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
The text:
