New Generation Thinkers - Who's Afraid Of Anthropomorphism?

New Generation Thinker Will Abberley reflects on evolutionary psychology via the stories we've told ourselves about animal minds. Anthropomorphism was a word flung at the early primate ethologists like Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey but their work is transforming our attitudes towards the existence of culture in animals other than humans. Katie Slocombe, who studies chimps both in the wild and a captive population at Edinburgh Zoo, discusses the ever-present danger of taking anthropomorphism too far but argues that observation, intuition, and anecdote are intrinsic starting points for much of her scientific work. And the nature writer Sy Morgan, whose latest book is called The Soul of an Octopus, explores how we might use our different senses to approach minds configured quite differently to ours.

Reader: Brian Protheroe

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.