How do chicks fly back to Africa on their own? Is recognition merely re-cognition? What are the different mechanisms for differentiation? How do (say) most new-born insects recognize objects without any social support? How, besides sight and sound, odour-mediated recognition plays a special role in several species? How there is a lot of consistency with smell. We journey into the world of both precocial and altricial species and wonder if the ability to recognize may be both innate and learned. How do unhatched chicks communicate with each other and their mother? Does a life form have the option to not know? Can animals identify that which their nervous system does not allow them to identify? Do brains process information from the environment in a non-linear way? Can one recognize that which has not been experienced before? How the North American apple flies were set up to love apples even before apples were there? How do starlings recognize each other in a murmuration of almost a million? Does time need to be continuous (& finite?) for recognition to make sense? Does knowledge consist in knowing what a thing is not? Is identity always ecological? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from chemical ecology (Dr. Shannon Olsson, NCBS, Bangalore), philosophy (Prof. A. Raghuramaraju, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), and ornithology (Dr. Asad Rahmani, BNHS, Mumbai). Listen in....

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