Caturday felid trifecta: Brian Cox vs. Robin Ince: Which is better, cats or dogs?; three-legged lion and brother swim across dangerous waters; scientific tails about cats; and lagniappe

October 19, 2024 • 9:50 am

Here’s a 45-minute BBC podcast of The Infinite Monkey Cage featuring physicist Brian Cox and comedian/actor Robin Ince, joined by others, arguing about the relative merits of cats and d*gs.  Here’s the BBC summary.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince sniff and paw their way through the evidence to put to rest the age-old debate of whether cats are better than dogs. They’re joined by TV dragon and dog devotee Deborah Meaden, comedian and cat compadre David Baddiel, evolutionary scientist Ben Garrod and veterinarian Jess French. They learn how the domestication of our four-legged companions by humans has had a profound impact on their physiology, temperament and methods of communication. They debate which species is the most intelligent and skilled and try to lay to rest the most important question of all – which one really loves you?

Click on the title below to access the podcast.

Veterinarian Jess French is, in my view, the most eloquent exponent for cats, which, of course, is the best of the two species. The voice vote at the beginning shows, as it did during our Cat-vs-D*g debate for the New Yorker, that the audience is biased towards cats, for people want to be constantly loved by an animal.

But Listen to Jess French at 7:01, giving the reason she favors cats, which comports with my own view. Dogs are obsequious, while cats decide when to spend time with you—and that is more like what humans do. (French is also a television presenter and a well known author of children’s books on nature and animals).There is plenty of biology (and some evolution) involved, but of course it being the Monkey Cage, there’s plenty of humor as well.

In the end the participants have to choose. One person equivocates, one votes for cats, and one points out that cat owners don’t live as long as d*g owners. But a voice vote again is for d*gs, which is sad. In the end, they talk about their favorite other species, and you’ll want to hear French talk about the scariest animals she’s ever treated.

It’s a good episode and well worth listening to for a Saturday morning laugh-and-learn

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From ScienceAlert we have a story and a video about two lion brothers, one with a missing leg, crossing a crocodile- and hippo-infested river in Uganda. Click the headline to see, and there’s a video below:

Excerpts:

A pair of lion brothers have been captured on video taking a death-defying 1-kilometer (0.6-mile) swim across a Ugandan river packed with predators – a sign of increasing human-caused pressures forcing animals to take more risks.

The brothers, Jacob and Tibu, crossed the Kazinga Channel at night. It’s the first visually documented long-distance swim for African lions (Panthera leo), and it involved a couple of false starts.

Researchers recorded potential predators possibly trailing the lion duo before they successfully made it across. In collaboration with the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the international team tracked their movements using heat-detecting drone cameras.

“Lions are known to hunt both crocodiles and hippos on occasion, but when in water they themselves become vulnerable,” the researchers write in their published paper.

“River crossings in Africa come with considerable risk of injury, or even death, from encounters with the much larger Nile crocodile or hippopotamus.”

The video (there is not much video of the swim, so watch carefully near the end):

They made it! A bit more:

“The fact that he and his brother Tibu have managed to survive as long as they have in a national park that has experienced significant human pressures and high poaching rates is a feat in itself,” Braczkowski adds.

The reason for Jacob and Tibu’s adventure? Most likely, finding females to mate with. However, this is less a story of romantic courage, and more a sobering tale about a lion population that has been decimated by poaching and expanding human activity across Queen Elizabeth National Park.

“Our science has shown this population has nearly halved in just five years,” says Braczkowski.

Indeed, there is a road bridge that the lions could’ve used more safely – but conservationists think that the presence of people on and around the bridge, which is currently being guarded by the Uganda Peoples’ Defense Force, would’ve put the brothers off using it.

Instead, researchers have observed lions choose the far-riskier, croc- and hippo-infested lake channel crossing six times.

. . . “Competition for lionesses in the park is fierce and they lost a fight for female affection in the hours leading up to the swim, so it’s likely the duo mounted the risky journey to get to the females on the other side of the channel,” says Braczkowski.

The research has been published in Ecology & Evolution.

Here’s the paper: click to read:

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ListVerse gives 10 heartwarming and “scientific” stories about cats, many accompanied by videos. Click below to read, and I’ll show a few of the videos:

A contraceptive vaccine for feral cats, easier than trapping and neutering:

Cats sitting in squares:

Exceptional visual perception and brain wiring are why cats love sitting in 2D squares or other shapes, even if those shapes are incomplete (i.e., four cut-outs placed apart from each other in the shape of a square).

The fact that these appear to create an enclosed form is the Kanizsa square illusion, exploiting our brain’s tendency to fill the gaps and see contours that aren’t there. The same thing occurs in the cat’s mind, meaning your kitty will likely love a flat, incomplete square as much (or almost as much) as a fresh, cozy box.

If you have a cat, you may have noticed that they have whiskers on their legs. But what are whiskers for?

Cats don’t just have whiskers on the whiskers part of their bodies. They also have whiskers on the non-whiskers part of their bodies, including the back of their legs. These are called carpal vibrissae because carpus means wrist, and vibrissae is the fancy Latin scientific word for whiskers, or technically nose hairs.

Like the whiskers around their snouts, these vibrissae aren’t just to tickle you; they’re sensory organs used for sensing a cat’s surroundings. They can detect tiny movements, such as air pressure changes and the surrounding environment, to help cats navigate their world and achieve their superb feline agility. By using these wrist whiskers, as it were, cats can feel surfaces and objects, giving them better spatial awareness, environmental orientation, and hunting skills.

And a new breed of cat with unusual fur:

The universe released a new cat type, recently described by science, in May 2024. This rare, domestic Finnish feline has a novel coat pattern called “salmiak,” and it’s kind of a cookies-and-cream vibe. People in Finland began noticing the pattern emerging around 2007, noting that instead of conventional tuxedos, these black-and-whites rocked a color gradation, like a sprinkling of salt and pepper. The ombré effect occurs as the fur grows lighter from root to tip, from black to white.

To make it official, scientists identified the genetic mechanics in the journal Animal Genetics as “a 95-kb deletion downstream of the KIT gene.” Ah, of course, that makes so much sense! In more understandable terms, a missing piece of DNA leads to the “salmiak” coat type, named after a popular type of Finnish salty licorice. Because Finnish people love licorice for some reason. But they love cats, too, so it evens out

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Lagniappe:  Cats in a Japanese cat cafe react to a 2018 earthquake. I’m betting they started reacting before humans detected the quake, and they flee quickly.

h/t Barry, Bill

 

14 thoughts on “Caturday felid trifecta: Brian Cox vs. Robin Ince: Which is better, cats or dogs?; three-legged lion and brother swim across dangerous waters; scientific tails about cats; and lagniappe”

  1. The taped square video is fascinating. It looks to me like cats will often sit inside the square, but not always. Why? Maybe they perceive the square as a potential box—a place of safety and refuge (especially from persistent staff members)—and are drawn to it. For those cats that don’t sit inside the square, if would be interesting to put an actual box inside the square and see if they go into that. My guess is that they would. I’d really like to see someone do a real experiment with controls (and statistics). Do cats preferentially sit inside taped squares? Probably yes, but not proven.

    And I had to laugh at the cat that puked. Of course he did!

  2. As comedian Louie Anderson said – that his mother said when he and his siblings asked for a cat, “they lick the butter.”

  4. We’ve had cats for twenty years, and our current one, Earl, for more than ten. He’s wonderful, and I love him, for despite his increasing crankiness with age he is still very loving, wanting to spend time with us every day despite going off outdoors for much of the day.

    Then two years ago we also got a dog, for the first time — a labrador puppy. A puppy especially is, of course, hugely demanding of time and attention; he also chewed everything, and jumped up all the time, and bit us frequently (not hard or angrily, but in the normal puppy way) and we had bruises all over our arms and holes in our clothes. I take it I do not also have to say that he was loving and lovable.

    But at the age of 18 months he died, after a sudden onset of lymphocite leukaemia, and we were both taken aback at the scale of our grief. We’ve lost cats before and been hit hard, and I certainly will be again when Earl dies, but it was mild compared to our feelings when our dog died. It made me realize that the intensity of the human relationship with dogs is much greater than that with cats — there is simply more at stake, emotionally, which surely reflects the dog’s status as the earliest animal we domesticated. To reduce this to dogs being “obsequious” doesn’t come close to doing it justice.

    Auden summed up the dog-human relationship well: “He needs the deep emotions I can give, I scent in him a vaster hunting ground”.

    1. But you can only speak for yourself, Jonathan.

      My grief at the loss of each of my cats was profound and lasting. Losing them was no less painful than the loss of human friends.

  5. Which is better dogs or cats?

    The short answer is dogs. The social nature is much more complex and nuanced. And a smart dog’s ability to psychologically understand beloved human is an order of magnitude greater than a cat’s ability.

    I like cats too, but I like cats with more of a doglike social nature. If a cat wants to be my friend in a straightforward sincere way, I’m friends. But some cats are snooty and egoistic and simply want to be adored and petted. Dog friendship seems more profound to me, though I make an exception for an unusually fine cat.

  6. These cat vs. dog debates can be entertaining. I’ve had both for pets, and I can see the arguments on both sides, though I prefer cats. And since this is a question without an answer (there is no “better”, only what characteristics in a pet you find most attractive and rewarding), some good-natured banter can be a laugh.

    As long as it stays that way. I was once rather harshly taken to task by a dog owner for my humorous (or so I thought) declaration of feline superiority. It seems as if dog owners are often the ones, ironically, that are more likely to get their backs up over any slight to their beloved pooches. They also bark the loudest about the virtues of dogs and the vices of cats. They are quite (ahem) dogmatic about it.

    But it’s all good, except when the sweeping generalizations declare that a human bond with a cat cannot possibly be as “intense” or “complex” or “nuanced”, etc. etc., as one with a dog. That’s pretty damn presumptuous. Speaking from personal experience, I cannot possibly imagine a deeper bond with any animal than I have with my cat, who has traveled life with me for 16 years now (and hopefully a few more).

    So to dog owners, please, enjoy your dogs. Wag your tails all you like. Just have a little respect for us feline fanciers.

    1. I think you’ve inadvertently demonstrated the point. If dog people get their backs up more, it’s precisely because the intensity of the feelings is generally greater. Just as, if you criticize someone’s child, you’ll get their backs up more than if you criticized their dog — because emotionally, there is more investment at stake. I don’t “prefer” dogs to cats in any rational sense. Dogs are generally vastly more time-consuming to deal with, clean up after, repair damage caused by etc. etc., whereas my cat is self-contained, affectionate yet mostly undemanding, and can be left alone for hours while I go out. Yet I’ve discovered that has nothing to do with the intensity of the love I feel for my dog. Although I’m not a parent, the time, anguish, exhaustion, and expense caused by a child would, likewise, be vastly greater again than for a dog, yet in the same way that would do nothing to diminish a parent’s love for their child.

      At each step, there is a recalibration, as the object of one’s love is able to return it with more meaningful reciprocity.

      1. Um, I have to take exception to your claim that I have demonstrated that “the intensity of the feelings is generally greater” for dog owners. I’ve done no such thing. In my view, dog owners are simply more like the animals they esteem, they are more in your face. They like to bark. People are different, and different kinds of people perhaps prefer different kinds of pets. The assertiveness of dog owners does not mean that it has anything to do with having some kind of higher relationship with dogs than is possible with cats.

        You connect more with your dog than your cat. OK, that’s your experience, it’s wonderful for you, congratulations. But you seem intent on asserting that your experience extrapolates across to everyone and demonstrates some sort of universal fact, and I respectfully disagree.

        You have no idea about the relationship I have with my cat, yet you diminish it. Telling me that my cat cannot “meaningfully reciprocate” my love for him only demonstrates that you’ve never experienced this with a cat, not that your claim is true.

        I asked for respect, but apparently it is not forthcoming. Perhaps you have demonstrated my point.

  11. Actually, I bought a new smartphone to replace my very old one. 📱📲
    Then, I lost my Twitter (X) account and how to log in! 😿😿
    It will take some time to recover… ⏳
    But I will read as much of Professor Jerry Coyne’s writing as I can!! 🐱

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