Scientists want frozen samples of animal species stored on the moon (infographic)

This is a cross-post. I think it is very interesting but I am quite scientific. One reason why it is interesting is because the scientists who dreamt up this plan are concerned about the vulnerability of a storage vault on the Earth because of global warming and nuclear war. 

And they are genuinely concerned about ensuring that the planet's precious animal species are preserved for future generations if everything goes pear shaped and the Earth collapses with the loss of all life or the majority of animal species. They see the real prospect of this.

There is already a plant species vault in Norway - the Svalbard seed vault. This stores seeds of vital crops. And there is the UK's Frozen Ark project which has stored more than 48,000 samples of genetic material from about 5,500 species of endangered animal. The problem as stated is that it could all be lost in a nuclear war or through catastrophic global warming.

Here is the infographic explaining the concept.

The report is called: Safeguarding Earth's biodiversity by creating a lunar biorepository. Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae058

Scientists want frozen samples of animal species stored on the moon by Michael Broad

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Do you believe scientists who say that smelly clothes don't reassure domestic cats?

This is a cross post - click this for the earlier post. Three scientists conducted an experiment as to whether the scented i.e. unwashed clothes, of domestic cat human caregiver's provided what they describe as a "secure base effect" (SBE) for their cats. To cut out the technical language, they wanted to see whether cats obtained reassurance from the unwashed clothes of their owners when their owners were absent; away from the home or perhaps asleep at night. Are smelly clothes a substitute for the presence of cat owners in terms of reassuring the domestic cat companions?

Do you believe scientists who say that smelly clothes don't reassure domestic cats? Image in public domain.

I would expect that nearly all cat owners would say that they are at least a second-best substitute. Many cat owners place an unwashed item of clothing in a cat carrier to help to reassure their cat when they take them to a veterinarian for instance. Or they leave an item of clothing with their cat when they are boarded at a cattery when they are away on holiday.

And of course you see thousands of pictures on the Internet of cat sleeping on beds which contain copious amounts of body odour from their owner or domestic cats sleeping on their owner's favourite chair. Domestic cat sleep on the laps of owners because it is warmer and because it smells of their owner. The scientist will say that these are all anecdotal forms of evidence.

They wanted to address the issue through science and provide a scientific, objective answer as to whether smelly clothes reassure domestic cats. And they say that they DO NOT! This runs counter to conventional wisdom on cat caregiving.

ASSOCIATED PAGE: 14 links between stress in domestic cats and health implications

They conducted the experiment in what was a strange place for the cats. The cats would have been brought there in carriers. The room would have been quite stark I expect and there would have been other interfering aspects such as strange noises and strange people. I believe that when you place a domestic cat into an entirely new place which might be perceived as being hostile to them, you cannot expect them to behave normally. And if you can't expect them to behave normally you can't measure natural behaviours.

The researchers found that when cats were left in a room without their owner being present but with the benefit of smelly clothing from their owner they did not use those clothes to seek reassurance. When their owner was in the room with them their stress levels went down but the clothes did not reduce stress levels as judged through their behaviour when their owners left the room.

ASSOCIATED: Study says that cats are prone to separation anxiety in homes with two female residents

They concluded, firmly, that this was scientific evidence that cats don't obtain a "secure base effect" from scented objects belonging to their owner. I would argue, as mentioned, that the study is tainted by the abnormal behaviour of the cats brought about because they were out of their home range and placed in a strange place with can induce a mild sense of panic and anxiety which masks normal behaviours.

The use of scented clothes to help reduce a well-known condition called "separation anxiety" in felines appears to have been debunked by this study. You make up your own mind. I have made up mine as you can see. There is too much first hand experience to show that scented clothes are very important to domestic cat because the smell of objects is a vital part of their lives. The use their sense of smell as much as they use their eyesight. Humans rely far more heavily on their eyesight.

Note: The scientists are: Alexandra C.Behnkea, Kristyn R.Vital and Monique A.R.Udella who, I believe, conducted the study at Animal Health & Behavior, Distance Education, Unity College, 49 Farm View Drive, Suite 201, New Gloucester, ME 04260, USA.

Domestic cats don't evaluate people who interact with their owner unlike dogs

A study carried out by Japanese scientists at the Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Japan, in 2015 found that domestic dogs evaluated people who interact with their owner. If these third parties were not helpful towards their owner they treated them in a way which indicated that they felt the person was hostile or less than friendly. This indication came from the fact that the dogs were less willing to accept food from the person who had failed to help their owner when help was requested.

Dogs evaluate third parties and cats don't. Pic in public domain. Words added
by MikeB on PoC.

I DISCUSSED THE STUDY IN A DIFFERENT WAY IN ANOTHER ARTICLE. CLICK HERE TO READ IT IF YOU WISH.

In 2021, the same or similar team of scientists headed by the same scientist, Hitomi Chijiiwa, carried out the same test on domestic cats. In summary, they found that "cats might not possess the same social evaluation abilities as dogs". The cats did not react as dogs had to people who did not help their owner by refusing to take food from them.

I will explain the study again and further comment on it below. They say that humans evaluate other humans based upon their interactions between third parties. I interpret this as meaning that people can look at two other people interacting with each other and by those interactions they can assess the character and behavioural traits of those people.

Dogs were also able to assess in a less sophisticated way (in my view) the character traits and behaviour of third parties. For both the cat and dog experiments they used the same procedure. They had the cats watch their owner try and unsuccessfully open a transparent container to take out an object inside and request help from the person sitting nearby. This person was told to either help when requested or not help when requested.

There was a third person sitting nearby who they describe as "passive (neutral) person". This person sat on the other side of the owner under both circumstances i.e. when the other person helped and when they did not help.

After both interactions by the actor who helped and didn't help with the owner, the actor and the passive person offered a piece of food to the cat. The scientist wanted to record from which person the cat took the food. They carried out four trials and noticed that the cats "showed neither a preference for the helper nor avoidance of the non-helper".

On this basis, they considered that cats "might not possess the same social evaluation abilities as dogs" as mentioned above. They do suggest that 'further work on cats' social evaluation capacities needs to consider ecological validity, notably with regard to the species' sociality'.

My comments and thoughts

My comments: I'm not going to read the entire study but simply pass my comments on these findings as stated in the study abstract. You might like to comment yourself. I would really like that actually.

The argument is that dogs have been bred to work with and associate with people. This has occurred for perhaps up to 30,000 years. This is when dogs were first domesticated, it is believed. And dogs have often been working dogs. And in the dog-human relationship they work with people so there is this naturally close, working connection which has allowed the dog to read people and evaluate them.

Conversely, the domestic cat has been domesticated for about ten thousand years, it is believed. It may be longer, as much as fourteen thousand years but this is still work in progress. The cat's role is as a companion although initially at the point of domestication they were working cats rooting out rodents and keeping the population down on farms. However, for many thousands of years their role is to entertain and provide companionship.

Further, the domestic dog is essentially a pack animal because their wild origins are the grey wolf. Pack animals look after each other and communicate with each other. The domestic cat, in contrast is essentially a solitary creature, living and surviving alone. Although their evolution during domestication has resulted in them becoming more sociable. Notwithstanding that advance in sociability, they still lack the skills to read behaviour patterns and traits of humans when watching them interact with their owner.

Ultimately, it comes down to the length of domestication of cats and dogs and their role in the lives of humans. This background has created the differences in results from this study in my opinion. What do you think?

Details of the study:

Cats (Felis catus) Show no Avoidance of People who Behave Negatively to their Owner Hitomi Chijiiwa1, Saho Takagi1, Minori Arahori, James R. Anderson, Kazuo Fujita, & Hika Kuroshima. Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University 2 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Corresponding author (Email: chijiiwa.hitomi.5m@kyoto-u.ac.jp)

Published online: Animal Behavior and Cognition journal.

Covid-19: potential human-cat-human transmission chain

Research needs to be carried out to look at in detail the potential for a human-cat-human transmission chain with respect to Covid-19. This is because recent research studies published from Kansas State University has confirmed that domestic cats can be asymptomatic carriers of the virus. We actually know this already but as I understand that this is more recent research.

Cats and people wear facemasks in 1918 during Spanish Flu pandemic. Picture: Dan Eskenazi.

LINK TO STORY BEHIND IMAGE ABOVE.

The researchers say that Covid-19 is being transmitted, and can be transmitted, from human patients to cats both domestic and captive large cats such as lions and tigers. Because of the obvious close association between humans and companion cats there is a question to be answered about whether cats can transmit the disease to people. Logic dictates that it does happen. This is been a question, actually, for quite a long time and until now and even today nobody can answer that question with any conviction or in any detail.

Jürgen A. Richt, the Regents distinguished professor at Kansas State University in the College of Veterinary Medicine, said that, "This efficient transmission between domestic cats indicates a significant animal and public health need to investigate a potential human-cat-human transmission chain".

He is referring to the fact that their research indicates that cats transmit the disease between themselves through the nasal, oral and rectal cavities and this transmission can take place within two days.

Scientists Developing a Bad Reputation in their Relationship with Cats

Of course scientists are people and within a group of people you will find some who don't like nature, don't like wildlife and don't like cats.  Within the past week there has been a spate of stories about scientists and their relationship with domestic cats and the scientist does not come out of the stories in a good light.

Just yesterday there was a story of a talented and well-known scientist in the UK.  He developed new light equipment in order to treat cancers.  We are told that he "inadvertently" or carelessly killed a neighbour's cat.  He put poison down to get rid of the rats on his land in Cheshire.

He put down a mixture of bacon, tuna and slug pellets.  The trouble is almost any animal could eat this poisonous concoction so if he intended to target rats he did it very, very carelessly indeed.  It is difficult to believe that a pioneer in cancer research and invention was that careless.  It makes me think that he put the poison down deliberately, knowing that it might well kill animals other than rats.

His name is Colin Whitehurst (54).  His neighbour is David Furness (41).  David found his cat dying, foaming at the mouth having eaten Mr Whitehurst's poison.

What David says is important:

“The chap would openly say to me he didn't want any wildlife living in the area-but what I can't understand is why he bought a property with all that land."

Mr Whitehurst had a two acre parcel of land adjacent to his property and apparently put the poisonous mix on that.

Mr Whitehurst was prosecuted and taken to the criminal court where he admitted causing unnecessary suffering under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.  He was handed down a 12 month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £2493.03 in costs.  The magistrate said that he had a disregard for wildlife.  He certainly did.

I must also refer to an animal testing facility at London University in which the scientists conducted Frankenstein-like experiments on domestic cats, cracking open their brains and inserting electrodes. Also, opening up the spinal-cord and inserting electrodes in that as well.  All in the name of some sort of vague benefit to people.  We don't quite know what it was about.  It doesn't really matter because it is totally unacceptable.

These are scientists who are highly educated many to Ph.D. level.  They should know better.  They should have a high level of morality and ethics built into their work and their behaviour.

Then we have the New Zealand Ph.D. economist who wants to exterminate all cats on the islands.

There have been cases reported in the past of scientists demonstrating bias in their work.  This is in relationship to the impact of the domestic cat preying on native species.  There's no doubt in my mind that there are many scientists who dislike cats in the same way that there are many people who dislike cats.  However, fortunately there are probably many more people who love cats.