Good Job, Brain! - 87: The Truth About Cats and Dogs

Episode Date: November 19, 2013

BREAKING MEWS! Put your paws up for some barking mad trivia about our furry companions: the amazing death-defying righting reflex of cats and "high-rise syndrome," we sift through the colorful history of cat litter, the many faces of Cerberus, and a purr-fect quiz. We try to answer burning questions like do dogs really watch and understand TV? How many toes can a cat actually have? ALSO: "Um, Actually" double-header Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hello, Zany Zoo of Zippy Zellets. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and Offie Trivia podcast. This is episode 87, and I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your scrappy, scrambling, but scrumptial. scrupulous screwball. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. It makes no more or less sense than the other ones do.

That's true. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris on the previous episode of Good Job Brain. I'm pretty sure I, for some very strange reason, kept saying 10,000 leagues under the sea. And everyone was not a lot. Yeah, sure. This sounds about right.

He's so confident. I was like, 20. But I didn't know what I was saying, honestly. Like, I really thought I was saying. the correct way. It was because you're focusing on the league fact. 20,000 leagues under the sea is the proper title of the Disneyland ride. I actually also have one, actually, and it wasn't really an error, but it was more of an omission from last episode.

I shared mnemonics for superlatives for bodies of water, like the largest lakes. And a couple of people online noticed that Caspian Sea is. the largest, technically largest, sea or lake. Caspian Sea is a little bit weird because it's called a sea, but technically it is landlocked, so that makes it a lake. But then I dug deeper and turns out there's some oceanic plate involvement, so it also can be called a small ocean. So it depends on what the international law is. So it can be classified as mostly sea or lake and sometimes ocean. So it's a little bit unclear.

It's a gray area. What do you do if it comes up in Pub trivia? That's what I was thinking. I was like, oh, what if I don't know? We have these cases where we're sometimes, you know, it's not necessarily a poorly worded question, but it's, ah, what are they looking for? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is commonly? There's what's the answer, and then there's what are they looking for, and you hope they're the same thing.

And without further ado, let's jump into our first trivia segment, Pop Quiz, Hot Shot. And I have here, random trivia, preemptia. Pursuit card from the box, and you guys have your barnyard buzzer. So let's start off the show with answering some questions. Here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What country is home to Chaceltaya, La Paz, and Potosi? Well, I think I know La Paz.

Isn't that Bolivia? Correct. Yeah, I was the only saying. I was like, I don't know the other ones. All right. Pink Wedge for pop culture. What baggy trousers got their name from a performer? His first name is Stanley Kirk Borell.

Everybody. Hammer pants. Yeah, MC Hammer. Oakland Zone. From Oakland. Yes, that's right. And Yellow Edge. What kitchen appliance helped Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman revolutionized running shoes soles?

Oh. A waffle iron. Correct, Chris. The first Nike soles were just rubber poured into a waffle iron. The smell would be really horrible. I'm sure it's pretty bad, yep. Hot rubber. Purple Wedge, name at least five of the nine members of the Weasley family in the Harry Potter series.

You want to just go around the table? Let's go around the table. Can I start? Yeah, you start. You start. Ron. Yes. All right.

George. Fred. Ginny. Skippy. Not Skippy. Ginny, yes. Molly. Correct.

Oh, wait. Shoot. And there's three more brothers. There are three more. The older brother with the scar on his face. Scarface. Scarface. Harry Potter as a Scarface.

Can I finish it off? Yeah. There's Arthur Weasley is the dad. Bill Weasley and of course Charlie Weasley. And Percy. Oh, and Percy Weasley. Arthur, Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, Ginny, Molly, Percy, Ron. All right.

Green Wedge for Science. What word is common to the full names of the NIH and W.H. Oh. Health. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. National Institute of Health.

You all pause. I was like, what is health? No, no. I was just kind of rid it out by this question. Yeah, it took me a second to figure out what they were asking. Yeah, what word is common. All right. Yeah.

Last question, Orange Wedge. You know what? Orange Wedge supposed to be sports and leisure. I feel like I haven't gotten a sports question in a really long time. I think this category, they do the most straining to the level. Okay. All right. What is known as the fifth taste after bitter, salty, sour, and sweet.

Eat. Everybody. Umami. Yes. The word describes a kind of yummy, savory quality. Yeah, they always say savory. Yummy. Sounds so scientific.

Yeah. Yummy. Scientific terms. Yeah. Good job, Brains. Longtime listeners would know that we usually record this podcast in Colin's apartment in his dining room area. We actually have two silent co-hosts.

Yes. Sometimes in the room, sometimes not in the room, sometimes on our lap, sometimes on the table. And there are podcats. They're Collins kittens, new kittens. So we thought why not since we're dog lovers and cat lovers to do a whole episode dedicated to the weird facts and burning questions and trivia about cats and dogs. So this week we're talking about the truth about cats and dogs. So I promise I will bring this back around to cats eventually, but just bear with me here for a minute. So you guys remember several episodes ago we talked about occupational names, you know, like what is a Cooper and those types of names.

A Cooper being a barrel maker. Do you guys know what a fuller is? Do you know what the occupation name of someone? We didn't talk about this before. Fulling, yeah. Tell me, what is fooling? Filling something up? Fuling is an old part of the process of turning wool, like raw wool, into wearable wool cloth.

Okay? So it's part of that process. And specifically, it's the step where you take the wool that's come off the sheep and you clean away like all the oils and like the lanolin, you know, sheep sweat, basically and just all the dirt and the impurities. Wait, lanolin is sheep sweat? Yeah. I thought it was just fat from, like, oils from. from the... Well, I'm simplifying it a little bit.

It's sheep excretion, yeah. I mean, it comes from... Their skin. Their skin. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. Lanolin is sheep sweat.

So back to the task here. Back to the topic. So that's the step where you basically clean out the wool, and it also kind of fluffs the wool up, makes a little thicker and more durable. And over the years, there been a lot of different processes for fooling. Apparently, they used urine at one point as part of the process. Many different procedures. But eventually, they discovered a...

a substance called Fuller's Earth that they would use for this process. And Fuller's Earth is a very specific type of clay that is especially good at absorbing oils and moisture and impurities, and it washes away really cleanly. It's like a wool britt. Yeah. So they would kind of, you know, work that into the wool as part of the process of fooling. So can you guys take a guess? What do most people today use Fuller's Earth for?

I'm going to go ahead and say it is cat-related. It is cat litter. Yeah. Cat litter. Clay cat litter that you may have in your cat box is Fuller's Earth. It's a very specific type of clay. Whoa. Okay.

Question. Yes. Do they still use Fuller's Earth for wool production? You can still use it for fooling, yeah, if you're doing a tradition. But nowadays... There are other processes. It's one of many, but it's safe. It's clean, for the most part.

One of the reasons people like it, I guess, I learned this as well. It's used in the special effects industry. a lot. Like in Hollywood, they like it because it produces a lot of dust, but it's a very kind of safe, clean dust. They use Fuller's Earth to like make country roads and things like that. So that's all kitty litter. A lot of that, it's the same stuff that kitty litter is made out of, maybe not in granule form. But yeah, yeah. Well, who knew? Fuller's knew. Now, I think I would have probably guessed this is something like, oh, yeah, going back, you know, hundreds of years. People just naturally knew. Yeah, use it for cat litter. No, this only goes back to the late

1940s, people using what we'd call by, like, kitty litter, cat litter today. What do they use before? Well, one of two things. Either you kept the cat outside, you know, like the cat was not an indoor pad and you just didn't worry about it. They did their business in the dirt or hopefully not your flower beds. But if you did have a litter box inside, you would use sand. Most people use sand or sometimes sawdust. Now enter the story, one, Mr. Edward Lowe. In 1947, he was living in Michigan and working at his father's sawdust factory. One day, his neighbor came over, and she had a cat. Now, keep mind, this is Michigan. That gets cold in Michigan. She had a cat,

and she came over with the problem that her cat box had frozen. The sand, the sand had frozen into a solid clump. So she came over to ask, like, hey, here in the sawdust business, can I borrow some sawdust to fill my cat's box up with? Again, very common. And this is where, as Edward Lowe famously would love to tell the story, he had a hunch. And so, now I mentioned his father's in the sawdust business. So one of the, one of the things that they would sell sawdust for was cleaning up oil and grease, like an industrial setting. Sawdust, it's really absorbent. You put it down. It's very non-toxic. It's easy to clean up. But one of the problems with it is that it's, it's pretty flammable. I mean, as you can imagine, sawdust soaked in oil and grease, especially, you know,

around big machinery. It's kind of hazardous. So his father had recently started selling Fuller's earth to some of his clients who needed oil and grease absorption. And in fact, that is one of the primary uses for it still today outside of cat litter. It's great for soaking up oil or grease in your driveway, things like that. Oh yeah. People do put it down. Absolutely. Absolutely. And he happened to have a bag of Fuller's Earth and said, you know what, let me give you some Fuller's earth instead of sawdust because it absorbs its weight in water. I think this will be better than your sand or whatever for your cat litter. So she took the bag, loved it, just loved it. And he knew he was on to something when she started coming back asking for more. It was at this point that he just had that

entrepreneurial spirit. And he's like, all right, this is my million dollar idea is using Fuller's Earth to fill cat boxes. So he put some Fuller's Earth in bags. He named his new product, kitty litter. This was the trade name. Oh, man. Not even cat litter. Kitty litter. Yep. Kitty litter. And it's, you know, it's one of those things like zipper or aspirin now where it's just become generic. It has. Yep. Yep. And so his plan was, all right, I'm making a million dollars. He's like, so he took it to pet stores. And he's like, all right, you know, I want you to sell this thing. You know, his suggested price was like 65 cents a bag for five pounds. And they basically laughed at them.

They're like, look, buddy, sand. Sand is like one cent a pound. So he came up with a, what I think is just a brilliant, brilliant stroke of business insight. So he persuaded the sellers, give it away, give away the bags of kitty litter

until people are hooked and realize how much superior it is to sand and then start charging for it. First one's free. Yeah. The rest, as they say, is history. Edward Lowe made millions and millions and millions of dollars off of pioneering the cat, the kitty litter industry.

So there was kitty litter brand. He also started Tiny Cat, which I have bought myself. Well-known brand. Yep, they've been around forever. They are hands down. His companies are the leading companies in that industry. And at this point, the formula, when you go buy kitty litter, it's the same stuff, basically. So they've added, you know, some tweaks like the clumping litter, you know, not to get, you know,

two inside baseball here with the cat litter. Two inside cat box. It's a cat box. It's basically the same thing. Chemically, what is Fuller's? It is a clay. It is a clay. Do you harvest it somewhere?

It's mined. Yeah, you mine it. It sounds like mostly in the southwestern U.S. It sounds like. And there's enough of it that we can let cats poop on it all day in. Yeah. In addition to it being super, super, super absorbent, it also naturally neutralizes the ammonia smell. And if you've ever had a cat or been around a cat, you know that cat pee in particular,

they say because cats are so efficient with the way they process water cat pee has so much ammonia in it that's why it smells so bad and the clay naturally neutralizes it and now so from there a lot of people really attribute the fact that people started

using Fuller's Earth clay cat litter to being more okay with having indoor pets and they say that really like the second half of the 20th century just saw a boom in the idea of oh a cat can be an indoor pet And they say that that's one of the reasons that cats, I guess, have now surpassed dogs in terms of popularity.

Who knew? There was so much story to unpack. Get out. Pawn through history. Yeah, the more you're pawing through history. The more you dig. Yeah. That's right.

You find buried treasure. Got some logs of wisdom for weight. No, no, no, man. All right. I have a quiz for you guys. It's about cats and dogs. and it's Jeopardy style. So all of the answers will have the word cat or dog in them.

Okay. Buzz in must phrase it in the form of a question. Urban Dictionary.com defines this as someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities. Everyone. Catfishing. What is catfish? Oh, dang it. All of us.

All wrong. What is catfish? What is catfish? Cuspids, which are the long pointed teeth that humans have, are also known as what? What are canines? No. Yeah, because it's all that's got to have cat or dog in. Yeah.

Oh, but that's the cat or dog. Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, what are you? Dog teeth. Yes. Oh. Is that true?

It's all the fair? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This thought experiment posed in 1935 shed new light on quantum mechanics. Everyone?

What is? is Schrodinger's cat. Yeah. The name of Keanu Reeves band and also the brightest star in the night sky. Colin? Isn't it dog star? Yes. What is?

No, he said, isn't it dog star? Yeah. It is a more than a question. You're right. My natural tick. This is the name for a duo tone textile pattern characterized by broken checks or abstract four pointed shapes. Is this? dog tooth?

Yes. Oh. Okay. It's also hounds hounds tooth. But also, you know, dog teeth worked so well for me. All right, yeah. I've learned now, Chris has just taught me, like, if I think I'm close, just substitute dog for anything related to dog, and that's the answer.

Yeah, exactly. This 1957 children's book led directly to the creation of beginner books, a publishing house focused on producing books for young readers. What is the cat in the hat? Yes. Oh. This game played with two people features a series of string figures. What is Cat's Cradle?

Yeah. This is a 1999 film starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Karen. What is Dogma? Yes. Ah. Yes. This is the name for Shepon's waltz and D major flat, opus 64, number one,

also known as the minute waltz. What does Chopin name this waltz? This is the name Shopan named Yeah Feels like something like cat maybe Yeah, Catherine Like cat

What is the cat waltz? You know what? Oh, I was going to say What is the dog waltz if he was running? Yeah So there was a 50-50 chance It's the little dog waltz Oh, that is cute

Yeah, he was watching his little dog running around chasing his tail And he wrote a waltz about it Last question. The first recorded use of this idiom was in 1651 in a collection of poems, O'Lor Iskinas. Chris. Will it be, it's raining cats and dogs? Yes.

Oh, I was going to say cats got your dog. That's what I was going to guess, yeah. Raining cats and dogs. 1651. Good job, you guys. So for this episode, I was like, okay, Karen, what are some burning questions you have about cats and or dogs? question number one So I've heard of six-toed cats

Oh yeah That happens That's a very common My family We had six-toed cats Like Ernest Hemingway You hear about his crazy six-toed cats And they're all still there in Kew-S

So I know polydactyl-ly Happens in cats It's common to have six-toed cats Or even seven-toed cats But I was like, okay Was there any cat that just had The most number of toes Like what's that one cat

And how many toes did it happen? So I found out Normal cats usually have a total of 18 toes, five toes on each front paw, and four toes on the hind paws. Tiger, a Canadian polydactal cat, 27 toes. Wow. Normal number of toes is 18. And it's an odd number, too. That's like a fan.

Yeah. Were they all on all the extra ones on his front? Oh, my God. There's so many. That's like 19 toes between. They were all on one paw, just all running down the leg. I don't know if those count as toes anymore. So it's typically it's 5-5-4-4 and this is 27.

Yeah, I don't know what the breakdown is. So that's two extra on each paw plus another one. Somewhere. Just throw it in there. If distributed evenly. If distributed evenly. It would be weird if it was just one pot. I like the extra just one for good measure.

27. I don't know if it's an advantage to have a, you know, for cats to be polydactyl. It can't be. Maybe not that nail things. He was like Spider-Man. Yeah. It's like a gecko. I bet you they were vestigil or didn't really do anything, you know, and just sort of hung out.

So the other question I had, and I'm not sure how I'm going to explain this. Hopefully you guys understand. So in English, we have classic dog names like Fido, Spot, or Rover. It's like generic maybe. It's kind of like John Doe or their actual names used for an unidentified thing. I think generic is probably, as Dana says, probably the closest. Yeah. But it's a name name.

It's not just like, oh, I call a spider a bug. Right, right, right. It's like Spot and Fido are actual names or a Polly for parrot. Yeah, right, right, or Tabby for a Cat or Tiger for a Cat or Tiger for a Cat. So I was like, oh, where did these names come from? Spot, I think most people know, comes from the 30s. There are a series of books, like the Dick and Jane books, yep. Dick and Jane and Spot.

Their pet dog was Spot. And those books were published for like, for like 40 years. So that's kind of the iconic dog name. And then there's Fido, which is derived from the Latin term for faithful. Oh, okay. Yeah, right. Yeah. And maybe the popularity comes from the fact that President Abraham Lincoln had a dog called Fido.

Really? Yeah. So that might be the reason why Fido kind of stuck. And I was curious about in other cultures if the same phenomenon happens too. And I'm, you know, I threw it out to Facebook and. Twitter and asked our international listeners to contribute. So these names are just like Spahn Fido. They are the iconic placeholder name for any dog.

So in French, it is Medore. And in Australia, it's interesting. It's Difa or Difer. And it comes from D for dog. For D for D for dogs. So they just say Difa or D4. Okay. In Germany, it is Bello.

And Bello is comes from. from bark, like a barker. In Colombia, it is Tommy. And lastly, in Sweden, it is BAMSA. It's spelled B-A-M-S-E, B-A-M-S-A for teddy bear. Oh, really? Yeah. So my next burning question is sometimes there will be a dog on TV. And I'm always curious. I was like, do real-life dogs, can they see dogs on the screen? Do they understand what's going on? Yes. Wait, really? Based on a research, recent research back in February 2013, the results show that dogs recognize and can recognize dog species on a screen. They conducted a study.

They would show all these domesticated dogs pairs of images. One would be of a dog breed and the other would be a human or another animal. Most of these dogs showed interest to the dog. And the really interesting thing is there's so many different types of. breeds. And they look so different, but somehow dogs can categorize that that goes into a dog category. That is amazing, actually, because there's such variety of dogs. They've never seen before. Like a chihuahua to a St. Bernard. They are able to form visual category of dog face and group them in a different group than other animals. I have one last burning question.

There are few things in life that are better than dogs and bandanas. I think. Dogs and bandanas is like the best thing. Like, it's so cute. I don't know why. And I don't know. They're so sporty and preppy. Yeah, it is. With the bandana tied around their neck like a Boy Scout?

Yeah. I know what you mean. Or a cowboy. It's because it kind of humanizes them a little bit, maybe. But at the same time, it's like, I grew up in a different country. Like, it's a worldwide kind of phenomenon of putting kerchiefs on dog necks. And it's so cute. I was like, where did it come from?

So this was your Google search is Why Are Dogs and Bandanas Cute? Who was the first person? Like was there like some sort of pop culture icon or the movies that are, you know, that popularized couldn't find anything. Couldn't find anything. And I think I read some theories that maybe it was back in the day people can tell their dogs apart. Yeah, yeah, sure. But then that also assumes that you live in a place where a lot of dogs look the same.

It was like a collar. Oh yeah, maybe it could be. ran across a story recently about sometimes there are coyote attacks in neighborhoods and whenever you spot a coyote you're supposed to call either your fire department or the police and tell them like oh there's you know i see a coyote and a lot of people were accidentally spotting coyotes they would spot like a dog you know in the neighborhood and they were so many false alarms in fact that the town issued a rule that you had to put kerchiefs on dogs or bandanas on dogs so that one

When you see a moving four-legged thing and you see that has been down, you're like, oh, okay, that's not a coyote. It's a dog. Or it's a very smart coyote. Couldn't find anything. I need to know. I agree with you. It is definitely cute. Who started it?

It's the best. Maybe somebody knows. Yes. Please write in looking at my dog. And I put a bandana on him and I was like, why, why Cisco? Tell me why. Why is it so cute? guys wear bandanas it's so cute all right let's take a quick ad break a word from our sponsor the new bemo

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keeps the fun going. Keep the fun going. And we're back. listening to Good Job Brain this week. We're talking about cats and dogs. We may all already know, based on the archetypal story of the cat trapped up in the tree and the firemen having to climb up to save the cat, right? Cats like heights. Cats really like heights. They have an affinity for heights. It's a good vantage point for hunting. It may also provide concealment. They just really enjoy climbing up stuff. They do. They like being up high. And so when cats

climb up things they tend to fall off things a lot too we all know the old saying that a cat always lands on its feet and of course we've probably either done this experiment with our cats or uh or just seen it in action when you just throw your cat oh you drop your cat or you throw your cat or your cat falls off i'm not gonna lie and say that i haven't done that when i was a kid who among us has not thrown our cat um you know you drop them upside out and they land right side up all the time most of the time every time It wasn't really until like slow motion cameras that we really had an idea of like what cats were doing Because they kind of figured the cats they just turned in the air But you can't just turn in the air

Rigid bodies can't just turn in the air If you or I were to throw ourselves like off a cliff Which I'm not for one second suggesting that we do Unless there's clown firemen holding that net thing Then it's totally okay Then you do it And even if you had all the time in the world we would have a really, really hard time and probably would find it impossible to try to turn ourselves back the other way.

Like, we wouldn't be able to orient ourselves so we fall a certain way. But cats, due to having really flexible bodies and this reflex built in, it's called the cat writing reflex. R-I-G-T-I-N-G writing. You look at me, hey, you spelled out right, and then I was like, is it going to be I-N-G? I-E-G, just building up the suspense. They twist and they deform their bodies in mid-air. If you watch it in slow motion, it's this very complicated procedure of them, like, twist one part of their body while they twist another part in a different direction,

and they pull in their paws, and they push out the other paws, so they're able to, like, it's some crazy stuff. The first thing they do is they figure out which way is down, and they do that with their eyes, and they look. And if a cat can't see, they are going to have a harder time landing on their feet because they're using their sight to determine where is the ground. They're also using their internal balance inner ear things that we all have to, their vestibular system, if you will, which is what it is called. And then when they land, they absorb the shock by bending their legs. You may know that cats are known to occasionally fall from dizzying heights and survive.

You hear on the news about like, oh, a cat in Manhattan fell out the 29th story of a high-rise building and is alive. The cat's name invariably is like lucky. Yeah. And they might have some broken bones and they might have some internal injuries, but they heal or they go to the vet and they heal the bones. But the cat lives, something that would have killed literally any other non-bird creature. In 1987, some researchers in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association decided that they were going to collect and look at some data of cats that had fallen from Great Heights. This specifically looked at 132 cats that had been brought into the Animal Medical Center Veterinary Hospital in New York City following a fall out of a tall building. You may say, that's a lot of cats that they were able to 132.

That just came in. Yeah, they just came in to the hospital. It seems like lots of cats fall out of buildings in New York City. As it turns out, they do. There is a phenomenon that veterinarians call high-rise syndrome. And the cats tend to fall out of windows when they're living in really tall buildings. Because, well, we already know, they like heights. They enjoy going to the window sill and enjoy the feeling of being super high up.

But then they're not in a tree, like they can't, like, grab onto branches and stuff. It's slippery. And they might see something that distracts them. Like, cats will get very fixated on prey or whatever. And they might get fixated on a bird and be like, oh, I'm going to get that bird. Oh, and now I'm out the window. Yeah, yeah. Falling, falling, falling.

So, the study found that of the 132 cats that were brought in for falling out of high windows, 90% of them survived. That's amazing. Yes, it is amazing. Now, you have to take this number with a bit of a grain of salt because it's a self-selecting sample, because the cats that were brought to the hospital with injuries, 90% of those survived. If a cat falls out the window and is clearly broken into a million pieces, you don't bring it to the vet, right? You have a little cat funeral.

So it is a self-selecting sample, but still, 90% of it. of cats that fell out of the windows and were brought to the vet actually did survive. But then, when they started looking at the data of these cats, they found something that is really, really interesting. With the cat fell out the window on the first floor, the cat would maybe get some minor injuries and survive minor injuries. The cat falls out of the second floor window. The cat's injuries are slightly worse, on average.

The cats who fell out of the second floor window, their injuries were worse than the the cats who fell out the first floor, as you might imagine. Yeah. Third floor, injuries are even worse. Fourth floor, injuries are even worse. Fifth floor, injuries are even worse. Sixth floor, the injuries they sustain, on average, are even worse than the cats who fell out of the floors below them.

Seventh floor, injuries they sustain are even worse than all the floors below them. Totally making sense. Eighth floor, injuries aren't as bad. What? Ninth floor, injuries aren't as bad. 10th floor, injuries, not as bad as cats who fall out of the floor is 7, 6, 5451. There's like a weird cutoff. There's a weird cutoff.

In fact, you can go all the way up to the tippy, tippy top floors of buildings. And the injuries that the cats sustain are not as bad as the injuries that they sustained on the 7th, 6th, 5th floors or thereabouts. I remember hearing about this. Yeah, it's a crazy, it's a crazy thing. So what is going on? Yeah. Yeah, because even if they, even they're able to switch their way with writing, you still have a lot of impact. I mean, you still have to travel a lot with property working.

But if you own a cat and you're living in a Manhattan high rise, the cat is safer living on the eighth floor than the seventh floor or higher. Now, the reason why this happens is a matter of some debate. The theory that was advanced by the veterinarians that did this were, okay, well, the cats, if they fall out of the seventh floor, they don't have, time before they hit the ground to attain terminal velocity, which means that they're accelerating all the way down. Or they don't have time to, like, get themselves in position. And they're basically saying that if the cat is high enough, then he gets to terminal velocity, which is the point at which you stop accelerating, which is just you're going

down to the ground at a constant rate of speed. At that point, the cat might relax and almost in the way that a flying squirrel might, you know, is sort of like spreads out a little bit. and has more time to ready himself for that impact, and actually might even create more drag and might fall more slowly and is thus able to absorb more of the impact. So it seems like cats need, it's something like if they have enough time in the air,

they can really prepare themselves for the landing. This is not to say that they are not injured. They can be very severely injured from these falls, but they live. But that the 20th floor is not statistically more dangerous than the 11th floor. Yeah, that's right. Now, again, self-selecting sample, it may be the case that if you're higher than the seventh floor, you're probably dead anyway, so they don't bring them to the vet. You know, it could be that sort of thing.

This is based on a study of these cats. Yeah, and then a lot of anecdotal evidence. But that is what they found. Wow. Yeah. I love stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, not to say I love stuff like cats falling out of building.

So what I love is counterintuitive findings. Well, we've been talking about real cats and dogs, and I'm going to talk about a fake dog. Oh, thank goodness. Cerberus, do you guys know who that is? Yes, that is the dog that guards the gates of Hades, right? And what's interesting about the dog? Aside from his three heads. He's polyheadle.

So if he has three heads and three brains, is he really one dog or three dogs? Dana, you just blew my mind. So a little bit of background. When we think of Cerberus, probably we'll think like a black dog with three heads. Or I think of like the Harry Potter. Fluffy. The actual Greek mythological creature, yes, it has three heads, sometimes more, depending on different depictions. But it's not just a dog.

It's a certified monster. It has a mane, and the main is made out of snakes. It has a tail, and it's a snake tail. Oh, jeez. Yeah, so it's not just kind of mostly snakes, actually. Yeah, most of so is there a real dog? It's snakes using a dog body to get around. It's the offspring of Echidna, not the animal.

Echina is the hybrid half woman and half serpent in Greek mythology known as the mother of monsters. Its dad is Typhon, which is a gigantic monster, known as the father of monsters. Together, the mother and father has spawned Cerberus, Chimera, and the Hydra. And another sibling, Orthus, is a two-headed, two-headed dog creature. What famous story did Cerberus make an appearance in? What famous Greek story? Is it the Odyssey? Was it, no, it was the one where he had to go get his girlfriend back, right?

Oh, wait, was it the one with the girlfriend? There are a lot of them about the girlfriend. I can't remember who the protagonist were. Is it the Persefini one? Cerberus is famously the 12th labor, the 12th task of Hercules. We have a mnemonic for this, too. The last task, because Cerberus is a symbol of guarding and security, there's a lot of technological companies naming their products.

Severus, because it is the most famous guardian, including this one thing. It is a blue, egg-shaped, kind of looks like a Dalek from Dr. Hu. but blue. It's an ultrasound device that is used to detect almost anything underwater. It's made by Kinetic with two cues because it's very edgy and technological. And this is used by military forces all over the world. And it can distinguish a diver from a dolphin, from a seal, anything that is in the water. It can identify just by the ultrasound. It just made the news recently this year because Kinetic, the company that made Serber is, made their first sale that's non-military use.

Oh. And that is for treasure hunting. Is it? Paranoiax. For America's Cup right here in San Francisco. Okay. Yes. The big yachting sports event that happened.

It occurred a couple months ago. It was the first non-military cyber risk system that they put in the water. And it detected a bunch of stuff. Pretty cool. And it looks like a toy. It looks like you'd think like a crazy ultrasound device would look like something like black or stealthy. No, bright blue. I'm just going to venture, I guess, that since their primary customers have been the military and the America's Cup, that they're not cheap.

No, I'm going to guess this is not something you can just buy a Radio Shack. Yeah. And one more Cerberus-related thing, there is a protein called the Cerberus Protein. It's associated with the development of extra heads. Oh. There are tests with tadpoles in mice that this protein may be associated with inducing multiple heads. Can we all eat it and grow extra heads? I could use an extra head.

What if it's brain dead and you just have to carry it around? What if it's not? You're right. What if you hate it? What if it's really annoying? This Christmas, Adam Sandler, in too many heads. Yeah. I feel like he's already done that movie.

So there you go. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go Network. And the weekday group passes offer the same weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash. And Colin, you have a last quiz for us. It's sort of a quiz. It's quiz-ish.

It's not un-quizz-like. Let me start with a quizoid. Let me pose a question for you guys here. True or false. Only house cats are capable of purring. Big cats like lions, tigers, and lepers cannot purr. True or false? Tell me what you think.

Or what you may have heard. I say all cats purr. Right, I'll see false all cats purr. Oh, false. Other things besides house cats can purr. I'm trying to remember if I'm misremembering this, but I could have sworn there was a baby lion and it was purring. It was very cute. I'm going to say false.

It is false. All philids are capable of what we would call purring. Capable. But for a very, very long time, they thought that this was true. And in fact, you'll still see this in some trivia. collections even and I remember learning this growing up I've read this on more than one place that like oh you know big cats can't purr and they would talk about like the trade-off like they can roar or they can purr but cats that you know so like lions tigers like they always thought for a very long time that that that they could not purr turns out that this actually uh is in fact false like researchers these days nobody ever really was able to cozy up to them close enough to find out if they did you too crack the case yeah but uh they just it's just like in the last dozen years or so they they they that researchers are finally saying, yeah, you know, we think that the big cats are, in fact, capable of purring. And no one really knows exactly what purring is.

Like, no one's exactly sure what it is. Like, there's nothing, there's nothing unique to cats' physiology that they don't have anything special that other animals don't have. Yeah, there's no, there's no purr box on a cat, like, oh, this is where the purring comes from. And it doesn't, huh, really, I figured they would. They have some theories about it. I'm not going to get too into the anatomy here, but it comes down, one of the beliefs comes down to the hyoid bone, which we have one in our throat. It's a U-shaped bone. It's in the middle of your throat.

So they used to think that the cats in panthera. So that's like your lions, your leopards, like the big cat. Yeah, sure, the panther family, as opposed to like house cats, or felus genus. And in some cats, it ossifies or hardens. And they used to think that the ability to purr was connected to whether they had a high or. bone that was ossified or not. Turns out all the big cats, even with ossified bones,

non-osified bones, are able of purring. It's just at a little bit different frequency than house cats. So yes, all cats are capable of purring. All right, another question for you guys. Do cats purr on the inhale or on the exhale?

Oh, wow. That's a good pop trivia question. Um, on the inhale. Wow. This is tough. I don't know. I don't know. All right.

I'm trying to remember. It's a trick question, and I apologize. It is both. I do not accept your apology. They purr on the inhale and on the exhale, house cats. Yeah, and it's, if you listen to it. They're like Kenny G. Circular purring.

The circular purr. It's a slightly different sound, and it vibrates slightly differently, but they can do it both ways. So, like, as long as they're breathing, it's inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, they're purring. The one difference here is with the big cats. The big cats, that's, they're purring. can purr, it's only on the exhale. Okay. So they're structured a little bit differently.

All right. Last question for you guys here. Why do cats purr? It's relaxing. Okay. They're trying to trick you into doing something. Okay. Okay.

All right. Because they do whatever they want. You know what? I think all three of you guys are right. All three of you guys are right. Again, like in addition to them not totally understanding the mechanism of purring, no one's exactly sure why is it that cats purr. I mean, all we can do is observe their behavior.

I mean, and obviously, the most classic example is they purr when they're happy. And it's true. If you've got a cat in your lap, you're scratching its ears or rubbing its belly, or they're going to purr and they're going to be really happy. And so it generally seems like they do it when they're content. But it's not really clear why they feel the need to signify that they're happy. One theory is that it's part of just being domesticated over the years, that it endears them to people. And it does. Maniculation.

But Dana, as you say, to trick you into doing something, a lot of people think that the purring, they notice like cats will do when they're hungry. They'll do it if they want you to feed them. And they think that it may be a way of like calling attention to themselves like, hey, I need something. Come feed me. They've also noticed that cats will purr when they're injured or are under a lot of stress as well. Like that that that is also common. So it's kind of like the two extremes of either super, super relaxed or super stressed and under tension. This is interesting. Researchers have discovered that they think that purring can actually accelerate healing. Like that just the sole vibration for themselves. Okay.

That they... Paring cats in the hospital. I'm like, I don't get it. Some studies have shown that it may, in fact, accelerate healing or at the very minimum is a way of kind of them calming themselves. Or just sort of, all right, I purr when I'm content. So maybe I can trigger some contentment by purring the other way. Going back to the little bit of manipulation, I don't know if you guys heard of John Katz. John Katz, he's a American journalist and an author in Hebrew a lot of books and articles about dogs,

as pets and human relationship. So funny that his name is cats. He writes about dogs. And one thing he mentioned in his book was the theory that cats and dogs may be classified as social parasites. Yeah. That technically the dogs aren't really working dogs anymore in most cases where we have dogs as pets.

And so they're not really contributing to any work. Yeah. We feed them. We give them a house. Related to that is they think, a lot of cat behaviors have been developed just in response to living with people, like, meowing. Cats out in the wild, like feral cats or cats that don't live with people, adult cats don't

meow to each other. Like, mother cats will meow sometimes to their kittens or vice versa. The kittens like, hey, I'm hungry. Feed me. They'll mew. But they grow out of that. And people think that cats meowing to people, they're trying to talk to you. They've learned it from you talking to them.

It serves no purpose in cat world. And there you go. That's our show about cats and dogs. dogs. Thank you guys for joining me and thank you guys listeners for listening and hope you learn a lot of stuff about purring, about, well, not about dogs and bananas, because that's still a mystery. Someone better find that out. You can find our show on iTunes, on Stitcher, on SoundCloud, and on our website, good job, brain.com. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye. Mio, meal, bro.

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