Languages: English

The study of animal behavior leaves little room for emotional-related explanations. Feelings in animals tend to be presented as functional explanations of behavior in a given situation. The notion of emotion has been completely overlooked, especially in the sixties, at the peak of animal experimentation, since it was easier to deny animal feelings like sadness or suffering, to guiltlessly carry out all sorts of tests. Recognizing the existence of animal feelings implies moral obligations. Things however are changing… and many scientists who study animal behavior are paying more and more attention to emotions. But how could it be otherwise? To better understand a behavior we need to compare it to an already seen already and understood situation. And what could better help us understand a specific behavior than our own experience, our own behavior and our own emotions.

In the 1950s, rhesus macaques living on the island of Koshima in Japan started to wash the sweet potatoes researchers gave them to eat. This observation could have remained anecdotal if the Japanese primatologists had not given this innovation the name of: “preculture”. Culture, always considered as a distinctive feature of the human race was being put into question. The study of the most evolved primates, our cousins the chimpanzees and bonobos, has since then enabled us to give a more precise definition of animal culture: habits acquired through a learning process leading to distinct traditions in different animal communities. Progressively other species have joined the culture club: elephants, dolphins, killer whales and even ravens…Through precise examples and never before seen footage, this documentary fuels the old debat of “nature versus culture” and sheds new light on the paradoxical question:”Is culture natural?”.

Like us, animals are exposed to parasites, bacteria and viruses – the germs which cause disease. How do they survive these attacks ? Recent research and observation have shown that animals use plant and insect substances to treat themselves – not only do they apply things to their skin, they actually treat themselves by feeding on things not normally part of their diets. Capuchin monkeys rub citrus fruit on their fur, caterpillars eat poison hemlock, herbivorous red deer have even been seen chewing the legs off live seabirds. This film takes off around the world to discover how animals use medicine, it questions what notions they have about health and how medical knowledge is passed on from one generation to the next. In doing so, the film also asks what we can learn from animals about medicine.

Altruism, an act that bestows a benefit on the recipient while conferring a cost to the actor, is one of the central paradoxes of evolution. In the wild, where only the fittest survive, adopting other animals’ offspring is not really in line with Darwin’s theory of evolution. And yet, amongst bees, dolphins, lions and several primate species, altruism may go as far as adoption. In the case of social insects, parent substitution was a flaw in Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection: the biologist noticed that non-reproductive insects who adopted and helped young ones, brought a large portion of genetic baggage from their parents. Darwin had to broaden his theory to the family group. For mammals, including men, what advantage is there in the act of adoption? In the years following the adoption, does the adopted individual contribute to the foster parents’ survival and vice versa? The controversy at the heart of this documentary continues to be debated in today’s scientific world. While raising these different questions, this documentary will study each case separately because each adoption behaviour has evolved independently forming its own pattern, its own benefit and even…its own disadvantages.