2023-10-21 06:39:19
The research director at the CNRS and the Natural History Museum of Paris Emmanuelle Pouydebat is a biologist who wants to make us think regarding our relationship with Nature. “Preserving the living means preserving ourselves too,” she says. And this includes wonder.
The famous French paleontologist Yves Coppens, who died last year, identified her wonder and admiration for the animal world: he nicknamed Emmanuelle Pouydebat “Emmanuelle in Wonderland”.
Lucy the Australopithecus’ father had a great influence on her: “One day, I saw Yves Coppens on television during a show and it was love at first sight, both for him and for Lucy. In In my childhood mind, I saw it as a kind of chimpanzee ancestor… a mixture of chimpanzee and human”, she tells La Matinale. This is what initially motivated her to want to work on great apes, tool use and the origins of humans.
>> Read: Australopithecus mothers were already experiencing difficult births
When she was little, she spent hours in her grandmother’s garden “observing dragonflies and ladybugs.” Having become a biologist, she is today a researcher at the CNRS and at the Natural History Museum of Paris; she just published “My most beautiful animal encounters” at Odile Jacob’s, where she recounts regarding fifty face-to-face encounters with these beings who fascinate her so much.
Keep your child’s soul
His credo is to marvel at the intelligence of Nature to better preserve it: “I think we need to take the time to have the curiosity to observe animals. I have worked on around a hundred species animals, sometimes very distant – gorillas, elephants, etc. –, but we can also be amazed by dragonflies, squirrels, close to home. It is also admirable. And in admiring, we feel marvels and in marveling, we love and in loving, we want to protect”.
>> Read: Biologist Bruno David denounces “the absence of naturalist culture”
For her, you have to take pleasure in observing: “Looking at crows, you can see that they store their food, they hide it. They will also throw nuts on the road, cars will crush them and they will recover then the fruit. It’s a child’s soul that you can maintain permanently by observing the animals near your home: I still find it as beautiful, it still amazes me as much.”
We have everything to learn from animals, in all areas: ecology, industry, transport
Emmanuelle Pouydebat
It is difficult for her to choose her favorite or most memorable encounter with an animal: “Honestly, they all shocked me. The one that shocked me the most – in the good sense of the word – was in a zoo. . A mother gorilla came closer and turned towards me to show me her baby who had just been born. When you know that gorillas, in general, avoid you and avoid glances, turn their back on you for questions of “Social appeasement, seeing this mother come and present her baby to me, it really upset me.”
To be amazed, to be inspired by nature to better preserve it, since you need a selfish reason to save it, she writes: “The problem is that we are obliged to justify this need to protect this biodiversity which is decreasing quite dramatically, unfortunately. Since there needs to be a reason, since we are here, I find it extremely sad to see that there are between two and ten million animal species and that there are no There are only 10,000 that have been described. That’s next to nothing! Even though we have everything to learn from animals, in all areas: ecology, industry, transport. We can really use their performance and their behavior to improve us.”
>> Read: Chimpanzees are capable of complex vocalizations
Bio-inspiration to improve ourselves
And to add that “bio-inspiration can be a win-win for both manufacturers, scientists and also, above all, for living things”. Bio-inspiration, she explains, is “taking inspiration from the skills, behaviors and performances of Nature to progress”.
A Morpho butterfly (Morpho didius) photographed in Tingo Maria, Peru. [Bernard Dupont – Wikimedia CC2.0]She gives several examples: “How can we improve photovoltaic panels by observing and studying morpho butterflies, these sublime tropical butterflies? The evolution of elephants is a real mystery and the skills and performances of their trunk can help us today to create versatile industrial robots that would allow us to transport objects in complete safety for people.”
>> Read: Cleaner fish are sensitive to their reputation
In short, quantifying animal performance “to try to propose improved solutions for us humans”. Emmanuelle Pouydebat further explains that chimpanzees are “the kings of self-medication”: “Where they make their nests, there are much fewer mosquitoes. We are currently extracting essential oil from certain leaves. which are repellent once morest mosquitoes thanks to chimpanzees. There is still everything to discover.”
>> Read: Chimpanzees in Gabon treat their wounds with insects
“There should be no reason to preserve biodiversity. Preserving the living means preserving ourselves too. It means preserving the beauty of what surrounds us and the rays of sunlight that constantly surround us when we observe the animal world. But since, it seems, reasons are needed, I am looking for them.”
Humans do not have a monopoly on intelligence
The biologist likes to talk regarding intelligence regarding the animal kingdom, fighting for a long time once morest “the imaginary pyramidal vision of the evolution of intelligence, according to which humans are the most intelligent because they have a kind of monopoly and power on the rest of life.
And to affirm that humans are not the best: “There are plenty of areas in which we do not excel: visual memory, spatial memory. There are animals that do much better than us: chimpanzees , but also little ants quite simply…well, quite complexly, because an ant is anything but simple!”
There are areas that have been under-explored in the animal world, such as everything related to altruism, cooperation, empathy
Emmanuelle Pouydebat
She recognizes that human intelligence is “incredible in its diversity, but there are many areas where we are not the best. I struggle to show this diversity of animal intelligences. There are many, whether for finding food, to move around; there are also areas that have been under-explored, like everything linked to altruism, cooperation, empathy. It exists in the animal world and I find that, precisely, these links with emotions have been understudied and are underrepresented in scientific studies.
>> Read: Animals are altruistic depending on environmental conditions
Females have also been studied much less in the animal kingdom than males: “It’s blatant and really damaging because, to understand evolution, we need to study males and females: there are a lot of behaviors and associated morphologies which co-vary from one sex to the other.”
As an example, she gives the duck and its corkscrew penis: “To fight once morest rape, females have developed vaginas which are corkscrews but inverted. If we do not study the two organs, we cannot not understand what is happening at the evolutionary level. And it is terrible and relatively anecdotal, but when we work on medical applications, it is extremely damaging. We know much less regarding women and females than men. And that creates really problems, both on a fundamental and applied level.”
>> Read: Diagnosis, research, medications: is medicine sexist?
Wonder as a scientific approach
For Emmanuelle Pouydebat, everyone can marvel and observe. The scientific approach can also be made of wonder: “By dint of wanting to fight once morest anthropomorphism… When I work on orangutans, I don’t wake up as an orangutan. When I work on parrots, I don’t wake up as an orangutan. don’t wake up parrot. I’d love to! Frankly, it’s an absolute dream, but that’s not the case. In any case, in fact, scientists do anthropomorphism. I find that we are missed out on encounters with other animals which are subject to emotion and wonder because what we discover regarding us, we discover regarding them.
>> Read: Monkeys also use forms of politeness, according to a Neuchâtel study
“I experienced incredible things with these animals and I think that, indeed, this wonder must be at the heart of science. It is these emotions and this wonder that made me ask myself questions. Do we didn’t underestimate the emotions of animals? Didn’t we underestimate their empathy, their altruism, their ability to communicate with us?”
>>Read: While playing hide and seek, the rats jump for joy, uttering little cries
“By wanting to put too much methodology and distance with the animals, ultimately, we missed certain things. So I claim this contact that we must have with them: trying to exchange with them to, precisely, have new scientific questions that will emerge.
>> Listen to French veterinary behaviorist Claude Béata, specialist in attachment, talk regarding the feelings of animals: The feelings of animals / QED / 10 min. / January 1, 2014
Radio interview: Pietro Bugnon
Web article: Stéphanie Jaquet
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