What we — and AI — can learn from nature's intelligence

Summary

TED Radio Hour (NPR)

Episode: What we — and AI — can learn from nature’s intelligence

Date: January 16, 2026
Host: Manoush Zomorodi

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the concept of "natural intelligence"—the remarkable ways that plants, animals, and even our own immune system solve problems and adapt, often in ways that put artificial intelligence to shame or provide profound inspiration for its development. Host Manoush Zomorodi is joined by neuroscientists, psychologists, and environmental researchers who share captivating stories and recent discoveries, revealing how Earth's living systems compute, communicate, and thrive.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Plants as Sensors, Counters, and Learners (00:49–12:54)

The Venus Flytrap’s Intelligence (00:49–06:46)

• Story of discovery:
  • Arthur Dobbs, North Carolina's governor in the 1750s, documented the extraordinary Venus flytrap, later studied by Darwin ("the most wonderful plant in the world").
• Key behavior:
  • The Venus flytrap "counts" touches on its trigger hairs. Only if touched twice within ~20 seconds does it close its trap—conserving significant energy and ensuring only true prey triggers the costly movement.
• Expert quote:
  • "The coolest thing is that the plant can count." – Greg Gage (03:46)
  • “Here, we're seeing the fly trap actually doing a computation.” – Greg Gage (05:41)
• Takeaway:
  • Plants can perform simple computational logic without brains.

Mimosa Pudica and Plant “Learning” (06:46–09:44)

• Behavior:
  • Mimosa Pudica folds its leaves at a touch—repelling herbivores and possibly deterring insects.
  • Reference to experiments where plants learn to associate clues (like airflow or light) for growth direction, demonstrating basic learning and flexible decision-making.
• Key analogy:
  • “That's starting to show a little bit of intelligence.” – Greg Gage (09:38)
• Insight:
  • Intelligence rooted in using limited resources to get what is needed.

Slime Molds: What Single Cells Can Achieve (09:44–11:33)

• Observation:
  • Slime molds, though brainless, exhibit problem-solving: avoiding light and seeking food efficiently.
  • “The cell is basically a little computer ... and it has goals.” – Greg Gage (11:10)
• Broader definition:
  • Intelligence as the ability to achieve goals with available means, seen even at the cellular level.

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2. Natural Intelligence Inspiring Artificial Intelligence (15:36–25:53)

Animal Navigation and Coordination (15:54–18:00)

• Frances Chance’s research:
  • Dung beetles use moonlight for straight paths; Sahara ants calculate return routes; honeybees use complex foraging behavior.
• Dragonflies’ hunting prowess:
  • Dragonflies intercept fast-moving prey, succeeding up to 95% of the time by predicting future locations—a natural precursor to "leading the target," like athletes or missile systems.
  • “It's known that dragonflies catch up to 95% of the prey that they choose to go after.” – Frances Chance (17:06)

Deconstructing the Dragonfly Brain (18:00–22:49)

• Coordinate transformation:
  • Dragonflies convert what their eyes see into body movements for pursuit, using neural circuits just four layers deep to accomplish this in ~50 milliseconds.
  • “The way that these neurons compute may be different from anything that exists on a computer today.” – Frances Chance (21:36)
• Practical aim:
  • Creating AI chips that mimic the speed and energy efficiency of dragonfly brains—envisioning ultra-efficient drones or navigation systems.
  • “Imagine if all brain inspired computers had the same extremely low power requirements.” – Frances Chance (22:26)
• Environmental implication:
  • Could drastically reduce global computing’s energy consumption and carbon footprint.

Intelligence: Cleverness Across Life (24:58–25:53)

• Philosophy:
  • Intelligence isn’t just about adaptation but about “clever” solutions evolved for ultra-efficient problem solving.
  • “I call them clever ... examples of what intelligence could produce.” – Frances Chance (25:09)

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3. The “Intelligence” of the Human Immune System (26:18–33:36)

Immune Response & Behavior (26:18–32:24)

• Case study:
  • When sick, cytokines create not just fevers or aches, but loss of joy, fatigue, and social withdrawal—evolutionarily pushing us to rest and recover, and avoid spreading illness.
• Quote:
  • “The immune system is telling the brain to feel depressed and to withdraw from socializing because it wants you to stay at home and rest.” – Keely Muscatel (30:23)
• Nuance:
  • Some inflammation increases motivation for care from loved ones (the “chicken soup shortcut”).

Chronic Inflammation & Societal Implications (36:41–40:09)

• Modern confusion:
  • Chronic stress, poor sleep, or unhealthy diets invoke the same inflammation as infection, compounding stress and social withdrawal in a vicious feedback.
• Quote:
  • “Stress can cause inflammation and then inflammation can signal the brain for people to maybe disconnect or withdraw, which can lead to more stress. ... tough cycle to break.” – Keely Muscatel (37:43)
• Broader lesson:
  • Evolution crafted the immune system’s “smart” algorithms, even if our conscious brain sometimes overrides them.

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4. AI Decoding Animal Communication & Guiding Conservation (40:38–53:11)

Karen Bakker’s Exploration of Animal Communication (41:21–53:11)

• Bioacoustics and AI:
  • AI is enabling scientists to listen to and decode sounds from bats, whales, elephants, and even coral larvae (“inside-out ears” that home by sound).
• Notable moment:
  • “Bats have dialects that they pass down ... baby bats learn to speak just like you did by listening to the adults around them.” – Karen Bakker (42:16)
  • Orcas pass on their “dialects” generationally; elephants have a specific alarm for honeybees.
• Prediction:
  • “Maybe bioacoustics would enable an orca to give a TED Talk. Why not ... telling stories about trying to survive on this beautiful planet.” – Karen Bakker (52:36)
• Practical impact:
  • AI-powered “whale lanes” off America's East Coast now prevent endangered whale ship strikes, giving species a chance at recovery.
• Ethical consideration:
  • Interspecies communication empowers empathy and conservation, but must be developed ethically.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Here, we’re seeing the fly trap actually doing a computation.” – Greg Gage (05:41)
• “Every cell is intelligent. I think everything that comes from cells is intelligent.” – Greg Gage (12:38)
• “The way that these neurons compute may be different from anything that exists on a computer today.” – Frances Chance (21:36)
• “Imagine if all brain inspired computers had the same ... low power requirements.” – Frances Chance (22:26)
• “Your body is gonna send signals to your brain that cause kind of a loss of joy or a loss of interest ... and the idea is that that’s a really good thing.” – Keely Muscatel (29:52)
• “When we lose species, we lose voices. When we lose landscapes, we also lose soundscapes.” – Karen Bakker (47:56)
• “Maybe ... instead of a human here on stage, maybe bioacoustics would enable an orca to give a TED Talk.” – Karen Bakker (52:36)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:49 — Introduction to Venus Flytrap and Natural Intelligence
• 03:46 — Flytrap’s Counting Mechanism
• 06:46 — Mimosa Pudica and Plant “Touch”
• 09:44 — Slime Molds as Simple Intelligent Creatures
• 15:54 — Dung Beetles, Ants, and Insect Navigation
• 17:06 — Dragonfly's Prey Interception Skill
• 18:00 — Deep Dive: Dragonfly Neural Circuits
• 22:26 — Low-Power, Brain-Inspired AI Devices
• 26:19 — Human Immune System: Sickness Behavior
• 29:52 — Evolutionary Rationale for Being Sick
• 33:36 — Chronic Inflammation and Modern Stress
• 41:21 — AI Decoding Animal Languages (Bats, Whales, Bees)
• 47:56 — The Loss of “Voices” in Nature
• 52:36 — The Vision: Interspecies TED Talks

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Tone & Style

The episode blends awe, scientific curiosity, and concern for the natural world, celebrating the diversity and ingenuity of intelligence across the tree of life. The speakers’ voices express both wonder and humility as they reveal how much we have to learn from the systems that have evolved over millions of years, emphasizing that technological progress does not render nature obsolete—if anything, it deepens our respect for it.

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Episode Summary

This episode artfully shows that “intelligence” is not unique to humans or even animals with brains. From flytraps that compute and flowers that “learn,” to dragonflies out-intercepting missiles, to the immune system’s subtle regulation of mood and social behavior, and, finally, to bats, whales, and bees whose languages AI is just starting to decode, natural intelligence is everywhere. The lessons: Our machines still have much to learn from nature’s evolved brilliance—and, perhaps more importantly, so do we.

Transcript

[NPR Announcer]

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[Manoush Zamarodi]

Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

[Greg Gage]

Our job now is to dream big.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Delivered at TED conferences to bring about.

[Karen Bakker]

The future we want to see around the world, understand who we are.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

[Greg Gage]

You just don't know what you're gonna find challenge you.

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We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy and even change you?

[Keely Muscatel]

I literally feel like I'm a different person.

[Greg Gage]

Yes.

[Keely Muscatel]

Do you feel that way?

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Ideas worth spreading From TED and npr, I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and on the show today, natural intelligence. And we're going to kick things off by going back in time to the 1750s and a marshy, swampy subtropical wetland in North Carolina where a man named Arthur Dobbs lived.

[Greg Gage]

Yeah, no, I like Arthur Dobbs.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

This is our tour guide, Greg Gage.

[Greg Gage]

He was the governor of North Carolina. This is back in the 1750s, still under British rule.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

And Arthur, he says, was a curious man, a bit of a gentleman scientist. So when Arthur started to hear a rumor about a very unusual plant growing not that far away, he decided to go check it out.

[Greg Gage]

And he heard these stories about this plant. He says, well, I'm the governor of this land, I should go investigate. He went out to the swamps. And so there's a little, small area, I think it's about six square miles. And then there, low to the ground, are these little tiny plants. And that if you watch them long enough, a bug will eventually fall into its little or walk across its little leaves, and it snaps, shuts and it eats this bug. And so, of course, he's pretty fascinated.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

By this, understandable because, well, no Europeans had ever documented a plant like this before.

[Greg Gage]

So he does what scientists do at the time. They take out a letter and they write to their colleagues in Europe. The great wonder of the vegetable kingdom is a very curious, unknown species of sensitive.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

He writes, It's a dwarf plant. Leaves are like a narrow segment of a sphere consisting of two parts, like the cap of a spring purse.

[Greg Gage]

Upon anything touching the leaves or falling between them, they instantly close like a spring trap. To this surprising plant, I've given the name of fly trap sensitive.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

The fly trap sensitive, or as we call it today, the Venus fly trap. The news of this remarkable animal eating plant took off across Europe. And 100 years later, Charles Darwin would write an entire book called Insectivorous Plants.

[Greg Gage]

Eventually, the great Charles Darwin got to study this plant and this plant absolutely blew him away. He called it the most wonderful plant in the world.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Here's Greg Gage on the TED stage.

[Greg Gage]

This is a plant that was an evolutionary wonder. This is a plant that moves quickly, which is rare, and it's a plant that's carnivorous, which is also rare, and it's in the same plant. But I'm here today to tell you that's not even the coolest thing about this plant. The coolest thing is that the plant can count.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

So let's pause for a moment. Greg Gage is not just an amateur fly trap historian. He is actually a neuroscientist and educator. And on the TED stage, he conducted a lot live science experiment.

[Greg Gage]

So I'm going to pretend to be.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

A fly right now, surrounded by monitors, microscopes, and of course, plants.

[Greg Gage]

And now here's my Venus fly trap. And inside the leaf, you're going to notice that there are three little hairs here, and those are trigger hairs. And so when a fly lands, I'm going to touch one of the hairs.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Right now attached to the fly trap. EKG sensors measuring any electrical signals generated by the plant.

[Greg Gage]

Ready?

1, 2, 3.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

And there the monitor lit up as Greg grazed the hairs inside the flytrap.

[Greg Gage]

What do we get? We get a beautiful action potential. However, the flytrap doesn't close.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

That's because it's waiting to see if it gets touched again within 20 seconds or so. Venus flytraps don't want to be hasty for several reasons.

[Greg Gage]

Number one is that it takes a long time to open the traps back up, you know, about 24 to 48 hours if there's no fly inside of it. And so it takes a lot of energy. And number two, it doesn't need to eat that many flies throughout the year. It only needs a handful. It gets most of its energy from the sun. It's just trying to replace some nutrients in the ground with the flies. And the third thing is it only opens, then closes the traps a handful of times until that trap dies. So therefore, it wants to make really darn sure that there's a meal inside of it before this fly trap snaps shut. So how does it do that? It counts the number of seconds between successive touching of those hairs. I'm going to touch the Venus flytrap again. I've been talking for more than 20 seconds. And then if I'm a fly moving around, I'm going to be touching the leaf a few times, I'm going to go and brush it a few times, and immediately the fly trap closes. So here we're seeing the fly trap actually doing a computation.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

I mean, that sounds like this plant is pretty smart.

[Greg Gage]

Yeah, it's. Well, I mean, it definitely is competing. I always think that plants are kind of cool because, you know, humans, if there's a rough situation, we can just run away. Right. Or we can just kind of, like, get out of dodge. But these plants are stuck there. They're in the ground. Right. So they've got nothing to do except for try to feed themselves somehow. They come up with very incredible ways of doing that.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

We hear a lot about the powers of artificial intelligence, but all around us, nature continues to find extraordinary ways to survive and communicate that we are still just beginning to understand. So today on the show Natural Intelligence, New findings about the brilliance of dragonflies, our immune system, and whales and how they are influencing human behavior. First, though, back to Greg Gage. He brought another surprisingly sensitive plant onto.

[Greg Gage]

The TED stage, the mimosa. Not the drink, but the mimosa pudica.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Greg, during your stage experiment, you also had this other plant that kind of looks like a fern, and it's called a mimosa.

[Greg Gage]

And this is a plant that's found in Central America and South America. And it has behaviors, and you just.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Lightly touch the leaves, and it kind of tend to curl up, wilt it away from you.

[Greg Gage]

If I tap the leaf, the entire branch seems to fall down.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

And my dad actually had a mimosa plant when I was a kid, and I was fascinated by this response. Like, I would touch it and it would pull away from me, like, get off me, you know?

[Greg Gage]

Yeah. So it's actually very, very similar to humans.

[Karen Bakker]

Right.

[Greg Gage]

So there's like a touch receptor, just like we do in our skin. And when we press down on something, we feel it because an electrical impulse is being sent back up to our brains. And we interpret that impulse as the feeling of touch inside of this leaf. Very similar cells are within there that will send an electrical current. Only this time, instead of using mussels, it again uses water to flushes the water out and makes the plant move.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

But why is it always about survival?

[Greg Gage]

I suspect so, yeah. And it's funny because with the mimosa, there's a couple of theories of why, if an animal brushes past it, it doesn't look, as I'm looking at mine right now, they don't look very tasty. Maybe I would eat a different plant if I saw that one.

Or maybe it kind of freaks out.

Some insects that would want to land on it. So that's a learning mechanism they can do. But that's kind of boring compared to some other experiments that have been done. Experiments where you can take a pea pod and you let it grow in the dark. You have, like, a little tube that goes up and it kind of goes like a Y. It's called a bifurcated tube. And if you shine a light in one of the tubes, say, on the right side, and you blow a fan on the other one, you can do this protocol where you kind of. You blow the fan on the left, and then you shine the light on the right, and then the next day, you blow the fan on the right, you shine the light on the left. Each day it's kind of growing up this tube, trying to get to that top of it, right? And then on the experiment day, right, we're about to make a decision, you flip it again, but you only blow the fan. And then you ask the question, which way will the plant grow? Will it grow where it last saw the light? Which would make sense, right? Or did it figure out the relationship between the fan and the light and grow to where the light would have been if it's going to come on soon? Right. You get a majority of the plants that kind of figure it out. They kind of figure out that they have to go in the other direction and go away from where it lasts out of light, but where the fan was indicating where it would go, to me, that's kind of flexible. And then that's starting to show some decisions, right? That's starting to show a little bit of intelligence. So it's. The ones that made it are the ones that can sort of live on to tell the story, right? So then those genes get inherited and move forward.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

So we have covered plants, which seem like a more simple life form than, say, mammals, and yet kind of display some very seriously smart behavior. But you are also really interested in. Seems strange to say this, but you're really excited about slime mold, which is not a plant, but.

[Greg Gage]

No, but a mold is a cell, right? A slime mold is a single cell. They kind of sit in a petri dish and you feed them. You feed them little oats, and they kind of wrap around it, and they kind of suck up the nutrients, and they kind of can go dormant for many, many years, and they can come back alive again.

[Karen Bakker]

Wow.

[Greg Gage]

Yeah. They're Absolutely fascinating. But they're. You can see them in various stages.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Even though they're single.

[Greg Gage]

Oh, you see, they could be. Yeah, they could be a single cell. Could be, like, you know, a meter long. They could be big. So they're macro. And so we were doing an experiment. One of the experiments we did was we put a piece of food in there. We watched. How often would it go towards the food? Not surprisingly, it goes towards the food a lot.

[Sponsor Messages]

Right.

[Greg Gage]

But slime molds are kind of. They don't want to be dried out. They don't like sunlight. And so if you shine a light there, you know, then they will shy away from it. They'll try to go around it, but they won't go through. They try not to go through the light. That would make sense if it was an animal. You're like, okay, well, their eyes are seeing it. The eyes are sending the message back to the brain, and the brains are telling the muscles which way to go. But then you realize, wait a minute, there's no brain, right? There's no.

There's just.

It's just cells, right? So they have these sensors on the outside of the cell that's sending back information, but that information's being processed inside the cell itself. And so I think there's a lot to be said about the cell. I mean, the cell is basically a little computer. It's got a little Turing machine inside of it. And it has goals, Right. It tries to do things. And so. And it has a lot of things on its resources to be able to do.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

I recently went to a lecture about the crows that are the only birds that we know that use or fashion and then use tools.

[Greg Gage]

Oh, corvids.

Yeah.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

They're amazing. And just every so often, you hear this incred that shouldn't blow our minds, but does about how the natural world is so incredibly smart. And I guess I'm wondering, you know, should it. Should it expand our definition of intelligence? How. In simple terms, how do we define what intelligence is?

[Greg Gage]

Yeah, I think the simplest way, given what you got, right, you got to figure out how to be able to get to what you want. Right? And so that's kind of my. Kind of the back of the envelope sketch of intelligence is being able to get to what you want, given what you have. And that's what intelligent things do. You look at a dog trying to get through a door, it'll kind of go check the other doors.

[Sponsor Messages]

It's doing.

[Greg Gage]

It's trying to figure out what it needs to do. And so you can look at these plants. As you know, in the case of these plants that are trying to find the light they're doing, they're taking what the information they have to figure that out. You could look at single cells doing that. I think the joy of intelligence is really in every living thing. I think every cell is intelligent. I think everything that comes from cells is intelligent.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

That's Greg Gage. He's a professor at the University of Michigan and co founder of Backyard Brains, a company that builds neuroscience experiments for kids. You can find all his [e-mail] on the show today. Natural Intelligence. I'm Anoush Zamorodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back.

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[Manoush Zamarodi]

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[Manoush Zamarodi]

It'S the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Manoush Zamarodi. On the show today, Natural Intelligence, which is actually where some computer scientists are looking for inspiration to Design the next generation of artificial intelligence.

[Greg Gage]

Yeah.

[Frances Chance]

So African dung beetles, they roll up balls of feces and balls of dung and roll them away as quickly as.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

They can, because even the smallest creatures on earth can execute some amazing feats.

[Frances Chance]

So they're standing on their head, they're rolling the ball of dung with their hind legs, and they're using various cues to roll in a straight line. If they're nocturnal, they're known to use moonlight to be able to make sure that they're going in a straight line. And I wouldn't be able to roll anything standing on my head.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

This is Francis Chance.

[Frances Chance]

Sahara desert ants. When they find food and they want to bring it back to their nest, they know how to calculate the straightest path back to their nest.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Frances sounds like an entomologist.

[Frances Chance]

Oh, and honeybees, you know, they also forage.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

But she's actually a computational neuroscientist at Sandia National Laboratories. She researches how natural intelligence can help develop new security technology. For example, what missile defense systems might learn from the dragonfly.

[Frances Chance]

So they're very good at what they do.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

These graceful, flittering creatures also use a very special technique to hunt.

[Frances Chance]

Dragonflies are really good at hunting. We know that they fly to intercept their prey. They fly really fast, and they're very successful. It's known that dragonflies catch up to 95% of the prey that they choose to go after. And even though they're really fast, they don't just fly straight at their prey. They fly on an interception pathway, which means they're aiming slightly ahead of where their prey are.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

So is that like Gretzky the hockey great saying, like, don't go to where the puck is, go to where the puck is going to be?

[Frances Chance]

Exactly. We need to aim ahead of where the puck is going to be. And so the dragonfly is constantly reacting to changes of the prey's direction or the prey's speed to calculate how far ahead of the prey, they need to aim.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

By understanding how these nearly instantaneous calculations happen in the dragonfly's brain, Francis hopes to build AI that mimics it and is just as efficient. Here she is on the TED stage.

[Greg Gage]

So when dragonflies are hunting, they do more than just fly straight at the planet prey. They fly in such a way that they will intercept it. They aim for where the prey is going to be. To do this correctly, dragonflies need to perform what is known as a coordinate transformation, going from the eye's frame of reference, or what the dragonfly sees, to the body's frame of reference, or how the dragonfly needs to turn its body to intercept. And dragonflies are fast. This means they calculate fast. The latency, or the time it takes for a dragonfly to receive bond Once it sees the prey turn, is about 50 milliseconds. So, in the brain, A computational step is a single neuron, Or a layer of neurons, working in parallel. It takes a single neuron about 10 milliseconds to add up all its inputs and respond. The 50 millisecond response time means that once the dragonfly Sees its prey turn, there's only time for maybe four of these computational steps, or four layers of neurons working in sequence, one after the other, to calculate how the dragonfly needs to turn. In other words, the neural circuit that I need to understand can have, at most, four layers of neurons. This is a small neural circuit, Small enough that we can identify it and study it with the tools that are available today. And this is what I'm trying to do. I have built a model of what I believe is the neural circuit that calculates how the dragonfly should turn. In a computer simulation, I can predict the activities of individual neurons. While the dragonfly is hunting to test the model, My collaborators and I Are now comparing these predicted neural responses with responses of neurons recorded in living dragonfly brains. These are ongoing experiments in which we put living dragonflies in virtual reality. Now, it's not practical to put put VR goggles on a dragonfly. So instead, we show movies of moving targets to the dragonfly, While an electrode records activity patterns of individual neurons in the brain. If the responses that we record in the brain Match those predicted by the model, we will have identified which neurons Are responsible For coordinate transformations. The next step will be to understand the specifics of how these neurons work together to do the calculation. But this is how we begin to understand how brains do basic or primitive calculations.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

So you are building computer models based on the dragonfly's brain that can intercept things in just a few steps. The dragonfly must be doing really complicated math really fast. Is that what you are trying to figure out, those calculations?

[Frances Chance]

Yeah. So what I'm really interested in are, what are the fundamental operations that neurons are capable of, or what are the fundamental operations that neurons do? And that's what I want to bring to a computer. It may be something like basic trigonometry, or it may be something that's kind of a different type of math Than we're used to thinking about, but that's what we're trying to understand, because if we can understand the operations, then we can begin to understand what the algorithms, or say the computer programs of the brain are.

[Greg Gage]

The way that these neurons compute may be different from anything that exists on a computer today. And the goal of this work is to do more than just write code that replicates the activity patterns of neurons. We aim to build a computer chip that not only does the same things as biological brains, but does them in the same way as biological brains. This could lead to drones driven by computers the same size as a dragonfly's brain that capture some targets and avoid others. Personally, I'm hoping for a small army of these to defend my backyard from mosquitoes. In the summer, the GPS on your phone could be replaced by a new navigation device based on dung beetles or ants that could guide you to the straight or the easy path home. And what would the power requirements of these devices be like? The human brain is estimated to have the same power requirements as a 20 watt light bulb. Imagine if all brain inspired computers had the same extremely low power requirements. Your smartphone or your smartwatch probably needs charging every day. Your new brain inspired device might only need charging every few months or maybe even every few years.

[Frances Chance]

You know, computers touch us in all sorts of ways that we totally take for granted. But one resource that limits what computers can do today is being able to power them.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Yeah, and you mention a future scenario where maybe we wouldn't need to charge our devices every day. Maybe we could go months or even years. Could we potentially scale back big time from using all the energy we need right now to run massive servers and data centers all over the world?

[Greg Gage]

Yeah, I think that it could have.

[Frances Chance]

Long reaching impacts by decreasing just human carbon energy footprint on the world. Definitely. As it is, a lot of these data centers need to be next to some natural resource like a river to be able to generate enough power to use these algorithms like Google Search. So I think that there's a lot of potential there that we may be able to bring that cost down.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

So bring this back to what you do at Sandia for us. I mean, I know you can't get into the details, but when it comes to national defense, it makes me think of Israel's Iron Dome. And leaving aside the politics, is the aim to find ways to make missile defense systems like those more efficient?

[Frances Chance]

Well, I, you know, Sandia is interested in national security missions. That requires a lot of computer power. I'm not necessarily going to talk about what those are, but if we're doing our job, you won't necessarily see the impact of that. So being Able to understand how neurons do what they do for low power means that the cost of each of these individual operations or the cost of each of these interactions of a human with, say, something in the cloud is going to come down. And so what I'm interested in is how the dragonfly brains are able to do this calculation with low power and really remarkably fast.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

There is a debate about whether artificial intelligence can actually be intelligent. What about the dragonfly? Do you think of it as intelligent?

[Frances Chance]

Yeah. So I think there are a lot of different definitions to what intelligence is. When I think about human intelligence, it's our ability to adapt or take in new information and behave differently based on new situations. For dragonflies, they're examples of neurons solving a task in what I would say is maybe even an optimized way. You know, the dragonflies evolved to do this particular task very well, very fast, very efficiently. So I call them clever, you know, clever solutions. They're examples of what intelligence could produce.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

That was computational neuroscientist Frances Chance. You can see her full [e-mail] on the show today. Ideas about natural intelligence. So far, we've heard about plants that can count and. And dragonflies that intercept their prey in milliseconds. But what about our own natural intelligence, the one in our bodies?

[Keely Muscatel]

How are you feeling?

[Manoush Zamarodi]

I'm feeling not so good. That's our senior producer, Sanaz, and her daughter Meena. I feel a little nauseous, like there are pebbles or rocks in my stomach and my head.

[Keely Muscatel]

Just occasionally it hurts.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Mina is homesick with a virus, and she doesn't want to do much of anything.

[Karen Bakker]

Right now I'm sitting on the couch.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

I just want to watch her movie.

[Keely Muscatel]

And, like, watch something on my iPad.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

As we know, these symptoms are coming from Mina's immune system that is trying to fight off that virus. Leading the charge are molecules called cytokines.

[Keely Muscatel]

They're basically like the chemical messengers of the immune system.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Keely Muscatel is a psychology and neuroscience professor at UNC Chapel Hill. That's where she studies the links between our physical and mental health. And she says these cytokines float around in our bloodstream looking for anything suspicious. And when they find something, they sound the alarm.

[Keely Muscatel]

It's like, oh, there's a problem here. We need to do something to try to contain this. And it's trying to signal to other immune cells to come and, like, try to figure that out.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

And that causes inflammation.

[Keely Muscatel]

And that's what we tend to experience when we have, you know, been infected with a virus or Some sort of other pathogen is that widespread systemic inflammation.

Now, in doing this, cytokines cause the physical symptoms we commonly have when we're sick.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Keely Muscatel continues from the TED stage.

[Keely Muscatel]

Things like fever and achiness and fatigue. So even though we usually think of those symptoms as being caused by a virus or a bacteria itself, they're actually caused by our own immune systems activating to try to eliminate the pathogen. But in addition to those physical symptoms, decades of research in both animals and humans clearly shows that cytokines also cause changes to our mood and to our social behavior. So inflammation in the body can signal to the brain to cause us to feel down, depressed, and even hopeless. Inflammation can also make us want to socially withdraw from other people to avoid interacting with individuals in our social networks. So this research shows the powerful influence that the immune system can have on our mood and on our social behavior. Changes in inflammation in the body can signal to the brain to cause us to feel depressed and even lonely.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

You know, earlier we heard from our colleague's daughter who was homesick, and she loved school, she loved sports, but she did not feel like doing anything that day. And that's exactly what you're describing. When we are sick, it is actually our immune system saying, stay home. Yeah, it's okay that you're a little depressed. Just lie down.

[Keely Muscatel]

Exactly, exactly. So your body is gonna send signals to your brain that cause kind of a loss of joy or a loss of interest or pleasure in things that normally would bring you tons of joy, like going to school or whatever it is that makes you really happy. And the idea is that that's a really good thing.

Right?

Because if you're sick, then you really should be staying home and letting your body recuperate and recover, Letting your immune system do its job, and also kind of containing the possibility of spreading whatever you have to other people.

While we can't know for sure why this happens, evolutionary theory provides some good food for thought. The fact is, revving up and running the immune system takes a lot of energy. Getting cytokines to swim through the bloodstream and send signals to immune cells takes calories. And what else takes calories? Pretty much everything, Especially things like going out and seeking pleasurable experiences, interacting with strangers, and just generally moving about the world. So the theory is that the immune system is telling the brain to feel depressed and to withdraw from socializing because it wants you to stay at home and rest. And if things that would normally sound fun just don't seem all that fun. And if interacting with Other people seems exhausting and maybe even a little threatening. Then we'll be less likely to do those things and more likely to stay at home and let our immune systems use our calories. But it turns out the influence of inflammation on our social lives isn't as simple as always, making us feel more disconnected and socially withdrawn. One of the most important discoveries that we've made in this area of research recently is that inflammation might actually make us more motivated to seek some social interactions, specifically those with the people who we're closest to. So it's not that inflammation makes us less social across the board. It may just make us more motivated to seek interactions with people who could provide us with comfort or care, those who could be a shortcut to chicken soup.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

This all feels incredibly intuitive, but it's also fascinating that there are evolutionary reasons why my body is making me feel this way when I don't feel well.

[Keely Muscatel]

Totally.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Would it be fair to say, though, that our immune system is smart?

[Keely Muscatel]

Yes, I think it is. I think it is smart. I think it evolves to do its job and do its job very well. And what I think is really interesting for, for humans is that it's also evolved in the context of having this brain that is able to ignore it. And there's kind of that push and pull there where I think the immune system sends those, like, appropriate signals to the brain. But we have this beautiful prefrontal cortex that can say, I hear you, immune system, but no, I'm not going to take these steps to help myself recover. And that's the cutting edge of being a human and having the brains that we do.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

The brain can be the idiot no matter how smart the immune system is being.

[Keely Muscatel]

Yeah, kind of. I kind of think that's true.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

In a minute, Keely Muscatel explains what can happen when inflammation doesn't go away and becomes chronic. On the show today, natural Intelligence. I'm Manoush Zamarodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. Stay with us.

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[Manoush Zamarodi]

[e-mail] support for this podcast and the following message come from Sophos. Cyber threats are evolving fast. Sophos helps you stay ahead with AI powered protection and a prevention first approach to stop ransomware, phishing and data breaches before they start. Trusted by 600,000 businesses worldwide, Sophos works 247 to secure everything that connects you. Learn more at Sophos. It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. On the show today, ideas about natural intelligence. We were just talking to Keely Muscatel. She's a social psychoneuroimmunologist, which means I.

[Keely Muscatel]

Study the relationship between the immune system and social behavior.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

Keeley says that over the years research has shown that inflammation in our body affects our mood and our behavior. So we hear about inflammation I feel like all the time right now like you know, the hot thing is to be on an anti inflammatory diet and to eat blueberries and almonds rather than processed foods. But are we talking about a different kind of inflammation? And if you don't eat healthy, we think of that, you know, you're not consuming the right fuel to give you energy and maybe you do feel depressed. But are those different?

[Keely Muscatel]

No, exact same, exact same process, same, same inflammation that you have in response to like an acute infection is part of what's contributing to chronic disease and that is responsive to the types of things you put in your body, the amount of physical activity that you engage in, the amount of skin sleep you get, I'm a new mom. I've been chronically sleep deprived for the last 11 months and it's been great. But also I often wonder, you know, how much of an impact is this sleep deprivation having on the levels of inflammation in my body and how is that influencing my mood and my ability to think clearly and engage with others? So, yeah, it's not to say that these responses that the body has to the acute instances of sickness or infection or even stress are, I think, adaptive. But if they play out over a long time, course that could be really tough for people. And I think especially in the face of chronic stress, it's sort of this spiral, right, where stress can cause inflammation and then inflammation can signal the brain for people to maybe disconnect or withdraw, which can lead to more stress. You don't have the same support network that you had or that you need. And that can be a really tough cycle to break.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

So it's not just a matter of, come on, go and get yourself out there. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes.

[Keely Muscatel]

100%.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

All right, so this baby that you've got, when they grow up and they're like, mom, I don't feel well, I want to stay home. What will you say?

[Keely Muscatel]

Oh my God, that's such a good question. I've thought about this a lot. I mean, because this is the other thing about human brains, right, is like, can also be deceitful. And I guess I hope that little baby Archer doesn't want to just stay home to hang out with me and watch cartoons or whatever. But what I hope is that we can teach him that signals from our bodies are important to listen to. And the other thing this makes me think of is that I'm so fortunate to have a job and a position where I could stay home with him. I would be able to accommodate those signals. And I, I really feel for people who don't have that safety net and who might have to push their kids to go out and go to school even when they're not feeling well. So maybe, maybe Archer can also push for some broadcast scale society change in terms of giving people the sick time they need.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

No pressure.

[Keely Muscatel]

Archer. Yeah, exactly.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

That's Keely Muscatel. She's a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. You can see her full [e-mail] and many thanks to Mina Meshkinpour Aghdam too.

[Keely Muscatel]

Do you want hugs from mommy and kisses?

[Manoush Zamarodi]

To close our show on natural intelligence, we want to talk about how Animals communicate to each other and what they're saying. Scientists are using new technologies to try and translate different species conversations, specifically using artificial intelligence to interpret their sounds. Environmental researcher Karen Bakker explained how these technologies work and what they're revealing in a talk she gave in 2023. Tragically, Karen died just a few months after giving her talk. And so we want to share with you now the entirety of it. Here's Karen Bacher on the TED stage.

[Karen Bakker]

So we're in the middle of a fierce debate about how artificial intelligence will change human societies. But have you thought about how AI will transform your relationship to the non human world? So these are bioacoustic recorders. And I've spent years studying how scientists use devices like this, combined with AI to listen to the hidden sounds of nature and decode non human communication. Hidden sounds, because much acoustic communication in nature occurs in the high ultrasound above your hearing range or in the deep infrasound below your hearing range. So I'm going to play a sound, I want you to listen and try to guess who or what this is. So that was a bat. That was bat ultrasound recorded above your hearing range, but slow down so you could hear. So that was an advertisement call from the peak of the mating season. Scientists can decode these calls. So a sample bat to English translation would be, and I quote, pay attention. I'm a Pipistrellis natuzzi bat, specifically male. My name is X. I am landing here. And we share a common social identity and common communication pool for a pickup line by a bat. Not bad. So scientists have recorded millions of bat vocalizations like this, and they've decoded many of them using AI and they've revealed that bats have dialects that they pass down from one generation to the next. And that baby bats learn to speak just like you did by listening to the adults around them and babbling back until they speak adult bat. So bats have far more complex communication than we knew, and they're only one of many examples. Listen to this. So those are orcas. Scientists can decode individual orca calls using AI and they've revealed that orcas also pass down their dialects from one generation to the next. So when we first learn about these secret sounds of the world, we're often surprised. Surprised because humans tend to believe that what we cannot perceive does not exist. And so we miss a lot. One of my favorite examples is this peacock. So to you, this looks like a visual mating display. And it is. But this peacock is also making very loud infrasound with its tail. Which you cannot hear, but female peahans can. And it is an important factor in their mating decisions. So this peacock is giving a rock concert. Now, we have lived with peacocks for millennia, but we only just figured this out. Even creatures without ears are exquisitely sensitive to sound. So this is a coral larva. When coral larvae are born, usually at a mass spawning event a few days after the full moon, they wash out to sea. So scientists used to think that these little larvae, these tiny dots that you see here, were helpless, randomly pushed around by wind and waves and currents. But it turns out that coral larvae are acoustically attuned. They can hear the sounds of healthy reefs, they can hear the sound of their home reef, their mother reef, and they swim back home across miles of open ocean. So these are tiny creatures with no central nervous system, but we think they do that with these hairs that you see on the outside of their bodies. They're a lot like the hairs inside your ears that are enabling you to listen to me right now. So you can think of a coral larva a little bit like an inside out ear, except that its sense of hearing is profoundly more sensitive than your own. Because they hear with their entire body. Even our planet makes sound. Volcanoes, earthquakes sound so low and strong and powerful, they travel very far, passing through soil and stone and even solid walls. So in nature, sound is everywhere, and silence is an illusion. So scientists are also listening to to the vast extent of interspecies communication. So this bat is using ultrasound to hunt this moth. Its echolocation beam is locked onto its prey, but the moth is also emitting ultrasound. It's jamming the bat sonar in an attempt to escape. This plant is also emitting ultrasound, which varies depending on its condition. Scientists have trained an algorithm to listen to this plant. Simply by listening, it can detect with about 70% accuracy whether the plant is healthy, dehydrated, or injured. So this is peer reviewed research, by the way. So we cannot hear these sounds, but we think many insects can. Does this mean that humans could use digital tech to one day communicate with other species? Well, some scientists think so, and they're using machine learning to try to decode the acoustics of other species. So there are teams of computer scientists and linguists and biologists working on decoding sperm whale bioacoustics. They're also building entire dictionaries. So there's an elephant dictionary with thousands of sounds. Elephants, for example, have a specific signal for honeybee. So I'd love to share just one of these sounds with you. It was recorded At a moment of great joy and celebration, the birth of a new baby. So the further we listen across the tree of life, the more complex interspecies communication would be. Listen to this honeybee. Now listen to this honeybee queen. So you thought you knew what honeybees sounded like? Okay. Honeybee communication is incredibly complex. It's acoustic, positional, spatial, vibrational. The queen has her own signals. So scientists are encoding these signals into robots. This robot is attempting, but not succeeding to communicate with the hive. The bees mostly ignore or attack it. But one day, we hope, the inventors hope that this robot will communicate well enough to allow scientists to monitor the health of the hive. Now, would that be a good thing? Some believe that interspecies communication would help foster respect and empathy for nature. Others believe that it is profoundly disrespectful and unethical to eavesdrop and engage in this way. Interspecies communication needs strong ethical guardrails. And anyway, maybe it's a bit self centered to think other species would even want to communicate with us. So what if we were to use bioacoustics for something of immediate practical value, like doing something about our massive biodiversity crisis? Let's go back to the coral reefs. Listen to this healthy reef sound. Pretty lively, right? But coral reefs are disappearing. If you were to go to most coral reefs today, you'd hear something like this. It's like a ghost town of the sea. When we lose species, we lose voices. When we lose landscapes, we also lose soundscapes. There is a ray of hope. The healthy reef sounds that you just heard can be used to regenerate coral reefs. Scientists are doing this. It's a bit like music therapy for nature. So this is not going to solve all the problems coral reefs face, notably climate change. But if we can address the massive epidemic of noise pollution that is harming and killing marine creatures, we could use bioacoustics to restore some biodiversity. Bioacoustics could also help protect animals on the move. So this baby whale was killed by a ship. Tragically, this is a common cause of death of North Atlantic right whales, one of the most endangered species in the world. So to address this, scientists are now launching a new bioacoustics program off the east coast of North America to triangulate the locations of whales and convey the information two ships captains in real time. The ships then have to slow down, Stop, move out of the way. Not a single right whale has died of a ship strike in this zone since this program was launched. So this may be the thing that saves this species. So think about it. A few decades ago, we were harpooning these whales nearly to extinction. Today, we've invented a technology that allows a community of less than 400 whales, simply by singing, to guide the movements of tens of thousands of ships in a watershed that's home to tens of millions of people. One day, these whale lanes may be everywhere in the oceans. For the orcas who live here in the Salish Sea, this would be just in time, because there are only a few dozen left. A final thought. About 400 years ago, the inventors of the telescope were gazing up at the stars, not knowing their invention would allow humanity to look back in time to the origins of the universe. Optics decenters humanity within the solar system, within the cosmos. Bioacoustics decenters humanity within the tree of life. Our commonality is greater than we knew. Now, today, we're using bioacoustics to protect species and decode their communication. But tomorrow, I believe we'll be using bioacoustics combined with machine intelligence to explore the frontiers of biological intelligence. Many biological intelligences are very different than our own, but they're no less worthy of exploration. And maybe one day, in a speculative future, instead of a human here on stage, maybe bioacoustics would enable an orca to give a TED Talk. Why not sharing orca stories about dodging ships and seismic blasts and human hunters stories about desperately seeking the last remaining salmon. Stories about trying to survive on this beautiful planet. In this crazy moment, in our era of untethered human creativity and unprecedented environmental emergency, now those would be ideas worth spreading.

[Manoush Zamarodi]

That was Karen Bakker. Her latest book is Gaia's How Digital Environmentalism Can Combat Climate Change, Restore Biodiversity, Cultivate Empathy, and Regenerate the Earth. And we want to dedicate this entire episode on natural intelligence to her. Thank you so much for listening. This episode was produced by James Delahusy, Harsha Nehada, Katie Monteleone, Matthew Cloutier and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also included includes Rachel Faulkner White. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Gilly Moon. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar and Daniela Valarezzo. I'm Minouche Zamorodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from N.

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