PJ the CatIt is with bitter disappointment that I share this link: it’s the end of the line for hypoallergenic cats. Remember the promise of the hypoallergenic cat? People who would enjoy sharing their home with a cat but who were previously unable due to allergies (I count myself among this number) were given hope with the $4,000 felines, “guaranteed” to not cause allergic reactions.
No more.
Allerca Lifestyle Pets, the provider, announced on its website recently that due to its recent acquisition that it will no longer produce the hypoallergenic cats (and dogs) to customers.
Further, one wonders if Allerca was actually producing the cats (and dogs) as they promised. According to The Scientist, despite many testimonials they were never able to produce any scientific evidence that their cats were actually hypoallergenic and apparently there are a number of blogs out there decrying Allerca for non-delivery and non-performance. So it may have all been wishful thinking anyway.
My current plan is to find the smallest short hair cat possible – small animal, less spit to be allergic to. That’ll work, right?
What I find of ancillary interest is that internally here at the museum we have been looking at scientific denialism and fraudulent science. If I applied a skeptic’s “filter” to my examination of the claims on the Allerca web site, the heavy dependence on testimonials rather than scientific data, the attacks on groups who are skeptical of their claims, the use of lots of scientific jargon and that fact that they are shutting down even though their product was claimed to be effective makes me lean to an opinion that they may not be able to deliver what they say they can. However, as with anything be your own skeptic. Don’t form an opinion based on what I am saying alone – do some research, and use the evidence you collect – especially the evidence that is supported by scientific research – to make your own conclusions.
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He can teach you much, but give you nothing: Wait... Is this man even handsome? This IS complicated!
Courtesy monseurlamSorry to break it to you, dudes, but you aren’t just ugly ducklings—you’re just ugly. Or, if you are mirror-melting hot, those good looks are an invention all of your own, so skip the father’s day present, and get yourself something nice.
See, guys and boys, you’re dad may have taught you how to gut a possum, and he might even have given you your first possum-gutting knife, but he didn’t give you the looks that attracted all those hungry eyes at the possum market. He saved those for your sister.
It turns out that men don’t inherit their fathers’ “attractiveness”. Fathers do pass on masculine features to their sons, but there doesn’t seem to be any strong correlation between attractive fathers (or, technically, “hot dads”) and attractive sons. So says the journal Animal Behaviour.
By rating the images of hundreds of males and females, and their respective parents, the recent study hoped to test the theory that women seek out attractive mates to produce sexy male offspring, who will in turn pass on their mother’s genes.
Uh uh. The study found that hot dads didn’t necessarily have hot boys, and that unattractive fathers (or “ug dads”) didn’t necessarily have ug boys. In fact, the study found no evidence of male-to-male attractiveness inheritance at all. So that beautiful bone structure, those sparkling eyes, that indefinable something that makes you so, so foxy… where did that come from? Your mother, perhaps?
Nope, attractiveness doesn’t seem to come from your mom either. It seems that when boys are born, they’re cast out into the Land of Fug to fend for themselves, and if they find a sunny hilltop to build a face on, they have to do it on their own.
Mothers, the study found, do pass on attractiveness to their daughters. And, ironically, so do fathers—hot dads are likely to have attractive daughters. That means that daughters are getting all those good looks funneled into them from both sides! Ooooh, I hate them so much!
It’s like the legend of Puss in Boots, really. The wealthy old miller and his wife (who I believe was some sort of novelty hat heiress) were on their deathbeds at the same time (food poisoning, I believe), and were deciding how to divvy up their vast wealth between their two sons and one daughter. Keep in mind, this was before division was invented, so the two dying parents decided that the fairest thing to do would be to give all their money to the daughter and none to the sons. The daughter lived a long and very happy life, and no more needs to be said about her. One of the sons died more or less on the spot (food poisoning, I believe), and the other grabbed the miller’s cat and did a runner.
The stolen cat may or may not have had a plan for the surviving son’s well-being, but there was no way to tell, because the cat couldn’t speak English, and the son couldn’t speak Cat. So, making the best of what he had, the son forgot to feed the cat until it died, and then took its fur. (And this was clever in itself, because the son was still too poor to afford a knife, and he had to be creative—that’s where the saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” comes from.) The son then used the beautiful fur (it was a good cat) to make an attractive fur hat (a skill he learned from his mother), which he sold to a local eccentric. The profits from the sale were then invested in the construction of a new animal shelter/hat factory. The venture proved to be a lucrative one, and it kept the man in stockings and gin for the rest of his life, until he burned the factory down so that his own son couldn’t inherit it.
Do you see the connection? If you replace all references to money in the story with the word “hotness,” the analogy is particularly apt.
Six-toed cats can remain at Hemingway museum
in Life Science, Diversity of Organisms, and Biological Populations Change Over Time
Hemingway cat: One of Snowball's many descendants takes it easy behind the Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West, Florida.
Courtesy Mark RyanThe fifty or so cats living around the former estate of author Ernest Hemingway in Key West, Florida, have been granted a reprieve from the US Department of Agriculture and are being allowed to remain on the grounds where the famed novelist once lived. The island property is now the Hemingway Home and Museum, and one of Key West’s more popular attractions. The federal agency originally wanted the cats removed or caged because the museum lacked the proper license to exhibit animals.
All the cats roaming the grounds are descended from a cat named Snowball given to the author by a ship’s captain in the 1930s. Snowball was a polydactyl cat, meaning its paws contained more than the usual number of toes. Typically a cat has 18 toes – five on the front and four on back. Polydactyls commonly have six or seven toes on the front, and sometimes an extra one on the rear, but the record is held by a California cat that had an incredible eight toes on each foot! Polydactyly is a congenital abnormality genetically passed down to offspring. In some cases the extra toes are like opposable thumbs giving the cats an almost human-like dexterity. Snowball’s descendents all carry the genetic trait but not all are polydactyl.
Ernie the cat
Courtesy Mark RyanOur family cat was a polydactyl, and we named him Ernie in honor of Hemingway and his six-toed cats. Ernie’s extra-large feet allowed him to gain lots of weight during his life with us. At his heftiest he weighed 24 pounds. He was huge, a real lard butt. His full name - Ernesto ”El Gato Gordo” Hemingway - was well deserved.
Nothing to do with the cat, actually: She just realized that she forgot her cell phone.
Courtesy dieselbug2007How has your day been so far? Good? I suppose it’s a little early to be asking that.
Depending on how you feel about no-faced cats, your day may be about to take a dive, or really look up.
When I say “no-faced cat,” what I mean is “a real cat with no face.” This one, in particular.
Not only has Chase recuperated beautifully from having her face and leg removed, but she’s started a blog!
Medicine is amazing, cats are amazing, and the Internet is amazing.
Who knew a cat could even type?
OMG! Cute kitten! LOL!: I r poisnin ur brain!
Courtesy manitoonI was wrong!
You know, I spend so much time being right, that the occasional (very, very occasional) situation in which I’m slightly…not right, is actually pretty refreshing. It’s like, oh, I don’t know, getting halfway to work and realizing that you forgot to put on pants, and then linking, “Hey, who cares? And it’s a warm day!” It’s liberating.
Some days I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by cat feces. I don’t even live with a cat at the moment, but I’m aware that there are millions of cats out there, and they’re all addicted to pooping (just try forcing a cat to go cold turkey—total junkies for the litter box). There’s just so much cat poop in the world, and none of it smells very good, and I don’t want to touch any of it, and its very existence drives me to distraction.
Nobody else seems to care very much. Here I am, dreaming of cats that emit water vapor and rose-scented hydrogen gas as their only waste products, and the rest of the world seems content to live with a planet suffocating under the weight and odor of cat effluvia. I imagine that Leonardo felt the same way. It’s a lonely existence.
Perhaps no longer.
Toxoplasmosis gondii is an interesting little gooball (gooball is a term of my own, so don’t use it in class, or you’ll get an F and I’ll sue you). It’s a protozoan parasite, capable of living in nearly any warm-blooded mammal (it’s estimated that over 20% of the U.S. population carries the parasite), although its infectious form—responsible for about a third of all deaths from food borne illnesses—is only carried by cats.
The parasite has some interesting tricks up its sleeves too. It seems that when a rodent is infected with T. gondii, it loses its fear of cats. And a little mousey with no fear of cats is a little mousey that gets eaten, successfully passing the parasite back to its favorite host. Weird.
I also have very little fear of cats, which lead me initially to believe that I was a carrier of the disease. But a study covered in this article details a whole different set of symptoms in infected humans (of which, again, there are many). Men who are infected “have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women” An unsettling portion of this description applies to me, and so it’s possible that I may still be infected.
Infected women, on the other hand, are generally “more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.” So, you know, it turns out that kittens are a good gift item after all.
And if that isn’t enough to get people thinking about cat feces, it turns out that some of human’s favorite animals, aquatic mammals, are just swimming in toxoplasmosis. How do you like that? The appearance of the parasite in marine mammal populations (including whales, dolphins, otters, sea lions, and seals) seems to be relatively recent, but it is estimated that up to 17% of sea otter deaths alone could be attributed to toxoplasma.
So how are sea creatures across the world becoming “infected by a parasite that is spread primarily through the consumption of infectious cat feces and infected meat”?
(That quote, by the way, comes from a microbiology researcher from Boston, and, if you remove “and infected meat,” is the winner of the best quote of the day award.)
Anchovies. Probably anchovies. The little fish are filter feeders, and could pick up the parasite before beginning extensive migrations, spreading the disease to the many anchovy eaters of the oceans (people who eat anchovies are safe, because heat kills the protozoa). Just how the organism is getting to the anchovies remains unclear, but it has been proposed that the problem has to do with cat feces-contaminated runoff.
So there. Like sea otters and dolphins? Then start thinking about cat feces. I don’t propose that you do anything about it, but I do want you to obsess over it. You won’t be alone.
Also, especially if you’re a guy, keep that stuff out of your mouth.
So cute. So shnuggly. So lethal.: Jax, the mighty hunter, eyes some tasty birdies from his window perch.
Courtesy Gene
As spring approaches (no, really, it is coming! You've got to believe!), house cats everywhere are sniffing at the fresh air coming in under the door, and are just itching to get outside. However, a politician in Boulder, Colorado is trying to pass a law that would require pet owners to keep their cats inside. It may sound funny – or like an unnecessary government intrusion into citizens’ lives—but outdoor cats are a big problem for wildlife. According to the American Bird Conservancy There are some 77 million house cats in America, and a similar number of feral cats. Each year, they kill hundreds of millions of birds, and perhaps a billion small mammals. Many of the prey species are threatened or endangered.
If you own a cat, keep it inside! Or invest in an enclosure so it can enjoy the outdoors without menacing the local wildlife.
A boring old one-faced cat: I'll be throwing him out soon, in favor of a newer model.
Courtesy JGordonWhy was I not made aware of this earlier? This is an outrage! There's a media conspiracy at work here, a government cover-up. They, The Man, the military-industrial complex, the cigarette-smoking men, the Masons, the Shriners, are trying to keep us honest, hard-working Americans, from the truth! Truths like "Can a single cat have two faces? Yes."
How are we, as a society, as a democracy, supposed to move forward if important, nay, vital, information is being kept from us?
Break free. Go here, and meet this damn two-faced cat.
The business end of a saber-toothed tiger: Not as dangerous as previously feared, but still, dangerous enough. Photo by Brendan Atkins from Flickr.com
Scientists in Australia, using a computer and advanced engineering formulas, have studied the skull of the famous saber-toothed tiger and discovered it wasn’t as fierce as previously thought. Due to weaknesses in the skull, its bite was only one-third as strong as a lion’s of similar size.
Of course, one-third the strength of a lion is still pretty strong.
OTOH, the saber-toothed tiger has a massively powerful body. The researches speculate that, rather than biting its prey on the run as lions do, the big cat first wrestled its prey to the ground and then clamped down on its neck.
No word as to whether these Ice Age creatures will be reintroduced to North America. If so, they would have to compete with these Tigers, the fiercest of all time.
(Other scientists have tried to figure out why the saber-toothed tiger had such big teeth to begin with.)
(And yes, I know it’s not really a tiger, but like my grandmother always used to say, alliteration counts for a lot.)
Scent of death?: A Providence, R.I., cat, (not pictured above) that lives at a nursing home has an uncanny ability to find and curl up by residents who are about to die. (Photo by grafwilliam)This has been the main topic of side conversations of floor staff members at the museum today.
Have you heard about this cat in a Providence, R.I., nursing home that has correctly identified the last 25 patients who were to die there?
Oscar, the cat, makes the rounds of the nursing home each morning, just like the medical staff. Some mornings, Oscar will then slip into a room, curl up next to an ailing patient. Within several hours, that patient dies. The cat is so accurate, nursing home staff members will call the family of a resident being visited by Oscar so that they can be present when their loved one passes away.
“He seems to understand when patients are about to die,” says Dr. David Dosa. “Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one.”
Before you get too creeped out by this, doctors at the nursing home say that most of the people Oscar visits are so sick, they’re not aware that he is there. And families, for the most part, seem to be pleased that their loved one got some special attention from Oscar before the death.
Is there science behind this phenomenon? After all, there are dogs that can sniff out oncoming epileptic seizures and there are rats that can sniff out buried land mines.
One theory is that Oscar picks up scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him in being able to determine if a patient is going to die. One researcher points out that the only way to know for sure is to do a study of Oscar’s behavior when someone is dying compared to what he does when people aren’t dying.
What do you think is going on here? Share your thoughts with other Science Buzz readers.
Being one never to have a lot of trust in cats, especially after seeing the movie "Cats and Dogs, I’d like that investigation to go a little deeper. Cats can be a lot more devious than appears on the surface.
Wild origins: A recent study of DNA shows that our tamed domestic cats of today likely came from wild cats that roamed the deserts of the Middle East some 100,000 years ago. (Photo by grafwilliam)I have a neighbor with a cat that’s quasi tame/wild. It hunts down a collection of little critters in the neighborhood for fun and food. But it also has the most domesticated practices of politely asking to enter the home or wanting to be petted.
New research now shows that our house cats of today have a lot in common with their wild ancestors with links that go to wild cats from the Middle East some 100,000 years ago.
This is all interesting and historical news, right? But what does it have to do with science today? A lot actually. Medical research for human ailments like polycystic kidney disease and retinal atrophy can be modeled through these same cats.
Through genetic analysis, the researchers have found that today’s cats have a lot in common with five types of wild cats from the Middle East. Through interbreeding over the years, those five cats produced the line of cats that today are found as pets in our homes.
Wild cats found in Israel, United Arab Emerites, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have similar DNA to our western tamed cats. And the thinking is that cats started to be tamed by humans around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago when humans began a farming economy. The cats were used to hunt down rodents that otherwise would try to eat away at the grains being stored from the harvest. Archeological evidence of cats living with people dates back about 9,500 years to the island of Cyprus.
Researchers think that these early Mid-Eastern cats might provide a pretty “pure” gene pool to analyze as well, since those cats lived in isolated desert areas and wouldn’t have had the chance to interbreed with too many other cat species.
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