Webster "Superman" Brown: We Hardly Knew Ye

We adopted kittens Webster and Lucinda (not biological siblings, but fostered together) in August: he was about 4 months old and she was a month older. They were darling kittens and really got along well together.

Sadly, Webster developed Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP), which is what his brother Darnarian died of back in May. It's a horrible disease which affects many internal organs and is always fatal, usually quite quickly. We were fortunate that Webster lived with his diagnosis for almost two months; his initial prediction was 20-30 days.

Lucinda (tuxedo) & Webster (tabby)

His primary nickname was Superman because when he jumped off a table or the bed he would spread all four legs wide and sail off into the wild - and if he'd had a cape, it would have flown out behind him.

Webster was a regular newspaper eater: he liked to sit on the kitchen table with me and chew on the paper as I read it. And he was a crafty kitteh: Webster liked to sit in the middle of my photography work and provide assistance.

A little newspaper nomming

Helping with crafts

His favorite song might have been John Fogerty's Centerfield. When he was well, and very kitteny, he would sing to me: "Put me in coach! I'm ready to play! I'm ready to play today!" He'd add ... "I don't know what I'm going to play, but I'm ready! I'm ready to play!"

Webster preferred to chase his food than eat it out of a bowl. More than once, he left a full bowl of crunchies in order to chase kibbles I'd thrown to keep his sister Lucinda running & in shape. Webster ran down the hall to chase crunchies, returning to his bowl only when the game was over.

He was a very affectionate, social cat. His purr motor was almost constantly on; in fact, two veterinarians had trouble hearing his heart due to his purring. He liked to be with his people and his sister Lucinda, right up until the end. He is survived by his adopted sisters Lucinda (now 9 months) and Emma (a very healthy 15 years).

Webby, webby, webby, webby, Webster. Rest in peace, little guy.

Thanks to ... 

• Independent Animal Rescue & Foster Mom Pam (article from UNC's Daily Tar Heel)
• Piedmont Veterinary Clinic, especially Drs. Sugg and Kipp.
• NC State Veterinary Hospital, especially Jamie and Dr. Wiley.

For More Information about FIP

• FIP - Feline Infectious Peritonitis patient handout from Cornell 
• Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) - VeterinaryPartner.com
• Feline Infectious Peritonitis and Coronavirus Information from Dr. Diane Addie
• Understanding Feline Infectious Peritonitis (pdf) by UC Davis' Niels C. Pedersen 

For Helpful, Knowledgeable Support

• the FIP Fighters Group on Facebook is full of knowledgeable, caring humans who have dealt with FIP in one (or more) cats.

Darnarian "Potamus" Brown, RIP

We adopted Darnarian from the MSPCA back in December, 2006 (see his welcome post). He had a wonderful life with us, but he recently developed Feline Infectious Peritonitis, or FIP, or as I call it, "Fatal Kitty Disease."

Darnarian was a wonderful kitty, and he died today, largely because of FIP, but more directly due to "anemia of chronic illness."

He was fond of squirrel watching, and he never met a ball he didn't like. Other hobbies included sleeping (he was an excellent sleeper!), eating dust out of corners, and lying in the middle of the kitchen while we were preparing dinner. The garage was one of his special spots -- he loved to roll around in his pop's wood shavings. He loved any bathroom, especially toilets, sinks, and bathtubs; he was particularly fond of curling up in any sink just about his size. Of course, he was a box-dweller too: he hopped into any box around.

When we had a house with stairs, he loved to run up three or four flights at a time; once he slid off the banister when he got to the top floor, resulting in a bloody nose.

He was a magnet for funny names - Darnarian itself is fun to say and never boring, but we also called him Potamus, and sometimes, the Mayor of Potamus-town. Early on, we called him the "weenie wiggler" and more recently, we called him "head butter 5" in honor of his fondness for head-butting and as a riff on UNC basketball player Kendall Marshall's "Kbutter5" Twitter name.

Darnarian lived in two states (that we know of): Massachusetts and North Carolina, and he's always been a trouper. Even on that 14-hour trip from MA to NC, he didn't make a peep.

Darnarian's current favorite toy is "fleece-on-a-stick," also known as the Cat Charmer. Here he is with his sister Emma on a recent Sunday morning.

Darnarian is survived by his non-biological sister Emma (who is now 15) and his two humans. All of us are grateful to his smart, kind, and caring veterinarians (Drs. Kipp and Heinz at Piedmont Veterinary Clinic, and Dr. Flood at Triangle Veterinary Referral Hospital).



FIP is a pretty horrible disease. For information from a few reputable sources, check out

• Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) from VeterinaryPartner.com (a highly reputable source for all veterinary information; recommended & supported by veterinarians)
• Feline Infectious Peritonitis from the wonderful vets at Cornell.
• Understanding Feline Infectious Peritonitis, by UC Davis' Niels C. Pedersen, DVM, PhD & FIP researcher (pdf).

Field trip to Durham's @LifeandScience museum! #scio12

I was thrilled to go on a behind the scenes tour of Durham's fabulous Museum of Life and Science at last week's ScienceOnline conference. Here is an annotated visual tour of the trip, with photos taken by several of us on the tour. I used Storify to curate the images, which were posted on Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube (the bear video is awesome; especially the last 10-20 seconds).

Thanks especially to Keeper Mikey for the tour!

Smart Birds!

Fascinating research shows that rooks, members of the corvid family like crows, can use tools to enhance their access to food. In this case, they used stones to raise water level in a tube high enough so they could get a worm out of the tube. The video demonstrates Connelly the rook's ingenuity; later experiments (also available on YouTube) show Cook the rook putting stones in tube of water rather than sand to get his worm.

Cell Press describes their featured video: "Corvid birds are known for their intelligent use of tools. In this video, three different rooks (Connelly, Cook, and Monroe) use stones to raise the water level in a vial in order to reach a floating worm, as described in detail in the paper by Bird and Emery published online on August 6. In the first two trials, Connelly is required to raise the water level by a varying amount by using seven stones and one stone, respectively. In the third trial, Monroe uses preferentially larger stones to get to the goal, and in the last trial Cook drops the stones into a vial with water as opposed to one containing sawdust."

A related note: I love that Cell Press is marketing its authors' research / publication with a YouTube video channel. It's a great way to promote science!

For More Information

• Bird, Christopher David, and Nathan John Emery Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm. Current Biology, August 6 2009.
  

Short Takes

Here are a few of my recent favorite things, for your Thanksgiving (U.S.) browsing pleasure:

Bora posts a great article on New and Exciting in PLoS ONE: an article entitled Whole Body Mechanics of Stealthy Walking in Cats and he asks for LOLCat submissions to illustrate the articles. I'd like to see that too!

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I just bought the library a terrific book called Head First Statistics (O'Reilly, 2008), which I like for several reasons:

1. It explains a bunch of statistics in a lot of different ways; and, quoting O'Reilly:  "brings this typically dry subject to life, teaching statistics through engaging, interactive, and thought-provoking material, full of puzzles, stories, quizzes, visual aids, and real-world examples."
2. It's a great example of how books can be designed to effectively -- and professionally -- teach complex concepts.  (O'Reilly says the book "satisfies the requirements for passing the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) Statistics Exam" so it's clearly no slouch!). I'd might even call it a 2.0 book?!
3. I got some good ideas of how to present study tips to my LIS students from page xxxiii entitled "Here's what YOU can do to bend your brain into submission," using tips like "Slow down" ... "Talk about it. Out loud" ... "Do the exercises. Write your own notes."  Interactivity improves learning.

Check out the book ... either to learn statistics, or to get ideas on how to make reading tough concepts manageable.

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Heard some interesting (but not uplifting) brain science stories on the News Hour:

• Misdiagnosing Dementia (Nov. 12 2008):  "About 5 million Americans suffer from dementia -- about half of those from suspected Alzheimer's disease -- according to official estimates. Now, researchers are looking for new treatments in a field that hasn't seen a major advance since the 1960s."  
• Military, VA Confront Rising Suicide Rates Among Troops (Nov. 10 2008)  "The Army says that suicides among active duty personnel have doubled in recent years, and multiple deployments might contribute to that increase."
  

Read the transcript, download the audio, or watch the video on the News Hour site.  (Note to the News Hour: nice way to keep your content vibrant in this multimedia age!)

PrimateLit -- free database!

One of my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin has worked on an impressive database called PrimateLit. This database

provides bibliographic access to the scientific literature on nonhuman primates for the research and educational communities. Coverage of the database spans 1940 to present and includes all publication categories (articles, books, abstracts, technical reports, dissertations, book chapters, etc.) and many subject areas (behavior, colony management, ecology, reproduction, field studies, disease models, veterinary science, psychology, physiology, pharmacology, evolution, taxonomy, developmental and molecular biology, genetics and zoogeography).

I did a search for mirror neurons, and found over 200 results -- plus a subject heading for mirror neurons. The metadata is impressive: you can search or browse by taxonomy (macaca), diseases (depression) anatomy (frontal cortex), behavior (theory of mind), disciplines (experimental psychology), and much more!

A cool feature of PrimateLit is that it

... attempts to identify each user's institutional affiliation and automatically provide links to that institution's online journals and other content from within search results. If PrimateLit can't automatically identify the proper institution, the user is prompted to manually set the preference through a simple form.

For librarians, this means that it takes advantage of OpenURL technology, and if you've registered your OpenURL resolver with WorldCat.org, it will automatically display your OpenURL resolver of choice. For researchers, if your library has done this behind-the-scenes magic, it means that if your library has the full-text of an article cited in PrimateLit, you will be able to get to it easily. Click on the "Institutional Affiliation" button on the search page to see if your institution is participating.

Here's what it looks like at UConn:
Where clicking on "UCONN Links" will ultimately lead you to the full-text of the article, if UConn has it online.

Quite impressive!

More About Feline Diabetes & Diet

My first post on Feline Diabetes & Diet is still getting hits in Google searches, so I wanted to update what I've since learned about it ... just to keep the record balanced (or perhaps more muddled).

In that first post, I cited an unpublished study suggesting that carbohydrates weren't less important than weight in treating feline diabetes. Which suggests that carbohydrates aren't bad for cats with diabetes.

BUT!

I’ve since read Your Cat : Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life, by veterinarian Elizabeth M. Hodgkins (c2007). She has carefully studied diet and feline diabetes in her practice and she strongly believes that cats shouldn't eat carbohydrates at all. Her own practice suggests that diabetes can be completely controlled by diet, and she cites examples of cats she has known who have switched to all canned food and no kibbles ... and who have no longer needed insulin. But this is only her practice and not a solid clinical trial, so your experience may vary.

Hodgkins pokes holes at some mainstream studies showing that cat food is healthy, and overall makes some very compelling arguments. Primarily, she states that "studies" show that for young cats, a short-term diet including a lot of carbs does no harm; she argues that this does NOT show that long-term, carbs do no harm.

Research is starting to support Hodgkins' arguments. Deborah Greco, DVM, PhD, an endocrinologist at The Animal Medical Center in New York, explained a "Catkin's diet" (Google search results) at the 2004 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. Her report was cited in a November 2004 article in DVM Newsmagazine:

Greco notes that in a cat's natural environment, mice would be a main staple, composed of roughly 40 percent to 45 percent protein, 3 percent to 5 percent carbohydrate and 40 percent to 45 percent fat.

"Cats should have a diet that is high protein, high fat and low carbohydrate," Greco says. "High levels of carbohydrates in dry food causes overproduction of insulin, increased hunger and weight gain."

Hodgkins' book strongly encourages cat "owners" to remove all carbohydrates from their cats' diet, and feed their cats nothing but canned food (or even raw food). Note that her recommendation is for ALL cats, not just cats with diabetes.

As a science librarian, I would like to see well-crafted, substantial, long-term, large-cat, published clinical studies of carb or no-carb diet in cats, diabetic or not. But until then, I will be feeding my healthy, non-diabetic cats low-carb, high protein diets in the hope of keeping them healthy and non-diabetic.

For More Information

• "Battle feline obesity with 'Catkins' diet, expert advises." DVM Newsmagazine 35.11 (Nov 2004): S6. Academic OneFile @ your library.
• Hodgkins, Elizabeth M. Your Cat : Simple New Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life. St. Martin's Press, 2007
• Tremayne, Jessica. "Tell clients to bite into 'Catkins' diet to battle obesity, expert advises" DVM Newsmagazine (Aug 1, 2004).

Disclaimer:This blog is not a tool for self-diagnosis or a substitute for professional care.

Updates

In which we revisit some earlier posts and see what's new. This is partly because now that classes are over, I have time to catch up on old issues of the New Yorker and New Scientist, leading to some blog bits.

Crows
Last July, I wrote about the intelligence of crows and scrub-jays. In March, "hacker and writer" Joshua Klein spoke at TedTalks about crows and how he taught them to use a specially-created crow vending machine.


As Klein leads up to the vending machine (truly amazing), he shows some fascinating videos which nicely illustrate how crows learn, specifically a shot of a crow bending a wire to pick up food in a lab, and another shot of a crow using cars to crack her nuts -- then waiting for the light to change so she can collect the nut bits in safety. I won't spoil the vending machine story for you, as it's really fascinating.

Politics, Emotion, and ... Genes?
I've written occasionally about politics and the brain, and I read an article in an early February issue of New Scientist about some studies that suggest "political positions are substantially determined by biology." Jim Giles summarizes recent studies in various journals, and the findings are startling: twin studies suggest that political orientation is genetic (American Political Science Review, 2005); there may be a connection between fear of death, art preference, and one's political leaning (American Psychologist, 2003), and "there is probably a set of genes that influences openness, which in turn may influence political orientation" (Journal of Research in Personality, YEAR). Giles cautions, however, that "there is no shortage of critics who question the whole idea of linking politics with biology." For more, check out the article, or read some of the articles that Giles summarizes.

The Pirahã
I summarized a New Yorker article about the Pirahã about a year ago; in January, New Scientist interviewed the linguist Daniel Everett, who, along with his family, are the only non-Pirahã who speak that language. If you're interested in the story of the language of the Pirahã, and what it says for language acquisition (including a conflict with Noam Chomsky), the interview is a good read.

For More Information

• Klein, Joshua. The Amazing Intelligence of Crows. TedTalks, March 2008.
  
• Giles, Jim. "Born That Way." New Scientist, Feb. 2, 2008. Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @your library, in Academic Search Premier and other databases.
  
• Alford, John, Carolyn Funk, and John R. Hibbing. Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted? (pdf) American Political Science Review. Vol. 99(2), May 2005, 153-167.
  
• Jost, John T. The End of the End of Ideology (abstract). American Psychologist. Vol 61(7), Oct 2006, 651-670. Full-text may be available @ your library in PsycARTICLES.
• "Heritabilities of Common and Measure-Specific Components of the Big Five Personality Factors" Journal of Research in Personality, vol 32 (4), April 1998, p. 431. Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @your library, in ScienceDirect.
• Else, Liz and Lucy Middleton. "Interview: Daniel Everett." New Scientist Jan 19, 2008, p42-45. Subtitle: "Out on a limb over language: linguist Daniel Everett went to Brazil as a young Christian missionary to work with the Piraha indigenous people. Instead of converting them, he told Liz Else and Lucy Middleton, he lost his faith and his family, and provoked a major intellectual row." Not available for free online, but full-text may be available @ your library, in Academic OneFile.

Pet "How To" Videos from Cornell

I found some wonderful cat videos @ Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine which provide details on how to care for your ailing cat.


In this case, not even ailing -- but how to brush a cat's teeth. We have a cat struggling with gum health, and we have been brushing her teeth for well over a year. We don't use the implements shown in the video; rather, we use a q-tip and some veterinary oral rinse. And we didn't introduce the new health regime the way the video suggests, tho' if I had to do it over, we would have. (note: early in the video are shots of sedated cats getting their gums cleaned; be prepared to cover your eyes if you don't want to see cats in an operating theater)

They have a long series on Caring for Your Diabetic Cat, which, sadly, I no longer have to do. The video has a great explanation of what diabetes is and how it affects your cat (including some distinctions between feline and human problems related to diabetes), how to give injections, and nutritional therapy. The series on Trimming Your Cat's Claws is very helpful -- and useful if your cats like to scratch things.

If you are caring for a cat, I recommend looking at the list of videos Cornell offers and watching the ones that apply to your cat.

For More Information

• Videos for Cats, Partners in Animal Health and Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. 2008.
• Videos for Dogs. Partners in Animal Health and Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. 2008. Only one there so far; maybe they'll add more soon.
  

Confluence of Cats & Science

YouTube says: "Two professional engineers illustrate the proper care and practical benefits of cats." In this case, three cats. The video is narrated by engineer and "guy who has all those cats", who talks about food (especially tuna), cat hobbies (such as lounging, floral arrangement regurgitation, and various forms of low-energy performance art) and potential uses of cats as energy sources (not quite successful).



According to YouTube, "None of the cats, humans, or engineers were mistreated in the making of this film. They were however, slightly annoyed."

This video definitely some sound reasons for cat acquisition and retention.

(thanks to Christine for the link!)

Neuroscience in PloS

Have you seen PloS? The Public Library of Science "is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.." I've referred to two of their articles and I was intrigued by Bora's recent post at A Blog Around the Clock about PloS One and its efforts to publish in all areas of science, including various aspects of cognitive science.

Here is a recent interesting articles in PloS One:

• Are Animals Autistic Savants from PloS Biology, where Giorgio Vallortigara and colleagues critique Temple Grandin's question "Do animals have privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts?" and Grandin responds. And here's a blog post, Do Animals Think Like Autistic Savants in which the article is summarized in, um, plain(er) English for us non-scholars.

And check out the articles @ PloS One in these categories -- all free for the world to read!

• Computational Biology
• Computer Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• Neuroscience

(Academic) Librarians, make sure you're making these journals available to your patrons. PloS is indexed in PubMed It's not indexed in Biosis, PsycINFO, Scopus or Web of Science, and sadly, Ulrich's doesn't indicate that it is indexed in PubMed. Indexers ... consider adding PLoS!

For More Information

• About Open Access, from the Public Library of Science.
• Vallortigara, Georgio and colleagues. (2008) Are Animals Autistic Savants PLoS Biology 6(2): e42. Grandin responds.
• Zivkovic, Bora. "PLoS, it rhymes with floss: Interview with Liz Allen." A Blog Around the Clock February 19, 2008.

Optical Illusion

moar funny pictures

Feline Diabetes & Diet

please also read my May 2008 post More About Feline Diabetes & Diet


ScienceDaily reports on a new study from Robert Backus, a University of Missouri-Columbia veterinarian which "...suggests that weight gain, not the type of diet, is more important when trying to prevent diabetes in cats."

When my cat Boomer was diagnosed with diabetes, my vet suggested putting him on a low-carb / low-kibble diet because kibbles are full of carbs which convert to sugar (insulin) more easily than the relatively higher protein content in canned food. Backus' research "... compared a colony of cats in California raised on dry food with a colony of cats in New Zealand raised on canned food. After comparing glucose-tolerance tests, which measures blood samples and indicates how fast glucose is being cleared from the blood after eating, researchers found no significant difference between a dry food diet and a wet food diet."

Instead, Backus' research "... suggests that weight gain, not the type of diet, is more important when trying to prevent diabetes in cats."

The findings were presented at the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Conference in April. I'm curious to see the paper, too.

For More Information

• Choosing Dry Or Wet Food For Cats Makes Little Difference When It Comes To Feline Diabetes. ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2007).
• Boomer Brown, Rest in Peace, Dec. 19, 2006.
  

Animal Bioacoustics & Speech Processing

I‘m in Milwaukee for a conference (about which probably more later), and was happy to have the local newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, delivered to my hotel room rather than a bland national paper.

Even better, there is a fascinating animal & cognitive science story on the front page. Decoding Calls of Wild is about Marquette engineering professor Michael Johnson and The Dr. Dolittle Project. The Project's goal is to "...develop a broadly useable framework for pattern analysis and classification of animal vocalizations, by integrating successful models and ideas from the field of speech processing and recognition into bioacoustics."

The Journal-Sentinel describes Johnson's work, saying that the Dolittle project "... has broad applications, from keeping animals happy in captivity to developing a precise census of endangered species from recordings in the wild." Johnson has worked with folks at the National Undersea Research Center of the University of Connecticut; the Journal-Sentinel says that the project "enabled scientists at University of Connecticut to show that beluga whales engage in a human response to noise known as the Lombard effect. Like friends trying to talk over the din at a party, whales raise their voices to be heard over the drone of ships in the St. Lawrence River estuary."

Read more about the project and see a chart explaining how the vocalizations are extracted and classified. Listen to some of the sounds (whales, prairie dogs, and elephants among them) and see audio spectrograms of the sounds at the Journal-Sentinel.

(Laughing) Rats in the News

Did you know that rats laugh?



Jaak Panksepp, neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University, talks about how rats actually laugh. Science News Online quotes him as saying "but you have to know the rat."

And in this week's Science Times, Natalie Angier wrote about rats: "A host of new behavioral studies makes plain that the similarities between us and Rattus extend far beyond gross anatomy."

For More Information
* Don't look now, but is that dog laughing?, Science News Online, July 28, 2001.
* Panksepp, J., Burgdorf, J. "Laughing" rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy? Physiology and Behavior, (2003) 79 (3), pp. 533-547.
* Angier, Natalie. Smart, Curious, Ticklish. Rats?, New York Times, July 24, 2007.

Blue Jay's Theory of Mind?

Fascinating article in the New Scientist about potential theory of mind in members of the crow family. Theory of mind (wikipedia), as you know, is the ability of one being to estimate what another being might be thinking or how he might respond to a given situation. For instance, I can imagine that my husband would want some strawberry shortcake if it were available, or that he would be excited if the Jets went to the Superbowl next year. Children as young as 3-4 years of age have some understanding that others have thoughts different from their own, but generally animals and birds are not thought to have this ability.

Research by Joanna Dally, associated with the Comparative Cognition Lab at Cambridge, writes about some interesting developments in crow and scrub-jay behavior that point to potential awareness of how other birds might respond to their actions. Nicky Clayton and Nathan Emery studied food-hiding and stealing habits of scrub-jays:

"The allowed jays to hide worms either while they were alone or when another bird was watching, and to recover the hidden items in private later that day. Worms are the 'Belgian truffles' of the jay's gastronomic world, so the researchers anticipated that birds would make every effort to protect their stores. They found that when jays were allowed to return to their stash, those that had hidden worms under the gaze of a would-be thief moved them to new sites. Birds did not move worms they had hidden in private, however."

Further research carried out by Dally and Clayton showed that this was not the only strategy jays use to protect their worms: "we found that when hiding worms with another bird around, jays prefer to cache their meal behind a barrier that blocks their rival's view. That might not sound very clever," Dally continues, "but it suggests they may be able to see things from the visual perspective of another individual. In other words, they might understand that another bird learns about the world through its sense of vision" (emphasis mine).

Further research includes suggestions that jays are aware of what other birds know and when they know it (jays are more likely to re-hide food when they know that someone watched them hide it in the first place). Also, jays who have never stolen worms themselves are less likely to re-hide worms.

Fascinating suggestions about the intelligence of scrub-jays, and by extension, the crow family. Bird brains are notoriously small, but these jays are pretty smart about what other birds know about their food.


For More Information
* Dally, Joanna. "Don't Call Me Birdbrained." The New Scientist, 194.2609, 23 (2007): 34-37. [will be available on InfoTrac in a few weeks; now available in LexisNexis]
* Dally, Joanna, Nathan Emery, and Nicola Clayton. "Cache Protection Strategies by Western Scrub-Jays, Aphelocoma Californica: Implications for Social Cognition." Animal Behaviour 70.6 (2005): 1251-63.
* Emery, Nathan and Nicola Clayton, "Effects of Experience and Social Context on Prospective Caching Strategies by Scrub Jays." Nature, 414.6862 (2001): 443-446.
* Animal Consciousness, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006.

Felis silvestris lybica: 10,000 million years old

Just as language has been tied to the growth of agriculture (see British & Irish genes: not that far apart, in which I discuss how the Celts may have brought agricultural tools and language to Ireland), so the origin of house cats may be tied to the "domestication" of wheat & barley by early human settlers in the Near East.

Carlos A. Driscoll and his colleagues analyzed the DNA of wildcats and house cats in Scotland, Israel, Namibia and Mongolia and determined that the DNA of house cats and fancy cats (what's the difference?) "falls within the Near Eastern wildcat cluster, making clear that this subspecies is their ancestor.

"... Wheat, rye and barley had been domesticated in the Near East by 10,000 years ago, so it seems likely that the granaries of early Neolithic villages harbored mice and rats, and that the settlers welcomed the cats’ help in controlling them."

This supports Vigne's 2004 assertion that cats were not domesticated by Egyptians but in fact have been domesticated far longer.

The Times quotes Driscoll as saying that " 'The cats were adapting themselves to a new environment, so the push for domestication came from the cat side, not the human side.'" Naturally this was the cats' decision: lots of rodents, warm fires -- what's not to like?

For More Information
* Driscoll et al., The Near Eastern Origin of Cat Domestication, Science, Jun 28, 2007; [Epub ahead of print].
* Vigne, JD et al., Early taming of the cat in Cyprus. Science. 2004 Apr 9;304(5668):259.
* Wade, Nicholas. Study Traces Cat’s Ancestry to Middle East. New York Times, June 29, 2007.

Do Animals Feel?

Interesting article at New Scientist about whether or not animals have emotions. Marc Bekoff, professor of biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society, writes about animals and their possible feelings. He gives examples of several emotions he claims to have seen / heard animals feeling, such as empathy, grief, gratitude, and love.

Those of us who share our lives with animals would surely be able to come up with our own examples; Emma seems to be grateful when I clean her litterbox, and it is conceivable that Boomer stayed alive with a huge tumor as long as he did out of love for me. But I also hear Ray Coppinger in my head scoffing at this notion.

Following his examples of animal emotions, Bekoff does an nice job of arguing the case for and against animal emotions.

FOR
"... it is bad biology to argue that humans are the only emotional beings. Emotions serve as a 'social glue' to bond individuals with one another and to catalyse and regulate their social encounters.
...
"A decade ago, neurobiologists identified specific nerve cells that are associated with empathy - the bedrock of social emotions. These so-called mirror neurons have been identified in non-human primates, and it is likely that they exist in humans and other mammals, and perhaps even in birds."

... transition discourse on anthropomorphising ...
"... careful anthropomorphism is not a way of foisting human attributes onto animals, but rather a means of identifying commonalities and then using human language to communicate what we observe."

AGAINST
"if unchecked, [anthropomorphism] leads to a complete absence of scientific rigour in the way we look at animals. Using anecdotes as data only makes matters worse, because this allows anyone to speculate on what a given animal is experiencing, without any standard for what counts as evidence."

Bekoff concludes by urging for scientific, evidence-based analysis of what it's like to be a cat, dog, bird, horse, or your animal of choice. A little anthropomorphism is good; too much is unscientifc.

Can't wait to read more about animal emotions!

For More Info
* Bekoff, Marc. "Are You Feeling What I'm Feeling?" New Scientist, 194: May 26, 2007, pp. 42-47. Full-text available in LexisNexis & possible on ScienceDirect.

Brain Symmetry in Dogs

There's been lots of research indicating that the left and right sides of human brains serve different functions. Turns out that birds, fish, and dog brains also have similar brain asymmetry, especially in the emotional area.

Sandra Blakeslee reports in the April 24 issue of the New York Times that "[w]hen dogs feel fundamentally positive about something or someone, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left."

Blakeslee reports on research published in the March 20 issue of Current Biology, in which Giorgio Vallortigara, a neuroscientist at the University of Trieste in Italy, and two Italian veterinarians, Angelo Quaranta and Marcello Siniscalchi, at the University of Bari, studied the tail wagging response of 30 dogs to known & unknown humans, an unknown cat, and an unknown dog.

"When the dogs saw their owners, their tails all wagged vigorously with a bias to the right side of their bodies, Dr. Vallortigara said. Their tails wagged moderately, again more to the right, when faced with an unfamiliar human. Looking at the cat, a four-year-old male whose owners volunteered him for the experiment, the dogs’ tails again wagged more to the right but in a lower amplitude."

Vallortigara says this "... suggests that the muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions while the muscles in the left side express negative ones."

Blakeslee cites more examples of how animals use different sides of their brains for important functions -- such as chicks who find food with their left eye and watch for predators with their right eye.

For more information:
A. Quaranta, M. Siniscalchi and G. Vallortigara, "Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli," Current Biology, Volume 17, Issue 6, 20 March 2007, Pages R199-R201. (not even the abstract is free, but if you have Current Biology at your library, try this DOI link.)


If You Want to Know if Spot Loves You So, It’s in His Tail
Sandra Blakeslee
April 24, 2007
New York Times

Catspeak

I don't usually like cute cat photos, but there is an interesting Internet meme going around about krazy kaptions of kat photos.

I first found it on

- Language Log, Kitty Pidgin and asymmetrical tail-wags, which referred me to


- Anil Dash's post Cats Can Has Grammar (see also his MeowChat and PetSpeak), which sent me to

- the Wikipedia entry for lolcat (which apparently is slated for deletion), which led me to these images of cats

- I Can Has Cheezburger?

- lolcats2.com

...

Phew. I'm exhausted from all that running around. And I still don't much care for kute kat photoz, but this was a fun ramble through an Internet meme.