research – Page 3 – Pain In The Bud

Another Tech Company Wants To Translate Meows And Barks Using AI: Can It Work?

Cats and dogs communicate primarily by scent, touch and body language, but human efforts to understand them have focused exclusively on meows and barks. If we want to truly understand our non-human friends, we need to take an approach that considers the other ways animals “talk” to each other.

A few years ago when MeowTalk made a minor splash in the startup world, I was pretty bullish on its potential to help us understand our cats better.

Sure, the app had an unhelpful habit of attributing improbably loving declarations to Buddy, but I thought it would follow the trajectory of other machine learning models and drastically improve as it accumulated more data.

More users meant the app would record and analyze more meows, chirps and trills, meaning it was just a matter of time before the AI would be able to distinguish between an “I want attention!” meow and a “My bowl is dangerously close to empty!” meow.

Obviously that didn’t happen, and what I personally didn’t take into account back then — and should have, given how obvious it is in retrospect — is that cats don’t just communicate via vocalizations.

In fact, cats don’t normally incorporate vocalizations into communication at all. Pet kitties do it entirely for our benefit because they know we’re generally awful at interpreting body language and we are completely useless when it comes to olfactory information.

It’s actually amazing when you really think about how much of the heavy lifting cats do in our efforts to communicate with each other. They recognize we can’t communicate the way they do naturally, so they try to relate to us on our terms. In return, we meet them less than halfway.

No wonder Buddy sometimes looks frustrated as he meows at me, as if I’m the biggest moron in the world for not understanding the very obvious thing he’s trying to tell me.

“Human, how can you not understand the simple feeling of innerer schweinehund I’m trying to convey here? The cringe is killing me!”

Now the Chinese tech giant Baidu is throwing its hat into the ring after filing a patent in China for an AI system that uses machine learning to decode animal communication and “translate” it to human language.

Machines are designed to process things from a human viewpoint according to human logic, so if Baidu wants to succeed where MeowTalk has not, its engineers will need to take a thoughtful approach with the help of animal behavior experts.

This is a hard problem that encompasses animal cognition, neuroscience, linguistics, biology, biochemistry and even philosophy. If they approach this strictly as a tech challenge, they’ll set themselves up for failure.

Without the information and context clues provided by tails, whiskers, facial expressions, posture, eye dilation, heart rate, pheromones and even fur, an AI system is only getting a fraction of the information cats are trying to convey.

Trying to glean meaning from that is like trying to read a book in which only every fourth or fifth letter is legible. There’s just too much missing information.

Even if we can train machines to analyze sound visual, tactile and olfactory information, it may not be possible to truly translate what our cats are saying to us. We may have to settle for approximations. We’ve only begun to guess at how the world is interpreted differently among human beings thanks to things like qualia and neurodivergence, and the way cats and dogs see the world is undoubtedly more strange to us than the way a neurodivergent person might make sense of reality.

“He grimaced. He had drawn a greedy old character, a tough old male whose mind was full of slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans full of half-spoiled fish. Father Moontree had once said that he burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton, so strongly had the telepathic image of fish impressed itself upon his mind. Yet the glutton was a glutton for danger as well as for fish. He had killed sixty-three Dragons, more than any other Partner in the service, and was quite literally worth his weight in gold.” – Cordwainer Smith, The Game of Rat and Dragon

An animal’s interpretation of reality may be so psychologically alien that most of its communication may be apples to oranges at best. Which is why I always loved Cordwainer Smith’s description of the feline mind as experienced via a technology that allows humans with special talents to share thoughts with cats in his classic short story, The Game of Rat and Dragon.

In the story, humans are a starfaring civilization and encounter a threat in the void between stars that people don’t have the reaction speed to deal with. Cats, however, are fast and swift enough, and with a neural bridge device, teams of humans paired with cats are able to keep passengers safe on interstellar journeys.

The narrator, who is one of the few people with an affinity for teaming up with felines, hopes he’ll be paired with one of his two favorite cats for his latest mission, but instead he’s assigned to partner with an old glutton of a tomcat whose mind was dominated by “slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans of half-spoiled fish.”

The narrator wryly notes that the last time one of his colleagues was paired with that particular cat, his burps tasted of fish for weeks afterward. But the cat in question, despite being obsessed with fish, is a badass at killing “dragons,” the human nickname for the bizarre entities that attack human ships in space. (The software that allows felines and humans to link thoughts also portrays the “dragons” as rodents in the minds of the cats, stimulating their ancient predatory drive so they’ll attack instantly when they see the enemy.)

We can’t know for sure if Smith’s interpretation of the feline mind is accurate, but another part rang true when he wrote that cat thoughts were all about the moment, filled with sentiments of warmth and affection, while they rapidly lost interest in thoughts about human concerns, dismissing them “as so much rubbish.”

If the mind of a cat is that relatable, we’ll be incredibly lucky. But in reality we’re dealing with animals who evolved in drastically different ecological niches, with different priorities, motivations, and ways of looking at the world — literally and figuratively.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to understand our furry friends. Research has yielded interesting information about the way animals like whales and elephants communicate, and AI is at its best when it augments human creativity and curiosity instead of trying to replace it.

Even if we don’t end up with a way to glean 1:1 translations, the prospect of improving our understanding of animal minds is tantalizing enough. We just need to make sure we’re listening to everything they’re saying, not just the meows.

Are Cats Really Liquid? Yes, Says Physicist Who Specializes In Fluid Dynamics

After seeing memes about liquid cats, physicist Marc-Antoine Fardin set himself the task of figuring out whether the little ones really are liquid.

Pour water into a glass or a jug, and the water takes the shape of the object immediately. Pour honey into a bottle, and it’ll likely take minutes before the slow-moving stuff fully conforms to its new container.

Both are liquid, but they’re not the same.

To differentiate levels of liquidity, rheologists — scientists who study the “deformation and flow” of liquids — use something called the Deborah number. The quicker the liquid takes the shape of its container, the lower its Deborah number, the “more liquid” it is.

On the extreme end are liquids like glass and tar pitch. It took an astounding 69 years for a single drop of the latter substance to fall at Trinity College, which set up a tar pitch experiment in 1944 and finally recorded its first drop on camera in 2013.

So what about cats? Are they really liquid?

If you’re a cat lover and you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 10 or 15 years, you’ve almost certainly seen memes showing photos of felines and their uncanny ability to conform their bodies to containers, as well as their tendency to “pour” themselves.

My Buddy is an expert in the latter, often electing to drop down from the couch in the laziest possible way, by shifting his weight and letting his body follow the path of least resistance until he slides off the side and onto the floor.

“Watchu lookin’ at, human? Haven’t you seen a liquid cat before?”

Marc-Antoine Fardin, a physicist with the French National Center for Scientific Research and Paris City University, won an Ignoble Prize for taking the memes seriously and studying the fluid properties of felines. Cats, Fardin wrote in an article about feline liquidity, “are proving to be a rich model system for rheological research.”

Cats, he concluded, are a “non-Newtonian liquid” with the ability to “alter their shapes to fill out the container without changing their volume,” putting them in the same general category as ketchup.

So the next time my cat gets all imperious with me, I’m going to remind him he’s a glorified condiment.

When Cute Is Cruel: Breed Beloved By Celebrities Like Taylor Swift Suffers Painful Genetic Mutation

Scottish Folds are cute, but the genetic mutation responsible for their folded ears also causes lifelong pain, joint problems and misshapen bones.

In 1961, a shepherd named William Ross found a barn cat with a curious feature: instead of the upright, swiveling, satellite dish ears of a normal feline, this cat’s ears were floppy and shapeless, resting atop her head like a tiny knitted cap.

Ross took the cat home and named her Susie. Susie gave birth to a litter of kittens with the same floppy ears, and it all gets a bit murky from there, with a dozen variations of the story online claiming it was Ross himself or a neighbor who “created” the breed.

Regardless of who it was, the floppy ears were transformed from an abnormal feature into the unmistakable characteristic of a breed, and the Scottish Fold was born.

The cute cats quickly caught on and were officially recognized in competitions by 1971.

Now they’re more in vogue than ever. They’re the preferred pets of music superstars Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, who regularly feature photos and videos of their Scottish Folds in social media posts. People across the world are buying them, and they routinely appear in “best breed” lists online, lauded for being cuddly and docile in addition to adorable.

Ed Sheeran with his Scottish Fold cat. Credit: Ed Sheeran/Instagram

But they’ve also been banned by the same cat fancy groups that initially welcomed them, they’re prohibited outright in some countries, and animal welfare groups are begging people to stop emulating celebrities by buying them.

That’s because the same deformity that gives Scottish Folds their distinctive ears is also responsible for weak and brittle cartilage and bones elsewhere in the body, which results in lifelong pain and disability.

According to the RSPCA:

“The disease is evident on x-rays of cats from as young as seven weeks of age. Serious abnormalities in joints and bone growth lead to arthritis (painful, swollen joints), short, abnormally thick, and inflexible tails, spinal abnormalities and short, stiff legs. The welfare impacts of Scottish Fold Osteochondrodysplasia can be severe in terms of pain and inability to perform natural behaviours, as these cats can be lame, walk with an abnormal gait, can be reluctant to engage in normal movements such as walking or jumping, and can even become completely crippled.

There is no cure for this progressive condition.”

Sadly, the deformities and resulting pain may be the reason Scottish Folds are considered docile and cuddly: they may simply be in too much pain to move or protest when their humans hug them or pick them up.

Ross and Turner didn’t know it in 1961, but the folded ears and brittle cartilage were the result of a genetic mutation. It wasn’t until 2016 that a group of American and Australian scientists found a mutation in a single gene, TRPV4, was responsible for weak cartilage and bones, leading to the deformities highlighted by the RSPCA in the passage above, as well as “progressive joint destruction.” The condition is called osteochondrodysplasia.

Taylor Swift and Scottish Fold cat — Swift’s cats have appeared in her music videos, feature prominently in her online posts, and were photographed in her arms for her 2024 post announcing she was supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election.

Cats Protection, a UK charity, raised the issue in 2024, warning that Scottish Folds were becoming even more popular, with breeders struggling to meet high demand. The group issued a public statement asking cat lovers and Swift fans to avoid buying Scottish Folds. Scottish Folds are equally popular in the US, spurring resistance from stateside animal welfare groups as well.

The Governing Council of Cat Fancy, which registers breeds in the UK — and no longer recognizes Scottish Folds — was even more direct.

“We strongly advise members of the public not to try to acquire cats of this breed,” Steve Crow, chairman of Cat Fancy’s governing board, told The Guardian.

With Bird Flu Spreading, It’s Probably A Good Idea To Keep Your Cats Inside

So far there are no cases of cats infecting humans, but a new study published Tuesday warns the virus easily mutates in infected felines.

Health officials have identified at least five cases of domestic cats infected with H5 bird flu in California, and they’re warning of multiple vectors of transmission now that both outdoor and indoor cats have been infected.

Two cats were infected after drinking raw milk from a dairy farm in Fresno, California, according to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health. That’s also how a dozen barn cats died in April after drinking raw milk from infected cows on a Texas dairy farm, the CDC said.

But three other cats who tested positive for bird flu were indoor-only, lived in the same home, and did not consume raw milk, authorities said. They’re looking into the possibility that the felines were infected through raw meat or by hunting mice.

So now it’s not only confirmed that cats are vulnerable to highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1, but that they can be infected in different ways.

To be clear, it’s not a cause for panic and it doesn’t mean people should isolate from their cats, but it does mean we should be smart and considerate when it comes to protecting our pets and reducing the possibility that they can be infected.

Because millions of felines live with humans, the fear is that they can pass the virus onto us. So far there have been no confirmed cases, but a study published on Tuesday confirmed that the virus can easily mutate in cats. That means the more domestic cats are infected, the greater chance the virus mutates in a way that allows it to “bridge” to humans.

At least two people — one in Wisconsin and one in Louisiana — have tested positive for the virus and were hospitalized this week. One worked on a farm and the other may have consumed raw milk. In the meantime, health officials are monitoring the people whose three cats were infected, and they’re urging people to take precautions.

“To avoid the spread of disease, including H5 bird flu, we strongly encourage residents and their pets to avoid raw dairy and undercooked meat products, limit contact with sick or dead animals, report sick or dead birds, and keep pets or poultry away from wild animals and birds,” said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Paleontologists Recover Shockingly Intact Saber-Toothed Kitten Buried For 35,000 Years

The find is extraordinary, allowing scientists to directly study the extinct cat’s musculature, fur, head shape, and even its claws and whiskers.

A team in Russia stumbled on the find of the century when they located the stunningly well-preserved remains of a saber-toothed kitten in Siberia.

The kitten, which was found near the Badyarikha River in northeastern Siberia, was about three weeks old when it died, scientists estimate.

Unlike typical finds — a fang here, a mandible or partial skeleton there — this specimen still had its fur, claws, whiskers and muscles, which means scientists have already learned more about the species, Homotherium latidens, than they have with almost any other long-extinct animal.

homotheriumpawpads — Images of the extinct cub’s paws compared to (D), the paw of a 3-week-old lion cub pictured on the bottom right. The Homotherium paw is thicker but less elongated. Credit: Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

While the saber-toothed cub is a true felid, it boasts adaptations unlike any surviving member of the panthera genus.

It has wide paws wrapped in heavy fur, a short tail and a stockier, lower-to-the-ground build than modern lions and tigers. Those adaptations, scientists believe, made it easier for Homotherium latidens to traverse environments with ice and heavy snow.

Its head shape is slightly different, with smaller ears than modern big cats, and its neck is enormous, more than twice as thick as the neck of a comparable three-week-old lion cub which was used for comparison. Likewise, its mouth is capable of opening significantly wider, although the team did not compare it to the jaguar, which has the widest-opening jaw among extant felids.

Homotherium cub — A photograph of the cub, top, and a scan revealing facial, ear and neck structure, below. Credit: Borissiak Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

The frigid, arid clime of Siberia made it possible for the cub’s body to endure for so long. The team that made the discovery conducted radiocarbon dating that puts the cat at between 35,000 and 37,000 years old, according to reports.

It’s not clear how the cub died, although its species went extinct about 10,000 years ago, likely as a direct result of fewer prey animals in the frigid zones it occupied. Additional bones belonging to the rear of the cub skeleton were encased in a large cube of ice immediately next to the intact upper body.

The cub’s remains were recovered in 2020, but the results of the research team’s analysis were just released on Nov. 14 and published in the journal Nature. The paper’s authors have a lot more to share about the species’ physical characteristics, they noted in the text, and plan to follow up soon with a second paper going into more detail about what they learned from the cat’s intact musculature.

Top image: An artist’s impression of an adult member of homotherium.