00:00:01.751 --> 00:00:04.838
(soft humming music)

00:00:15.473 --> 00:00:18.601
- [Mark] Sometimes
you have to look past

00:00:18.601 --> 00:00:22.439
every assumption that you have

00:00:22.439 --> 00:00:24.566
about who you are,

00:00:25.442 --> 00:00:27.819
about your place in the world,

00:00:27.819 --> 00:00:29.946
about what the world is,

00:00:31.031 --> 00:00:33.700
and look at everything anew

00:00:35.243 --> 00:00:37.579
in order to see something

00:00:38.830 --> 00:00:43.126
that has always been
right in front of you.

00:00:47.714 --> 00:00:49.466
Here is me.

00:00:49.466 --> 00:00:53.636
My species, Homo sapiens,
seems really confused

00:00:53.636 --> 00:00:55.138
about other species.

00:00:55.138 --> 00:00:58.600
Sometimes we act like
they're extremely important.

00:00:58.600 --> 00:01:01.102
- [Reporter] 30 people
worked for 28 hours

00:01:01.102 --> 00:01:03.146
to return the
whale to the water.

00:01:03.146 --> 00:01:07.567
- You're a good man to take
these sheep. They're rescued.

00:01:07.567 --> 00:01:10.320
What's their life
gonna look like now?

00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:12.530
- [Mark] Other times,
just the opposite.

00:01:12.530 --> 00:01:15.241
- [Person] We have good
quality fur for the consumer.

00:01:15.241 --> 00:01:17.660
- [Mark] And it seems like
this has to do with the fact

00:01:17.660 --> 00:01:20.789
that sometimes we think that
we're pretty much the same,

00:01:20.789 --> 00:01:24.292
and other times we think that
we're completely different.

00:01:24.292 --> 00:01:26.628
Do you think humans
are fundamentally

00:01:26.628 --> 00:01:29.839
or qualitatively different
from other animals?

00:01:29.839 --> 00:01:31.007
- Yes.

00:01:31.007 --> 00:01:31.841
- No.

00:01:31.841 --> 00:01:33.051
- Yeah.

00:01:33.051 --> 00:01:33.885
- [Mark] How?

00:01:35.470 --> 00:01:36.971
- I don't know.

00:01:36.971 --> 00:01:39.974
- Their arms operate in a
different manner than we do.

00:01:39.974 --> 00:01:41.518
- [Mark] And you would say

00:01:41.518 --> 00:01:43.853
that's the most significant,
sort of fundamental difference?

00:01:43.853 --> 00:01:45.146
- I would say that's probably

00:01:45.146 --> 00:01:47.023
the most fundamental
difference, yeah.

00:01:47.023 --> 00:01:49.692
- [Mark] What animals can think?

00:01:49.692 --> 00:01:50.819
- Dogs.

00:01:50.819 --> 00:01:52.278
- [Mark] Dogs can think, okay.

00:01:52.278 --> 00:01:55.865
What animals might
not be able to think?

00:01:55.865 --> 00:01:57.367
- Hamster.

00:01:57.367 --> 00:01:59.869
- Definitely animals have
more feelings than humans.

00:01:59.869 --> 00:02:01.871
- [Mark] Are our
emotions stronger

00:02:01.871 --> 00:02:04.249
or equally strong
or less strong?

00:02:04.249 --> 00:02:05.625
- In humans? Yeah.

00:02:07.001 --> 00:02:07.836
- [Mark] Sorry?

00:02:07.836 --> 00:02:08.711
- In humans? Yeah.

00:02:08.711 --> 00:02:10.463
- [Mark] In humans what?

00:02:10.463 --> 00:02:12.298
- They're more strong.

00:02:12.298 --> 00:02:13.967
- [Mark] What
makes you think so?

00:02:15.176 --> 00:02:16.177
- I'm good. (chuckles)

00:02:16.177 --> 00:02:18.096
- [Mark] Oh, okay. Thank you.

00:02:18.096 --> 00:02:22.058
So I decided to stop all the
talking and go see for myself.

00:02:22.058 --> 00:02:25.395
There's a small number of
humans who are figuring this out

00:02:25.395 --> 00:02:29.399
by studying particular
animals over a long time.

00:02:29.399 --> 00:02:32.235
So I decided to meet
them all in person,

00:02:32.235 --> 00:02:35.071
capture on camera what
they're discovering,

00:02:35.071 --> 00:02:37.740
and find out how much like us

00:02:37.740 --> 00:02:40.910
other animals really can be.

00:02:40.910 --> 00:02:43.121
But where it eventually led me

00:02:43.121 --> 00:02:44.747
was more than I bargained for.

00:02:48.751 --> 00:02:51.754
My journey began with
looking at all of us

00:02:51.754 --> 00:02:53.173
through fresh eyes.

00:02:53.173 --> 00:02:55.800
(air swooshing)

00:03:06.686 --> 00:03:08.605
(waves crashing)

00:03:15.862 --> 00:03:20.158
So tell me, doctors, how
does this story begin?

00:03:23.578 --> 00:03:26.247
- [Speaker] This far back
we're approaching the edge

00:03:26.247 --> 00:03:28.291
of our current knowledge.

00:03:28.291 --> 00:03:31.628
There are several ways the
first step could have happened,

00:03:31.628 --> 00:03:33.296
but it happened.

00:03:33.296 --> 00:03:36.549
A molecule ended up
with a composition

00:03:36.549 --> 00:03:41.012
that caused it to make copies
of itself, to replicate.

00:03:41.012 --> 00:03:43.640
(tense music)

00:03:46.309 --> 00:03:48.394
- [Speaker] Sometimes
slight copying errors

00:03:48.394 --> 00:03:51.314
resulted in differences
such as a new version

00:03:51.314 --> 00:03:52.982
of the molecule that happened

00:03:52.982 --> 00:03:55.568
to replicate faster than others.

00:03:55.568 --> 00:03:58.613
- [Speaker] After countless
incremental changes,

00:03:58.613 --> 00:04:03.493
these tiny machines became
larger and more complex.

00:04:04.911 --> 00:04:06.579
- [Speaker] Some of these
machines formed colonies,

00:04:06.579 --> 00:04:09.540
perhaps by failing
to completely split.

00:04:09.540 --> 00:04:13.378
- [Speaker] As the eons passed,
more incremental changes

00:04:13.378 --> 00:04:16.130
resulted in more
complex colonies,

00:04:16.130 --> 00:04:19.801
including types of
colonies that moved about.

00:04:21.094 --> 00:04:24.472
Today, the replicator
molecules are DNA,

00:04:25.515 --> 00:04:27.267
the machines are cells,

00:04:29.018 --> 00:04:32.689
and the colonies are you and me,

00:04:32.689 --> 00:04:36.359
and every other multicellular
organism on Earth.

00:04:37.694 --> 00:04:40.029
And every single one
of us is connected,

00:04:40.029 --> 00:04:43.574
in an unbroken chain
of replication and
incremental changes,

00:04:43.574 --> 00:04:45.868
to those earliest molecules.

00:04:45.868 --> 00:04:49.414
That means for every
animal that exists today,

00:04:49.414 --> 00:04:51.874
if you look back
in time far enough,

00:04:51.874 --> 00:04:54.419
there was once a
time when they and we

00:04:54.419 --> 00:04:55.795
were the same species.

00:04:57.213 --> 00:05:01.718
We are all, every animal on
earth, literally cousins.

00:05:06.014 --> 00:05:08.641
- [Mark] Since I'm a member of
the species of Homo sapiens,

00:05:08.641 --> 00:05:10.768
I decided to start
off with a species

00:05:10.768 --> 00:05:13.313
that may be our
closest ever relatives,

00:05:13.313 --> 00:05:17.317
an animal so similar to us,
that scientists still debate

00:05:17.317 --> 00:05:20.987
whether to consider us
separate species or subspecies,

00:05:20.987 --> 00:05:24.907
an animal that only went
extinct 40,000 or so years ago.

00:05:26.117 --> 00:05:28.161
So I went to Gibraltar

00:05:28.161 --> 00:05:31.414
where some of the last
Neanderthals lived,

00:05:31.414 --> 00:05:34.250
and where some
impossibly massive caves

00:05:34.250 --> 00:05:36.794
are being excavated by
a team of scientists.

00:05:36.794 --> 00:05:40.757
Oh, and this is me pretending
to know where I'm going.

00:05:40.757 --> 00:05:44.260
And this is the lead
scientist, Dr. Clive Finlayson

00:05:44.260 --> 00:05:46.346
leading me into
one of the caves.

00:05:46.346 --> 00:05:48.556
- So here we are. It's
a very sensitive site.

00:05:48.556 --> 00:05:50.892
So there's a strict limit
of the number of people

00:05:50.892 --> 00:05:52.185
that can go in.

00:05:52.185 --> 00:05:54.937
This cave, we actually
don't let any visitors,

00:05:54.937 --> 00:05:56.272
but we're gonna
make an exception.

00:05:56.272 --> 00:05:59.233
- Can I step on this
also? Okay, not that.

00:05:59.233 --> 00:06:01.527
We actually existed
at the same time,

00:06:01.527 --> 00:06:02.779
we were contemporaries.

00:06:02.779 --> 00:06:04.781
- Yeah. And didn't know
that each other existed.

00:06:04.781 --> 00:06:06.824
They had lots of skills

00:06:06.824 --> 00:06:09.702
that we have previously
only attributed to humans.

00:06:09.702 --> 00:06:12.121
They knew how to start a
fire, how to control it.

00:06:12.121 --> 00:06:13.581
They knew- they cooked food.

00:06:13.581 --> 00:06:15.792
We found there was the
remains of a fire they'd made.

00:06:15.792 --> 00:06:18.961
They were catching
animals with furs.

00:06:18.961 --> 00:06:20.963
So they were probably
using those to keep warm.

00:06:20.963 --> 00:06:23.383
Catching golden eagles for
their feathers and the talons,

00:06:23.383 --> 00:06:25.176
probably using them
for ornamentation.

00:06:25.176 --> 00:06:26.636
That sophisticated behavior

00:06:26.636 --> 00:06:28.971
to allow you to wear
all these things,

00:06:28.971 --> 00:06:30.556
humans may have learned
it from Neanderthals.

00:06:30.556 --> 00:06:33.309
- [Mark] I mean, it really
turns things upside down

00:06:33.309 --> 00:06:35.061
in terms of our
perceptions of ourselves.

00:06:35.061 --> 00:06:36.270
- And we've been
brought up to think

00:06:36.270 --> 00:06:38.064
that we are very special.

00:06:38.064 --> 00:06:40.691
We are undoubtedly
special, or unique.

00:06:40.691 --> 00:06:44.112
But as a colleague
anthropologist once said,

00:06:44.112 --> 00:06:46.155
we're are just another
unique species.

00:06:49.450 --> 00:06:52.662
- [Mark] As surprising as all
that was, they're extinct.

00:06:52.662 --> 00:06:56.332
So I thought, what would happen
if I looked more carefully

00:06:56.332 --> 00:06:58.835
at our closest living relatives?

00:06:58.835 --> 00:07:02.380
Before anything else,
I obviously had to
meet the one human

00:07:02.380 --> 00:07:04.674
who introduced the
rest of our species

00:07:04.674 --> 00:07:06.884
to the world of chimpanzees

00:07:06.884 --> 00:07:09.554
through her groundbreaking
fieldwork in Tanzania.

00:07:09.554 --> 00:07:10.721
She still lives there,

00:07:10.721 --> 00:07:13.474
though no longer
with the chimpanzees.

00:07:13.474 --> 00:07:16.185
- I didn't go out to
look for similarities

00:07:16.185 --> 00:07:17.645
between chimps and humans.

00:07:17.645 --> 00:07:19.355
They were just obvious.

00:07:19.355 --> 00:07:21.941
And the more I learned about
them, the more I realized,

00:07:21.941 --> 00:07:24.402
my goodness, there
isn't a sharp line.

00:07:24.402 --> 00:07:26.779
- [Mark] Then I went to her
former student, who's now

00:07:26.779 --> 00:07:29.866
at the Department of Human
Evolutionary Biology at Harvard.

00:07:29.866 --> 00:07:32.869
- You realize that you are
in the presence of a species

00:07:32.869 --> 00:07:37.665
somewhere sort of
halfway between humans
and other species.

00:07:37.665 --> 00:07:39.792
- [Mark] So with those
interviews as my guidance,

00:07:39.792 --> 00:07:43.629
I decided to meet
chimpanzees where they live,

00:07:43.629 --> 00:07:46.257
which involved
traveling to Uganda

00:07:46.257 --> 00:07:48.968
and then getting in a canoe.

00:07:48.968 --> 00:07:50.386
- You can get in.

00:07:50.386 --> 00:07:52.555
- Or at least what they
told me was a canoe.

00:07:54.265 --> 00:07:56.058
That's where all the
chimpanzees live.

00:07:56.058 --> 00:07:57.351
- Exactly.

00:07:57.351 --> 00:07:59.937
From the mainland, it's
about 23 kilometers.

00:07:59.937 --> 00:08:00.730
- Oh wow.

00:08:00.730 --> 00:08:01.981
Yes.

00:08:01.981 --> 00:08:05.067
- We just went 23
kilometers in a canoe.

00:08:05.067 --> 00:08:05.902
- Exactly.

00:08:07.945 --> 00:08:09.822
We are approaching
the camping area.

00:08:09.822 --> 00:08:11.908
- [Mark] But we didn't
stop at the camping area.

00:08:11.908 --> 00:08:15.161
We just got into a smaller canoe

00:08:15.161 --> 00:08:17.288
along with someone who
knows the chimpanzees

00:08:17.288 --> 00:08:19.916
better than anyone,
Innocent Ampeire.

00:08:19.916 --> 00:08:24.170
- As we get close to the
forest, I'll make the call.

00:08:26.506 --> 00:08:29.592
(Innocent vocalizes)

00:08:37.266 --> 00:08:38.643
It's also possible that they are

00:08:38.643 --> 00:08:40.811
on the southern
side of the island.

00:08:40.811 --> 00:08:42.647
- No, he's coming out.

00:08:46.692 --> 00:08:48.945
The more I watched and filmed,

00:08:48.945 --> 00:08:52.156
the more similar our
two species seemed.

00:08:52.156 --> 00:08:54.617
- [Richard] When we see
chimps behaving like us,

00:08:54.617 --> 00:08:57.662
the obvious interpretation is
that our ancestors did that

00:08:57.662 --> 00:08:59.121
7 or 8 million years ago.

00:08:59.121 --> 00:09:01.123
- [Mark] Back when we
were the same species.

00:09:01.123 --> 00:09:03.626
- Back when there was no
difference between us.

00:09:03.626 --> 00:09:06.128
- So even if you know
nothing about chimpanzees,

00:09:06.128 --> 00:09:08.881
if you see individuals
embracing, kissing,

00:09:08.881 --> 00:09:11.300
they do it in the
same context as we do.

00:09:11.300 --> 00:09:12.635
- [Mark] But here's the moment

00:09:12.635 --> 00:09:14.178
when it really hit me.

00:09:14.178 --> 00:09:18.516
- This is a rock that has been
played with by a chimpanzee.

00:09:18.516 --> 00:09:21.519
And the way it does
so very much suggests

00:09:21.519 --> 00:09:24.063
that it's treating it as a doll.

00:09:24.063 --> 00:09:26.941
I brought rocks back, but
mostly they do it with sticks.

00:09:26.941 --> 00:09:28.568
It's the young ones,
it's the juveniles,

00:09:28.568 --> 00:09:31.654
and particularly the juvenile
females doing with it,

00:09:31.654 --> 00:09:34.824
the kind of thing that
they do with babies.

00:09:34.824 --> 00:09:37.577
It seems to indicate
that they are imagining

00:09:37.577 --> 00:09:39.954
that this is an
infant chimpanzee.

00:09:39.954 --> 00:09:43.708
Sometimes what they do is to
take them up into the canopy,

00:09:43.708 --> 00:09:45.835
into the trees, and
then make a nest

00:09:45.835 --> 00:09:49.338
and lie down with the
toy on top of them.

00:09:49.338 --> 00:09:51.465
Much like a mother
would lie down

00:09:51.465 --> 00:09:53.467
with the baby on top of them.

00:09:53.467 --> 00:09:56.345
- [Mark] Okay, using
objects as imaginary toys

00:09:56.345 --> 00:09:57.680
is already something.

00:09:57.680 --> 00:10:00.391
But I met the scientist
who first discovered

00:10:00.391 --> 00:10:02.351
that a group of chimpanzees

00:10:02.351 --> 00:10:05.646
has invented something
nobody expected.

00:10:05.646 --> 00:10:08.524
Chimpanzees are
hunting with spears?

00:10:08.524 --> 00:10:11.027
- Yes. Chimpanzees are
hunting with spears.

00:10:11.027 --> 00:10:12.945
We were racking our
brains trying to think of

00:10:12.945 --> 00:10:14.196
what they were doing.

00:10:14.196 --> 00:10:15.698
We just hadn't, there
was no precedent.

00:10:15.698 --> 00:10:18.284
They break off a live tree
branch and they sharpen it.

00:10:20.536 --> 00:10:23.372
That was something we really
thought only humans did.

00:10:23.372 --> 00:10:25.541
- [Mark] Finally, I met
the distinguished scientist

00:10:25.541 --> 00:10:27.043
who discovered that chimpanzees

00:10:27.043 --> 00:10:29.629
can recognize
themselves in mirrors.

00:10:29.629 --> 00:10:33.049
But I was there to ask about
a rumor among primatologists

00:10:33.049 --> 00:10:36.052
that a chimpanzee was once
artificially inseminated

00:10:36.052 --> 00:10:37.345
with human sperm

00:10:37.345 --> 00:10:41.390
and gave birth to a
human-chimpanzee hybrid.

00:10:41.390 --> 00:10:43.017
- Would you put it in a cage?

00:10:43.017 --> 00:10:45.728
Would it be put in
a headstart program?

00:10:45.728 --> 00:10:47.146
Would it get a social
security number?

00:10:47.146 --> 00:10:52.109
I mean... This dramatic
line in the sand

00:10:53.444 --> 00:10:55.738
that we draw between
humans and other animals,

00:10:55.738 --> 00:10:56.864
I mean, it would force you

00:10:56.864 --> 00:11:01.577
to have to rethink
human existence.

00:11:01.577 --> 00:11:05.331
- [Mark] And speaking of
rethinking human existence,

00:11:05.331 --> 00:11:07.833
I found out there's
another living species

00:11:07.833 --> 00:11:10.920
just as closely related
to us as chimpanzees are,

00:11:10.920 --> 00:11:12.630
but so little known,

00:11:12.630 --> 00:11:16.175
they've been referred
to as the forgotten ape.

00:11:16.175 --> 00:11:20.930
And they resemble us so much
more, it's almost eerie.

00:11:20.930 --> 00:11:22.723
I visited one of
the first people

00:11:22.723 --> 00:11:26.811
to successfully photograph
bonobos where they live.

00:11:26.811 --> 00:11:31.482
- When I'm out there in the
forest and I observe bonobos,

00:11:31.482 --> 00:11:32.650
I see ourselves.

00:11:32.650 --> 00:11:35.778
We are only just
beginning to understand

00:11:35.778 --> 00:11:37.947
what bonobos are really about.

00:11:37.947 --> 00:11:42.326
They live only in this remote
part of the Congo Basin,

00:11:42.326 --> 00:11:44.120
which is so difficult to get to.

00:11:44.120 --> 00:11:48.624
You have to charter planes and
then transfer to motorbikes,

00:11:48.624 --> 00:11:52.420
or you have to travel for
days and days upriver.

00:11:52.420 --> 00:11:54.922
- So, off to the Congo I went.

00:11:54.922 --> 00:11:58.259
Unfortunately, there was
so much recent civil unrest

00:11:58.259 --> 00:12:00.803
that the US Embassy
had been evacuated

00:12:00.803 --> 00:12:02.680
just months before I arrived.

00:12:02.680 --> 00:12:05.558
But fortunately, we
were escorted by someone

00:12:05.558 --> 00:12:07.685
with apparent connections
in the military.

00:12:07.685 --> 00:12:10.563
And best of all, there's
now protected sanctuary land

00:12:10.563 --> 00:12:13.482
for bonobos not far
from the capital city.

00:12:13.482 --> 00:12:16.110
The bonobos are
somewhere that way, huh?

00:12:16.110 --> 00:12:18.946
I met with Congolese
biologist Suzy Kwetuenda

00:12:18.946 --> 00:12:21.824
and communicated pretty
well despite the fact

00:12:21.824 --> 00:12:25.786
that the only language I
speak is her third language.

00:12:25.786 --> 00:12:28.372
Does it seem like I've been
to the Congo many times?

00:12:31.500 --> 00:12:33.502
- It seems like you
already will be here.

00:12:33.502 --> 00:12:37.757
So you are not like
a guest. You are-

00:12:37.757 --> 00:12:39.800
- I think you're just
trying to be nice.

00:12:39.800 --> 00:12:41.051
- No, no.
- That's not true.

00:12:41.051 --> 00:12:42.428
- No. Yeah.

00:12:42.428 --> 00:12:46.766
The area for bonobos is
deeply in a swampy forest.

00:12:46.766 --> 00:12:48.684
- And we got in another boat.

00:12:48.684 --> 00:12:52.021
The alpha female is
coming into the water.

00:12:52.021 --> 00:12:52.980
- [Suzy] Yes.

00:12:52.980 --> 00:12:53.939
- And she's looking at us.

00:12:53.939 --> 00:12:55.316
- And she's walking on two feet.

00:12:55.316 --> 00:12:57.568
You've seen on the
sticks. Different use now.

00:12:57.568 --> 00:12:58.861
- Let's see.
- It was a support,

00:12:58.861 --> 00:13:00.362
but now she take it.

00:13:00.362 --> 00:13:02.490
- So she's using it to
measure how deep the water is.

00:13:02.490 --> 00:13:03.699
- Yes. To measure.

00:13:03.699 --> 00:13:05.534
- To see if she can
come out further.

00:13:05.534 --> 00:13:06.952
- Yeah.

00:13:06.952 --> 00:13:09.079
- I wouldn't even necessarily
think of doing that.

00:13:09.079 --> 00:13:10.539
That's a good idea.
- Yes.

00:13:10.539 --> 00:13:12.208
- [Mark] Their gestures,
their expressions,

00:13:12.208 --> 00:13:14.794
and literally their physical
appearance seems more similar-

00:13:14.794 --> 00:13:16.128
- [Suzy] Similar to us.

00:13:16.128 --> 00:13:17.546
- [Mark] Than even
a chimpanzee's.

00:13:17.546 --> 00:13:18.380
- [Suzy] Sure.

00:13:19.673 --> 00:13:21.133
- [Mark] And that's
when I realized,

00:13:21.133 --> 00:13:24.595
chimpanzees and bonobos
are just the beginning.

00:13:24.595 --> 00:13:27.473
- It was always, you should
not be anthropomorphic.

00:13:27.473 --> 00:13:30.893
And I invented the
term anthropodenial.

00:13:30.893 --> 00:13:33.562
We humans, we think
that our experiences

00:13:33.562 --> 00:13:35.731
must be different than
those of other animals.

00:13:35.731 --> 00:13:38.359
Let's say you fall in love,
you're gonna be very impressed

00:13:38.359 --> 00:13:41.529
by the flood of thoughts
and feelings that you have.

00:13:41.529 --> 00:13:44.240
And you can barely
imagine that a chimp

00:13:44.240 --> 00:13:46.575
or any other animal would
have those feelings.

00:13:46.575 --> 00:13:48.953
But that's just
lack of imagination.

00:13:48.953 --> 00:13:51.872
- [Mark] So I stopped by
an esteemed neuroscientist

00:13:51.872 --> 00:13:55.835
who studies romantic
love in other species.

00:13:55.835 --> 00:13:56.877
- There's no reason to believe

00:13:56.877 --> 00:13:58.712
that the biological mechanisms

00:13:58.712 --> 00:14:01.632
that are driving human
experiences, like love

00:14:01.632 --> 00:14:04.510
and romantic relationships
are any different.

00:14:04.510 --> 00:14:07.930
So I don't think that our
experience, human experience

00:14:07.930 --> 00:14:11.058
is more intense than
an animal experience

00:14:11.058 --> 00:14:13.602
when it comes to something,
for example, like love.

00:14:13.602 --> 00:14:15.813
- [Mark] Okay, so all
these lines of evidence

00:14:15.813 --> 00:14:17.314
point in the same direction:

00:14:17.314 --> 00:14:20.442
towards shared sentience
and emotions across species.

00:14:20.442 --> 00:14:23.946
The same evolutionary origins,
the same brain mechanisms

00:14:23.946 --> 00:14:26.115
and neurochemicals,
the same behavior

00:14:26.115 --> 00:14:27.825
under the same circumstances.

00:14:27.825 --> 00:14:30.911
So I thought, what would
happen if I traveled

00:14:30.911 --> 00:14:33.497
even further along
the evolutionary tree

00:14:33.497 --> 00:14:35.165
to more distant cousins.

00:14:35.165 --> 00:14:37.376
For that, I went back to Africa,

00:14:37.376 --> 00:14:40.170
but this time to the
savannas of Kenya

00:14:40.170 --> 00:14:42.256
to meet with a
group of researchers

00:14:42.256 --> 00:14:44.466
that has been studying
the elephants there

00:14:44.466 --> 00:14:46.385
for over 50 years.

00:14:46.385 --> 00:14:47.678
- It's good car for off-roading.

00:14:47.678 --> 00:14:49.305
And it's not easy to get stuck.

00:14:50.806 --> 00:14:54.143
We're the only ones who are
allowed to drive off the road,

00:14:54.143 --> 00:14:55.811
follow the elephants.

00:14:55.811 --> 00:14:57.771
- [Mark] Like actually
into the savanna.

00:14:57.771 --> 00:14:59.231
- [Katito] Into the savanna.

00:14:59.231 --> 00:15:01.817
- Are we driving through a
herd of zebras right now?

00:15:01.817 --> 00:15:03.068
- [Katito] Yes, we are.

00:15:03.068 --> 00:15:04.320
- And these are
wildebeests going by here?

00:15:04.320 --> 00:15:05.613
- [Katito] Yeah,
these wildebeests.

00:15:05.613 --> 00:15:07.323
- [Mark] By the way,
is that a hippopotamus?

00:15:07.323 --> 00:15:08.324
- [Katito] Yes.

00:15:08.324 --> 00:15:09.491
- [Mark] Are those ostriches?

00:15:09.491 --> 00:15:11.076
- [Katito] Yes.

00:15:11.076 --> 00:15:12.536
- It looks like
there're elephants
approaching our vehicle.

00:15:12.536 --> 00:15:16.582
And suddenly there they
were, a family of elephants

00:15:16.582 --> 00:15:19.126
crossing the savanna
right in front of us.

00:15:19.126 --> 00:15:20.127
- This is the matriarch.

00:15:20.127 --> 00:15:21.045
- [Mark] This is the matriarch?

00:15:21.045 --> 00:15:22.588
- [Katito] This their matriarch.

00:15:22.588 --> 00:15:24.173
- [Mark] So she's the leader
and she makes the decisions?

00:15:24.173 --> 00:15:26.050
- [Katito] She's the one who
make the decision where to go,

00:15:26.050 --> 00:15:28.928
what to do, because she
has a lot of experience.

00:15:28.928 --> 00:15:31.889
Now we understand elephant
they live in family.

00:15:31.889 --> 00:15:34.099
- [Mark] So this is why these
children are staying with her,

00:15:34.099 --> 00:15:35.225
those children are
staying with her,

00:15:35.225 --> 00:15:36.685
and they they know each other-

00:15:36.685 --> 00:15:38.646
- They know each, yeah.
- well.

00:15:38.646 --> 00:15:40.981
But the most important unit-

00:15:40.981 --> 00:15:42.566
- That is her immediate family.

00:15:42.566 --> 00:15:44.568
A sister. She's
very close to you.

00:15:44.568 --> 00:15:48.197
So they care about the sister
more than extended cousin.

00:15:48.197 --> 00:15:50.366
And a cousin, yes,
they're still family.

00:15:50.366 --> 00:15:51.575
They help each other.

00:15:51.575 --> 00:15:53.118
When a calf gets stuck,

00:15:53.118 --> 00:15:56.872
you see the family
trying to help the calf.

00:15:56.872 --> 00:15:58.374
- [Mark] How could this be?

00:15:58.374 --> 00:16:02.086
How could animals who appear
so different from humans

00:16:02.086 --> 00:16:05.756
nonetheless have such
recognizable lives?

00:16:05.756 --> 00:16:07.925
So I asked myself, is this true

00:16:07.925 --> 00:16:11.720
for even more distant relatives,
whose last shared ancestors

00:16:11.720 --> 00:16:14.932
with humans lived hundreds
of millions of years ago?

00:16:14.932 --> 00:16:18.185
- Crows and ravens, because
of the neurotransmitters

00:16:18.185 --> 00:16:20.437
in their brain and the
structures in their brain,

00:16:20.437 --> 00:16:22.314
there's no reason to
suspect, when they play,

00:16:22.314 --> 00:16:23.524
they aren't having fun.

00:16:23.524 --> 00:16:25.025
In the wintertime
when there's snow,

00:16:25.025 --> 00:16:26.819
they often slide down slopes.

00:16:26.819 --> 00:16:28.737
One of the greatest
videos of this,

00:16:28.737 --> 00:16:32.825
a bird had grabbed a saucer
like the top of a container,

00:16:32.825 --> 00:16:36.578
walked up to the top of
the roof, slid down on it,

00:16:36.578 --> 00:16:39.456
kind of rode it like a surfboard

00:16:39.456 --> 00:16:42.292
or a saucer that you
slide in the snow with.

00:16:42.292 --> 00:16:43.752
The best thing is that
he then picks it up,

00:16:43.752 --> 00:16:45.838
walks back up and does
it again and again.

00:16:45.838 --> 00:16:47.923
- [Mark Voiceover] But then
he said something different

00:16:47.923 --> 00:16:50.259
from what any of the
other scientists had.

00:16:50.259 --> 00:16:51.760
- We discovered that
they were paying

00:16:51.760 --> 00:16:53.262
very close attention to us.

00:16:53.262 --> 00:16:55.055
- [Mark Voiceover] And
how do we know that?

00:16:55.055 --> 00:16:59.101
Well, I participated in
an ongoing experiment.

00:16:59.101 --> 00:17:00.602
- That's the dangerous face.

00:17:00.602 --> 00:17:02.730
My student and I were each
wearing a mask like that

00:17:02.730 --> 00:17:05.774
when we caught seven
birds 15 years ago.

00:17:05.774 --> 00:17:07.985
We measure them, weigh
them, let 'em go.

00:17:07.985 --> 00:17:09.903
From that point on 15 years ago,

00:17:09.903 --> 00:17:12.406
we would just walk around
campus and see the response.

00:17:12.406 --> 00:17:14.783
So the birds that are
responding to this mask

00:17:14.783 --> 00:17:16.618
could be brand new,
have never seen it,

00:17:16.618 --> 00:17:18.579
and are learning by
hearing the alarm

00:17:18.579 --> 00:17:19.997
given by the other birds.

00:17:19.997 --> 00:17:23.333
They could have seen us
catch a bird 15 years ago.

00:17:23.333 --> 00:17:24.793
You can wear it.
- Okay.

00:17:24.793 --> 00:17:27.629
(whimsical music)

00:17:32.176 --> 00:17:34.803
(crows cawing)

00:17:36.722 --> 00:17:39.141
Consistent with the years
of published research,

00:17:39.141 --> 00:17:41.268
they certainly did notice me,

00:17:41.268 --> 00:17:43.604
and draw each other's
attention to me.

00:17:43.604 --> 00:17:47.066
This remarkable attention
to individuals reminded me

00:17:47.066 --> 00:17:50.486
of something Frans de Waal
said about one pair of birds,

00:17:50.486 --> 00:17:52.988
a couple whom he'd
regularly observed.

00:17:52.988 --> 00:17:55.491
- The female at some
point disappeared.

00:17:55.491 --> 00:17:58.786
I don't know what happened
to her, but the male,

00:17:58.786 --> 00:17:59.995
for two weeks,

00:17:59.995 --> 00:18:02.331
he kept calling and
scanning the sky,

00:18:02.331 --> 00:18:04.333
calling and calling
and not eating.

00:18:04.333 --> 00:18:06.043
And then he died.

00:18:06.043 --> 00:18:07.836
- [Mark] And finally,
just when I thought

00:18:07.836 --> 00:18:10.422
I'd seen everything, I
heard about something

00:18:10.422 --> 00:18:12.633
almost impossible
for me to believe.

00:18:12.633 --> 00:18:13.842
- [Constantine] You
just have to be careful

00:18:13.842 --> 00:18:15.677
not to fall into a
prairie dog hole.

00:18:15.677 --> 00:18:17.679
- [Mark] So the
prairie dogs live here.

00:18:17.679 --> 00:18:18.972
- Correct.

00:18:18.972 --> 00:18:20.641
They have extensive
tunnels underground.

00:18:20.641 --> 00:18:25.104
- Am I really understanding
correctly that these animals,

00:18:25.104 --> 00:18:28.315
you have found, are
talking with each other,

00:18:28.315 --> 00:18:31.276
using nouns and adjectives?

00:18:31.276 --> 00:18:32.861
- Correct. They have
a word for human.

00:18:32.861 --> 00:18:34.196
They have a word for hawk.

00:18:34.196 --> 00:18:37.241
They have a word for
coyote, word for dog.

00:18:37.241 --> 00:18:40.744
There are adjectives
such as yellow, green.

00:18:40.744 --> 00:18:44.540
There are verbs such as
moving slowly, moving fast.

00:18:44.540 --> 00:18:46.834
- Sentences are in some
sort of like structured-

00:18:46.834 --> 00:18:48.001
- Yes. Right.

00:18:48.001 --> 00:18:51.713
And these have a
grammatical structure.

00:18:51.713 --> 00:18:53.799
- And they make up new
words if it's a new thing?

00:18:53.799 --> 00:18:55.384
- And they can
make up new words.

00:18:55.384 --> 00:18:59.304
When you go from one colony to
another colony farther away,

00:18:59.304 --> 00:19:01.723
the dialect changes
more and more,

00:19:01.723 --> 00:19:03.642
just like you find
with human dialects.

00:19:03.642 --> 00:19:04.977
- You just have
to sort of narrow

00:19:04.977 --> 00:19:07.146
the definition of
language artificially

00:19:07.146 --> 00:19:10.149
just to exclude this, just
because we want to exclude this.

00:19:10.149 --> 00:19:10.566
- Right.

00:19:10.774 --> 00:19:12.860
- While there’s still
uncertainty about some of

00:19:12.860 --> 00:19:15.571
these specific conclusions
and interpretations,

00:19:15.571 --> 00:19:19.658
what’s clear is there’s a lot
more going on than we seem

00:19:19.658 --> 00:19:20.784
prepared for.

00:19:20.784 --> 00:19:23.620
- They want to keep the
distance of humans

00:19:23.620 --> 00:19:25.747
and other animals.

00:19:25.747 --> 00:19:27.791
And there are lots of
ethical implications.

00:19:27.791 --> 00:19:30.794
Colonies have been bulldozed
to make playing fields.

00:19:30.794 --> 00:19:32.963
They've been bulldozed
to make parking lots.

00:19:32.963 --> 00:19:34.423
Prairie dogs were
in their burrows

00:19:34.423 --> 00:19:36.466
and they just
bulldozed them over.

00:19:36.466 --> 00:19:38.051
No thought to the social system,

00:19:38.051 --> 00:19:40.095
no thought to their language,

00:19:40.095 --> 00:19:42.973
no thought to whether they
look at a sunflower field

00:19:42.973 --> 00:19:44.933
and say, "how
beautiful this is."

00:19:44.933 --> 00:19:46.476
We give no thought to that.

00:19:46.476 --> 00:19:50.355
- Had I been asking the
wrong question all this time?

00:19:50.355 --> 00:19:53.483
Maybe it was never about
a lack of knowledge.

00:19:53.483 --> 00:19:57.487
Could our entire species
be in some kind of denial

00:19:57.487 --> 00:20:00.782
because of things
that we're doing?

00:20:00.782 --> 00:20:03.327
Should I be looking at, say,

00:20:03.327 --> 00:20:05.287
how we treat these
various animals

00:20:05.287 --> 00:20:08.832
that I've just looked into
all of this research about?

00:20:08.832 --> 00:20:11.877
- Absolutely. You should
be looking at that.

00:20:11.877 --> 00:20:16.506
- And what I find might not
make humans look that good.

00:20:16.506 --> 00:20:17.299
- Probably.

00:20:19.676 --> 00:20:22.387
- [Mark] I decided to
find out what we do

00:20:22.387 --> 00:20:25.098
to the very species
I'd just looked at,

00:20:25.098 --> 00:20:29.061
starting back what the most
majestic and so-called exotic.

00:20:29.061 --> 00:20:30.646
It seemed like the biggest way

00:20:30.646 --> 00:20:33.023
Homo sapiens interact
with elephants

00:20:33.023 --> 00:20:35.192
takes place in Thailand.

00:20:35.192 --> 00:20:37.861
I met with an attorney
who supports advocacy work

00:20:37.861 --> 00:20:39.529
on behalf of
elephants in Thailand.

00:20:39.529 --> 00:20:43.492
- If you see things that
they don't want you to see

00:20:43.492 --> 00:20:44.910
and they're fearful

00:20:44.910 --> 00:20:46.703
that you're going to be
telling the world about it,

00:20:46.703 --> 00:20:49.915
particularly if you had a
camera and you're there,

00:20:49.915 --> 00:20:51.541
it could be pretty dangerous.

00:20:51.541 --> 00:20:55.254
They're gonna want to get rid
of you in one way or another.

00:20:55.254 --> 00:20:57.464
I don't know what
their choices might be

00:20:57.464 --> 00:21:00.884
at any given moment, but
none of 'em are good for you.

00:21:00.884 --> 00:21:03.095
- [Mark] So I went to Thailand

00:21:04.054 --> 00:21:05.764
where I met with "Lek" Chailert,

00:21:05.764 --> 00:21:08.517
who has dedicated her life to
speaking out about elephants

00:21:08.517 --> 00:21:11.019
used in the entertainment
industry in her country.

00:21:11.019 --> 00:21:13.230
- Elephant industry
is a big industry.

00:21:13.230 --> 00:21:16.566
Anyone who touches the
pocket get a lot of attack.

00:21:16.566 --> 00:21:19.278
They asked the government
to kick me out the country.

00:21:19.278 --> 00:21:23.073
I have a gun pointed at my
head. I have many worse...

00:21:23.073 --> 00:21:24.950
I don't even want to look back.

00:21:24.950 --> 00:21:27.869
In our country, we have
thousands of captive elephants

00:21:27.869 --> 00:21:29.871
used for tourist industry.

00:21:29.871 --> 00:21:31.415
They have small building,

00:21:31.415 --> 00:21:34.084
they chain them at
the concrete floor.

00:21:34.084 --> 00:21:38.422
Mentally is a really
big issue for them.

00:21:38.422 --> 00:21:41.341
- [Mark] She then described
how elephants, like humans,

00:21:41.341 --> 00:21:43.802
behave in severe confinement.

00:21:43.802 --> 00:21:47.514
- The shake like that, hours
and hours, their mind is gone.

00:21:47.514 --> 00:21:50.392
- [Mark] She found a
way to take me inside

00:21:50.392 --> 00:21:53.228
one of those places, which
we had to film quickly

00:21:53.228 --> 00:21:55.564
before the owners
changed their minds.

00:21:55.564 --> 00:21:57.816
- [Lek] And this is
how they keep them.

00:22:05.490 --> 00:22:08.285
(chains clanking)

00:22:09.619 --> 00:22:11.288
- [Mark] So they're
chained every day.

00:22:11.288 --> 00:22:12.289
- [Lek] Yes.

00:22:12.289 --> 00:22:13.248
- [Mark] And the
rest of the time

00:22:13.248 --> 00:22:14.791
they're being made to do work.

00:22:14.791 --> 00:22:16.335
- [Lek] Yes. So many places,

00:22:16.335 --> 00:22:18.879
they change elephants
somewhere in the hot sun

00:22:18.879 --> 00:22:23.342
or in the mud and stand
on their own poo and pee.

00:22:23.342 --> 00:22:26.053
- So this is better
than most of them.

00:22:26.053 --> 00:22:27.220
- Yes. Much better.

00:22:29.639 --> 00:22:31.725
Below here is a baby nursery.

00:22:31.725 --> 00:22:33.602
- [Mark] This is a
mother and a baby?

00:22:33.602 --> 00:22:34.978
- [Lek] Mother- yes.

00:22:34.978 --> 00:22:37.814
(dark music)

00:22:42.319 --> 00:22:43.862
- [Mark] Back in
the United States-

00:22:43.862 --> 00:22:47.574
- We might kill 40-50 here
today. We might kill 20.

00:22:47.574 --> 00:22:50.118
It depends on how many
crows are in the area.

00:22:50.118 --> 00:22:52.329
This is like cheap sporting
clay shooting here.

00:22:52.329 --> 00:22:53.372
The targets are free.

00:22:53.372 --> 00:22:57.417
(crows cawing)
(gun shoots)

00:22:57.417 --> 00:22:58.835
Did you hear him
when I shot him?

00:22:58.835 --> 00:23:00.962
He kind of cried.
(vocalizing) He was wounded.

00:23:00.962 --> 00:23:02.381
- [Mark] Oh, I
didn't hear. Okay.

00:23:02.381 --> 00:23:03.924
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And I'll shoot two or three,

00:23:03.924 --> 00:23:05.592
and one of 'em might fly all
the way across that field

00:23:05.592 --> 00:23:07.135
and land in that tree.

00:23:07.135 --> 00:23:08.804
He might be the guy
that'll warn everybody

00:23:08.804 --> 00:23:10.013
from coming in here.

00:23:10.013 --> 00:23:11.348
(crowd cawing)

00:23:11.348 --> 00:23:12.224
They look like they look
out after each others.

00:23:12.224 --> 00:23:13.809
I can't really explain it.

00:23:13.809 --> 00:23:17.020
- [Mark] And I didn't have to
travel far from where I live

00:23:17.020 --> 00:23:20.899
to find a zoo with a
chimpanzee in a cage.

00:23:20.899 --> 00:23:24.277
So I planted a hidden
timelapse camera there.

00:23:27.030 --> 00:23:29.366
Watching this, I just
kept thinking about

00:23:29.366 --> 00:23:33.787
how these are our species'
closest living cousins.

00:23:33.787 --> 00:23:36.039
An evolutionary
blink of an eye ago,

00:23:36.039 --> 00:23:39.000
they and we were
the same species.

00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:42.045
What happens to individuals
who are treated like this?

00:23:42.045 --> 00:23:45.298
- A lot of times we hear
about PTSD in war veterans.

00:23:45.298 --> 00:23:49.511
Our study found that chimpanzees
used in entertainment,

00:23:49.511 --> 00:23:54.516
in the international primate
trade, had high levels of PTSD.

00:23:55.809 --> 00:23:57.352
- [Mark] While chimpanzees
can't describe PTSD

00:23:57.352 --> 00:24:00.730
in our language, I
found someone who could.

00:24:00.730 --> 00:24:02.441
- I'm a Marine Corps veteran,

00:24:02.441 --> 00:24:04.651
diagnosed with post-traumatic
stress disorder.

00:24:04.651 --> 00:24:06.570
Your mind and body are convinced

00:24:06.570 --> 00:24:08.029
that something's gonna happen.

00:24:08.029 --> 00:24:11.032
That you're going to have
to fight for your life

00:24:11.032 --> 00:24:13.160
or run for your life.

00:24:13.160 --> 00:24:17.831
Every moment has been fear.

00:24:17.831 --> 00:24:19.833
Whether it's supposed
to be a happy moment

00:24:19.833 --> 00:24:20.792
or anything else.

00:24:20.792 --> 00:24:23.795
Not getting a moment of peace.

00:24:23.795 --> 00:24:25.755
This year I attempted suicide.

00:24:32.345 --> 00:24:34.431
I don't wanna be here.

00:24:37.017 --> 00:24:39.436
- [Mark] This led
me to a much deeper,

00:24:39.436 --> 00:24:41.271
more disturbing question.

00:24:41.271 --> 00:24:44.691
If these are only the species
I just happened to look at,

00:24:44.691 --> 00:24:46.485
what else is going on?

00:24:48.153 --> 00:24:50.322
To find out, I
spoke with perhaps

00:24:50.322 --> 00:24:53.950
the most knowledgeable animal
welfare expert alive today.

00:24:53.950 --> 00:24:56.119
- I'm emeritus professor
of animal welfare

00:24:56.119 --> 00:24:57.287
in Cambridge University.

00:24:57.287 --> 00:24:58.788
I've been doing research

00:24:58.788 --> 00:25:02.918
on the behavior and welfare
of animals for 50 years.

00:25:02.918 --> 00:25:07.923
I've written about 360
refereed papers and 12 books.

00:25:09.299 --> 00:25:10.967
At this moment, the biggest
animal welfare problem

00:25:10.967 --> 00:25:12.969
in the world is the chickens,

00:25:12.969 --> 00:25:14.304
which are kept for
meat production.

00:25:14.304 --> 00:25:16.348
- [Mark] Ooh. How
is that possible?

00:25:16.348 --> 00:25:20.060
- In the United States
alone, it's estimated

00:25:20.060 --> 00:25:23.813
that more than 9
billion chickens

00:25:23.813 --> 00:25:26.107
are produced for
slaughter, for meat.

00:25:27.317 --> 00:25:28.735
- [Mark Voiceover]
Uh, if you're feeling

00:25:28.735 --> 00:25:32.030
a little uncomfortable
right now, you're not alone.

00:25:32.030 --> 00:25:35.325
To help me make sense of this,
I visited an animal sanctuary

00:25:35.325 --> 00:25:38.662
with evolutionary anthropologist
Dr. Barbara J. King,

00:25:38.662 --> 00:25:42.165
who recently turned her
attention to farmed animals.

00:25:42.165 --> 00:25:45.168
- When you change the topic
and you bring in chickens,

00:25:45.168 --> 00:25:48.672
there's a very palpable
sense of tension.

00:25:48.672 --> 00:25:50.215
There's joking.

00:25:50.215 --> 00:25:52.842
- Once you change the species.
- Once I change the species.

00:25:52.842 --> 00:25:57.347
- So, talking about this
is gonna ruin my film.

00:25:57.347 --> 00:25:58.682
- (chuckles) Possibly.

00:25:58.682 --> 00:26:01.184
- [Mark] And I was told
it's not just chickens.

00:26:01.184 --> 00:26:04.854
- Globally, nearly all
animal production now

00:26:04.854 --> 00:26:08.608
is conducted in these
highly intensive,

00:26:08.608 --> 00:26:10.193
so-called factory farming

00:26:10.193 --> 00:26:12.654
or confined animal
feeding operations.

00:26:12.654 --> 00:26:15.031
- [Mark] So I looked into
the numbers, and it's true.

00:26:15.031 --> 00:26:18.243
If I wanted to find out
how Homo sapiens interacts

00:26:18.243 --> 00:26:21.329
with other species, animal
agriculture, cows, pigs,

00:26:21.329 --> 00:26:23.748
and chickens, is where
I'd have to look.

00:26:23.748 --> 00:26:25.542
So I enlisted the
help of perhaps

00:26:25.542 --> 00:26:28.461
the most world renowned
expert on the meat industry.

00:26:28.461 --> 00:26:29.796
Dr. Temple Grandin.

00:26:29.796 --> 00:26:31.631
- Been in this
industry for 50 years.

00:26:31.631 --> 00:26:33.466
Every major meat company,
I've worked with them.

00:26:33.466 --> 00:26:37.554
- [Mark] And with that, a
strange new journey began.

00:26:37.554 --> 00:26:40.223
- [Person] They can feel
pain, they can feel fear.

00:26:40.223 --> 00:26:42.392
They can have positive feelings.

00:26:42.392 --> 00:26:45.478
- [Mark] I clearly had to
meet some chickens first.

00:26:45.478 --> 00:26:47.022
So I met up with a friend

00:26:47.022 --> 00:26:49.190
who'd recently adopted
some pet chickens.

00:26:49.190 --> 00:26:50.567
- Come on, guys.

00:26:50.567 --> 00:26:52.152
The ones that we got last
year are much smaller.

00:26:52.152 --> 00:26:55.113
So the older chickens would
kind of pick on them a little

00:26:55.113 --> 00:26:56.906
and not welcome them
into their group.

00:26:56.906 --> 00:27:00.285
They have their
own personalities.

00:27:00.285 --> 00:27:03.079
They have their own
interpersonal relations

00:27:03.079 --> 00:27:05.081
and conflicts just like humans.

00:27:05.081 --> 00:27:09.377
The mother hen is very,
very protective of her baby.

00:27:09.377 --> 00:27:11.546
The two walk around
as a pair now.

00:27:11.546 --> 00:27:14.424
- [Mark] So it was time to
begin the investigations,

00:27:14.424 --> 00:27:18.136
which turned out to be
more than I bargained for.

00:27:18.136 --> 00:27:19.929
- You have your work
cut out for you.

00:27:19.929 --> 00:27:24.100
Animal agribusiness has engaged
in aggressive, expensive,

00:27:24.100 --> 00:27:26.603
and prolonged efforts
to prevent people

00:27:26.603 --> 00:27:29.397
from doing exactly what it
is that you're trying to do.

00:27:29.397 --> 00:27:32.525
Basically just seeing what
happens behind closed doors.

00:27:32.525 --> 00:27:34.903
They've threatened to
punish whistleblowers.

00:27:34.903 --> 00:27:36.863
They passed legislation
to make sure

00:27:36.863 --> 00:27:40.033
that investigative journalists
cannot record what happens.

00:27:40.033 --> 00:27:43.119
Those recordings, and
if you share them,

00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:45.038
could mean that
you're thrown in jail.

00:27:46.247 --> 00:27:48.375
- I decided to start
by just showing up,

00:27:48.375 --> 00:27:52.879
not at prepared show farms, but
randomly selected facilities

00:27:52.879 --> 00:27:56.216
on random days...
with a hidden camera.

00:27:56.216 --> 00:27:58.927
Hello? Can we come over there?

00:27:58.927 --> 00:28:00.553
Oh, thank you.

00:28:00.553 --> 00:28:02.972
Since obviously I didn't
tell them I was filming,

00:28:02.972 --> 00:28:05.725
I decided to blur
everyone's faces.

00:28:05.725 --> 00:28:06.768
Hi. How are you doing?

00:28:06.768 --> 00:28:08.311
How many birds are in these?

00:28:10.271 --> 00:28:11.314
- 20,000?

00:28:11.314 --> 00:28:12.857
- Oh, what in each building?

00:28:12.857 --> 00:28:14.984
- Yeah.
- Oh wow.

00:28:14.984 --> 00:28:16.986
Is it okay, can I
take a quick look?

00:28:16.986 --> 00:28:17.821
Can I see them?

00:28:19.489 --> 00:28:21.533
Not go in, but just, like, look.

00:28:21.533 --> 00:28:25.787
- Uh, I don't know, because...

00:28:25.787 --> 00:28:27.163
I don't know.

00:28:27.163 --> 00:28:28.998
- The company says that
people are not allowed to-

00:28:28.998 --> 00:28:29.916
- Yes. Yep.

00:28:29.916 --> 00:28:31.000
- Even just to look though?

00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:32.335
- No.

00:28:32.335 --> 00:28:33.837
Yeah, because I don't know...

00:28:35.839 --> 00:28:37.340
- What if you open the door,

00:28:37.340 --> 00:28:39.676
but I'm over here
and I just look.

00:28:39.676 --> 00:28:40.510
No?

00:28:42.178 --> 00:28:45.181
Thankfully I got
better with practice.

00:28:45.181 --> 00:28:47.016
Until... one day...

00:28:48.351 --> 00:28:52.188
Hello! He's never seen
chicken barns in his life.

00:28:52.188 --> 00:28:53.690
Is there someone who would like,

00:28:53.690 --> 00:28:55.608
we be able to get permission of

00:28:55.608 --> 00:28:57.944
to see inside one of the barns?

00:28:59.279 --> 00:29:00.864
- I don't know.

00:29:00.864 --> 00:29:03.283
You tell the man right there.
Maybe he gives the permission.

00:29:03.283 --> 00:29:04.325
Go look the barn.

00:29:04.325 --> 00:29:05.285
- Oh, he's there now?
- Yeah.

00:29:05.285 --> 00:29:06.870
- Maybe we knock on the door.

00:29:06.870 --> 00:29:09.539
(door knocking)

00:29:12.625 --> 00:29:13.752
Hi, how are you doing?

00:29:16.212 --> 00:29:18.882
Sorry to interrupt you.

00:29:20.091 --> 00:29:22.510
We were just driving
by here and...

00:29:22.510 --> 00:29:25.263
Hi, I'm Mark, by the
way. Hey, how are you?

00:29:25.263 --> 00:29:27.974
Somehow I persuaded
them to show me inside.

00:29:29.100 --> 00:29:30.685
- The chickens.

00:29:30.685 --> 00:29:33.521
(chickens clucking)

00:29:39.402 --> 00:29:40.737
- Wow.

00:29:40.737 --> 00:29:44.908
And to show me some
of their records.

00:29:44.908 --> 00:29:46.034
- [Worker] Per house.

00:29:46.034 --> 00:29:48.495
- Oh, per house? Wow.

00:29:48.495 --> 00:29:51.247
- Can I just see
really fast? Oh, sorry.

00:29:51.247 --> 00:29:55.835
Is it okay if I take
a look? Wow, 18,000...

00:29:58.379 --> 00:30:00.924
Here's the total
number of individuals

00:30:00.924 --> 00:30:03.384
who were put into this building

00:30:03.384 --> 00:30:06.513
and here is the
weekly death rate.

00:30:06.513 --> 00:30:08.515
To make sure that
was no exception,

00:30:08.515 --> 00:30:12.018
on another day I wandered up
to another random facility.

00:30:12.018 --> 00:30:13.603
Can we come this way?

00:30:13.603 --> 00:30:16.606
Is it okay if I just walk over
there and look really fast?

00:30:25.740 --> 00:30:27.283
- [Worker] Okay. Come on.

00:30:27.283 --> 00:30:28.409
- [Mark] Take a look.

00:30:29.577 --> 00:30:31.496
How many died in this one?

00:30:31.496 --> 00:30:35.291
- Oh, every day?
10, 20, different.

00:30:35.291 --> 00:30:36.835
- [Mark] Normal?
That's like normal?

00:30:36.835 --> 00:30:38.253
- [Worker] Yeah. Normal.

00:30:38.253 --> 00:30:40.463
- [Mark] What is happening
to these animals?

00:30:40.463 --> 00:30:41.840
- Genetic selection.

00:30:41.840 --> 00:30:43.716
- There's a whole sort of
host of medical problems

00:30:43.716 --> 00:30:47.637
associated with this very,
very rapid weight gain

00:30:47.637 --> 00:30:49.305
that we've selected for.

00:30:49.305 --> 00:30:52.725
They get pain in their joints.
They can't stand up for long.

00:30:52.725 --> 00:30:55.812
- The heart just can't keep
up with this rate of growth.

00:30:57.063 --> 00:30:59.107
- And on yet another
day I just stood around

00:30:59.107 --> 00:31:01.693
and watched as birds
were loaded onto trucks

00:31:01.693 --> 00:31:03.152
bound for the slaughterhouse.

00:31:03.152 --> 00:31:05.238
Look, look at the truck loading.

00:31:07.073 --> 00:31:09.784
(forklift rumbling)

00:31:21.880 --> 00:31:24.674
As I was about to
leave, I saw this one

00:31:24.674 --> 00:31:27.719
who had escaped and was
hiding against a wall.

00:31:31.180 --> 00:31:33.516
Then, when I happened
to be visiting Brazil

00:31:33.516 --> 00:31:35.184
for an unrelated project,

00:31:35.184 --> 00:31:38.438
I had a very unexpected
conversation about

00:31:38.438 --> 00:31:39.939
what happens next.

00:31:39.939 --> 00:31:42.859
- I work for the Brazilian
government as a work inspector.

00:31:42.859 --> 00:31:46.195
I go to different places to see
how the workers are treated,

00:31:46.195 --> 00:31:49.365
and one of the main places
I go is slaughterhouses.

00:31:49.365 --> 00:31:53.620
When the box comes with the
chickens very packed inside,

00:31:53.620 --> 00:31:55.705
they're flapping their rings
and trying to get away.

00:31:55.705 --> 00:31:57.040
One worker opens

00:31:57.040 --> 00:31:58.917
and then the other ones
have to get the chickens

00:31:58.917 --> 00:32:00.585
with both hands by the legs

00:32:00.585 --> 00:32:03.296
and then put them upside
down on the shackles

00:32:03.296 --> 00:32:04.881
and they're like
flapping their wings

00:32:04.881 --> 00:32:07.467
and making really
disturbing noises.

00:32:07.467 --> 00:32:09.010
They're like really scared.

00:32:09.010 --> 00:32:11.179
I want to say, "Hey,
stop! Hey, stop.

00:32:11.179 --> 00:32:13.306
They're alive. You
can't do that."

00:32:13.306 --> 00:32:16.517
But then, of course,
I'm a professional,

00:32:16.517 --> 00:32:19.395
I can't say that, but
that's the feeling I have.

00:32:19.395 --> 00:32:21.564
Like, "Hey, stop
that. You're crazy.

00:32:21.564 --> 00:32:24.901
The birds are conscious.
They are suffering.

00:32:26.069 --> 00:32:27.445
This is wrong."

00:32:27.445 --> 00:32:29.697
And have to pretend
I don't care.

00:32:31.199 --> 00:32:33.910
But it's a horrible feeling to
see them suffering like that

00:32:33.910 --> 00:32:36.579
and not being able
to do anything.

00:32:36.579 --> 00:32:39.999
Not even, I don't know, trying
to comfort them some way

00:32:39.999 --> 00:32:44.671
or saying, expressing
how sorry I am

00:32:46.381 --> 00:32:48.675
for what they are going through.

00:32:50.134 --> 00:32:52.971
- In egg production, goal is
to get as many eggs, obviously,

00:32:52.971 --> 00:32:56.099
out of the system as they can
in the shortest possible time.

00:32:56.099 --> 00:32:58.101
- Unfortunately, egg facilities

00:32:58.101 --> 00:33:00.770
didn't just invite me in.

00:33:00.770 --> 00:33:02.438
Hello? Is anyone here?

00:33:03.731 --> 00:33:04.941
Hello? Is anyone here?

00:33:17.203 --> 00:33:18.579
Let's go talk to them over here.

00:33:18.579 --> 00:33:20.957
I found someone to speak
with at one of them

00:33:20.957 --> 00:33:23.376
amid the extremely
loud machinery.

00:33:23.376 --> 00:33:24.877
Excuse me? Is anyone there?

00:33:28.297 --> 00:33:29.340
Hello?

00:33:30.550 --> 00:33:33.678
I have a quick question,
if someone has a second.

00:33:33.678 --> 00:33:35.430
How many birds are in there?

00:33:35.430 --> 00:33:38.141
- About 70,000 birds.

00:33:38.141 --> 00:33:39.642
Somebody'll help you up front.

00:33:39.642 --> 00:33:40.893
- Okay.

00:33:40.893 --> 00:33:42.311
Do you think if they
help us up front,

00:33:42.311 --> 00:33:43.479
they'll be able to show us in?

00:33:43.479 --> 00:33:46.566
- No, it's biosecurity,
our birds, yeah.

00:33:46.566 --> 00:33:48.609
Because if somebody gets
one of the chickens sick...

00:33:48.609 --> 00:33:49.944
- Right. Then they
all get sick, yeah.

00:33:49.944 --> 00:33:50.778
All 70,000.

00:33:50.778 --> 00:33:52.071
- Yeah.

00:33:52.071 --> 00:33:53.865
- I came up with what
seemed like a good plan

00:33:53.865 --> 00:33:57.410
to avoid being turned away
on biosecurity grounds.

00:33:57.410 --> 00:33:59.829
Does my biohazard
suit look alright?

00:33:59.829 --> 00:34:01.497
- [Camera Operator] I think so.

00:34:01.497 --> 00:34:03.624
- [Mark Voiceover] Even
then I couldn't get in,

00:34:03.624 --> 00:34:06.961
but I did get a
strange phone call.

00:34:06.961 --> 00:34:08.337
- [Caller] Hi, Mark.

00:34:08.337 --> 00:34:09.756
My name is (censored),
and I'm with the FBI.

00:34:09.756 --> 00:34:11.215
I was hoping you'd be able
to give me a call back

00:34:11.215 --> 00:34:12.341
when you get a chance.

00:34:12.341 --> 00:34:13.593
- [Mark] That's right.

00:34:13.593 --> 00:34:16.512
One of the egg facilities
called the FBI.

00:34:16.512 --> 00:34:17.972
I had to find another way.

00:34:17.972 --> 00:34:19.515
So I found an investigator

00:34:19.515 --> 00:34:22.060
who has guided countless
journalists and others

00:34:22.060 --> 00:34:24.312
into egg facilities
throughout England.

00:34:24.312 --> 00:34:27.065
- [Investigator] There's no
one actively working at night.

00:34:27.065 --> 00:34:28.858
So that's why we're
going at night.

00:34:28.858 --> 00:34:30.818
There's a whole load of
floodlights down here,

00:34:30.818 --> 00:34:32.653
which, like, motion-sensored.

00:34:32.653 --> 00:34:35.364
We'll have two-way radios
so we can keep in touch

00:34:35.364 --> 00:34:38.659
and I can give you any warning
of anyone that's approaching.

00:34:38.659 --> 00:34:42.497
- What happens if we get caught?

00:34:42.497 --> 00:34:44.332
- [Investigator] It's likely
that the police will be called.

00:34:44.332 --> 00:34:47.502
- About how many birds
are in here total?

00:34:47.502 --> 00:34:50.129
- [Investigator] There's at
least half a million there.

00:34:50.129 --> 00:34:51.547
- In this one facility?

00:34:51.547 --> 00:34:53.257
- [Investigator] Yeah,
just in the one farm.

00:34:53.257 --> 00:34:56.177
- [Mark] So this is
basically nothing special?

00:34:56.177 --> 00:34:57.720
- [Investigator] Yeah,
and nothing special

00:34:57.720 --> 00:34:59.097
on conditions either-

00:34:59.097 --> 00:35:02.100
- [Mark] A step up from the
cages we have in the US.

00:35:02.100 --> 00:35:03.309
- [Investigator] Yeah,
there's just been

00:35:03.309 --> 00:35:05.978
some minor welfare improvements.

00:35:05.978 --> 00:35:08.231
So I've got two scopes with me.

00:35:08.231 --> 00:35:12.360
I've got a thermal imager
and an infrared scope.

00:35:12.360 --> 00:35:14.779
If someone's coming in
the dark, I'll see them.

00:35:17.281 --> 00:35:19.909
(uneasy music)

00:35:24.038 --> 00:35:27.208
There's a couple of fences
to get over. Take them slow.

00:35:27.208 --> 00:35:29.293
- [Mark] How do we get
over the barbed wire?

00:35:33.256 --> 00:35:35.383
- [Investigator] So we
have to climb the fence

00:35:35.383 --> 00:35:36.342
on the side here.

00:35:36.342 --> 00:35:37.260
It's got electric on the top.

00:35:37.260 --> 00:35:38.928
Don't put your hand on the left.

00:35:38.928 --> 00:35:41.722
- [Mark] So I put
my hand on these?

00:35:41.722 --> 00:35:44.225
- [Investigator] Let's just
sort out radios before we go in.

00:35:44.225 --> 00:35:47.603
Comms check, comms
check, are you receiving?

00:35:47.603 --> 00:35:51.149
- [Mark] We donned our
biosecurity gear and went in.

00:35:59.657 --> 00:36:04.662
(metal clanking)
(chickens clucking)

00:36:25.474 --> 00:36:27.435
In there, I started
thinking about how,

00:36:27.435 --> 00:36:29.020
while I was going to sleep

00:36:29.020 --> 00:36:31.981
in my comfortable hotel
room bed that night,

00:36:31.981 --> 00:36:34.483
they would stay trapped
here, that night,

00:36:34.483 --> 00:36:36.402
and the next, and the next,

00:36:36.402 --> 00:36:37.570
and the next.

00:36:44.911 --> 00:36:46.621
- The animals have
the biggest issues

00:36:46.621 --> 00:36:47.830
when it comes to housing

00:36:47.830 --> 00:36:50.249
would be the layer
hens and the pigs.

00:36:50.249 --> 00:36:52.585
- They're very active,
very intelligent.

00:36:52.585 --> 00:36:54.629
- [Mark] 12-year-old
Alyson and her dad

00:36:54.629 --> 00:36:56.672
take care of some adopted pigs.

00:36:56.672 --> 00:36:58.716
Are they wagging their tails?

00:36:58.716 --> 00:37:00.176
- Mm-hm.

00:37:00.176 --> 00:37:01.093
- [Mark] Because they're happy,

00:37:01.093 --> 00:37:02.637
like the same way that dogs do?

00:37:02.637 --> 00:37:04.263
- Yeah, they also
wag their tails a lot

00:37:04.263 --> 00:37:05.514
when you're like petting them.

00:37:05.514 --> 00:37:08.476
It's way easier to teach
a pig than a dog to sit.

00:37:08.476 --> 00:37:09.310
Sit.

00:37:09.310 --> 00:37:11.729
(pig puffing)

00:37:12.730 --> 00:37:13.689
Good boy.

00:37:13.689 --> 00:37:15.733
I think they're just smarter.

00:37:15.733 --> 00:37:17.693
- So we take this animal

00:37:17.693 --> 00:37:21.364
and we put it into a
confinement system,

00:37:21.364 --> 00:37:24.242
which is essentially
a concrete pen.

00:37:24.242 --> 00:37:26.577
They just become very
hostile towards each other,

00:37:26.577 --> 00:37:28.996
get into disputes
over various things.

00:37:28.996 --> 00:37:33.042
What you often see is
pigs with abrasions, cuts

00:37:33.042 --> 00:37:34.335
on their skins.

00:37:34.335 --> 00:37:36.045
And that's from the
teeth of other pigs.

00:37:36.045 --> 00:37:38.547
- [Mark] I was determined
to see this for myself

00:37:38.547 --> 00:37:41.676
and without traveling
halfway across the world.

00:37:41.676 --> 00:37:43.594
So I found a robotics company

00:37:43.594 --> 00:37:47.056
that had competed on
the TV show "BattleBots"

00:37:47.056 --> 00:37:49.267
and asked them to
customize a robot

00:37:49.267 --> 00:37:53.354
that could travel across a
field and look into a window.

00:37:58.025 --> 00:37:59.694
- All right.

00:38:00.569 --> 00:38:02.571
It's definitely a robot.

00:38:05.992 --> 00:38:08.577
So we got the right
general category of thing.

00:38:09.787 --> 00:38:11.789
- That's what I imagined
a robot to look like.

00:38:14.125 --> 00:38:15.626
- Raise the camera up

00:38:15.626 --> 00:38:18.337
and then we'll be able to
look inside of the windows.

00:38:18.337 --> 00:38:21.757
And then we've got a camera
that can pan, tilt, and zoom.

00:38:21.757 --> 00:38:23.926
We'll drop it off and
then we'll drive away

00:38:23.926 --> 00:38:26.429
so that we can control
it from a distance.

00:38:26.429 --> 00:38:27.847
Alright, let's go.

00:38:27.847 --> 00:38:30.599
(anxious music)

00:38:41.652 --> 00:38:43.070
I think we're in good shape.

00:38:43.070 --> 00:38:44.989
It doesn't look like there's
anyone on the property.

00:38:44.989 --> 00:38:47.950
I'm trying to get as close
to the wall as possible.

00:38:47.950 --> 00:38:49.243
A little closer.

00:38:50.703 --> 00:38:53.497
Okay, we're right up
against the wall now.

00:38:53.497 --> 00:38:55.958
I'm gonna raise
the scissor lift.

00:38:55.958 --> 00:38:57.460
Okay. The lift is going up.

00:39:00.129 --> 00:39:03.924
It's definitely windy or
it's on unsteady ground.

00:39:05.134 --> 00:39:06.385
It looks like there's mesh.

00:39:06.385 --> 00:39:08.929
It looks like it's
pretty hard to see in.

00:39:10.598 --> 00:39:12.475
- [Mark Voiceover]
It was a disaster.

00:39:12.475 --> 00:39:15.811
After all that it was
impossible to see inside.

00:39:15.811 --> 00:39:18.481
And when I drove the
robot back to the roadside

00:39:18.481 --> 00:39:21.525
to pick it up, things
got even worse.

00:39:21.525 --> 00:39:23.944
A truck from the
company drove in

00:39:23.944 --> 00:39:26.405
and parked right next to it.

00:39:26.405 --> 00:39:28.324
- If we can drive this
into the middle of the road

00:39:28.324 --> 00:39:30.951
and pick up the robot,
even if they follow us,

00:39:30.951 --> 00:39:32.953
we still are able to
get the robot back.

00:39:32.953 --> 00:39:35.039
Are you guys okay with that?

00:39:35.039 --> 00:39:37.666
All right, let's
actually put that away.

00:39:37.666 --> 00:39:39.543
We were able to pick
it up and get away,

00:39:39.543 --> 00:39:42.797
which gave us another chance
at a different facility.

00:39:42.797 --> 00:39:45.383
I could see the pigs
crammed into pens,

00:39:45.383 --> 00:39:48.010
standing on concrete
floors with slats

00:39:48.010 --> 00:39:50.221
that their waste
just falls through

00:39:50.221 --> 00:39:53.557
with no escape from each
other and nothing to enjoy.

00:39:53.557 --> 00:39:55.559
And I saw the
scrapes and bruises

00:39:55.559 --> 00:39:58.396
that they would rarely have
under normal circumstances

00:39:58.396 --> 00:40:00.189
- When they're ready
to be slaughtered,

00:40:00.189 --> 00:40:03.275
they travel by road sometimes
for very long distances

00:40:03.275 --> 00:40:07.029
and that often triggers kind
of an acute stress state

00:40:07.029 --> 00:40:07.947
in these animals.

00:40:08.864 --> 00:40:10.574
- To see that I went to Canada

00:40:10.574 --> 00:40:13.244
where I could track pigs
traveling from Alberta

00:40:13.244 --> 00:40:15.538
to British Columbia
through the mountains.

00:40:15.538 --> 00:40:18.416
I needed a totally new type
of investigative equipment

00:40:18.416 --> 00:40:20.709
that I could attach
to transport trucks,

00:40:20.709 --> 00:40:23.921
designed and built from scratch.

00:40:23.921 --> 00:40:27.466
This is the the device.
There's the lens.

00:40:27.466 --> 00:40:31.053
We stick this through
the truck hole

00:40:31.053 --> 00:40:35.766
and then we try to screw these
on at the first brake check.

00:40:35.766 --> 00:40:37.143
- [Person] As quickly
as we can, yeah.

00:40:37.143 --> 00:40:39.645
The camera will send
it to this receiver.

00:40:39.645 --> 00:40:41.814
- [Mark] And there's
the live monitor.

00:40:41.814 --> 00:40:43.482
- [Person] Right, and with
the range that this thing has,

00:40:43.482 --> 00:40:45.276
we can keep the car
back far enough that

00:40:45.276 --> 00:40:46.944
we don't have to worry
about being noticed.

00:40:46.944 --> 00:40:51.907
- This is quite a thing to
try to sneak through the hole

00:40:52.908 --> 00:40:54.243
in the side of a
transport truck.

00:40:54.243 --> 00:40:55.411
- [Person] It's
not super discreet.

00:40:55.411 --> 00:40:57.204
- Thankfully the
inventor provided me

00:40:57.204 --> 00:40:59.915
with these crystal
clear instructions.

00:40:59.915 --> 00:41:01.041
- [Inventor] Make
sure this is on,

00:41:01.041 --> 00:41:02.460
there's your recording light.

00:41:02.460 --> 00:41:03.752
You're gonna have to drive
close to this vehicle,

00:41:03.752 --> 00:41:05.087
but when the truck's moving,

00:41:05.087 --> 00:41:06.547
you're not going to
be able to hear shit.

00:41:06.547 --> 00:41:07.882
You know what I mean? Because
they're so fucking loud.

00:41:07.882 --> 00:41:08.757
And that's how I dropped
half the fucking shit.

00:41:08.757 --> 00:41:10.176
- [Mark] So off we went.

00:41:10.176 --> 00:41:13.179
She will get out and talk
to them on the left side

00:41:13.179 --> 00:41:16.307
and we will run up
on the right side

00:41:16.307 --> 00:41:18.934
while she's distracting
them, and plant the camera.

00:41:18.934 --> 00:41:20.561
- [Person] Yeah, and
there's a washroom

00:41:20.561 --> 00:41:21.937
down further that way.

00:41:21.937 --> 00:41:23.898
So there's a justification
for us walking there.

00:41:23.898 --> 00:41:27.443
- And washroom are
what Americans called
bathrooms, right?

00:41:27.443 --> 00:41:28.277
- [Person] There's a bathroom...

00:41:28.277 --> 00:41:29.653
- Okay.

00:41:29.653 --> 00:41:30.613
[Mark Voiceover] And with
that foolproof plan...

00:41:30.613 --> 00:41:31.780
So he's about to pull over.

00:41:31.780 --> 00:41:32.781
- [Person] Yeah.

00:41:32.781 --> 00:41:35.117
- Let's drive up a little bit.

00:41:37.870 --> 00:41:39.663
Because otherwise
we'll lose visual.

00:41:41.165 --> 00:41:44.293
I'm just talking loud
for the camera. Sorry.

00:41:44.293 --> 00:41:45.461
- [Person] Oh.

00:41:45.461 --> 00:41:46.921
That truck left.

00:41:46.921 --> 00:41:48.380
- So he didn't even try.

00:41:48.380 --> 00:41:49.298
- [Person] He didn't even
stop and check his brakes.

00:41:49.298 --> 00:41:50.799
- So he's just a bad person.

00:41:50.799 --> 00:41:51.717
- [Person] Yes.

00:41:51.717 --> 00:41:52.885
- Trucks weren't stopping

00:41:52.885 --> 00:41:55.513
and people were
getting suspicious.

00:41:55.513 --> 00:41:57.640
So when one finally did stop,

00:41:57.640 --> 00:42:00.184
we had to get everything
right on one try.

00:42:00.184 --> 00:42:02.478
- You want me to put the
camera down for a second?

00:42:03.771 --> 00:42:04.730
- No.

00:42:04.730 --> 00:42:06.065
- Okay.

00:42:06.065 --> 00:42:07.650
- Wait until he does
the whole break check.

00:42:07.650 --> 00:42:09.151
- ...until he does the brake
check. All right, let's go.

00:42:09.151 --> 00:42:11.737
(anxious music)

00:42:17.576 --> 00:42:18.702
We made it work.

00:42:21.580 --> 00:42:25.501
The first thing I noticed
was, again, how many scrapes

00:42:25.501 --> 00:42:26.794
and bruises they had.

00:42:36.053 --> 00:42:39.431
Here, the individual in the
middle has begun vomiting.

00:42:49.066 --> 00:42:51.235
Since the uses of
cattle vary more,

00:42:51.235 --> 00:42:53.362
I focused on the
most common practices

00:42:53.362 --> 00:42:54.863
in places like the US.

00:42:54.863 --> 00:42:56.156
- When you're
driving down the road

00:42:56.156 --> 00:42:58.534
and you see cattle
grazing in a field,

00:42:58.534 --> 00:43:00.661
they won't stay there
all their lives.

00:43:00.661 --> 00:43:03.038
They then get moved into
what are called feedlots.

00:43:03.038 --> 00:43:05.207
They develop all kinds
of digestive problems

00:43:05.207 --> 00:43:06.166
as a result of that.

00:43:06.166 --> 00:43:07.543
They probably feel sick.

00:43:07.543 --> 00:43:09.753
- [Mark] Okay, that's
cattle raised for beef,

00:43:09.753 --> 00:43:11.380
but what about dairy?

00:43:11.380 --> 00:43:13.215
Dairy is really bizarre.

00:43:13.215 --> 00:43:15.467
So it can be pretty
hard to understand.

00:43:15.467 --> 00:43:18.262
So I supplemented the scientists
with someone who worked

00:43:18.262 --> 00:43:21.890
as a private undercover
investigator at
dairy facilities.

00:43:21.890 --> 00:43:25.227
- Before I got into working
as an undercover investigator,

00:43:25.227 --> 00:43:28.314
I was a police officer
for seven years.

00:43:28.314 --> 00:43:32.276
I've worked at four dairy
farms as an investigator.

00:43:32.276 --> 00:43:35.821
- How was I going to
investigate dairy farms?

00:43:35.821 --> 00:43:39.408
There seem to be people on
the property all the time.

00:43:39.408 --> 00:43:40.826
This is a good disguise, right?

00:43:40.826 --> 00:43:42.911
I look like a
construction worker.

00:43:42.911 --> 00:43:44.330
- [Camera Operator] Um, no.

00:43:46.582 --> 00:43:49.084
- I persuaded a friend
to get a certification

00:43:49.084 --> 00:43:50.753
to operate bucket lifts.

00:43:50.753 --> 00:43:54.298
And of course we practiced
with several different ones.

00:43:54.298 --> 00:43:57.051
You definitely read
the instruction manual

00:43:57.051 --> 00:43:58.594
for this one, right?

00:43:58.594 --> 00:44:01.430
(vehicle beeping)

00:44:03.557 --> 00:44:06.101
Then, it was onto
the dairy farms,

00:44:06.101 --> 00:44:09.647
where I saw firsthand
exactly what the scientists

00:44:09.647 --> 00:44:11.398
and investigator described.

00:44:11.398 --> 00:44:12.608
- There's no grass.

00:44:12.608 --> 00:44:14.652
- The cow is essentially
standing or lying

00:44:14.652 --> 00:44:18.447
in its own manure,
in its own excrement.

00:44:41.387 --> 00:44:44.139
- They have to give birth
in order to produce milk.

00:44:44.139 --> 00:44:47.851
- The calf is usually taken
away within a day or two.

00:44:47.851 --> 00:44:49.812
Many cows show a
lot of distress.

00:44:49.812 --> 00:44:52.481
They search for the
calf, they call.

00:44:52.481 --> 00:44:54.358
- The calf is
screaming and crying.

00:44:54.358 --> 00:44:58.654
- They're usually put in
these small crates or hutches.

00:44:58.654 --> 00:45:00.030
- And then grows up

00:45:00.030 --> 00:45:02.825
in a completely controlled
solitary confinement.

00:45:04.159 --> 00:45:06.829
(uneasy music)

00:45:09.540 --> 00:45:12.000
- [Mark] Even knowing
what they would be like,

00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:14.878
the hutches were truly shocking.

00:45:14.878 --> 00:45:16.296
Hundreds of individuals,

00:45:16.296 --> 00:45:18.257
who would normally be
with their mothers,

00:45:18.257 --> 00:45:21.093
trapped in crates
and fed formula.

00:45:23.679 --> 00:45:25.055
After looking at all this,

00:45:25.055 --> 00:45:28.434
I realized there's another
huge category of animals

00:45:28.434 --> 00:45:31.603
that we use in this
industry, marine animals.

00:45:31.603 --> 00:45:35.274
- The more distantly
related a species is,

00:45:35.274 --> 00:45:38.819
it's hard to understand how
to read their body language,

00:45:38.819 --> 00:45:41.864
how to interpret their
behavioral cues and signals,

00:45:41.864 --> 00:45:43.866
doesn't mean that
they aren't happening.

00:45:43.866 --> 00:45:46.493
The more we learn,
the more we understand

00:45:46.493 --> 00:45:49.121
that they live fascinating
and complex lives.

00:45:49.121 --> 00:45:51.540
Just to take a common
example, tilapia.

00:45:51.540 --> 00:45:53.041
They have different
social structures.

00:45:53.041 --> 00:45:55.878
They might engage in even
parental care and making nests

00:45:55.878 --> 00:45:58.380
and having tight-knit
hierarchical families.

00:45:58.380 --> 00:46:01.216
Atlantic halibut are having
a completely different life,

00:46:01.216 --> 00:46:03.886
going on massive migrations
through the sea mounts.

00:46:03.886 --> 00:46:05.429
- [Mark] I met with the captain

00:46:05.429 --> 00:46:08.098
of a Sea Shepherd
Conservation Society ship.

00:46:08.098 --> 00:46:11.059
It's an organization known
for ocean conservation work.

00:46:11.059 --> 00:46:14.438
But I asked him about
the individual fish.

00:46:14.438 --> 00:46:18.442
- Fish are stabbed to death.
They're asphyxiated to death.

00:46:18.442 --> 00:46:20.068
They are crushed to death.

00:46:20.068 --> 00:46:22.154
Over 1 trillion animals killed.

00:46:22.154 --> 00:46:23.822
1 trillion is a
thousand billion.

00:46:23.822 --> 00:46:25.199
And I think it's
important to remember that

00:46:25.199 --> 00:46:29.077
that's 1,000 billion times
one individual creature.

00:46:29.077 --> 00:46:31.622
A trawler essentially
drags a net

00:46:31.622 --> 00:46:34.458
and bulldozes any ocean habitat.

00:46:34.458 --> 00:46:36.752
A purse seine fishing
vessel sets their net

00:46:36.752 --> 00:46:38.295
around a school of fish.

00:46:38.295 --> 00:46:39.713
The net is pulled in tight

00:46:39.713 --> 00:46:41.590
until some of them
actually crushed.

00:46:41.590 --> 00:46:43.717
- [Mark] Sea Shepherd is now
working with the governments

00:46:43.717 --> 00:46:45.761
of several African
nations to do things

00:46:45.761 --> 00:46:47.429
like ensuring that
fishing vessels

00:46:47.429 --> 00:46:49.473
are operating with
the proper permits.

00:46:49.473 --> 00:46:52.976
But this allows Sea Shepherd
to do something else:

00:46:52.976 --> 00:46:57.272
film standard commercial
fishing practices.

00:46:57.272 --> 00:46:59.942
(uneasy music)

00:47:17.751 --> 00:47:19.127
But there's another way

00:47:19.127 --> 00:47:23.340
humans now obtain fish:
industrial aquaculture.

00:47:23.340 --> 00:47:26.468
- It's the same as any
sort of industrialized,

00:47:26.468 --> 00:47:30.180
highly mechanized
production system.

00:47:30.180 --> 00:47:32.933
Physiological
abnormalities at birth

00:47:32.933 --> 00:47:35.143
through to intensive crowding.

00:47:35.143 --> 00:47:37.479
The first and most
important thing

00:47:37.479 --> 00:47:39.940
that you need to turn
to is water quality.

00:47:39.940 --> 00:47:42.442
And of the parameters
in water quality,

00:47:42.442 --> 00:47:44.736
perhaps the most
important is ammonia.

00:47:44.736 --> 00:47:46.655
They are living in
a toxic environment

00:47:46.655 --> 00:47:49.575
if there's even just a little
bit of ammonia in the water.

00:47:50.742 --> 00:47:52.494
- So I traveled to
one of the centers

00:47:52.494 --> 00:47:55.664
of the fish farming industry
to collect water samples

00:47:55.664 --> 00:47:57.374
and test them for ammonia.

00:47:57.374 --> 00:48:01.336
I would have to fly a drone
with a sterilized test tube

00:48:01.336 --> 00:48:04.840
attached to some kind of a
cable to collect the samples.

00:48:04.840 --> 00:48:06.800
But what kind of disguise

00:48:06.800 --> 00:48:08.844
was going to explain
that one away?

00:48:11.054 --> 00:48:12.431
All right. Ready to go.

00:48:13.724 --> 00:48:15.183
(drone humming)

00:48:15.183 --> 00:48:19.187
Okay, I'm releasing
the test tube.

00:48:20.606 --> 00:48:22.733
Okay, here we go.

00:48:25.027 --> 00:48:26.111
All right, we're good.

00:48:27.112 --> 00:48:28.614
After several attempts

00:48:28.614 --> 00:48:31.408
and some pretty stunning
accidental footage

00:48:31.408 --> 00:48:35.370
of how massive these facilities
are, we made it work.

00:48:35.370 --> 00:48:39.207
Here is a fast-forward of
pulling out the water sample,

00:48:39.207 --> 00:48:42.002
flying back to the truck
where we had the testing kit

00:48:42.002 --> 00:48:42.878
ready to go,

00:48:44.880 --> 00:48:47.633
lowering the drone so that
I could remove the test tube

00:48:47.633 --> 00:48:49.092
containing the water sample,

00:48:52.512 --> 00:48:54.640
and then testing it.

00:48:56.308 --> 00:48:59.227
I tested the nitrates
first for background

00:48:59.227 --> 00:49:01.271
and then, ammonia.

00:49:02.564 --> 00:49:04.900
After putting in the
required testing chemicals

00:49:04.900 --> 00:49:06.944
and waiting the
required five minutes,

00:49:09.071 --> 00:49:12.824
the presence of toxic
ammonia was all too clear.

00:49:18.080 --> 00:49:20.832
Pull over for a second.
Pull over here for a second.

00:49:20.832 --> 00:49:23.251
So we're coming back from
these investigations,

00:49:23.251 --> 00:49:28.256
and I think we're
somewhere where the science

00:49:29.758 --> 00:49:32.970
and the investigations,
they've hit their limit.

00:49:32.970 --> 00:49:37.766
And the question now is
about what this all means.

00:49:37.766 --> 00:49:40.644
And that's a question
of philosophy.

00:49:42.104 --> 00:49:45.440
That led me to something I
hadn't thought deeply about

00:49:45.440 --> 00:49:49.945
in years, and the true
core of this journey.

00:49:49.945 --> 00:49:51.780
I decided I had to do something

00:49:51.780 --> 00:49:55.033
that's a little strange
for a documentary:

00:49:55.033 --> 00:49:59.454
directly investigate a
philosophical argument.

00:49:59.454 --> 00:50:02.124
This took me to Athens, Greece.

00:50:02.124 --> 00:50:04.167
Along with a Greek
history scholar

00:50:04.167 --> 00:50:06.294
I walked up a hill
overlooking the place

00:50:06.294 --> 00:50:08.130
where thousands of years ago,

00:50:08.130 --> 00:50:09.965
one of the most
important moments

00:50:09.965 --> 00:50:13.468
in our species' cultural
history unfolded.

00:50:13.468 --> 00:50:16.138
So what are we looking
at here, first of all?

00:50:16.138 --> 00:50:17.681
- The Ancient Agora.

00:50:17.681 --> 00:50:20.726
The very place where
the great philosophers

00:50:20.726 --> 00:50:23.103
and in particular
Socrates used to meet.

00:50:23.103 --> 00:50:25.814
The very idea of
philosophical reasoning,

00:50:25.814 --> 00:50:29.776
logic used as a method to
discuss ethical questions,

00:50:29.776 --> 00:50:31.278
it starts there.

00:50:31.278 --> 00:50:33.321
- You can actually ask, why
do we hold this position-

00:50:33.321 --> 00:50:34.156
- Exactly.

00:50:34.156 --> 00:50:35.157
- And maybe we find out

00:50:35.157 --> 00:50:36.324
that we're wrong.
- Yes.

00:50:36.324 --> 00:50:37.701
- [Mark] And from
there I traveled

00:50:37.701 --> 00:50:39.661
to meet present-day
philosophers,

00:50:39.661 --> 00:50:42.581
beginning with perhaps the
most influential philosopher

00:50:42.581 --> 00:50:47.252
of the past century, whose
1975 book, "Animal Liberation,"

00:50:47.252 --> 00:50:50.047
updated and retitled
"Animal Liberation Now,"

00:50:50.047 --> 00:50:52.382
is credited with
igniting a revolution

00:50:52.382 --> 00:50:55.010
in how humankind
views other species.

00:50:55.010 --> 00:50:58.388
What was your philosophical
argument here?

00:50:58.388 --> 00:51:03.351
- Well, the argument was simply
applying to animals ideas

00:51:03.351 --> 00:51:05.020
that most people already accept

00:51:05.020 --> 00:51:08.356
with regard to things
like racism and sexism.

00:51:08.356 --> 00:51:11.693
- [Mark] Okay, an argument
is a set of statements,

00:51:11.693 --> 00:51:15.864
called premises, that
logically lead to a conclusion.

00:51:15.864 --> 00:51:19.242
So here is the main
philosophical argument

00:51:19.242 --> 00:51:22.913
- Among the various ethical
codes around the world,

00:51:22.913 --> 00:51:26.333
one principle in common, the
principle of nonmaleficence,

00:51:26.333 --> 00:51:28.794
which is the
principle that says,

00:51:28.794 --> 00:51:33.090
it's generally speaking
wrong to harm others.

00:51:33.090 --> 00:51:37.886
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

00:51:37.886 --> 00:51:40.263
- Nonhuman animals or
anyway, many of them

00:51:41.389 --> 00:51:42.808
are capable of feeling pain,

00:51:42.808 --> 00:51:44.893
are capable of
suffering as we are.

00:51:44.893 --> 00:51:49.689
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

00:51:49.689 --> 00:51:52.317
- Other animals matter morally.

00:51:52.317 --> 00:51:57.322
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

00:51:58.448 --> 00:52:00.242
- Can such a simple
chain of logic

00:52:00.242 --> 00:52:03.578
upend humankind's
view of other species?

00:52:03.578 --> 00:52:06.289
Is there a valid objection
to this argument,

00:52:06.289 --> 00:52:09.584
something that would justify
excluding nonhuman animals

00:52:09.584 --> 00:52:11.503
from the nonmaleficence
principle,

00:52:11.503 --> 00:52:14.005
or at least make
harming them less bad?

00:52:14.005 --> 00:52:16.133
I reviewed the
philosophical literature

00:52:16.133 --> 00:52:18.093
and put to them
what appeared to be

00:52:18.093 --> 00:52:20.679
the most commonly
made objections.

00:52:20.679 --> 00:52:23.223
We can do lots of things
that other animals can't,

00:52:23.223 --> 00:52:27.269
like we're smarter, we're
capable of thinking about ethics

00:52:27.269 --> 00:52:28.770
and making ethical judgements.

00:52:28.770 --> 00:52:30.897
- The things that you
mentioned actually aren't true

00:52:30.897 --> 00:52:32.190
of all human beings.

00:52:32.190 --> 00:52:33.900
- Even if we're only
talking about babies.

00:52:33.900 --> 00:52:36.278
- And people who are
intellectually disabled

00:52:36.278 --> 00:52:38.363
or who have Alzheimer's.

00:52:38.363 --> 00:52:42.576
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

00:52:42.576 --> 00:52:43.660
- [Mark] Oh, right.

00:52:43.660 --> 00:52:45.704
To help make all this concrete,

00:52:45.704 --> 00:52:47.414
I visited some people I know.

00:52:47.414 --> 00:52:51.126
On the left is Mark, on the
right is his sister Maureen.

00:52:51.126 --> 00:52:53.545
And in the middle is
their brother, Brian.

00:52:53.545 --> 00:52:56.298
- He's one of the friendliest,
happiest people I know.

00:52:56.298 --> 00:52:59.217
His single most noticeable
attribute is his smile.

00:52:59.217 --> 00:53:01.845
- Would he be considered
intellectually disabled?

00:53:01.845 --> 00:53:05.182
- Definitely, yeah. He lives
in a group home right now.

00:53:05.182 --> 00:53:07.058
He wouldn't be able
to live by himself.

00:53:07.058 --> 00:53:10.478
Of course, Brian's wellbeing
is important as yours are mine.

00:53:10.478 --> 00:53:14.107
He experiences joy and sadness
just like anybody else.

00:53:14.107 --> 00:53:15.483
- And finally,

00:53:15.483 --> 00:53:17.777
isn't it just part of some
sort of natural order?

00:53:17.777 --> 00:53:20.155
- Natural and good are
like Venn diagrams.

00:53:20.155 --> 00:53:22.073
There's a set of things that
are both natural and good.

00:53:22.073 --> 00:53:23.575
There are natural
things that are bad.

00:53:23.575 --> 00:53:26.995
It's perfectly natural
to die of malaria.

00:53:26.995 --> 00:53:29.998
And there are good things that
are unnatural, like medicine.

00:53:29.998 --> 00:53:32.959
Murder is natural.
Every very human society

00:53:32.959 --> 00:53:35.212
has witnessed people
killing each other.

00:53:35.212 --> 00:53:37.672
But we've determined that
this is out of bounds,

00:53:37.672 --> 00:53:40.008
because it creates
too much suffering.

00:53:40.008 --> 00:53:45.013
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

00:53:46.264 --> 00:53:47.891
- I tried one more off
the top of my head.

00:53:47.891 --> 00:53:51.102
Shouldn't we just take
care of our own sort of,

00:53:51.102 --> 00:53:52.520
I mean, isn't it-

00:53:52.520 --> 00:53:53.813
- Well, that's exactly

00:53:53.813 --> 00:53:55.190
what the racist will
say, of course, right?

00:53:55.190 --> 00:53:58.526
He will just define "our
own" as a narrower group.

00:53:58.526 --> 00:54:01.196
- In that case, you've just
arbitrarily chosen species

00:54:01.196 --> 00:54:04.241
because it's convenient,
but you have nothing to say

00:54:04.241 --> 00:54:06.534
to the white supremacist
that then says,

00:54:06.534 --> 00:54:08.161
"Well, I was born White,

00:54:08.161 --> 00:54:10.121
so why do I have to care
about Black people?"

00:54:10.121 --> 00:54:13.375
- [Mark] I can't refute
the logic of the arguments.

00:54:13.375 --> 00:54:16.503
It still feels like
they must be wrong.

00:54:16.503 --> 00:54:18.546
- That sounds like an
intuitive judgment,

00:54:18.546 --> 00:54:20.882
but we have to be
careful with intuitions

00:54:20.882 --> 00:54:24.052
that might actually
represent prejudices.

00:54:24.052 --> 00:54:27.055
- [Mark] And that is what
took me to a town in England

00:54:27.055 --> 00:54:30.058
to meet a former Oxford
clinical psychologist

00:54:30.058 --> 00:54:33.603
who added a new word to
the English language.

00:54:33.603 --> 00:54:37.274
- So I thought of speciesism

00:54:37.274 --> 00:54:40.860
to draw the parallel
with racism and sexism.

00:54:40.860 --> 00:54:45.282
- It's a kind of prejudice
that's not based in reason,

00:54:45.282 --> 00:54:47.117
that seems perfectly
normal to them,

00:54:47.117 --> 00:54:49.744
just like racism seemed
perfectly normal.

00:54:49.744 --> 00:54:52.580
- [Mark] And just to be a
hundred percent clear about

00:54:52.580 --> 00:54:54.291
what all this really means.

00:54:54.291 --> 00:54:56.084
So does this mean
we have to do things

00:54:56.084 --> 00:54:58.628
like giving nonhuman
animals the right to vote?

00:54:59.713 --> 00:55:01.548
- No. We don't
let children vote.

00:55:01.548 --> 00:55:03.300
- In fact, they don't
really need to use

00:55:03.300 --> 00:55:05.427
the concept of rights
in my argument at all.

00:55:05.427 --> 00:55:06.886
- [Mark] Got it.

00:55:06.886 --> 00:55:08.930
I decided to leave the
academics behind for a bit,

00:55:08.930 --> 00:55:12.767
and see if regular, everyday
people might have some answers

00:55:12.767 --> 00:55:15.979
by doing what Socrates did
thousands of years before,

00:55:15.979 --> 00:55:18.857
walking up to them
and asking questions.

00:55:18.857 --> 00:55:20.900
And what better place to do it

00:55:20.900 --> 00:55:22.944
than exactly where Socrates did?

00:55:22.944 --> 00:55:26.990
So it was back to Greece and
the Ancient Agora of Athens.

00:55:26.990 --> 00:55:29.117
Excuse me. You seem wise.

00:55:29.117 --> 00:55:31.870
Do you think humans are
more important ethically

00:55:31.870 --> 00:55:33.538
than other animals?

00:55:35.248 --> 00:55:36.458
- No.

00:55:36.458 --> 00:55:38.126
- Not necessarily. No.

00:55:38.126 --> 00:55:39.044
- I don't think so.

00:55:39.044 --> 00:55:40.462
- [Mark] To my surprise,

00:55:40.462 --> 00:55:43.965
most people were already
opposed to speciesism,

00:55:43.965 --> 00:55:46.051
but I found some who weren't.

00:55:46.051 --> 00:55:48.470
- Because they are
more intelligent.

00:55:48.470 --> 00:55:51.306
- So what about humans
who aren't as intelligent?

00:55:51.306 --> 00:55:52.891
Like, let's say, babies.

00:55:53.808 --> 00:55:54.642
- Ah, babies-

00:55:55.602 --> 00:55:57.687
- Are they less important?

00:55:57.687 --> 00:55:59.481
- No. No, no, no, no.

00:55:59.481 --> 00:56:02.650
- [Mark] So I took this show
on the road to San Francisco

00:56:02.650 --> 00:56:05.820
and Washington, DC
and Los Angeles,

00:56:05.820 --> 00:56:09.157
and of course, my
favorite city, Paris.

00:56:09.157 --> 00:56:11.659
- There is some
biological difference.

00:56:12.994 --> 00:56:15.205
- Biological difference
between humans and animals.

00:56:15.205 --> 00:56:18.291
So there's a biological
difference between
men and women.

00:56:18.291 --> 00:56:20.877
Does that mean we could
say, for example, we're men,

00:56:20.877 --> 00:56:22.170
women are less important

00:56:22.170 --> 00:56:23.671
because there's a
biological difference?

00:56:23.671 --> 00:56:25.090
- No. No, no.

00:56:25.090 --> 00:56:27.467
- Animals cannot do the
same things that we can do.

00:56:27.467 --> 00:56:29.010
- Right.

00:56:29.010 --> 00:56:31.679
And we can't do a lot of the
things that animals can do.

00:56:31.679 --> 00:56:34.474
- Yeah, okay.
- Flying, for example.

00:56:34.474 --> 00:56:36.309
- Okay. For sure.

00:56:36.309 --> 00:56:41.314
But like, I don't know, a
cat simply walking with four-

00:56:43.525 --> 00:56:45.902
- Right, they need four feet.
We could do it with two.

00:56:45.902 --> 00:56:46.736
Yeah. No, that's a good point.

00:56:46.736 --> 00:56:48.279
- Ability to reason

00:56:48.279 --> 00:56:52.367
and that kind of extra level
that makes us human, I suppose.

00:56:52.367 --> 00:56:53.493
- What about babies?

00:56:55.787 --> 00:56:57.288
- Hmm.

00:56:57.288 --> 00:56:59.124
- You're correctly following
the logic of my statement,

00:56:59.124 --> 00:57:00.291
I'll grant you that.

00:57:01.543 --> 00:57:05.547
You know, I was
brought up religiously.

00:57:05.547 --> 00:57:09.050
- People used theological
justifications

00:57:09.050 --> 00:57:11.261
or attempts at justification

00:57:11.261 --> 00:57:16.141
for exploitation of groups of
humans, like human slavery.

00:57:16.141 --> 00:57:18.601
How do we determine that
their interpretation

00:57:18.601 --> 00:57:21.062
was wrong then, with that-

00:57:21.062 --> 00:57:22.397
I assume you think that's wrong-

00:57:22.397 --> 00:57:23.690
- Yeah. I do.

00:57:23.690 --> 00:57:25.567
- and our attitude
towards animals

00:57:25.567 --> 00:57:30.363
and the theological
justifications are
not similarly wrong.

00:57:30.363 --> 00:57:32.198
- That's really good question.

00:57:32.198 --> 00:57:33.700
- [Mark Voiceover] Pause.

00:57:33.700 --> 00:57:36.035
Of course, while people have
pointed to religious views

00:57:36.035 --> 00:57:39.247
in attempt to defend things
like, say, racial segregation,

00:57:39.247 --> 00:57:42.333
others used religious views
to oppose segregation.

00:57:42.333 --> 00:57:44.752
Similarly, there are
religious scholars today

00:57:44.752 --> 00:57:47.422
arguing for changing our
view of nonhuman animals.

00:57:47.422 --> 00:57:48.882
So anyway.

00:57:48.882 --> 00:57:50.925
- I don't think you segregate
people based on race,

00:57:50.925 --> 00:57:52.385
creed, color,
whatever it may be.

00:57:52.385 --> 00:57:54.721
- So why species?
- Why species?

00:57:55.722 --> 00:57:57.015
That's a good question.

00:57:57.015 --> 00:57:58.433
I don't know if I have
a solid answer for that,

00:57:58.433 --> 00:57:59.559
to be quite honest for you.

00:57:59.559 --> 00:58:02.270
- I'm a human. I
think I'm a human.

00:58:02.270 --> 00:58:03.271
I'm a human.

00:58:03.271 --> 00:58:04.439
- I assume you are.
- Yeah.

00:58:04.439 --> 00:58:08.610
So my perspective is that...

00:58:10.570 --> 00:58:13.781
I think I maybe I do think
people are more important?

00:58:13.781 --> 00:58:16.659
- Now, what if someone said,
"Well, look, we're both men,

00:58:16.659 --> 00:58:19.621
so we can agree that men are
more important than women."

00:58:20.663 --> 00:58:23.333
That seems like
the same principle.

00:58:24.792 --> 00:58:26.294
- Yeah, I guess you're right.

00:58:26.294 --> 00:58:28.463
- [Mark Voiceover] What in
the world is going on here?

00:58:28.463 --> 00:58:32.383
Nobody anywhere seems to have
any successful objections.

00:58:32.383 --> 00:58:34.844
And what's more, the
objections they attempted

00:58:34.844 --> 00:58:36.221
were basically the same

00:58:36.221 --> 00:58:38.640
as what the professional
philosophers tried.

00:58:38.640 --> 00:58:41.059
- It is somewhat embarrassing
to the profession,

00:58:41.059 --> 00:58:41.976
I think that's true.

00:58:41.976 --> 00:58:43.561
Just as again, you could go back

00:58:43.561 --> 00:58:45.271
and read what some
philosophers said

00:58:45.271 --> 00:58:49.359
about the position of
women, for example,

00:58:49.359 --> 00:58:50.818
and find that
embarrassing as well.

00:58:50.818 --> 00:58:52.737
The flaws in the
sexists and racists

00:58:52.737 --> 00:58:53.988
seem very obvious to us.

00:58:53.988 --> 00:58:56.032
But I'm sure that
future generations

00:58:56.032 --> 00:58:57.867
will look back on the
way we treat animals

00:58:57.867 --> 00:59:01.079
and on the excuses we
use to justify that

00:59:02.497 --> 00:59:06.709
and think of them as just
as lacking in good reason.

00:59:08.169 --> 00:59:09.754
- [Mark] How can so many of us

00:59:09.754 --> 00:59:12.715
believe something
without reasons?

00:59:12.715 --> 00:59:15.927
That's no longer a
question of philosophy,

00:59:15.927 --> 00:59:18.721
it's a question of psychology.

00:59:18.721 --> 00:59:20.139
- Together with my colleagues,

00:59:20.139 --> 00:59:22.976
we've investigated the
psychology of speciesism,

00:59:22.976 --> 00:59:25.603
and we found that speciesism
shows many properties

00:59:25.603 --> 00:59:27.355
of being a prejudice.

00:59:27.355 --> 00:59:29.941
So for example, it correlates
with other prejudices

00:59:29.941 --> 00:59:33.027
like racism, sexism...
Statistical correlation,

00:59:33.027 --> 00:59:36.030
somebody who shows particularly
strong speciesist views

00:59:36.030 --> 00:59:39.909
is more likely to have
racist or sexist tendencies.

00:59:39.909 --> 00:59:42.245
We found that young children

00:59:42.245 --> 00:59:44.497
are much less
speciesist than adults.

00:59:44.497 --> 00:59:47.000
These findings do
suggest that it's likely

00:59:47.000 --> 00:59:49.460
that, at least to quite
significant extent,

00:59:49.460 --> 00:59:52.630
speciesism actually is socially
acquired, socially learned.

00:59:52.630 --> 00:59:54.799
- [Mark] If it's even
partially learned,

00:59:54.799 --> 00:59:57.051
where are we learning it from?

00:59:57.051 --> 00:59:59.053
I don't remember
learning this anywhere.

00:59:59.053 --> 01:00:02.390
To answer that question, I
traveled to Berlin, Germany

01:00:02.390 --> 01:00:05.560
to meet another social
scientist, Dr. Melanie Joy.

01:00:05.560 --> 01:00:08.938
- When an ideology is dominant,
that means it's invisible

01:00:08.938 --> 01:00:10.273
and it's entrenched.

01:00:10.273 --> 01:00:14.485
It is so widespread that
we don't even see it.

01:00:14.485 --> 01:00:18.364
People typically don't recognize
that their preferences,

01:00:18.364 --> 01:00:23.369
their very thoughts and feelings
have been deeply influenced

01:00:23.369 --> 01:00:26.247
by an ideology that's
outside of their awareness.

01:00:26.247 --> 01:00:27.582
- These really strong intuitions

01:00:27.582 --> 01:00:30.960
that humans are more
valuable than animals.

01:00:30.960 --> 01:00:33.254
Maybe these intuitions
are quite similar

01:00:33.254 --> 01:00:38.259
to how historically racists
thought about the moral status

01:00:39.093 --> 01:00:41.137
of White and Black people.

01:00:41.137 --> 01:00:43.389
- Might the way that
our current view

01:00:43.389 --> 01:00:47.435
of nonhuman animals just
seems mundanely obvious,

01:00:47.435 --> 01:00:50.438
be exactly what it
felt like to be racist

01:00:50.438 --> 01:00:52.857
in an openly racist society?

01:00:52.857 --> 01:00:54.400
There was one way to find out:

01:00:54.400 --> 01:00:57.403
speak with a former
overt racist.

01:00:57.403 --> 01:01:00.323
You were the leader of the KKK.

01:01:00.323 --> 01:01:01.908
- Yes. The Ku Klux Klan.

01:01:01.908 --> 01:01:03.785
- [Mark] You did
wear robes, right?

01:01:03.785 --> 01:01:04.619
- [Person] Oh yes.

01:01:04.619 --> 01:01:06.454
- Were they comfortable?

01:01:06.454 --> 01:01:07.789
- Oh yeah. They
were comfortable.

01:01:07.789 --> 01:01:10.458
The town I grew up, it
was just common thoughts

01:01:10.458 --> 01:01:14.212
that Blacks were
inferior to the Whites.

01:01:14.212 --> 01:01:16.214
Just everyday people
growing up thinking this,

01:01:16.214 --> 01:01:19.300
and it wasn't
questioned or anything.

01:01:19.300 --> 01:01:20.593
- [Mark] It was
just invisible sort-

01:01:20.593 --> 01:01:22.887
- Yeah, it was kind
of invisible thing.

01:01:22.887 --> 01:01:26.307
- [Mark] If this is a
prejudice so deeply ingrained

01:01:26.307 --> 01:01:30.103
that we don't even see it,
where did it come from?

01:01:30.103 --> 01:01:33.398
That goes even deeper,
beyond psychology.

01:01:33.398 --> 01:01:36.150
It's now a question of history.

01:01:36.150 --> 01:01:39.070
Of course, just as prejudices
against groups of humans

01:01:39.070 --> 01:01:41.364
have been commonplace
across societies,

01:01:41.364 --> 01:01:43.991
speciesism seems
equally widespread.

01:01:43.991 --> 01:01:45.910
However, because
I'm from the West

01:01:45.910 --> 01:01:48.413
and considering the
West's current influence,

01:01:48.413 --> 01:01:51.124
I decided to focus on
how it developed here.

01:01:51.124 --> 01:01:52.834
I spoke with the
theology scholar,

01:01:52.834 --> 01:01:54.669
Reverend Dr. Christopher Carter,

01:01:54.669 --> 01:01:57.046
and the legal
scholar, Steven Wise.

01:01:57.046 --> 01:02:02.009
- The view in the West
that nonhuman animals

01:02:02.885 --> 01:02:06.347
are somehow created for us

01:02:06.347 --> 01:02:08.975
is something that goes back

01:02:08.975 --> 01:02:11.561
at least to the ancient Greeks,

01:02:11.561 --> 01:02:14.063
and became known as The
Great Chain of Being.

01:02:14.063 --> 01:02:15.356
- The idea of The
Great Chain of Being

01:02:15.356 --> 01:02:18.151
begins to coalesce
and emerge with Plato,

01:02:18.151 --> 01:02:20.695
and it gets more
refined with Aristotle,

01:02:20.695 --> 01:02:22.071
these Greek philosophers.

01:02:22.071 --> 01:02:24.907
- [Steven] Everything was
seen as having a place

01:02:24.907 --> 01:02:26.868
with those things on
the lower existing

01:02:26.868 --> 01:02:28.161
for those things on the higher.

01:02:28.161 --> 01:02:29.412
- [Christopher] Where
you have non-Greeks

01:02:29.412 --> 01:02:30.705
exist to serve Greeks,

01:02:30.705 --> 01:02:33.124
you have women that are
there to serve them,

01:02:33.124 --> 01:02:34.459
and you have slaves that exist

01:02:34.459 --> 01:02:36.002
to serve pretty much everybody.

01:02:36.002 --> 01:02:37.545
Nonhuman animals exist

01:02:37.545 --> 01:02:39.213
to be at the service
of human beings.

01:02:39.213 --> 01:02:40.882
- And really, everything
in the universe

01:02:40.882 --> 01:02:43.176
was made for human beings,
and that was really part

01:02:43.176 --> 01:02:44.927
of The Great Chain
of Being as well.

01:02:44.927 --> 01:02:47.221
- [Mark] There were two
scientific revolutions

01:02:47.221 --> 01:02:50.558
that helped undermine the myth
of The Great Chain of Being.

01:02:50.558 --> 01:02:53.853
The first was the Copernican
Revolution, when we discovered

01:02:53.853 --> 01:02:58.191
that the Earth was not quite
the center of the universe.

01:02:58.191 --> 01:03:00.735
The second was the
Darwinian revolution.

01:03:00.735 --> 01:03:02.403
- And it was in this house

01:03:02.403 --> 01:03:04.864
that Charles Darwin
wrote the books,

01:03:04.864 --> 01:03:08.576
which profoundly
changed our sense of

01:03:08.576 --> 01:03:10.745
where we sit in the
grand scheme of things.

01:03:10.745 --> 01:03:13.164
What was taken for
granted before Darwin was

01:03:13.164 --> 01:03:14.749
that people were on top,

01:03:14.749 --> 01:03:17.710
people were separate,
they were different.

01:03:17.710 --> 01:03:20.213
Darwin showed that
far from humans

01:03:20.213 --> 01:03:22.924
standing above the rest
of living creation,

01:03:22.924 --> 01:03:25.676
we were part of the same
evolutionary process

01:03:25.676 --> 01:03:27.470
that had produced
everything else.

01:03:27.470 --> 01:03:30.181
- [Mark] So Darwin
showed how all species

01:03:30.181 --> 01:03:34.060
are equally evolved for their
environments and challenges.

01:03:34.060 --> 01:03:36.479
And some species just
happened to develop

01:03:36.479 --> 01:03:38.606
certain extreme characteristics,

01:03:38.606 --> 01:03:41.400
such as giraffes'
very long necks

01:03:41.400 --> 01:03:44.862
and humans' very powerful
generalized cognition.

01:03:44.862 --> 01:03:46.614
- And so scientifically
they kind of discard

01:03:46.614 --> 01:03:48.199
The Great Chain of Being.

01:03:48.199 --> 01:03:53.204
But socially, theologically,
it's basically been embedded.

01:03:54.497 --> 01:03:57.083
- [Mark] Considering
just how embedded it was,

01:03:57.083 --> 01:04:00.253
this took a long time,
but at least in the West,

01:04:00.253 --> 01:04:03.381
we no longer widely
view some ethnicities

01:04:03.381 --> 01:04:06.467
as existing for
other ethnicities,

01:04:06.467 --> 01:04:09.971
or women as existing for men,

01:04:09.971 --> 01:04:14.851
or so-called natural slaves
as existing for free people.

01:04:16.269 --> 01:04:19.146
But we still hold onto the
view that nonhuman animals

01:04:19.146 --> 01:04:21.315
exist for humans.

01:04:21.315 --> 01:04:26.320
This suggests something even
deeper about how humans think.

01:04:27.196 --> 01:04:28.406
So I visited Michael Shermer,

01:04:28.406 --> 01:04:30.491
co-founder of the
Skeptics Society,

01:04:30.491 --> 01:04:32.118
who has dedicated his life

01:04:32.118 --> 01:04:34.662
to studying how people
can believe things

01:04:34.662 --> 01:04:38.082
and act in ways that
seem totally irrational.

01:04:38.082 --> 01:04:40.459
- All of us think we
are rational creatures,

01:04:40.459 --> 01:04:42.086
and for much of
our lives we are.

01:04:42.086 --> 01:04:43.004
- [Mark] But?

01:04:43.004 --> 01:04:44.297
- We are often engaged in

01:04:44.297 --> 01:04:46.716
what psychologists call
motivated reasoning.

01:04:46.716 --> 01:04:50.094
That is to say, we're
motivated to find evidence

01:04:50.094 --> 01:04:52.430
for what we want to be true,

01:04:52.430 --> 01:04:55.016
and to ignore or
rationalize evidence

01:04:55.016 --> 01:04:57.018
that's against what
we want to be true.

01:04:57.018 --> 01:04:58.394
Anyone watching
this is gonna go,

01:04:58.394 --> 01:05:01.022
"Well, of course I recognize
motivated reasoning

01:05:01.022 --> 01:05:03.733
in other people, but
fortunately, I don't do that."

01:05:03.733 --> 01:05:06.027
It's really, really hard
to see it in yourself.

01:05:06.027 --> 01:05:07.612
So if you find yourself saying,

01:05:09.238 --> 01:05:11.365
"I have to find out what's
wrong with this argument.

01:05:11.365 --> 01:05:12.867
How can I show that
this is wrong?"

01:05:12.867 --> 01:05:14.201
And if that's what you're doing,

01:05:14.201 --> 01:05:15.870
it's probably
motivated reasoning.

01:05:15.870 --> 01:05:19.206
- [Mark] And what does all this
have to do with speciesism?

01:05:19.206 --> 01:05:23.711
- All of Western tradition
intellectually has been

01:05:25.171 --> 01:05:29.175
in this kind of hierarchy of
complexity and moral worth

01:05:29.175 --> 01:05:30.426
with humans at the top,

01:05:30.426 --> 01:05:33.220
and it's sort of this
kind of gradation

01:05:33.220 --> 01:05:36.098
down the ladder of
creation to the simplest.

01:05:36.098 --> 01:05:40.770
And so that's a hard one
to overcome for most of us.

01:05:40.770 --> 01:05:44.106
- [Mark] Driving back, I
thought, if I'm truly honest

01:05:44.106 --> 01:05:47.068
with myself, I've
exhausted my objections.

01:05:47.068 --> 01:05:50.237
But looking back at
everything I'd investigated,

01:05:50.237 --> 01:05:52.782
if I can't justify speciesism,

01:05:52.782 --> 01:05:55.826
what does that mean
about those billions

01:05:55.826 --> 01:05:59.205
upon billions of individuals?

01:05:59.205 --> 01:06:02.833
Applying the philosophy,
following the logic faithfully,

01:06:02.833 --> 01:06:07.672
led me unavoidably
to a conclusion that
changed everything.

01:06:11.842 --> 01:06:14.011
- Looking back at
history should, I think,

01:06:14.011 --> 01:06:15.554
make us very skeptical

01:06:15.554 --> 01:06:18.641
of the common sense moral
intuitions that we have today.

01:06:18.641 --> 01:06:22.728
People have had enormous
moral blind spots.

01:06:22.728 --> 01:06:25.606
Throughout history, slavery
was almost universal.

01:06:25.606 --> 01:06:29.610
It's very hard to find even
great kind of moral thinkers

01:06:29.610 --> 01:06:34.115
note that slavery is
an abominable wrong,

01:06:34.115 --> 01:06:36.575
until, you know, even
the 18th century.

01:06:36.575 --> 01:06:40.579
And now just think, how awful
would it be to be that person

01:06:40.579 --> 01:06:43.457
to have been active in 1700

01:06:43.457 --> 01:06:46.627
and to consider yourself
a morally serious person

01:06:46.627 --> 01:06:48.671
trying to make the world better,

01:06:48.671 --> 01:06:52.383
but yet missing this
enormous moral issue

01:06:52.383 --> 01:06:53.801
of the wrongness of slavery.

01:06:55.678 --> 01:06:57.513
You don't want to
be that person.

01:06:57.513 --> 01:06:59.140
And if you don't want
to be that person,

01:06:59.140 --> 01:07:01.475
then you shouldn't want
to be that person now.

01:07:01.475 --> 01:07:02.935
And so we should look
around and think,

01:07:02.935 --> 01:07:04.478
"What are the things we're doing

01:07:04.478 --> 01:07:06.355
that might be on a
comparable scale?"

01:07:07.314 --> 01:07:08.691
- [Mark] This put some things

01:07:08.691 --> 01:07:12.278
that previous interviewees
had said in a new light.

01:07:12.278 --> 01:07:15.573
- The manner in which today
we view nonhuman animals

01:07:15.573 --> 01:07:18.492
is exactly analogous to the way

01:07:18.492 --> 01:07:23.497
that human slaves were viewed.

01:07:24.540 --> 01:07:26.333
- That was the exact same thing.

01:07:26.333 --> 01:07:28.169
It was literally the
exact same thing.

01:07:28.169 --> 01:07:30.379
- We enslave nonhuman animals.

01:07:30.379 --> 01:07:35.384
I don't see why there's any
reasonable claim that we don't.

01:07:36.510 --> 01:07:38.763
They are legal things.
We enslave them.

01:07:38.763 --> 01:07:40.181
- On the same scale,

01:07:40.181 --> 01:07:43.350
in fact, actually, literally
on an even greater scale

01:07:43.350 --> 01:07:45.436
than the atrocities of slavery.

01:07:45.436 --> 01:07:48.314
- [Mark] Indeed, these same
philosophical arguments

01:07:48.314 --> 01:07:53.319
were used by the abolitionists,
including Abraham Lincoln.

01:07:54.779 --> 01:07:58.365
Lincoln said, quote, "You say
A is white and B is black.

01:07:59.075 --> 01:08:00.534
Is it color, then,

01:08:00.534 --> 01:08:03.037
the lighter having the
right to enslave the darker?

01:08:03.037 --> 01:08:04.205
Take care.

01:08:04.205 --> 01:08:06.373
By this rule, you
are to be slave

01:08:06.373 --> 01:08:09.835
to the first man you meet with
a fairer skin than your own.

01:08:09.835 --> 01:08:11.879
You do not mean color exactly?

01:08:11.879 --> 01:08:14.590
You mean the Whites are
intellectually the superiors

01:08:14.590 --> 01:08:17.760
of the Blacks and therefore
have the right to enslave them?

01:08:17.760 --> 01:08:18.886
Take care again.

01:08:18.886 --> 01:08:20.721
By this rule, you
are to be slave

01:08:20.721 --> 01:08:22.306
to the first man you meet

01:08:22.306 --> 01:08:24.642
with an intellect
superior to your own."

01:08:25.851 --> 01:08:27.853
If the facts had turned
out to be different

01:08:27.853 --> 01:08:30.106
and some group of
people had turned out

01:08:30.106 --> 01:08:32.566
to actually be less
intelligent than another,

01:08:32.566 --> 01:08:34.235
would Lincoln have been wrong

01:08:34.235 --> 01:08:37.071
and slavery have been justified?

01:08:37.071 --> 01:08:38.614
Thinking about the present,

01:08:38.614 --> 01:08:40.032
might the ways that we feel

01:08:40.032 --> 01:08:42.243
about our current
uses of other animals,

01:08:42.243 --> 01:08:45.496
that it's just mundanely
obvious that they're justified

01:08:45.496 --> 01:08:49.458
be exactly how things felt
at the time of human slavery,

01:08:49.458 --> 01:08:54.338
banal, just like the racism
of that former KKK leader?

01:08:54.338 --> 01:08:57.049
And even if I'm still
not completely certain

01:08:57.049 --> 01:08:59.468
about the arguments,
I remembered something

01:08:59.468 --> 01:09:02.638
that Peter Singer said
to me about uncertainty.

01:09:02.638 --> 01:09:03.973
- If you're not
absolutely certain

01:09:03.973 --> 01:09:05.266
that my argument is mistaken,

01:09:05.266 --> 01:09:07.601
and I really don't
think you could be,

01:09:07.601 --> 01:09:10.479
then I think you would be
wrong to take the chance

01:09:10.479 --> 01:09:12.189
that you're doing something
so seriously wrong,

01:09:12.189 --> 01:09:14.608
that you're putting
yourself in the same side

01:09:14.608 --> 01:09:18.195
as the people who continued
to defend slavery,

01:09:18.195 --> 01:09:20.698
even though they had heard
some reasons for thinking

01:09:20.698 --> 01:09:22.116
that slavery could be wrong.

01:09:23.325 --> 01:09:27.121
- [Mark] I sat down
outside as it sunk in.

01:09:27.121 --> 01:09:31.125
Could abolishing the slavery
of members of our own species

01:09:31.125 --> 01:09:34.753
merely be scaling the foothills?

01:09:34.753 --> 01:09:37.631
Could the slavery of
all the other species

01:09:37.631 --> 01:09:40.634
be the true mountain
we have yet to climb?

01:09:42.845 --> 01:09:46.765
How can this be the
world I live in?

01:09:46.765 --> 01:09:51.020
It's unrecognizable compared
to the world I'd been living in

01:09:51.020 --> 01:09:54.982
or thought I was
living in all my life.

01:09:54.982 --> 01:09:57.651
How can I have the
courage to face

01:09:57.651 --> 01:10:00.196
what we are doing, what we are?

01:10:02.990 --> 01:10:07.161
If you were living at the
time of human slavery,

01:10:07.161 --> 01:10:09.622
would you be an
abolitionist, do you think?

01:10:09.622 --> 01:10:12.333
Or do you think you would've
been in support of slavery

01:10:12.333 --> 01:10:14.168
or at least neutral?

01:10:14.168 --> 01:10:16.879
- No, I wouldn't have been
in support of slavery.

01:10:18.047 --> 01:10:20.007
But that's also a
tough thing to say.

01:10:20.007 --> 01:10:21.508
That's easy for me to say now.

01:10:21.508 --> 01:10:23.135
- [Mark] Do you think you
would've been an abolitionist

01:10:23.135 --> 01:10:25.512
or do you think you would've
been alright with slavery?

01:10:25.512 --> 01:10:26.764
- Abolitionist.

01:10:26.764 --> 01:10:28.182
- [Mark] Even at a
time when most people

01:10:28.182 --> 01:10:29.391
were in favor of it

01:10:29.391 --> 01:10:32.228
and it was not thought
about seriously,

01:10:32.228 --> 01:10:33.145
you think you would've
been the person-

01:10:33.145 --> 01:10:34.521
- I think I would've, yes.

01:10:34.521 --> 01:10:36.398
- If everyone around me
didn't take it seriously,

01:10:36.398 --> 01:10:41.403
I would certainly feel
pressure or feel out of place.

01:10:42.363 --> 01:10:44.031
But I would hope
that I would try

01:10:44.031 --> 01:10:47.701
to push those
ideals, those ideas.

01:10:49.286 --> 01:10:51.622
- [Mark] Well, there seems to
be a growing number of humans

01:10:51.622 --> 01:10:54.500
who are opposing speciesism
and its consequences.

01:10:54.500 --> 01:10:55.876
So I met with leaders

01:10:55.876 --> 01:10:58.837
of today's nonhuman
animal advocacy movement.

01:10:58.837 --> 01:11:03.259
- If what happens to animals
were happening to humans,

01:11:03.259 --> 01:11:05.719
we would be absolutely outraged.

01:11:05.719 --> 01:11:07.554
And that is why I decided

01:11:07.554 --> 01:11:10.391
that I would be
completely dedicated

01:11:10.391 --> 01:11:12.476
to this cause my entire life.

01:11:12.476 --> 01:11:14.603
- [Mark] Which turned
all of this philosophy

01:11:14.603 --> 01:11:18.232
into something almost
jarringly practical.

01:11:18.232 --> 01:11:20.776
- The industry has a
very strong incentive

01:11:20.776 --> 01:11:22.569
to mislead consumers.

01:11:22.569 --> 01:11:24.863
- Corporations are going
to do whatever they can

01:11:24.863 --> 01:11:26.323
to sell their goods,

01:11:26.323 --> 01:11:28.826
and that also means
lying to the consumer.

01:11:28.826 --> 01:11:30.411
- So a lot of times the labels

01:11:30.411 --> 01:11:31.787
that you see on animal products,

01:11:31.787 --> 01:11:33.914
they're purposely advertising

01:11:33.914 --> 01:11:35.291
what the consumer wants to hear.

01:11:35.291 --> 01:11:38.419
- So we don't put
any focus on labels.

01:11:38.419 --> 01:11:42.131
We focus on ending the
worst forms of abuse.

01:11:42.131 --> 01:11:43.966
- Organizations around the world

01:11:43.966 --> 01:11:46.510
have got major companies to
improve welfare conditions

01:11:46.510 --> 01:11:47.636
in their supply chain.

01:11:47.636 --> 01:11:49.388
- And then we focus
on legislation.

01:11:49.388 --> 01:11:51.890
- They've banned
cages for laying hens

01:11:51.890 --> 01:11:53.434
and other such
pieces of legislation

01:11:53.434 --> 01:11:55.060
that are constantly
raising the bar.

01:11:55.060 --> 01:11:58.439
- [Mark] Then I learned,
that's only half the equation.

01:11:58.439 --> 01:12:02.776
- There is simply no way to
be able to meet the demand

01:12:02.776 --> 01:12:05.904
for meat that we currently
have without factory farming.

01:12:05.904 --> 01:12:07.906
In order for us to
end factory farms,

01:12:07.906 --> 01:12:10.242
we're going to have
to reduce the amount

01:12:10.242 --> 01:12:11.702
of animal products that we eat.

01:12:11.702 --> 01:12:13.537
- Okay.

01:12:13.537 --> 01:12:18.542
Why has an economist taken
me to the supermarket?

01:12:19.752 --> 01:12:21.295
- Because this issue can
feel abstract sometimes.

01:12:21.295 --> 01:12:23.297
So it's good to be where
the rubber hits the road,

01:12:23.297 --> 01:12:25.132
where your decisions
make a difference.

01:12:25.132 --> 01:12:26.508
It's a basic economic principle

01:12:26.508 --> 01:12:27.968
that they're going to
be stocking the shelves

01:12:27.968 --> 01:12:29.511
with the items that sell most.

01:12:29.511 --> 01:12:31.388
So if you buy fewer products,

01:12:31.388 --> 01:12:33.474
they're going to buy fewer of
these from their own supplier

01:12:33.474 --> 01:12:36.018
to stock the shelves with,
and that means these suppliers

01:12:36.018 --> 01:12:37.394
are going to produce
less animals.

01:12:37.394 --> 01:12:40.272
Approximately three-fourths
of your decisions

01:12:40.272 --> 01:12:43.317
get passed on to fewer
animals being produced.

01:12:43.317 --> 01:12:45.694
The average American eats
20 chickens per year.

01:12:45.694 --> 01:12:47.821
Let's say you cut all
of that out for a year,

01:12:47.821 --> 01:12:49.198
15 fewer chickens,

01:12:49.198 --> 01:12:51.617
so three-fourths
of that original 20

01:12:51.617 --> 01:12:54.328
are not going to have to
live in factory farms.

01:12:54.328 --> 01:12:57.456
It should be empowering to
know that your decisions here

01:12:57.456 --> 01:12:59.166
really do influence
the number of animals

01:12:59.166 --> 01:13:00.667
that live on factory farms.

01:13:00.667 --> 01:13:02.169
- [Mark] But there's a caveat.

01:13:02.169 --> 01:13:04.713
- For the same amount of
meat, more animals are harmed

01:13:04.713 --> 01:13:07.341
if eating smaller animals
like chickens and fish,

01:13:07.341 --> 01:13:09.134
cutting back on
poultry and seafood

01:13:09.134 --> 01:13:11.387
is sort of your biggest
bang for your buck.

01:13:11.387 --> 01:13:12.679
- Because so many people

01:13:12.679 --> 01:13:14.264
have already started
making these decisions,

01:13:14.264 --> 01:13:16.725
there are a lot fewer animals
living on factory farms today

01:13:16.725 --> 01:13:18.143
than there otherwise would be.

01:13:18.143 --> 01:13:21.397
- [Mark] So with animal
welfare reforms on one side

01:13:21.397 --> 01:13:23.690
and reducing demand
on the other side,

01:13:23.690 --> 01:13:25.401
now have we solved everything?

01:13:25.401 --> 01:13:28.028
Well, following the
arguments where they lead

01:13:28.028 --> 01:13:29.947
led me to one more factor

01:13:29.947 --> 01:13:32.324
and the legal scholar
Gary Francione.

01:13:32.324 --> 01:13:36.495
- Animals are property. They
are economic commodities.

01:13:36.495 --> 01:13:39.623
You cannot have the
institution of animal property

01:13:39.623 --> 01:13:43.627
without having the
interests of animals

01:13:44.920 --> 01:13:47.256
being accorded a different
weight, a lesser weight.

01:13:47.256 --> 01:13:51.051
This idea that we can talk about

01:13:51.051 --> 01:13:56.056
animals mattering morally
in some serious way

01:13:57.349 --> 01:14:00.477
while they're property
is as absurd as saying

01:14:00.477 --> 01:14:03.397
you can have human
slaves and they matter,

01:14:03.397 --> 01:14:06.775
they're very important,
even though they're slaves.

01:14:06.775 --> 01:14:08.026
- [Mark] This is
one of those things

01:14:08.026 --> 01:14:09.445
that once I heard about it,

01:14:09.445 --> 01:14:11.655
I felt like I should have
thought of it before.

01:14:11.655 --> 01:14:15.033
The inherent tensions between
taking nonhuman animals

01:14:15.033 --> 01:14:17.369
into comparable
consideration with humans

01:14:17.369 --> 01:14:20.247
and using nonhuman
animals as property

01:14:20.247 --> 01:14:22.040
and economic commodities.

01:14:22.040 --> 01:14:23.750
It was time to ask a question

01:14:23.750 --> 01:14:26.879
that would have seemed
absurd not long ago.

01:14:26.879 --> 01:14:29.923
Are there justifications
left for humankind

01:14:29.923 --> 01:14:32.384
continuing to use
animals in agriculture?

01:14:32.384 --> 01:14:34.094
Anticipating that question,

01:14:34.094 --> 01:14:36.847
Animals eat each other,
so shouldn't we eat them?

01:14:36.847 --> 01:14:40.267
- We would usually
not look to animals,

01:14:40.267 --> 01:14:42.436
other animals, as role models.

01:14:42.436 --> 01:14:43.854
- Like there's one
species of duck,

01:14:43.854 --> 01:14:45.522
it reproduces through rape.

01:14:45.522 --> 01:14:49.443
- Animals are not capable of
reflecting on the morality

01:14:49.443 --> 01:14:50.360
of what they do.

01:14:50.360 --> 01:14:52.154
- Oh, so that makes us special.

01:14:52.154 --> 01:14:55.157
- Well, certainly it makes
us, most of us again, right?

01:14:55.157 --> 01:14:57.451
This is not true of
all humans. Right?

01:14:57.451 --> 01:15:02.456
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

01:15:06.502 --> 01:15:09.004
- [Mark] And just to
cover all the bases,

01:15:09.004 --> 01:15:10.672
What if plants feel pain?

01:15:10.672 --> 01:15:11.965
- There is no good evidence,

01:15:11.965 --> 01:15:14.134
because advantage of
being able to feel pain

01:15:14.134 --> 01:15:16.512
is moving away from
a noxious stimulus.

01:15:16.512 --> 01:15:18.138
- [Person] If that is a concern,

01:15:18.138 --> 01:15:20.766
just remember, more plants
get fed to farmed animals.

01:15:20.766 --> 01:15:25.771
(energetic music)
(keys typing)

01:15:28.440 --> 01:15:31.151
- [Mark] But can
humankind really move away

01:15:31.151 --> 01:15:33.320
from the use of
animals in agriculture?

01:15:33.320 --> 01:15:37.741
To my surprise, that shift
may have already begun.

01:15:37.741 --> 01:15:40.786
- The real solution
has to be to make meat,

01:15:40.786 --> 01:15:42.079
but without the animals.

01:15:43.038 --> 01:15:44.498
- And that's where you come in.

01:15:44.498 --> 01:15:45.999
- That's where I come in.

01:15:45.999 --> 01:15:49.336
Meat is made up of lipids,
aminos, minerals, and water.

01:15:49.336 --> 01:15:51.630
That stuff exists
in plants as well.

01:15:51.630 --> 01:15:54.132
So we can essentially biomimic

01:15:54.132 --> 01:15:56.301
the meat experience with plants.

01:15:56.301 --> 01:15:58.929
We're pretty early in
this evolution to products

01:15:58.929 --> 01:16:01.181
that taste the same or better
and cost the same or less,

01:16:01.181 --> 01:16:02.641
but early signs are excellent.

01:16:02.641 --> 01:16:04.184
- [Mark] So I tried
some for myself.

01:16:04.184 --> 01:16:06.895
- People have been dining at
our establishment for months

01:16:06.895 --> 01:16:10.190
only to find out that it was
plant-based a few months in.

01:16:10.190 --> 01:16:12.859
- [Mark] Mind if I try your
plant-based chicken right now?

01:16:12.859 --> 01:16:14.361
- Of course.

01:16:14.361 --> 01:16:16.572
- It tastes like chicken.
And it's just made of plants

01:16:16.572 --> 01:16:17.823
- Without bloodshed.

01:16:17.823 --> 01:16:19.491
Meat industry has
done a very good job

01:16:19.491 --> 01:16:22.369
at planting seeds of doubt
and consumers' minds.

01:16:22.369 --> 01:16:24.580
We make a lot of our
plant-based analogs ourselves.

01:16:24.580 --> 01:16:25.872
It's very simple.

01:16:25.872 --> 01:16:29.251
- So this is entirely
plant-based sushi.

01:16:29.251 --> 01:16:31.628
- I became a sushi chef at 17.

01:16:31.628 --> 01:16:32.963
I'm still doing the same things,

01:16:32.963 --> 01:16:34.715
but just with
plant-based ingredients

01:16:34.715 --> 01:16:37.092
and nobody seems to
notice the difference.

01:16:37.092 --> 01:16:38.677
This is our salmon tataki roll.

01:16:38.677 --> 01:16:40.679
- It tastes like salmon.

01:16:42.097 --> 01:16:44.016
That's not amazing to you.
I guess you're used to it.

01:16:44.016 --> 01:16:44.850
(Sandy laughs)

01:16:44.850 --> 01:16:46.143
Then it occurred to me:

01:16:46.143 --> 01:16:48.186
much of what humankind
has traditionally eaten

01:16:48.186 --> 01:16:49.938
is already plant-based.

01:16:49.938 --> 01:16:51.231
So I visited a
friend from India.

01:16:51.231 --> 01:16:53.150
So you actually grew up
completely vegetarian.

01:16:53.150 --> 01:16:54.234
- Completely vegetarian.

01:16:54.234 --> 01:16:55.485
Never occurred to me

01:16:55.485 --> 01:16:57.070
that animal can also be
something that you eat.

01:16:57.070 --> 01:16:59.740
It is just so bizarre,
eating corpse of some animal,

01:16:59.740 --> 01:17:02.701
which has all these organs
like intestine and brain,

01:17:02.701 --> 01:17:04.786
washing the blood and
cutting it into pieces

01:17:04.786 --> 01:17:06.997
and eating different muscles,
different body parts.

01:17:06.997 --> 01:17:09.916
We know like thousands
of dishes, which is-

01:17:09.916 --> 01:17:11.960
- Do you personally know
thousands of dishes?

01:17:11.960 --> 01:17:13.462
- Yes.

01:17:13.462 --> 01:17:15.047
Chickpea curry. We are going
to add some coconut milk.

01:17:15.047 --> 01:17:15.964
Next step is eating.

01:17:15.964 --> 01:17:17.507
- Okay.

01:17:17.507 --> 01:17:18.759
That's actually the only one
I know how to do correctly.

01:17:18.759 --> 01:17:20.093
That's really good.

01:17:20.093 --> 01:17:21.678
- [Person] This is
khichdi: quinoa, lentils,

01:17:21.678 --> 01:17:23.347
onion, garlic, ginger.

01:17:23.347 --> 01:17:25.140
- That's like, so flavorful.

01:17:25.140 --> 01:17:29.353
How did you become the
world's tofu expert?

01:17:29.353 --> 01:17:32.648
- Well, first of all, I'm
not the world's tofu expert.

01:17:32.648 --> 01:17:33.982
There are tons of
people out there

01:17:33.982 --> 01:17:35.901
who know way more
about tofu than I do.

01:17:35.901 --> 01:17:38.236
I fell in love with tofu
while living in China.

01:17:38.236 --> 01:17:40.530
Apprenticed under a
fifth generation master,

01:17:40.530 --> 01:17:43.617
ended up watching a movie with
friends called "Speciesism."

01:17:43.617 --> 01:17:44.951
That was your film, yeah.

01:17:44.951 --> 01:17:46.620
- That was my
previous documentary.

01:17:46.620 --> 01:17:48.747
- There's spongy tofu,
there's pressed tofu,

01:17:48.747 --> 01:17:50.666
which is dense and chewy.

01:17:50.666 --> 01:17:52.000
There's Shanghai tofu.

01:17:52.000 --> 01:17:54.544
It absorbs any sauces
that you cook it with.

01:17:54.544 --> 01:17:55.837
Think of tofu like chicken.

01:17:55.837 --> 01:17:58.131
You can stir fry it, you
can add it to salads,

01:17:58.131 --> 01:17:59.383
you can put it on the grill.

01:17:59.383 --> 01:18:01.927
It's the perfect center
of plate protein.

01:18:01.927 --> 01:18:04.429
- [Mark] Speaking of protein,
all these elite athletes

01:18:04.429 --> 01:18:05.847
who are eating plant-based now,

01:18:05.847 --> 01:18:08.100
a lot of them must eat
these different tofu dishes.

01:18:08.100 --> 01:18:09.893
- Yeah. You can use
any sauce you like,

01:18:09.893 --> 01:18:11.937
throw in your spongy tofu and
braise it and you're done.

01:18:11.937 --> 01:18:14.564
Farro grain bowl
with pressed tofu.

01:18:14.564 --> 01:18:16.233
Shanghai tofu scramble.

01:18:16.233 --> 01:18:19.653
- That actually is better
than I expected. Really good.

01:18:19.653 --> 01:18:20.821
Oh, that's also really good.

01:18:20.821 --> 01:18:21.655
Cut.

01:18:21.655 --> 01:18:23.156
Now we can eat the food.

01:18:23.156 --> 01:18:25.659
And if that wasn't enough
for me, one further prospect.

01:18:25.659 --> 01:18:27.536
- The biggest meat producers,

01:18:27.536 --> 01:18:29.579
they're literally making their
own plant-based products,

01:18:29.579 --> 01:18:32.332
but they're also
investing in startups

01:18:32.332 --> 01:18:34.000
that are doing cultivated meat,

01:18:34.000 --> 01:18:37.462
which is growing actual animal
meat directly from cells.

01:18:37.462 --> 01:18:40.424
These ways of producing
meat are far more efficient,

01:18:40.424 --> 01:18:44.052
and they are how meat will
be produced in the future.

01:18:44.052 --> 01:18:46.972
- [Mark] As we change our
views of nonhuman animals

01:18:46.972 --> 01:18:48.682
and change our practices,

01:18:48.682 --> 01:18:51.226
there are questions
and challenges ahead.

01:18:51.226 --> 01:18:54.229
What are the best ways to rotate
the grazing of wild animals

01:18:54.229 --> 01:18:56.523
on cropland to regenerate soil?

01:18:56.523 --> 01:18:58.233
How might we reduce the extent

01:18:58.233 --> 01:19:00.861
to which we inadvertently
harm nonhuman animals,

01:19:00.861 --> 01:19:03.363
even in non-exploitive
practices?

01:19:03.363 --> 01:19:05.866
What uses of animals
might still be justified

01:19:05.866 --> 01:19:08.285
even on non-speciesist grounds?

01:19:08.285 --> 01:19:10.328
If nature is ethically neutral,

01:19:10.328 --> 01:19:13.623
what should we do to improve
the wellbeing of wild animals?

01:19:13.623 --> 01:19:16.251
What is the ethically
optimal population level

01:19:16.251 --> 01:19:17.878
of sentient individuals?

01:19:17.878 --> 01:19:21.465
What about human-created
sentient life in the future?

01:19:21.465 --> 01:19:24.342
But thinking about all
of this brought me back

01:19:24.342 --> 01:19:26.803
again and again to
a single notion,

01:19:26.803 --> 01:19:30.015
that nonhuman animals
should be center stage

01:19:30.015 --> 01:19:31.975
in our global priorities,

01:19:31.975 --> 01:19:34.728
even if this feels as
counterintuitive to us

01:19:34.728 --> 01:19:37.355
as prioritizing
so-called lesser races

01:19:37.355 --> 01:19:39.900
must have felt to
earlier generations.

01:19:39.900 --> 01:19:43.236
And what about my own
life's priorities?

01:19:43.236 --> 01:19:46.281
What do I want to believe I
would have done with my life

01:19:46.281 --> 01:19:47.949
if I were a free person

01:19:47.949 --> 01:19:51.077
at a time of widely
accepted human slavery?

01:19:51.077 --> 01:19:53.789
Would I have just
put it out of my mind

01:19:53.789 --> 01:19:55.123
to focus on other things

01:19:55.123 --> 01:19:57.584
that were more
popular or convenient?

01:19:57.584 --> 01:19:59.753
Who would I want
to have been then?

01:19:59.753 --> 01:20:02.881
And who do I want to be now?

01:20:02.881 --> 01:20:06.551
And how do I want the
future to judge me?

01:20:07.761 --> 01:20:10.180
In joining the call
for animal liberation,

01:20:10.180 --> 01:20:12.349
can I have hope for its success?

01:20:12.349 --> 01:20:16.353
Asking this is really asking
one of the deepest questions

01:20:16.353 --> 01:20:18.230
about human nature.

01:20:18.230 --> 01:20:21.316
So I decided to end my
philosophical journey

01:20:21.316 --> 01:20:23.026
by meeting the author of a book

01:20:23.026 --> 01:20:26.321
that profoundly influenced
me, "The Blank Slate:

01:20:26.321 --> 01:20:29.074
the Modern Denial
of Human Nature."

01:20:29.074 --> 01:20:30.492
- Over the course of history,

01:20:30.492 --> 01:20:32.786
the circle of our
sympathy has expanded.

01:20:32.786 --> 01:20:35.372
Reason can help expand
our sense of sympathy.

01:20:35.372 --> 01:20:38.333
Starting from a pretty
narrow circle of sympathy,

01:20:38.333 --> 01:20:40.502
the ancient Greek city-states

01:20:40.502 --> 01:20:43.129
pretty much respected only
people in the same city-state.

01:20:43.129 --> 01:20:45.340
And it was considered a big
moral advance when they said,

01:20:45.340 --> 01:20:46.550
"Well, we're all Greeks."

01:20:46.550 --> 01:20:47.801
That doesn't necessarily extend

01:20:47.801 --> 01:20:49.553
to the barbarians over the hill.

01:20:49.553 --> 01:20:52.264
But that was next, because
why should you stop at Greeks?

01:20:52.264 --> 01:20:54.975
And if you extend it to
the so-called barbarians,

01:20:54.975 --> 01:20:58.812
why not extend it to
every member of your race?

01:20:58.812 --> 01:21:00.730
And why stop at your race?

01:21:00.730 --> 01:21:03.358
Why not extend it to
every human being?

01:21:03.358 --> 01:21:07.487
Why should you stop at
the the human species?

01:21:07.487 --> 01:21:11.116
- [Mark] If reason has helped
us press beyond our intuitions

01:21:11.116 --> 01:21:13.952
and expand our moral
circle in the past,

01:21:13.952 --> 01:21:16.746
perhaps it can do
so again today.

01:21:16.746 --> 01:21:20.041
I decided to visit
one final place:

01:21:20.041 --> 01:21:23.545
a place that offers hope
that our species can,

01:21:23.545 --> 01:21:27.048
indeed has, challenged
our deepest intuitions

01:21:27.048 --> 01:21:28.466
about the world,

01:21:28.466 --> 01:21:32.387
and, through reason,
expanded our understanding.

01:21:32.387 --> 01:21:34.139
- It's been my
great good fortune

01:21:34.139 --> 01:21:36.766
to have worked on the
NASA Voyager mission

01:21:36.766 --> 01:21:38.143
to the outer solar system.

01:21:38.143 --> 01:21:41.730
And now I'm operating the
Mars Perseverance rover.

01:21:41.730 --> 01:21:46.401
In 1610, Galileo turned
his telescope to Jupiter.

01:21:46.401 --> 01:21:49.696
He saw four little dots
that he realized were moons

01:21:49.696 --> 01:21:52.032
going around the planet Jupiter.

01:21:52.032 --> 01:21:56.328
The Voyager I and II
spacecraft turned those dots

01:21:56.328 --> 01:21:58.997
that Galileo saw into worlds.

01:21:58.997 --> 01:22:03.043
The innermost moon, Io, has
volcanoes going off constantly.

01:22:03.043 --> 01:22:06.212
But all of that is
our own backyard.

01:22:06.212 --> 01:22:07.672
The Sun, our star,

01:22:07.672 --> 01:22:11.051
is one of hundreds of billions
of stars in our galaxy,

01:22:11.051 --> 01:22:15.388
the galaxy being one of
hundreds of billions of galaxies

01:22:15.388 --> 01:22:17.057
in the universe.

01:22:17.057 --> 01:22:19.601
How often does science
show that we're wrong

01:22:19.601 --> 01:22:22.395
in what we think about
our place in the universe?

01:22:22.395 --> 01:22:26.733
Time and again, our intuitions
are shown to be too narrow,

01:22:26.733 --> 01:22:28.777
shallow, and self-serving.

01:22:30.737 --> 01:22:35.533
We have every reason
to fundamentally
rethink the intuition

01:22:35.533 --> 01:22:38.912
that we are so
much more important

01:22:38.912 --> 01:22:41.373
than all the other
species on our planet.

01:22:45.043 --> 01:22:47.337
- [Mark] Now I'm
just talking to you,

01:22:48.755 --> 01:22:52.217
as one member of the species
Homo sapiens to another:

01:22:53.468 --> 01:22:56.054
the fate of our kin

01:22:56.054 --> 01:22:58.181
is up to us.

01:22:58.181 --> 01:23:01.601
(energetic music)

01:23:30.505 --> 01:23:34.801
(energetic music continues)

01:24:03.329 --> 01:24:07.625
(energetic music continues)