now, I care about humans because most of my friends are humans. I actually think, again, that maybe perhaps some of the ways of addressing some of the world's biggest conservation problems are dealing with some of the best human problems. But humans are actually a really important part of a dynamic Earth. So let's think about the Amazon rainforest. We all think of it as being completely untouched and pristine. But in fact, there's lots and lots of evidence that humans have been in the rainforest, altering it, doing things to it, ever since they first arrived there between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. Not that long in the kind of grand scheme of things.

So like nomadic tribes would bring a species from somewhere else, so they would... Well, we're a weed. I mean, we're just a weed. We're like the Japanese knotweed of the mammal kind of thing. Great. Because, I mean, if you think, what do weeds do? They spread out and they take everything over. You know, bindweed in your garden smothers everything and kills it. And that's exactly what we as a species have done.

We're a weed. Simon, I'm interested in the argument that we've kind of skirted around, that it's in our self-interest to protect diversity in particular. It would appear to be that more diverse ecosystems tend to be more stable, so they're not ones that go as easy. Even ones that seem to have more parasites actually seem to be more stable. Also, the more species you have out there, the more of that biochemistry there is, the more natural things that there are to plumb and to act as resources. So preserving like the wild equivalents of things like the potato gives you diversity that you can use.

And again, we have to perhaps choose what we're going to do. So one of my favourite conservation schemes, I really love these guys, they're based at London Zoo and it's called the Edge of Existence Campaign. And edge stands for evolutionarily distinct, globally endangered. And they're effectively trying to catalogue life and work out where there's the most interesting stuff. What species is weird and has nothing else like it?

And let's focus on preserving that. Well, that's preserving evolutionary diversity. So if you think of all of life as a tree, what you want to preserve is as many branches as you possibly can and not just one bit of a trunk. I mean, if you want a tree in your garden, that's what you want, is you want something that's nice and symmetrical and looks good rather than something that has one wonky branch out here.

And how well have we characterised or enumerated these branches? Because I know you were just in Brazil and came back off the expedition with five new species of plant. So plants are relative... Mammals are extremely well known. There's about 5,000 of them. Birds are also extremely well known. There's only about 9,000 of them. I mean, vertebrates, we know lots of, because there't very many of them and we like them a lot. And so people

study them a lot. Plants are also, funnily enough, quite well known. There's probably about anywhere between a quarter and a half a million species. And so if you do the maths, if you do all these calculations, we have 20% left to discover, which is why it's really exciting when you find something that you think is new. So do you experience it? There's the wonderful line when Charles Darwin was, I think, first in the Brazilian rainforest on the voyage to the Beagle, and he talked about that, the chaos of delight he experienced. The tangled belt, yeah.

He was bombarded by so much nature and so many things that hadn't been imagined. And do you have those moments where you go, I'm experiencing a chaos of delight? We have found a thing that people didn't know existed. Walking somewhere that you've never been before is absolutely amazing. I mean, it's amazing to walk somewhere and you look at things and you think, I kind of know what that is and I know what that is, but man, I've never seen anything like that before. And that's what great thing about studying plants is they sit there and wait for you to kind of walk up to them and say, yeah, you're new. But it is really exciting, and we're very specialised.

I mean, all science is incredibly specialised now. No-one is like Darwin was or Alfred Russell Wallace, who kind of did a bit of everything. I mean, we're all incredibly specialised, and I'm a specialist on the plant family that includes potatoes and tomatoes and things. Do you feel bad when you eat them? Um, no.

No, I don't. I don't feel bad at all. I don't feel bad in the slightest. Does it feel like work? No, no. No, I don't. I don't feel bad at all. I don't feel bad in the slightest. Does it feel like work? No, no. No, it just feels like eating tomatoes, really. There is a wonder to it. There is a wonder to it. And I can see how Darwin felt, you know, when first confronted with this amazing diversity. I know people, you know, you get the chaos of delight and everything, but fundamentally, it's often working in really, really hard places.

So I remember once I was in Borneo going through the jungle, oh, this is amazing, and then I was there at night, and I just wished that nature would shut up so I could get some sleep. So you do get both. Same way I've got a friend who discovered a whole new species because I bit him. He wasn't really enamoured with it. We can argue, I suppose,

that this kind of disconnection from the natural world is a modern thing. When did this idea of conservation emerge? Because you certainly look back to the 20s, isn't it? It emerged sort of 1920s, 1913, 1920. I mean, the charity that I work with, Fauna and Flora International, started out as the Wildlife Preservation Society, which was about keeping places in Africa for big game hunters. But people saw quite clearly that it was really important to conserve diversity. as the Wildlife Preservation Society, which is about keeping places in Africa for big game hunters.

But people saw quite clearly that it was really important to conserve diversity for a very utilitarian purpose. But this is a 20th century... It's a 20th century phenomenon. There was a philosophical issue as well of actually a lot of this. So the dodo, we think, went extinct in 1662, and it was then 15 years before we noticed it had gone extinct. And it was 200 years before we recognised it because at that point they thought only God creates and destroys.

They thought it was impossible that something as small as mankind could have an impact. What about the passenger pigeon, which is one of the most famous ones, which is what, the beginning of the 20th century, is it? Yeah, the last one was shot. But they were just an enormous number of those, weren't they? And then it just seemed that because of whether it was fashion or hunger, often they go together, as you will have seen in Paris catwalks.

But these things, they suddenly just almost entirely... Well, and then they became extinct. Well, the passenger pigeon was apparently so common because that was one of these bounce-back things after the decimation of the native inhabitants of North America who had kept them under control, and they just kind of went and exploded. You just sparked something in my head there, actually,

because we're thinking of, yeah, things going extinct, without even noticing. If the passenger pigeon went extinct, its parasites went extinct. There's a whole ecosystem associated with every species. For every organism. Yeah, but there's only one that's recognised. It's the pygmy hog-sucking louse. It's the only internationally recognised endangered species.

We've actually added to it recently because we've discovered that... This is amazing. ..that the pubic louse is going extinct because... LAUGHTER Yeah, you guessed it, because of so many people having Brazilians. It's... Yeah, they're losing their habitats. That is a genuine reason.

LAUGHTER See, I would imagine you would be able to do a campaign to save that, though, they're losing their habitat. That is a genuine reason. See, I would imagine you would be able to do a campaign to save that, though, because the kind of pin-up version... Anyway, that doesn't matter. That's kind of very nuts indeed. Is that one we're going to save or one we're going to let go? No, I'm all for saving things for the sake of the interest. Does it offer anything to the biodiversity? Well, it will do, actually.

Will it, really? It'll be interconnected with other things? Because, again, there'll be things that feed on that. We've never found any form of cellular life which does not have viruses in it. The point that there's a chaotic nature to the ecosystem. Wasps, for example. A lot of people say, I don't like wasps. I'd love to get rid of the wasp. They seem to serve no useful purpose. Wasps are brilliant. That's a great example. Think of the fig wasp. We would not have figs if it weren't for a type of wasp.

We'd not have that fruit. The entire garden would be eaten up by caterpillars without wasps. That's the thing. I got really bored of ecology at school, which is really something bad to admit as a biologist, but it was because you could sum up all answers with everything that's connected. And it's because it kind of is.

Now, we're also wrong to think that there is a natural Gaia-like order. It is chaos. The worst phrase ever invented was the balance of nature. Yeah, because some things would progress to monoculture, and that's not necessarily good either. If it weren't for elephants, Africa would be covered with forests because they farm it.

They knock down trees deliberately to try and keep the stuff they eat. But we're not talking about preserving some kind of idealistic status quo, are we? We're not saying that Africa looks like that now, therefore that's what it should look like, whatever should mean. But that's kind of what happens. I mean, in a way, that's the problem. So the problem is the word conservation, because the word conservation implies something that's static. You know, if you conserve a building, you keep it the way it was. So conservation, in a way, in the English language, is this really horrible word. I'd like to preserve a dynamic Earth.

An Earth with the capacity to change. An Earth with the capacity for change, which is like having money in the bank. There is a strain of argument which says, who are we to make a choice, what lives and what dies? But I suppose that's just practically the way that it is and will be for the foreseeable future. So I think it's better to make the choice than just let it happen

or also let it happen through our own ignorance, which is effectively what's happening. We haven't studied the world well enough to know where can we get the best investment. And we don't actually know even all the different ways that we're causing harm. And would you agree with the general point that we, because we can, we have to manage the planet, the ecosystem, and we have to manage it actively and we have to manage the planet, the ecosystem, and we have to manage it actively, and we have to choose.

It's not a case of leave these things alone, leave the natural world alone. Well, I think that we've gone beyond that. Our population growth and our kind of use of our Japanese knotweed tendencies have taken us beyond that. I was going to say, Sarah, are you comfortable with that idea? Because it's quite a challenging idea that we've gone beyond the point of being able to step back.

It's strange. It makes me think of Noah. That's what it makes me think about. And I guess what you're describing is, OK, so a flood is coming. This is terrible, what's happening. It's too late. You can't change it. And what we're currently doing is setting up an arc. Let's pick some really fertile biodiverse

areas and protect them from the rain and hopefully that will that that's the best thing we can do in this terrible scenario you know we don't have enough use of bible stories to illustrate science and this is the first time no no it was good i enjoyed it because we're always getting complaints about that you know normally we sometimes use the apocrypha, but apparently that's not even in the book. Simon, you've got, I mean, in terms of, we were talking at the beginning about the use of the panda as a kind of honey trap to ideas,

and you have the Ugly Animal Preservation Society as a way of kind of wooing people into realising it's not just the cuddly, it's not just the orangutan. And I think you have got, the reason we have this big screen here is you are going to show us, I believe, the top five... It's great radio, this. Brilliant. And Sarah's going to describe what they look like, because...

Yeah, so if we can... So these are... Now, as we said, in fact, the poll that you did this year, the blobfish, was number one. Now we're just going to go, is it just monkeys? We did a request, actually. So what we do is, we're basically a comedy night that got out of hand, because we had a serious message behind it. And it was two real purposes. One was to get people

talking about species that we don't talk about. And the other bit was to have some fun with it. Because as I say, conservation's depressing. You know, you open up a newspaper, you're just checking what's died today. That's the kind of... So they've asked me to put together, pick what I thought were six particularly interesting ugly monkeys. Can we stick on the first one?

Can we just, and you as an audience, by the way, have to ooh and ah at the correct level. We will do this in the standard way that we do at our ugly animal comedy nights. Basically, we try for democracy and conservation. We're going to get you to scream as loud as you can at the end for your vote for what's going to be the official mascot, the kind of anti-panda.

So, Sarah, what's this first one here? Well, I think ugliness is subjective, because I think this is a very attractive monkey. He looks a little bit... I used to work in Lanzarote as a club rep. He's got a little red sunburned face, very soulful brown eyes, a downturned

mouth with a very... It's like a... I call it an adolescent moustache. And the rest of his body is covered with luscious red hair. So Sarah's been very kind, cos this is the bald head of Duakari. It's got a bright red face, probably cos it's embarrassed, I think. It's a beautiful monkey from the Amazon. They can leap, like, six metres in a single bind. They're pretty incredible.

So let's see the next one, then. The proboscis monkey. Well, see, again, you know the actor Owen Wilson? Oh, no, no, I'm going... Right, so, basically, he once said in an interview, and I thought it was very interesting, where people get insecure about themselves, he said that he's got this unattractive, kind of broken nose,

and he thinks the reason women find him sexy is subconsciously it reminds you of a penis. So let's have a look at this proboscis monkey. Yeah, I mean, a question, Simon, about that, because that nose, I mean, is that sexual selection? We think so, because, yeah, so the guy, this is... The proboscis monkey is named after its nose. In Borneo, they called the Dutch monkey

because they thought it looked like the Dutch colonisers, honestly. Because not only has it got enormous nose, but it's also got a big pot belly. It feeds mostly on leaves and things, so it's basically just full of fart. It can't break them down so well. It's got bacteria and things to do instead. And, yeah, we think that that's probably sexual selection,

and it might even be involved in their big honking calls. So the bigger your hooter, the louder you can hoot, so to speak. Let's have the next monkey then. Right. Now, Sarah, remembering that this show goes out at 4.30 on a Monday, describe what you can see. Well, we've got

a monkey. Now, I'm going to say Nicki Minaj. Stay with my... Because this monkey has got a booty and all the other monkeys are looking at it. So monkeys, a big swollen red bottom is a sign of fertility, is it? Or being receptive to males in monkeys?

Yeah, it's common. So every 33 to 36 days, this is a crested black macaque or a silhuesi macaque. That just balloons like a massive... It's like a whippoorcushion or something, isn'tey macaque that just balloons like a massive it's like a whoopie cushion or something isn't it and whenever it does that's just just saying come get me boys that's the idea yeah so it's not actually properly ugly it's only from this angle let's have the next monkey then oh again i think you've got this lovely he's a lovely monkey so it's like um so sometimes um girls in not just girls, men and women,

can have kind of tiny designer dogs in their handbag. So this looks like a small, scared, black-faced dog in a white, fluffy handbag. It looks like a very angry dog in a white, fluffy handbag. Well, he would be. Yoda dressed up as Santa. Yoda dressed up as Santa, yeah. That's exactly what he is. That's exactly what he is.

That's exactly what he is. I think he's nice. And what's that one, Simon? This is a Brazilian bare-faced tamarin. Again, it's pretty cool. It's got an amazing social system. It runs what we know as a reverse harem because there's an alpha female

and she controls all the mating rights. But we think this might be perhaps the most endangered primate in the Amazon, that kind of area. I'm interested with species that have one woman. Are they more peaceful than other species, or do they fight? No, they're all over the place. So it's like everything. In baboon societies, it tends to be that dominance is asserted

by the males by fighting, and in females, dominance is asserted by alliances. So males are more likely to fight between one and two. The females are more likely to all pile on and beat up one girl. So it varies entirely from species to species. Lanzarote.

Yeah, Lanzarote. See the final end, your final monkey of choice. Oh no! What's this one, Simon? It's Honkin' Snub-Nosed Monkey. We actually thought this one was extinct until they rediscovered them in 1989, and there's only 200 to 250 of them.

All these species are endangered, I should point out. It's not just that they're ugly, they're all on the way out. It looks like a character from the League of Gentlemen. Top five monkeys, let's have a look. So, the audience, by level of screaming, let's find out. Vote for the Uruk-hai, the ball-faced Uruk-hai. Let's go for the next one. The Brabascos monkey.

Next one, the Sulawesi macaque. Next one, the Brazilian bear-faced monkey. Surely. Next one, I'm the-faced family. Surely. Next one. And the Tonkin smuggler. There we are. That's the winner. The people of Spokane.

There we are. Right. The Tonkin. But you said, I mean, the serious point is, you said there are only 200 of those. Yeah, 200 to 250. And mainly in zoos or in the wild? Do you know what?

I don't know. I don't think that there's many in zoos, if there's any, actually. No, I don't think there are any. There's none, are there? I think they're from an area in Southeast Asia. They're in Vietnam, these ones. Yeah, in Vietnam.

They're the largest primate in Vietnam. So that's the reason why we do our comedy now, is because, yeah, nobody's heard about these things, and they're wonderful. And, again, we tend to think, well, dolphins, sorted, pandas, sorted. And it's much, and they're wonderful. And, again, we tend to think, well, dolphins, sorted. Pandas, sorted. And it's much, much bigger than that.

But I find those things are like magic eye pictures, because animals that you are told are ugly, whether they are a red-lipped batfish, whether they are a blobfish, whatever they might be, the more you kind of look at them, the more you just think the incredible... You know, how mutation, heredity, natural selection has... You know, that's where this has currently ended up, in that shape, with those crazy eyes, that bizarre nose, whatever it might be.

And to me, there is an even greater delight than going, oh, you can see why that's ended up like that. When you look at something, you go, why on earth? What would be the point of that nose? But all beetles are like that. All beetles are inexplicable, aren't they? Basically, you look at them and you go, what? You just said inexplicable on a science programme, Brian Cox.

What has happened to you? No, it is generally true. You look at beetles, you think, well, how did it get to be like that? They're ornate, remarkable things. I know it's evolution. I know the bloody answer. I'm saying there's a lot of them. Is that God? The reason why we did this...

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! The reason why we did that was because we thought conservation shouldn't be above a bit of satire. And I don't think there's anything ugly more than just what we choose to be ugly. But we did get proper hate mail from, like, four-year-olds. And what was incredible was there were so many people

telling me off for bullying the animals. But because they were all still at primary school, they still signed all the hate mail with love. It was really. There were so many people telling me off for bullying the animals. But because they were all still at primary school, they still signed all the hate mail with love. It was really quite nice. Also, most hate mail we get doesn't then get age after it, but I imagine they love age. So we asked the audience a question, which animal would you happily see become extinct and why?

Howard says the ptarmigan, or p-tarmigan. So no-one has to figure out how to pronounce its name. Squirrel. Either the grey or the red, doesn't matter. Lions, because they're so smug. Foxes, to annoy the Countryside Alliance. Seagulls, I've been pooed on them three times, now it's personal. That's from Gail. Spiders, they scare my girlfriend, who wakes me up at night to re-home

them. Re-home them. How lovely. I'm going to re-home that. So, there we are. Those are your answers. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to our panel, Sandy Knapp, Sarah Pascoe and Simon Watt. Next week is the final in the series and we

are Science Communication. What's the point? So, thank youcoe and Simon Watt. Next week is the final in the series and we are Science Communication. What's the point? So, thank you very much for listening and goodbye. That was the Infinite Monkey Cage podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Did you spot the 15 minutes that was cut out for radio? Anyway, there's a competition in itself. What, you think it's to be more than 15 minutes?

Shut up, it's your fault, you downloaded it. Anyway, there's other scientific programmes itself. What you think is to be more than 15 minutes, shut up, it's your fault, you downloaded it. Anyway, there's other scientific programmes also that you can listen to. Yeah, there's that one with Jimmy Alka-Seltzer. Life Scientific. There's Adam Rutherford, his dad discovered the atomic nucleus. Inside Science, All in the Mind with Claudia Hammond. Richard Hammond's sister.

Richard Hammond's sister, thank you very much, Brian. And also Frontiers, a selection of science documentaries on many, many different subjects. These are some of the science programs that you can listen to. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you