Patty Vest: Welcome to Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College. I'm Patty Vest. Mark Wood: And I'm Mark Wood. Patty Vest: In these extraordinary times, we're coming to you from our various homes as we all shelter in place. Mark Wood: This season on Sagecast, we're talking to Pomona faculty and alumni about the personal, professional, and intellectual journeys that have brought them to where they are today. Patty Vest: Today, we welcome science writer Virginia Morrell, class of '71, the author of several books including Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel. Mark Wood: Welcome, Virginia. Virginia Morrell: Hi, it's nice to be here with you. Thanks for inviting me. Mark Wood: It's good to have you with us here kind of, in cyberspace. How are you adjusting to this new confined lifestyle? Virginia Morrell: Well, it's not that different. I think as writers, we're used to being socially isolated anyway. I'm just doing what I've done, which is just sit in my office and interview people by telephone or Skype, and write articles, and read, and think. Take my dogs for walks. I do get out every day for a nice walk with our dogs. Always a nice thing to be able to do, but it's really not that different from what I was... how I was living my life before. Except that it's so quiet, and we don't see other people of course. Everybody here in Oregon seems to be following the rules. Patty Vest: That's good to hear. Virginia Morrell: Yeah. Patty Vest: Virginia, which came first in your life, science or writing? Virginia Morrell: I think they both came about the same time. I mean, as a kid, I really loved to read. I was apparently writing little stories when I was six, seven years old. Probably just I took my dog to the park kind of stories. But I was also always really keen on science. I remember that my parents bought my brother, my older brother, a microscope set with a little chemistry set, for I think his seventh birthday. I was so jealous. I would have been five. They got me one for my next birthday, and then I went on to... I really loved it. I loved looking through the microscope at all these things that you couldn't normally see. Virginia Morrell: My dad took a drinking glass, and he would draw on a piece of paper, use it as sort of a template, and draw around it so that he made circles like what I was seeing through my microscope. Then I would fill in what I saw. I took the book of those drawings and my microscope set to the annual hobby show at our elementary school. I got a golden prize. Patty Vest: That's awesome. Virginia Morrell: I was always keen on science, but my strengths academically were in writing and reading. I wasn't particularly strong in math. I think about that and wonder why. I expect that it was because it wasn't applied. I couldn't really understand why we would do these equations. There didn't seem to be any reason other than trying to figure out why Suzy went to the market and did something. That was a pretty boring plot line. I didn't realize I could combine my two strengths until I was working at the Pomona College computer center. I think it was then the president of Harvey Mudd. He came around and he mentioned to me that there was always a need for good science writers, and that I might think about that as a career after Pomona. Virginia Morrell: At that time, in the '70s, early '70s, I don't think that science writing had certainly not blossomed into the field that it is today. I wasn't sure how you would go about becoming that, but his comment to me did get me to start looking at Time Magazine, which was a much bigger enterprise than it is now. They had always these sections in the back of the magazine. The science writer would cover something like the astronauts blasting off from Cape Canaveral. I thought, yeah, that would be really cool, to be able to be a person like that. Because I love to do adventurous things and I could write about them. Virginia Morrell: I didn't go about doing that directly. Instead, I imagined that I would be what I prepared to be, which was a college professor teaching literature somewhere. I went to McGill University in Montreal, Canada for a degree in medieval literature, which is far away from thinking about science, you would think. Except that there, I also had a really wonderful professor, Benjamin [Weims 00:05:30], who taught this course in... what did he call it? It was metaphor and analogy, I think. He talked about the difference between the way the people in the Medieval times perceived the world compared to our times. We were in an era where relativity was a strong influence in the way we talked about the world and our experiences in it. Virginia Morrell: That really began to shift my point of view too. It made me realize how influential science was in the world. It really affected everything, from art, literature, and music. Everything across the board in Medieval times was influenced by their ideas that things weren't necessarily... it wasn't as if. It wasn't like, "You're as beautiful as a rose." You are the rose. That was the kind of thinking that they had at that time. Anyway, I got very interested in that. But I also wanted very much to travel. I had not been outside of the United States except for Canada and Mexico. I thought, okay. Virginia Morrell: I considered joining the Peace Corps, but then I had friends from Ethiopia who were at Pomona College and Claremont Colleges. They said that if I just went to their country, I would be able to get a teaching job because I had this master's degree. I thought that was just nuts, but I decided I would try it. I had the names of their parents, and lived there in the capital city of Addis Ababa. I did this crazy thing, and I traveled by myself through Europe. Got myself to Greece and bought a roundtrip ticket, because you couldn't buy one way to Addis Ababa. I bought a roundtrip ticket from Athens to Addis, and landed there. Initially, I had some trouble not... I wasn't sure how I was going to get in touch with this family, but people seemed to know them. Virginia Morrell: Of course, they were very wealthy Ethiopians, or well known. After a couple of days, I was rescued from the little hotel I was staying in and taken in by these lovely people. The mothers, they were quite amazed that I was there and that I was looking for a job. But the mother thought it was wonderful, as did this one friend of mine, his stepfather, who is General [Shiperol 00:08:12]He was head of the Harar Military Academy. He had lived here in the States. He had gone to school at one of our... I'm not sure if it was in Georgia, somewhere that he spent some time living here in the States. He thought I was really great, that I was so brave that I would come to his country, really unattached to anything official. Virginia Morrell: He took me around to meet the head of USAID in Addis, and that man, you could see his alarm on his face. Because I probably looked really young, about 15 years old. I was in my early 20s, but I did look rather young and inexperienced. This poor man, his eyes, as General Shiperol was explaining how I had arrived and I was looking for a job, and perhaps he could help me out. This man's eyes got wider and wider. He said, "Well, the best thing you can do is to probably go home and apply through official channels." Patty Vest: But I'm here. Mark Wood: Yeah, right. Virginia Morrell: But I'm here already, yeah. On the way down the elevator of the embassy, General Shiperol turned to me and he said, "I don't think he's going to help us." Patty Vest: Very perceptive. Mark Wood: Yeah. Virginia Morrell: No, I don't think so. Instead, my friend's mother, a lovely woman, gosh, what's her name? [Leikech 00:09:45]. She took me to the ministry of education, and I filled out a form there to apply for a teaching job in a secondary school. Then she took me to the university. At the time, Haile Selassie was the emperor, so it was Haile Selassie, one university in Addis Ababa. The big university in the country. I went in to meet the Dean of Humanities there. I'm not going to remember his name, but he was a wonderful, warm fellow. I had brought along my transcripts from Pomona and McGill, and sat down and gave them to him. I said I knew that they needed first year English teachers. Virginia Morrell: The university was English speaking, and so most of the classes were all taught in English. They had also a need for people to teach English composition and literature. I was applying for a junior level position in that. He was very kind, this young woman. He looked down at my papers and he said, "My goodness. You went to McGill?" I said, "Yes." He said, "I did my PhD there. You're hired." It was the easiest interview of my life. Mark Wood: Just a reminder that luck is as important as skill. Virginia Morrell: It really is, it really is. It was just so funny. Then we talked about McGill, and how lovely Montreal was, and how cold it was to live there. That worked out, so then I taught there at the university for a little... well, two years basically. But things changed dramatically be towards the... I'm trying to think exactly how events unfolded. There were the beginnings of a revolution that were starting. People were very unhappy because reports were coming into the capital, which is more or less in the center of the country, that people in the northern part were starving. There was a terrible famine underway, but it was being hidden by the authorities. Suddenly, you would see pictures appearing on the streets of Addis, photographs taped up against telephone poles and street lamps of Haile Selassie feeding his dog birthday cake while next to it was a picture of a starving Ethiopian child. Mark Wood: Wow. Virginia Morrell: And something written in their language. I learned to speak a little bit of the language, and to read some of the writing. They have an entirely different alphabet. I couldn't read those, but it was obviously. All you needed to do was look at the pictures to see that this wasn't going to be very good for the emperor. People would be out there, soldiers, police officers would be out early in the morning taking these down. But they'd appear the next day, automatically they'd be up again. Slowly, things began to really become more and more unsettled. Virginia Morrell: How did it go? I think that the non-commissioned officers went into his office, to his meeting rooms one day, and demanded. He would sit there on his throne, but they came in, in force. They demanded that they be given a pay raise. Of course, they hadn't applied through any kind of... the official way to do it. They just came in and made their demands. Everyone was shocked when he gave into them. That was really the beginning of the end of him. Because having done that one thing to the NCOs, then what else were they going to ask for? Virginia Morrell: Then the price of gasoline went up because some of the people on the Western side of the country, who live in the desert areas, they began demanding more money and payments from the emperor. He had a way of keeping everything under control by paying the Sultan of the area a fixed sum of money. Anyway, they started stopping all the oil tankers that were coming in. They would escort the truck drivers off the trucks, and then they would blow up the trucks. Suddenly, there was no gasoline for sale in Addis. Virginia Morrell: Then the taxi cab drivers started stoning the buses because they didn't want the city buses to go if they couldn't drive their cabs. Slowly, the whole society collapsed. You could see it happening step by step. The students were out in the street demanding that land be broken up. It was still a futile society so that there were big land owners who were related to the emperor, who owned the land. The peasants would work the land. Then they would have to pay much of what they grew to their landholders. The students were demanding land to the tiller. Eventually, the NCOs went back to the emperor. They said, "Come with us." They escorted him out, put him in the back of a VW bus, bug I think, just a tiny little car, and drove him off. That was the last anyone ever saw of him in public. There we were, having a revolution. It wasn't what I signed up for. Patty Vest: I bet. Virginia Morrell: My dad had- Mark Wood: But quite an experience. Virginia Morrell: It was, it was. It was the bloodless revolution, at least that's how it started out. There were soldiers everywhere and tanks, but the students would walk by, and they'd put flowers in the guns of the soldiers. It seemed like it was going to be kind of smooth, except that the people who took over were the military. They had this committee of 120 men who were ruling the country. They decided, or some of them decided that the first thing they were going to do was to attack the north that wanted to succeed. That didn't go very well. My paycheck began to shrink because they started taking more tax money out to pay for their war on the north. Mark Wood: Wow. Virginia Morrell: Of course, you have no voice. That was the other interesting thing, was to live through a revolution. You realize it's not the best way to solve problem. People, young people especially, might think that revolutions are really great. But they quickly turned bad. It went very, very quickly from being a bloodless revolution to an all out war. City Hall was blown up one day from the north. Everything was so unsettled and uneasy. I was trying to teach, but then they closed the university. They sent all the students out to do a campaign of... they had to teach socialism, hygiene, and medicine I think. It was mostly to break the students up. Mark Wood: Yeah. Virginia Morrell: Anyway, I could go on and on about living in the times of the Ethiopian revolution. It turned out to not be really happy, but I stayed. I signed a new contract, and I stayed for the second year of the Ethiopian revolution, and watched as the society continued to crumble and things became even dicier. Then I decided I would leave after two years of that. I didn't want to. I really loved living there. I loved the adventure of it, and just the everyday newness of living in some place that was so outside my own realm of experience. I can't advise young people often enough to do that kind of thing, to take yourself out of the known and put yourself in a situation where everything is brand new every day. Virginia Morrell: It was just a remarkable experience, and it paid handsomely later in my life when I decided... well, I think it was largely because of that experience. My plan had been to go back to university and get a PhD. But after having lived outside the university, a formal academic setting where I was studying, I just couldn't picture myself being back in that sheltered environment. I really wanted to be out in the world and doing things, and experiencing more than an ivory tower existence. I came home, and my first job, thank goodness for the couple years that I spent working at the computer center, because I got a job as a junior technical writer at a computer company. Mark Wood: Technical writer. Virginia Morrell: Yeah, exactly. Actually, that too proved to be worth my time because I learned how to talk to scientists there. I had to go in and talk to the engineers, and learn how their brains work differently from mine, and had to translate what they would say to me in their geeky kind of language with a lot of jargon, into straight English. That was a really useful experience. I also learned how the business world worked, or at least in that little company, which was disappointing. They would sell a lot of things that they hadn't made yet, so there would always be a scramble back among the engineers when they would have to make these things that the salesman sold. That was disheartening. Virginia Morrell: I decided at some point, maybe my second year working for that company, that I was... I think I was 26, 27. I just decided I had to start. If I was going to be a writer, I had to really start doing it. I went with a friend. We went down to South America. We decided we would backpack Inca Highway from Cusco to Machu Pichuu. At the end of that, I said, "Okay." I had been reading the Los Angeles Times travel section and I'd always think, "I could do that. I could write those things. I can travel like that." I sat down and I said, "Okay, I have to write a story about this trip that we took to Machu Pichuu." I did it. I folded it up like a business letter and sent it off. I wrote it on I think travel editor of the Los Angeles Times. They wrote back about five days later and said, "We're buying this. We'll pay you X amount of money. Please send us more." Mark Wood: And you were off and running. Virginia Morrell: I thought, wow. That's not how it's supposed to happen. [crosstalk 00:21:06] Mark Wood: Yeah, you're supposed to line your wall with rejection letters, right? Virginia Morrell: Rejection letters, yeah. That gave me a lot of hope. I started then building a small career as a travel writer. I'd make trips, short ones, and I'd write about them. I did self-syndication where I would sell them first to the L.A. Times, and then I could sell them elsewhere in the country as long as I didn't overlap markets. Then I discovered that there was this other job that you could have where you were a contract technical writer. You didn't have to work for a company, but another company would send you out. You could make really good money doing that. I did that for a while, and I would go on assignments, do these contract assignments for a short period of time. And make a nice stash of money, and use that to pay for a trip somewhere. Virginia Morrell: A friend of mine, well, I made friends with the editor at the Los Angeles Harold Examiner, which is defunct now. She was the travel editor there. She invited me to lunch with her, and then she introduced me to editors at various magazines that were published out of L.A. She was really kind. That was the other thing that I found, was that a lot of editors were really very, very helpful in getting me started in my career. She introduced me to a fellow who was very successful. He taught me how to write a pitch letter. Virginia Morrell: The things that I remember from him, his advice about a pitch letter, was that it could only be one page. Because editors didn't have time to turn the page. You better be able to say what your idea was in the first paragraph, if not the first sentence. It had to really be grabby. Then I was trying to pitch ideas to various magazines. Again, mostly outdoor oriented ones. Backpacker Magazines, I got assignments from them early on. Then I was aiming for... My big dream was to get stories in Outside Magazine. That was my big goal. I began to be invited on these trips. They were called familiarization trips, or fam trips, where they would invite writers from various regional areas. Virginia Morrell: They'd take a group of you off to, say Tahiti was one that I did. Then this other one came up, thanks again to my friend at the L.A. Harold Examiner, Cathy Healy. She said she got this call saying, could she go skiing in France? She told them no, she couldn't because she was going to Hawaii. The life of a travel editor. But she gave them my name, so I got this call one morning saying, "Hello, please, we're from the French tourism bureau in Los Angeles. Can you come skiing in France?" Patty Vest: Let me think about that. Virginia Morrell: I said, "Not if I'm washing my hair that day." On that fam trip, there was going to be an editor from Outside Magazine. I was like, "Oh, yes. I want to see if I can get to meet an editor from Outside Magazine. I'll talk to him about my experiences living in Ethiopia. Maybe I'll work my way up to an assignment." I got my ski stuff together. I really wasn't much of a skier. I have to confess to that, but I thought I could manage the French alps. Patty Vest: They have to have a bunny slope somewhere. Virginia Morrell: Yeah, exactly. We got to, I think it was this town of La Clusaz was the first place that we were all meeting. The writer from Outside Magazine was a man named Michael McRae. We came down from our rooms. He was already there in the little anteroom, the little lobby area, having drinks with some of the other writers. He turned out to be this young, handsome guy. I was like, "Oh my Lord. What am I going to do now? He's not a gray beard. He's really good looking. If I start talking to him, he's probably going to think I'm hitting on him. What ever am I going to do?" Virginia Morrell: I was just real quiet. I didn't say much, except then a couple of days later, he was seated by himself at lunch. They had done a story about some friends of mine who ran some rivers in Ethiopia, some river rafters. I thought, okay, I'll just go over and say, "I think we have mutual friends in the river rafting business." Because I knew that they would know these river rafters. I'd use that as a way to talk about my... "Yeah, I went to Ethiopia too. I ran a river there." We began to really hit it off. We discovered we had a lot in common. By the end of the trip, it was pretty clear that we were going to stay in touch. That fall, we were married. Patty Vest: Oh, wow. Mark Wood: Yeah, I thought that's where this was going. I remembered your husband's name. Virginia Morrell: Yeah. Mark Wood: But that's a real reveal there at the end, that's cool. Patty Vest: Okay. Mark Wood: Virginia, let's jump forward. Virginia Morrell: Yeah. Mark Wood: I became aware of you after the year 2000, just a couple of years after I came to Pomona with an issue of National Geographic on biodiversity. Virginia Morrell: Oh, yes. Mark Wood: I remember looking at you, picking up that issue, and starting to look through it to see. Because I knew you were in it and I thought, oh, I'll look and see what story she wrote. I realized you had written almost the entire issue. Virginia Morrell: Yes, that was a lovely assignment. Mark Wood: Stories from all over the world, that must have been quite an experience. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Virginia Morrell: Yes, it was a fabulous assignment. I got my first assignment for the Geographic because I had written a book called Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginning. It was a biography about Louis, Mary, and Richard Leakey, who showed that humans evolved in Africa. I could talk about how I got that book assignment, but that's... Anyway, I did that book. It was a big chunk of my life. The editors at Nat Geo loved it. Then I had a call from them in the late '90s, and they asked me if I would consider writing for the magazine. It took me about two seconds to say- Mark Wood: Another one of those really difficult questions, right? Virginia Morrell: Yeah, really. Well, okay. I'll consider it. I think that the biodiversity issue was either my second or third assignment for the magazine. It was really quite an astonishing assignment. The editor at the time was Bob Poole. He was a big fan of mine, which was lovely. He wanted me to write this series of pieces that they had kind of picked them out. I'm trying to think exactly. One was on extinction. One was on the state of the world's biodiversity and Madagascar. The state of Madagascar's biodiversity. Virginia Morrell: There was an overview piece, what is biodiversity? They had various topics, but the thing about the Geographic is they would call you up like that and tell you the subject. But then it was up to you to decide how you were going to approach it, where you were going to do the research. They leave all of that up to you, so it's kind of a daunting thing because you're not sure. Is this what you want? I decided, okay. I didn't want the pieces to focus necessarily always on the poorest parts of the world, or to suggest that only lesser developed countries were at risk of losing everything. Because we have a lot of problems here in our own country. Virginia Morrell: I remember one of the stories that I did, I went with Stuart Pimm, who has done a lot of work on extinction and theory of extinction. Where do we stand to lose the most species? He suggested that I go with him to see, excuse me, see how this little sparrow in Florida, the Sable coast shore sparrows or Sable sparrow was doing. They had outfitted these little birds with special little transmitters so they could track them. They lived in the Everglades. You would think they would be completely protected. Virginia Morrell: But instead, they were going extinct. The reason they were going extinct was because the army core of engineers would flood the meadows every year right at the time that those birds were building their nests. They were ground nesters. All you had to do was to wait until their nesting season was over. Wait another four to six weeks before you flood the fields. That's all it would take. Stuart eventually I think managed to get them to agree to that, although I'm not sure that under the current administration that's still the case. But at the time, it looked like the little sparrow was going to have a chance. Virginia Morrell: That was the disheartening thing about doing those series of stories, was to discover how many really ridiculous decisions were being made not just in poor countries, but here in our own country, that were causing animals to lose their lives forever. That, well, it really just touched my heart. It still makes me sad to think that we could be so shortsighted or so indifferent to life on our planet. That's upbeat. Patty Vest: Well, kind of along those lines, that was 20 years ago. Virginia Morrell: Yeah. Patty Vest: How have things changed in terms of the world's biodiversity? Virginia Morrell: Well, I'm not sure they have. Look at the latest issue of Science, which is about the decline of insects and what we're doing to our insect populations. We're not treating them kindly at all. Again, it's unnecessary, the amount of pesticides that we use to grow our foods. And just our general attitude and indifference. We don't care that there are fewer grasshoppers. The interesting thing was that then, well, it was actually when I did my book, Ancestral Passions, that I went to Gombe Stream and I met Jane Goodall. Because Louis Leakey had started her on that project. As we were talking, one of the things that I saw there with Jane was this moment when she had given... or they had a feeding station, and there were two chimpanzees who were coming through. Virginia Morrell: One was this adult, Beethoven. He had this little chimpanzee with him, who was an adopted orphan. At the feeding station, she gave him a big bunch of bananas. He sat down, that piggy guy, he ate every single banana on the stem. None left, none for this little chimpanzee, Dilly, who was his little orphan he was caring for in his own way. Jane held back one banana. I was sitting in another building across the way, so I could see her. When Beethoven, after eating that bunch of bananas, he laid down of his back, fell sound asleep. Jane then caught Dilly's eye, and she held up this one banana. Virginia Morrell: Normally, when chimpanzees see food like that, they make this hoot cries. Hoot, hoot, hoot, hoot. [inaudible 00:34:18] Beethoven had when he got that big hunk of bananas. But Dilly didn't make a sound. She was like, none is the word. I'm not going to let anybody know. Then Jane put this outside the little building she was standing in. Then Dilly sat there, and she very patiently groomed Beethoven until he fell sound asleep. She made sure he was snoring. Then as if she was tiptoeing really quietly, she walked around the side of the building, got the banana, ate it like within three bites. Chomp, chomp, chomp. Then came back and took care of Beethoven again. Virginia Morrell: Afterwards, I said to Jane, this is like 1985, I think. I said, "Wow, that was so amazing that you guys were in this deception together. You see Beethoven about there being another banana." I said, "Are you going to write that up? That's so cool." She said, "No, I can't possibly. Everyone would say, if I used the word deception, everyone would say, 'Jane, you're just anthropomorphizing. How silly of you. You can't say things like that.'" I said, "But it was so clear." She's like, "I know, I know." Chimpanzees have personalities. They have all of these things. Virginia Morrell: They do all the same things that we do, but you can't say that. You have to say, "It was as if Dilly deceived Beethoven, or it seemed like Dilly..." But you could never say, "Dilly deceived Beethoven." She doesn't really act, she only seems to act, or it's as if she acts. But Jane said, the field was changing, that there were scientists who were taking more of an evolutionary approach to animal cognition. And I would see that in time, people would begin to accept that other animals have thoughts and emotions. I kind of shelved that, but I always wanted to do a book about it. Eventually, after the biodiversity issue, I proposed a story to Geographic about animal cognition. They gave me the assignment, and that led to my book Animal Wise. I did the story first here in National Geographic, and then I did the whole book on it for Penguin. It's one of the things that you learn as a writer, is never to throw away your old notebooks. Keep everything. Things go into the gristmill, and you're surprised. Patty Vest: And your training for medieval literature. Virginia Morrell: Yeah, exactly. Mark Wood: That's one of the themes that come through your book. It's an interesting one to me, this whole notion that scientists are, like the rest of us, inclined to develop these prejudices. Virginia Morrell: Oh, yes. Mark Wood: And taboos. Why do you think that taboo on animals thinking and feeling was around for so long? Does it still affect researchers today? Did it affect you after writing the book? Virginia Morrell: The taboos? Or... Mark Wood: Yeah, that scientific rejection of the very idea that... Virginia Morrell: That other animals think and have emotions? Mark Wood: Yeah. Virginia Morrell: No, I'm fully accepting of those ideas. You have to be a little careful, because some people take those discoveries a little too far. The thing that troubles me the most probably is that people then want to have relationships not just with their dog, but with wild animals. Mark Wood: Yeah. Virginia Morrell: They want to go swim with the dolphins. It's like, well, the dolphins don't really want to swim with you. They have their own things that they're worried about. They've got to meet partners, and they've got to mate, and they've got to care for their young. Get out of the way, people. Just let them get on with their lives, kind of like we're doing now in this shutdown that we have going on. Animals are having a better time with it because we're out of the way. Virginia Morrell: I went into it and I thought, as a science writer, you approach most of your subjects with an open mindedness. You have to write about the research and discoveries, but a certain amount of skepticism too. You don't want to be given snow job or report on things that aren't substantiated, there's no evidence. I made sure that I chose researchers who were doing top flight work, who had really solid papers that were peer reviewed. I wrote about their work, and went to see them and meet them at their labs or in the field. Virginia Morrell: I avoided people who were doing invasive research on animals. I didn't think that I could write about that in an effective way. It's so controversial, and it's really upsetting to me. A few labs where I did see people doing things that could only be described as cruel, I tried to block them from my mind. Because that's just a different way of going about it. What I looked for were scientists who were taking an evolutionary approach to understanding how animals think and how their emotions work. Virginia Morrell: It doesn't make sense that we as an organism would be here with our history of coming out of the primate line, that we wouldn't share certain things with them. It just doesn't make any sense. The problem with the field in the past as I understood it was that it had been taken over by the psychology department largely. Psychologist aren't trained to think in evolutionary terms. They would do these discrete tests to see, can the rat do this? Can the rat do that? But there wasn't any reason for why the rats would do... be able to solve mazes. Virginia Morrell: What's the rationale behind it? Well, the only way you can explain what animals do is to understand how they live their lives in the wild. And what are the evolutionary forces that would lead them to be able to do the things that they do? That was the approach that I took. I wanted to talk to researchers who were actually putting the animal in their habitat, in their society, with their fellows. And figuring out why, for instance, do parrots have this ability to imitate our voices? Virginia Morrell: It's not so they can imitate our voices. It's not so they can tell you to go shopping, or say hello to you when you come back from your trip to the store. There has to be something more to it than that. Then I looked for a researcher who was looking at parrots in the wild, and able to explain, why do they have this imitative ability? What other animals have it? We have it, dolphins have it, parrots have it. What do those groups of animals share that would cause us all to have an ability to imitate one another? That makes it a much more interesting question, I think. That was the approach that I took. Patty Vest: Virginia, what are some of your own recent projects or projects you're working on now? Virginia Morrell: The last book that I wrote was about a biologist by the name of Robin Baird, a marine biologist. It was for a series called Masters at Work that Simon & Schuster put out last year. They asked a group of us to write about someone who was accomplished in their field, and how they had become what they are. My book was Becoming a Marine Biologist. I described the life story basically of Robin Baird, and how he had grown up on Vancouver Island and watched wales as a kid, but never really imagined that he would be able to become a marine biologist because he was bad at math. But he could write. Virginia Morrell: One biology professor realized that that was a rare gift in someone who wanted to be a scientist. Don't worry about the math. Statistics, well, you can always get somebody to help you with that, but you can write. That's your strong suit. He's now gone on to develop a project in Hawaii where he is the expert on, it's about 28 species of dolphins and wales that live off the Hawaiian islands. At the time that he went there, no one realized that. I want to say he started that work about 20 years ago. At the time, people were focused on two species there. The humpback wales and the spinner dolphins. Virginia Morrell: But Robin would go out, and he would see other wales and dolphins doing things when he was out say doing a project on the humpback whales. He just began taking pictures of these other species. And overtime showed that they too were resident to the Hawaiian islands. That has really influenced the way that they were treated in the marine reserves that they have in the Hawaiian islands. They have such a variety of wales and dolphins that live there. It affects also the naval exercises. The things that the navy can do, when they can do them. It's all thanks to Robin and his ability, his talent for being a really good observer, and for being able to write about it. Mark Wood: We don't have much more time, but if it's okay, I want to go back to Animal Minds for just a minute. Virginia Morrell: Yes. Mark Wood: Can you tell us about one or two of the more amazing creatures that you met during that process? Virginia Morrell: Gosh, I would have to say the parrots. Because I did have the fun of getting to meet Irene Pepperberg, who has worked with her parrot Alex until he passed away about 10 years ago now, I think. I was able to meet him before he died. I have these really lovely memories of watching her work with Alex. He was such a funny fellow. There were two other parrots she was working with. The way that they teach them how to say, to imitate our words, would be to show them something like a toy cube that was painted green or brown. Virginia Morrell: He was trying to learn how to pronounce the word brown. He would be in the back of the room. Then she had another parrot, Griffin, she was working with, who would be in the foreground. She would hold up things to Griffin that were colored green. She had a little platter she would hold up to him. He was very nervous because parrots, they're afraid of new things, new people. I was in the room, so his feathers were all shivering and quaky because I was there. I was standing as far back as I could, but nevertheless, he was afraid. He's trying to say the word green, and he would go... and Alex from the back of the room, "Speak clearly. Speak clearly." Patty Vest: They're just like us. Mark Wood: Yep. Virginia Morrell: Yeah, exactly. Then he would pick up this little toy ground cube he had, and he would hold it up. He would say, "Tell me what color." Irene and her two assistants would say, in this little rhythmic singsong, "Brown, Alex. The color is brown." Then he would listen. He'd sit there for a little bit kind of hunched. "Brown, Alex. The color is brown." Eventually, he got it. "Brown," sort of like that. "Good, Alex. Brown, Alex. The color is brown." That's how he learned his vocabulary of about 100 words that he could use to answer questions that Irene would pose to him. She wanted to see if parrots were capable of abstract thought. Could they do things like tell you color and shape? Yeah, he could do that. Virginia Morrell: She could show him things that were all blue. "How the same?" "Color," he would say. All those things on your platter are the same because their color is the same. "How are they different?" "Shape." She was able to show that birds, even though they have a brain the size of a walnut, parrots are able to do some abstract thinking. She had him do a little math. It was amazing to me. People afterwards, I would hear some from scientists who were really envious that I got to meet Alex. Others were hugely skeptical. They were all certain that she was giving him cues, although I saw no evidence of it. Certainly where Alex would speak up like that, "Talk clearly," or "Speak clearly." That was just Alex. Mark Wood: Alex being Alex. Virginia Morrell: Yeah, Alex being Alex. Irene got a little angry with him because she said, "Don't be a smart Alec." Then he got all sad. She said, "Okay." He said, "Want to go tree." He knew that outside the room, there was a big window. You could see this leafy green tree. He liked to go sit there in the sunlight in the shade, shining on the tree. She said, "Okay." Then he got on her arm and he said to her, "Good boy?" She said, "Yes, Alex. You're a good boy." Patty Vest: Oh, wow. Mark Wood: Oh, wow. Virginia Morrell: And walked him down the hall to that tree. It was lovely. The relationship between them, she had him for about 30 years I think at that point. Then he died not long, a couple years after that. It's something I truly treasure, was my time with Alex. And all my time with all of the various animals. The ants were wonderful. Mark Wood: I'm afraid they'll have to read the book to know about the ants. Virginia Morrell: Well, that turned out to be one of people's favorite chapters. Mark Wood: Yeah, one of mine. Virginia Morrell: I think it's so funny that I've had so many people say to me that they can't step on ants anymore after reading the book. Mark Wood: Our listeners will have to get the book so that they can read about the ants. Virginia Morrell: Oh, that would be lovely. Mark Wood: And about all the other animals. It's a beautiful book, Virginia. It really is. Virginia Morrell: Thank you. Mark Wood: I loved it. Virginia Morrell: Thank you very much, Mark. Thank you for those kind words. Mark Wood: On that note, we're going to have to wrap this up. We've been talking with Virginia Morrell, class of '71. The author of Animal Wise: How We Know Animals Think and Feel. Thanks. Virginia Morrell: Thank you so much, Mark. It's been a pleasure. Patty Vest: Thank you, Virginia. That was so fun. Virginia Morrell: Thank you, Pat. Patty Vest: And to all who stuck with us this far, thanks for listening to Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College. Stay safe, and until next time.