AV Geeks @ Hunt Library

okay virginia thanks skip welcome to av geeks at the hunt library not currently at the hunt library i am virginia faris and this is our 13th semester of this series partnering nc state university folks with raleigh's av geeks to discuss vintage educational and classroom films skip alzheimer founder of av geeks is an nc state alum he has been for the last few decades collecting films made throughout the last century mostly 16 millimeter educational training and other sorts of how-to movies and he does an incredible job sharing them with the world skip currently houses over 36 000 such films at the av geeks archive here in raleigh and shares them as stock footage for films and exhibits as research material and during public events like this one so today's theme is let's talk about animals and we're very excited to welcome our guest dr nicole welkyeager dr wilkieger is a postdoctoral teaching scholar in the department of history here at nc state she holds a phd in the history and sociology of science from the university of pennsylvania and her work focuses on how capitalist ideals have transformed human and non-human bodies her first book will focus on u.s preoccupations with bovine bodies in particular and the long history of american attempts to mold them into symbols of health and sustainability and we're really delighted to have her join us today so just a reminder that over 200 of av geeks compilations are available for checkout from the libraries and you can also visit avgeeks.com or search for av geeks in youtube or at archive.org so i'll hand things back over to you skip to kick us off uh nicole you could say something to say hello so we can see what you look like hey thanks thanks so much for having me can you hear me okay we got it we're good zoom technology we love it and we hate it um so um what i did is uh based on your expertise and what you've been working on nicole i picked three films from our collection that i felt like might bring up some interesting points uh these are educational films that are on 16 millimeter and um they talk about two of them are made for kids um and talk about our relationship with animals um and historically and also modern day and modern day being in the early 40s uh and uh the last one is a weird kind of tv piece about whether animals can think or not and so it's it's kind of light-hearted but um i feel like this is a good place to jump off so the first one we're going to watch is animals in the modern world and the modern world is more than 80 years old 80 years from now so what i like to do when we watch these films is kind of see like wow things are totally different now or wow they're exactly the same or wow we totally forgot about that so hopefully this will bring up some um things nicole that you can talk about so here we go uh let me switch windows and do all the things that i need to do all right you his belongings more easily in the world about us today there are about five hundred thousand species of animals from the largest four-footed beasts down to the smallest insects man has devises we indicate this vast number of species by this large cube the species which man has domesticated is shown by this small cube most of these were domesticated by man before history began we of today have greatly increased the number within each of these species of animals which man has learned through ages to use also we have made specialists of domesticated animals even chickens are specialists these white leghorns specialize in supplying us with that important part of our food supply eggs other chickens are specialists in meat production here is one dressed and ready for cooking the milk of animals such as the goat has furnished food for thousands of years in many parts of the world goat's milk is especially good for children a more modern way of milking is found in this dairy barn filled with cows these cows are specialists in milk production this large hereford is a specialist in beef production beef cattle are raised in vast herds on our broad western plains where grass is plentiful after being fattened they are shipped to huge packing plants such as this one in chicago where they are prepared for food under the most sanitary conditions here we see halves of beef inside a packing house the meat can be kept for months in great refrigerators it is then sent out as there is demand for it in refrigerator cars to all parts of the country we are continually making new articles from parts of animals these are some of the products made from cattle suitcases shoes gelatin soap handles for cutlery and even fertilizer another important food hole is the fish here we see fish being taken from the sea in great nets they are used by nearly all of us for food fish are not an expensive food because they are easily caught and because we do not have to supply them with food these fish will be put on ice and will be sent to people who prefer fresh fish on the other hand here are cans of salmon which will be sent long distances eventually finding their way into our homes on many pantry shelves is found another delicious food honey honey is furnished by a tiny animal the bee an insect which has worked for man for thousands of years to be therefore is called a friend of mine but some insects are harmful this fly for example may carry millions of disease germs eggs of the fly are laid in filth and waste flies are found in almost every place where people live from filth to food to fly travels carrying its possible load of deadly disease germs in contrast to this enemy of man is the silkworm another insect valuable to man and raised mostly in japan and china here we see mulberry leaves being fed to young silkworms the domestic silkworm would soon perish if protected and fed the silkworm spins a cocoon when fully grown these are heated and softened and the tiny silk thread is unwound japan and china produce nearly all of the raw silk of the world but most of this raw silk is sent to the united states england france and italy to be made into cloth after a long journey across the ocean the bales of raw silk are unloaded and are sent to factories here the silk is woven into cloth by large banks of intricate machines and it comes out as the soft durable silk cloth which people buy in all parts of the world other animal products as well as silk are important in the trade between countries for example wool from australian sheep is sent to many parts of the globe mostly to europe and to the united states since ages past sheep have supplied people with wool for clothing after the wall has kept the sheep warm through the winter it is clipped off with shears during the warm spring weather here we see several types of clothing which are made from the wool babies snow suit children's play clothes particularly for winter wear stocking caps and sweaters a ski suit a polo coat and even a lumberjack's magnum shepherds have long used another animal the dog to take care of their flocks shepard dogs are intelligent and well trained most dogs in the united states are pets such as this tiny terrier and huge saint bernard good hunting dogs are the result of long training and experience they locate game for the hunter and will stand for long periods quietly pointing the direction of game dogs must be very intelligent and highly trained to act as guides for the blind in many parts of the world dogs furnish power in holland they are used to draw small carts dogs are found in all climates in the cold north they pull sleds loaded with mail and supplies these laps in far-off lapland have found that they can use reindeer power to pull their sleds on rough steep trails animals such as the donkey are useful for carrying loads the power of the pony is better than that of the automobile or rounding up cattle cow ponies know their jobs almost as well as their riders these horses are trained for the race from the time they are cold racehorses combine power with speed on the other hand heavy slow work is the specialty of these draft horses in the deserts of egypt and arabia camels are still the freight trains in far off india we see the cow being used to pull a heavy cart india leaves the world in the number of cattle and nearly all of them are used as work animals for power the water buffalo is well trained to splash through the muddy rice fields of india where machines could not operate it is estimated that today nearly four-fifths of the people of the earth as shown by the dark portions of the continents still depend upon the power of animals to help them in their work and today perhaps even more than in ages past people throughout the world depend upon animals as a source of clothing [Music] and perhaps to an even greater extent as a source of food in many countries however the work of even the most powerful animals is being replaced with vastly more powerful man-made machines which do the work better their untiring machines are proving great disappear the power of animals such as the camels in this age-old camel train which still plod along the highways of the orient all right um so nicole what do you think about that film it's that film was 84 years old it came out in 1937. um there's a lot going on in this film um and they kind of try to go over as much as possible of how animals are affecting humans in various different ways um you know i thought it was so interesting how they were talking about animals as quote unquote specialists um really speaking to how each animal has some kind of use value there they have some kind of specialty that's best for what their purposes are so whether it be food for us through the beet production aspect and the milk production speaking to their use of for clothing for transportation and then even going into insects being vectors for disease it really tried to encompass all and what's fascinating about this is there's a bit that's changed but a lot of this narrative is quite the same how we talk about animals it's always within like the repurposing for human benefits uh when we look at other films or other literature in this vein yeah it seems to come up the value of an animal seems to come up a lot or at least it did in the 80s when it was like well you can't log here because there's this slug that's gonna go extinct and the outcry was like blue who cares about that slug nobody cares about a slug um yeah i mean it there there's different value um we're placing different kinds of value depending um speaking to like the the 80s example you you present speaking to conservation efforts and taking care of um certain animals that might be beneficial to the larger ecosystem this is a different way of thinking about domesticated versus non-domesticated animals particularly after the 1960s thinking about ddt and rachel carson's silent spring how various different chemicals are affecting ecosystems i think there's a lot more narratives around surrounding which animals which which non-human things are really important to to keep us healthy um so this being this was done in 1937 you said correct um yeah there's a lot that hasn't quite happened yet that might make us help us with framing this film including um going to the one of the last points they were talking about where was clothing and needing this wool for clothing needing the hides of cattle for for clothing um 37 we're we're getting into synthetics and and dupont is developing nylon and it's certainly popular by this time but it's not really until the post-war period where we're really seeing synthetic clothing take over the market so the emphasis on silk on wool on leather is really interesting to note in this film there's also the part where they're focused on the cattle production um and that's kind of closer to my area of expertise and was really interesting for me to kind of look at here first off the milking machines some places still use milking machines like this but it's actually amish farms that i see using these particular milking machines that go straight into a bucket like that most milking machines actually have a pipeline system that go directly into a milk tank now has everything to do with health and safety guidelines and also efficiency speed of of milking at this time and then the when you're looking at the beef cattle production they go from grazing to meat packing plant no in between the feedlot is non-existent at this time or at least it's not at the scale that it is today um so seeing this in 1937 you you see the the mists of the the feedlot isn't in the equation when we're thinking about beef production of the cattle at this time interesting um yeah you know so the the funny thing is of course this is made for kids and um you know the fact that we start off with a little boy who discovers a kitten and they don't have room for it but maybe they can take it to his to the farm but they only accept useful animals at the farm um it's kind of fascinating to hear that um it's a way to kind of start talking about the the process but giving kids a sense of what is useful and what isn't useful um as far as animals and to think about how animals play a part in your everyday life is interesting and this next film we're going to watch actually is called animals useful to man and this one again we have a little boy who's walking around and learning about animals and how again how it affects uh their life his life so let's watch animals useful for man and i feel like this film i don't have the year on it but i feel like it was like 50s or early 60s so let's switch over actually i misspoke this is called um how animals help us [Music] now one saturday in autumn jimmy was on his way to his grandfather's farm [Music] a rabbit you know getting to see animals was part of the fun of going to grandfathers usually there were many to see rabbits field mice squirrels birds of all kinds and sometimes pheasants now finding out about animals was fun to jimmy he knew that some of them are helpful such as the little birds that eat harmful insects but crows farmers think of them as enemies because they eat the crops some animals are so very helpful that men raise them and take care of them what's that at first all jimmy could see was the grass moving and then a kitten a lost kitten there isn't room for you at our home thought jimmy maybe grandfather will let you stay on the farm but grandfather only keeps animals that are helpful jimmy knew that so that was when jimmy really began to think about the ways animals help us [Applause] now here were grandfathers cows and jimmy remembered that every night and morning the cows are brought to the barn to be milked giving milk is the way cows help us they provide us with food that's the reason grandfather keeps cows have you ever seen a cow milk this way [Music] most of the cows are milked by machines well the kittens certainly couldn't give milk then jimmy saw the chicken yard grandfather keeps a large flock of chickens they have a big yard and a big house do you know how they help they provide food too the hens lay eggs see well the kitten won't ever be able to lay eggs isn't there something it can do to earn its keep at the farm pigs when the little ones are big and fat enough grandfather sends them to market they provide food just beyond the fence is the turkey yard the turkeys are useful as food too well the kitten can't provide food give milk or lay eggs but he is cute maybe he can be useful in some other way after all grandfather keeps other animals too what about the sheep some people raise them for food but grandfather raises them for wool see the deep woolly coats sheep grow them for the winter in the spring the wool is clipped off then the sheep start growing new coats the wool is made into cloth so sheep help us by furnishing material for clothing then jimmy remembered a trip he and his grandfather made to a neighboring farm where another kind of animal is raised mink they are hard to handle and can bite fiercely but they have beautiful coats of fur and that is why the farmer raises them mink provide fur for clothing well the kitten had soft fur but jimmy hadn't ever heard of anyone raising cats for fur he'd have to think of something now right in front of jimmy was a third way animals help us but he didn't notice because there was grandfather do you know the third way animals help us jimmy was so excited about showing grandfather the kitten and finding out if grandfather would keep the kitten that he forgot about everything else he's a cute one said grandfather do you think he can help around the farm well said jimmy i know a good many things he can't do he can't give us food the way cows do [Music] or the chickens or the pigs [Music] or the turkeys he can't give us clothing as the sheep do but couldn't you keep him anyway well jimmy if you figure out how the kitten can be useful it can stay then grandfather went off to finish his work and jimmy took the kitten to the house to give it something to eat on the way he tried to think of other ways animals can be useful then he saw the horses again work of course and jimmy thought about oxen that are used for work in faraway lands and camels that carry people and things they help by doing work and jimmy had seen the wonderful work dogs can be trained to do to lead a blind man dogs what about pal grandfather's dog he works he guards the farm and often he helps grandfather herd the sheep or the cows so grandfather does keep animals that work if only the kitten could work then jimmy had an idea he knew what the kitten could do to help about the farm do you of course like most of us the kitten will have to grow before it can do its work but when it is grown it will help have you guessed how out at the barn grandfather stores grain and mice come to the barn and eat the grain now do you know how the kitten will earn its home at the farm how many other ways can you think of that animals help us [Music] all right so that was uh i believe 1954. similar film different company but a completely similar uh plot as far as discovering the kitten on the farm yeah and similar narrative really focused on the useful factor of um is this animal helpful how can the kitten be helpful in this instance which i think this narrative is a lot more driving that home in this film than in the other one um and man his grandfather has a huge farming operation even for 54. chickens turkeys dairy cattle hogs sheep it would have been um not that this would have been rare during this time but it's definitely fitted form fitted for this film so anyone would who've seen this probably maybe have three of these animals on one farm would have been likely it's much more likely nowadays just to focus on one animal um and then the throwing in of the mink was really fascinating um and mink farming because that's um when thinking about animal welfare issues you don't see their milk mink from mink farms are still around but it wouldn't have been publicized in a way like this if we saw a film like this today right and the the service animal aspect was interesting as well um and that certainly is a debate now about what is a service animal and what which service animals are we allowing on planes yeah i mean this kind of goes to what animal is useful and um i i always films like this and any discussions about animals actually say a lot more about us as humans than it says about animals i mean the whole narrative of this film is how can you be helpful and it's not talking just about animals it's talking about the kids who are watching this film about animals where is your place in the world how are you going to be helpful and with the debate over service animals and emotional support animals versus specifically trained animals for um whether it be for um for for those who are blind uh with those training programs or they now have animals who are very good at helping people with diabetes and smelling when the sugar levels are fluctuating there's a lot of debates over um the the use value of emotional support and i think it speaks to the debates that we're having that are there need to happen about mental health and what constitutes a good healthy relationship with another animal or with other humans so those debates aren't going to go away but they definitely get latched onto certain kinds of animals just like you see in this film where the kitten is kind of oh we're not sure if this is a useful animal um actually yeah it's a useful animal and one narrative in this film just as a boa constructor or a pet snake could be a useful animal for another person so something to keep in mind certainly in um in your studies um in research did you did you ever map out the uh transition of farm animals which are allowed inside of a city limit oh yeah so in the 19th century that's when they start really pushing livestock animals out of city limits and that has to do with them as vectors of disease hog cholera as well as issues with um nuisance oriented audiences there's there's a great book by catherine mcner called taming manhattan that speaks to this whole debate and these issues of pushing out animals but um yeah by the early 20th century most and livestock animals are really pushed out of city cities and you need special permits to have a livestock animal or a large grouping of animals together so this is really it's really come up over the last 10 years i think with people trying to keep chickens uh in their back lots in various cities and that being a possible uh vector for a disease issue um and a big question so uh yeah our relationship with livestock animals has changed dramatically and by this time in the 1950s it would have been mainly rural areas where you would have found found livestock animals as it is today in um i don't know how it was when you were in grade school uh where you grew up but um did you did you have a class trip to a farm i actually grew up on a farm but it was really funny because every year there was a huge county fair that we had and the elementary school every year would take all the kids to the county fair to see all the animals and they they would be kind of an educational opportunity for everyone who didn't grow up on a farm i was actually the odd one out of maybe one of four or five families in my class that grew up on farms but those were educational opportunities to talk to farmers about the cattle and um yeah you definitely get this like very similar narrative of the the use value of animals and oh how much milk can a cow produce in one day sort of narratives today or when i was in elementary school certainly still happening today um that you're getting out of a film like this nice what type of farm did you grow up on i grew up on a dairy farm i did wow i did in what part of the country uh in in pennsylvania in lancaster county pennsylvania that's why i did some work with the amish i was able to access the community through through familiarity with the group excellent uh any other uh points about the film that we just saw that i'd like to talk about um just if anyone's there's a lot of scholars today that are thinking about use value of animals not just in the emotional support realm um but also in service animals but also thinking of pets and what are the place of livestock animals if we go whole hog to to pull out a pun on animal welfare issues richard boulier has a great book called herders hunters herders and hamburgers and he speaks to issues of post domestication where we're thinking of what's the future of animals if they're if we're not going to focus on their service value and their use value because there are animal welfare concerns and questions and debates that are happening today around these questions and definitely coming out of that film that we just watched today right i mean and that's you know certainly the ecosystem that's impacted by these giant factory farms in north carolina it's uh hog waste lagoons which is uh pretty horrible when they when those dams break and it just floods these rivers uh it's disgusting um yeah manure management is a huge huge element of this and you are certainly not getting that aspect of things from this 1950s film which very much would have looked more organic all that menorah would probably go back to the crops which would then go back to the animals so something to think about certainly interesting um so we're gonna watch one more film but uh if you have questions for nicole about uh her research and what she talks about and is working on um please put it in the comments on either youtube or facebook um and this last film is kind of a i don't like to always have like kind of a goofy film and this one is again it you know it it purports to be it's called can animals think and it's part of this series that was shown on early television and it has kind of a goofy narration that's played for laughs but it's talking about some issues which are you know animals and how do they think how do they reason in compared to humans and there seems to be a lot of discussion recently about the fact that we we haven't given animals a break as far as thinking how that we're the smartest ones not realizing that oh there's a whole other things that we haven't even studied um so here's uh can animals think and you know again this is a really holds up a mirror to us on how we view animals unless it's less about animals themselves so let me switch things over wow [Music] this layout is a labyrinth a maze and it's going to be used in a test to see how quickly an animal can find its way through it now the professor's finger is indicating the only possible open road through the maze those are all glass partitions that prevent a small animal from making any other progress through that labyrinth there's food at the other side oh it's a white mouse mr thin whiskers he's going to be the animal to make the trip [Music] you see he goes sniffing along he's hungry and he's looking for food he's going to try and find his way to where the food is and it's at the far end of the maze as we know still sniffing you know the sense of smell is very helpful to animals in this case mr thin whiskers can tell where he's been where he hasn't been to by sniffing he doesn't want to retrace his steps that'd be lost motion he isn't like the goofest bird that flies backward because it doesn't care where it's going it only wants to see where it has been well mister thin whitskins is really making progress pretty well along now he's getting warm getting warm very warm uh-oh that's the jackpot he's got it he wins the prize an aromatic chunk of cheese yum yum we let him try it over and over again this trip through the maze and the more often he tries it the quicker he makes the right turns gets to know his way around over to the food supply and back to his shelter where he lives the way he's going back this time looks as though he could do it with one poor tide behind his back and maybe blindfold too he's really in a hurry oh he just went back to get a pal well look who's here that's a crayfish the first cousin to the shrimp and and the prawn we can call him crusty because he belongs to the crustacean like a lobster or a crab now the professor is going to do a little balancing act with krusty you know human beings have a sense of balance or they should have and the organs that keep us in balance are in our ears now the crayfish has them uh in the antennas uh or feel as if you want to call them that there's a little chamber by the way it's very much magnified and it has hard particles in it ordinarily the little particles rest on the bottom of that little chamber and tell krusty the crayfish that he's right side up rest among those hairs that are really nerve endings [Music] now the professor has taken out those natural particles and has substituted little metal particles for a definite reason when he drops a magnet into the water the magnet attracts those metal particles and they go to the top of that container that chamber in which those metal particles were dropped well that seems to tell the crayfish that he's upside down so he turns over now he feels as though he were right side up but as you can see he's really upside down it's the magnet pulling those little particles to the wrong side that confuses them now when the magnet is withdrawn the particles fall back to where they should be and the crayfish turns right side up it's all very confusing now we're going to watch a guinea pig try to figure out the quickest way to a male now here are two partitions swinging doors to them and food is placed behind each swinging door only in one case it's covered and the other oh well look who's here this is a guinea pig george he has more whiskers than george bernard shaw who is also a vegetarian well now george starts out he's looking for food and he makes his way across to well he turns to the right he's a conservative goes to the right and goes through the door marked oh well there's food there but it's tied down under wire he can't get at it there's no profit in that so a little bit disappointed he goes out now he goes to the left through the door marked in and he finds the blue plate special the fine vegetable salad he's really sinking his teeth well we try it over and over again and he gets used to going to the left through the door marked him which means meal to him because that's where he finds his blue plate special now the professor mr mino is going to pull a switch on him the m or meal door is and also the boot has moved with it now let's see what george does about this well he goes out and he goes to where he usually found the food on the left but this time it's marked oh and there's no food in there well he that's really skullduggery been going on according to the way george looks he'll probably go home and write his congressman about that but he's stubborn he says wait a minute i know there's food around here somewhere so he goes through the door on the right just in a chance he has nothing to lose the one marked in and there's his blue plate special again he's right up to his ears in that food there it still is through the door mark damn on the right well the professor keeps switching backwards and forward but one thing is constant and george finally finds it out that m means meal and when you turn him out he looks around picks the door marked in and when he gets there he knows he's on his way to his meal he has it now you'll see different animals faced with the same problem and you'll notice the different ways they react to it the professor is cutting a hole in this wire here and down along the wire you'll see a hand debra now the professor screws a little corn under the eyes of debbie and debbie looks at it good quality corn she's hungry she'd like to get it the hole down the wire debbie only knew it she's walking down that way but let's see no she doesn't go far enough she just wouldn't go that far from the corner it has too much attraction for us so she goes back and looks at it well i don't think she's going to solve it she she puts her neck out but not far enough and she's baffled she's going to go hungry she just can't solve this problem now we try another animal a dog a schnauzer fritz the bone on the outside he reaches for it no i can't get it that way well zip one dog one bone didn't take him long to get it [Music] now we have a monkey behind the wire and a banana as the bait that monkey is uh wilberforce that is i call him wilberforce he doesn't necessarily answer but i call him that anyhow well his reach isn't long enough to get that banana through the wire so he has to do a little figuring come on wilberforce old chap put on your thinking cap don't just sit there [Music] oh now he has an idea yeah saying he has an idea and now he has a banana it's just as simple as that for him oh this is a chimpanzee the keeper calls him charlie charlie the chimp now the professor has half a pair in his hand and he lets charlie sniff it he teases him with it then the professor puts it under that middle jaw well charlie saw him do that you know he likes a a bit of fruit and he keeps looking backward over his shoulder the way the professor put it as he's dragged away oh what goes on why the professor the old me know has put a wad of paper under there now the keeper leads him back to the bench where he saw the pair hidden uh-uh and he pulls up the right jaw so what does he get just a no good water paper well he looks under those energize he knew there was a piece of fruit around there somewhere oh by jingles [Music] he's still looking he's wondering what became of that fruit [Music] he looks like a man wondering what became of last summer's wages and he's still wondering and so am i [Applause] [Music] all right um so not strictly a science film more of an anecdotal film about science and how smart animals are nicole what's your takeaway yeah the the title of this film was how animals think or can animals think can animals think yeah there's a few a few uh reactions that i have um in comparison with the other films one striking thing to me is the naming of the animals you don't get the other animals named in the other films and there's a there's a specific uh narrative that's being oppressed on here um and and just a george bernard shaw that joke wilberforce then whiskers charlie fritz debbie the chicken all named animals and then the the poor crayfish was never named and this might have been not even consciously done by the narration or maybe it was um because what's happening with the crayfish example is they're aligning um that crayfish going belly up with a biological reaction to this magnetic substance being replaced with the natural substance that makes the animal think that it's going right side up or upside down so in ways when you're watching that film you're seeing that animal not get named and seeing a lot of description about why that animal is acting the way it does and not so much personification that's happening with it as with the other animals it's leading you to assume that animal does not think it merely just reacts to the environment around it and i found that really fascinating uh looking um listening and watching this film yeah the um and i guess that's the thing is do we assign value to animals that we think are dumb yeah and that is a great question we we assign some kind of value but is it a companionship or is it an animal that's close to us when it comes familially um the wilberforce naming of that one uh primate i found really fascinating because it immediately made me actually think of bishop samuel wilberforce who is part of the darwin debates against uh huxley so huxley wilberforce debates huge during when when darwin's origin of species was coming out and for the narrator to name the primate wilberforce and to acknowledge that kind of companionship we have with these types of animals was was truly striking to me and speaking to we do align some kind of intelligence or problem solving or personality that we see with animals with a value that maybe they can be saved they don't need to be eaten they can be companion species this sort of thing because the chicken was also considered a dumb animal even though her name was debbie she didn't get her food they they said oh she's just gonna starve um which is quite interesting nice um yeah so that one that film was actually like i said shown on television it wasn't made for kids it was general audiences but also adults which is why you had that you know that little wilbur force mentioned kids would not get that but you know maybe an adult watching it would say like oh that's funny but um and i have a whole series of those films and i talk about the animal world but this one it was in particular interesting to me because of the idea that can animals think i mean it doesn't really i don't think 100 addressed this in the film but it does bring up that question of you know when we look at animals do we think that they have similar mental processes than we do yeah the big question is do they think like us and if they do think like us what are the implications of the relationships we have with them right now if they do because there's an ethical question that comes out of that if that animal thinks like me and i think like that animal um if i if should i treat this animal as i would treat myself or another human and so that this question is this philosophical questions really it's important and it's been tried to be solved through these scientific experiments but it's still there's a lot of suspension of how much thinking and problem solving is an innate animal thing and how much of it is specifically special to humans if at all um there's some really this has been a debate with philosophers for quite some time i think of jacques darades cat i don't know if anyone is watching this is familiar with darada but he has a whole discussion where he's wondering if his cat sees him naked and knows that he's naked and is like confused by this or not um but it leads into this like philosophical debate in his book the animal that therefore i am um are we closer to animals and if so maybe our relationship with them should change nice um so somebody had a question in the comments um about because you you know livestock is your what what you've been doing research on do you have any insights on the history of uh horses that were raised specifically like clydesdales or like war horses that were you know selectively bred to serve a purpose and you know you talked about post domestication i mean their their job is done and so what is happening to them now yeah so i'm i'm not as familiar with horses but i do know a little bit um one of the things to keep in mind is horses were seemingly replaced for transportation but we wouldn't have gotten any of the transportation we have now without horses horses were the main mode of work for getting the railroad system put together in the united states and for a long time automobiles had like a like a kind of hybrid horse nature to them um but nowadays i've seen i i there are some farmers that still use horses like i've mentioned the amish community a few times uh sitting here today and they still use horses for work um they use mules they use donkeys um so i don't think they're going away in the sense that they're still used for transportation for certain tourist uh relationships or certain uh lifestyle arrangements but i think that there's just not as big a horse's population as we used to have it takes a lot of work and a lot of resources to take care of horses um they they have flightier stomachs they need to have a very a strict hay and grazing diet so so all to say as the horse our horses are not going away but our relationship with them has changed quite a bit and it's seemingly more recreational um on the grand scheme of things than it was in the past when when that happens when uh like a traditional domestic animal kind of transitions into something that is for show or for you know do they become more expensive because you know does it become something that's now very precious and you know somebody is raising these this breed of this animal because this is you know this used to be significant like you know like with like records like records there were vinyl records everywhere they were super cheap then they went away and now they're coming back and you have to buy you buy a record for 35 is there something similar to that with the domesticated or pre or post domesticated animals yeah i i would agree to that to an extent um when it i mean it's a little different with animals because you're also taking care of a living thing and that takes a lot of time and resources and care it's a little bit different than speaking to artifacts and that kind of supply and demand because you need also someone who's a dedicated breeder to keep those animals in reproduction you could have a breed come back there's actually some really interesting uh science and efforts to bring back rare livestock breeds to help better diversify the gene pool of particularly cattle and and pigs and chickens to ensure that if one breed for one reason or another gets sick and die off um that that we have some kind of diversity to ensure food production so there's there's a lot of this kinds of things happening and these are expensive projects but not necessarily because they're um there's not as many of them but the resources going into them it's not as many as not as much as resources going into other projects excellent um virginia has shown up and i think that means our time is up uh nicole thank you for your time thank you for having me this was a pleasure thank you so much nicole and skip that was a really interesting discussion and some fascinating films as always um so everyone remember to visit avgeeks.com for more information and check out those compilations when the library's physical collections are back open our next show is in a few weeks on friday march 26th at 3 p.m again and it is called let's talk about air pollution with arun sazu laskerrain who is the assistant university director of the southeast climate adaptation science center featuring a selection of vintage educational films about pollution and its effect on climate so tune in then and until then you can watch previous av geeks events at the library um showing through the library's website um so again thank you so much nicole for joining us and for skip as always for a great great discussion have a great weekend everyone thank you thanks so much