Science Friday - Quantum Leaps, Cancer Drugs, Cat Cameras. June 7, 2019, Part 2

Episode Date: June 7, 2019

The “spooky physics” of the quantum world has long been marked by two key ideas: The idea of superposition, meaning that a quantum particle can exist in multiple states simultaneously, and the idea of randomness, meaning that it’s impossible to predict when certain quantum transitions will take place. Writing in the journal Nature, Zlatko Minev and colleagues report that they may be able to make the quantum behavior slightly less mysterious. Minev joins Ira to talk about the finding, and what new directions it might open up in quantum research. For patients whose cancer has metastasis, the options can be limited. While new drugs are being developed, they are often only approved for a specific subset or stage of cancer—sometimes even a specific age group. However, researchers are looking to expand on a pool of patients that can get these new drugs. Dr. Sara Hurvitz, the director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at UCLA, joins Ira to talk about how a drug that was approved for breast cancer in postmenopausal women may soon be available for younger patients. Plus, Dr. Neeraj Agarwal, the director of the Genitourinary Oncology Program, to talk about a new treatment option for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. If you want the real scoop on what your cat is doing while you’re away, researchers are studying that very question, using cat cameras. Our feline friends spend quite a lot of time outside of our line of sight, and we imagine them napping, bathing, playing, hunting. But that’s merely speculation. To get the data, researchers need to catch them in the act. Maren Huck, Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby in the UK, recently published a methodological study where she successfully tracked the movements of 16 outdoor domestic cats to find out what they were up to. She joins Ira to discuss the findings, which she published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science. Plus, cat behavior specialist and University California Davis Veterinary School researcher Mikel Delgado joins the conversation to talk more about catching cat behavior on camera, and what we can learn from recording their secret lives.   Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we'll be talking about new advances in cancer drugs and what your cats do when you're not there. But first, the spooky physics of the quantum world has long been marked by two key ideas. There's the idea of superpositioning, meaning that a quantum particle can exist in multiple states simultaneously, and the idea of randomness, meaning that it's impossible. to predict where certain quantum transitions will take place. But now researchers say that they may be able to make the quantum behavior slightly less mysterious. By using a sensitive form of continuous monitoring, they have been able to identify signs that a quantum leap is imminent in an artificial atom. The timing of the leap is still completely random.

The researchers cannot predict when it will happen, but they do get a warning flag of an upcoming jump, a few, microseconds before it occurs. Let me introduce my guests who will explain it. Slakomenev is a research scientist at IBM quantum computing in Yorktown Heights, New York. He did his work as part of his post-doctoral dissertation

at Yale, published this week in the journal Nature. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Minow. Ira, it's a pleasure to be on Science Friday. Phil, it's our pleasure to have you. Thank you. Set this scene for us. What is a quantum leap?

That's a great question. Well, that goes back to the very founding of quantum physics, and BOR's ideas that in quantum physics, unlike in classical physics, the energy of an atom can only take discrete levels. For instance, it can only be measured to ever be zero, one, two, or three, and it can never be, so to speak, in the middle. Well, then the question is, how does the atom transition from one discrete energy to another without ever tracking a flight in between the two.

And Boer's idea to answer this was a quantum jump. And this was a big debate in physics, right, between Boer and Einstein and Schrodinger. You're absolutely right. Yes, Boer had this idea in 1913, and as was then thought that these jumps occur in an abrupt, almost instant, in an abrupt instantaneous fashion. Now, Schrodinger, on the other hand, another chief architect of quantum physics, had quite the opposite to say about it.

He actually quite almost polemically opposed the whole idea of quantum jumps altogether. He wrote an article called, Are there Quantum Jumps? In which he wrote, If all this damn quantum jumping were really here to stay, I should be sorry I ever got involved with quantum physics. we can maybe understand some of Schrodinger's uneasiness about these discrete abrupt transitions

and that nothing within the jurisdiction of Schrodinger's equation, which governs basically quantum physics, ever jumps or is abrupt or instantaneous. Let's talk about what you did. You developed a way to monitor the behavior of an artificial atom very closely. Why did you do that? How did you do that and what did you see? Exactly. And maybe to lead into that, I should explain that these quantum jumps were not observed for about seven years after Bore proposed them.

And Borr Schrodinger and others went back and forth. And in about 1986, there was three simultaneous experiments in atomic physics, which observed quantum jumps for the first time. And in all those experiments, we indeed observed these discrete random, transitions between the energy levels of these atoms. And so in a sense, the story has since been these quantum jumps do indeed exist and occur by this manner. Now, in our experiment,

we go back to those original observations and look at the very, take basically a metaphorical lens to the experiment, zooming in on the very fine timescale, where the time of that quantum jump is said to occur, where we see that abrupt transition. Until now, in a sense, this has been far out of reach of experimental atomic physics,

because it hinges on the ability to resolve every single photon that's being emitted by the atom. And in our experiment, what with this measurement scheme I proposed we're able to do is to actually look at the time of the last, piece of information the atom emits, the last photon, the last flash of light, and zoom into the very vast dynamics of where the transition is said to occur. This abrupt transition, what we observe is that on this fine time scale, the jumps are actually not discrete, but continuous,

coherent, and in the sense that the jump has a flight and mid-flight, it's in a superposition of having jumped and having not jumped, a Schrodinger, a cat-like state of the atom didn't jump and did jump between the ground state and the excited state. And not only that, but surprisingly, every single time a quantum jump occurs between the ground state and excited state in these systems, the glide between the ground and excited state is always the same.

It's predictable. So are you able to know then when it's going to make the leap? Right. Is there a warning, a flag that comes up, that says, oh, oh, here comes a leap? You're absolutely right. Exactly.

It's subtle in the sense that we can't say, you know, Sunday at 2 p.m. there's going to be a quantum jump, but Sunday at 159 p.m., right before a quantum jump does occur, there are certain telltale signals that you can detect that there's a process underway, a transition that's about to turn into a quantum jump. And so in that sense, you can always get this advanced warning of a quantum jump occurring and always catch it mid-flight before it does occur and this deterministically prevent it from occurring.

How do you do that? How do you prevent it from making the leap? Well, the trick consists in two parts. The first part is to be a bit. be able to catch the quantum jump to detect this advanced warning signal, to make a kind of loose analogy. You know, you could say that quantum jumps of an atom are somewhat analogous to the eruption of a volcano. They're completely unpredictable in the long term. You know, no one exactly knows when that will occur. Nonetheless, with the correct monitoring with just the right efficiency and so forth, we can would certainly detect this warning of an imminent disaster and act on it before it has occurred. Now, in the case of the atoms we work with, it turns out that there is a very

particular signal that you can pick out from the measurement. So we observe the atom continuously. When the atom is in the ground state, before it has taken its jump, we see a series of flashes of light. We detect the light that is being scattered by the fault, by the atom. And the way we observe the atom is by shining light on it. And if a lot of light is being scattered, and we see a lot of flashes, then we know with certainty it's in the ground state. On the other hand, if no light is being scattered, there are no flashes, then we know the atom is with certainty in the excited state.

Now if we can look at every single one of those flashes and zoom into the last flash, and we find a lull in the flashes, we find a flash followed by a little of those flashes and we find a flash followed by a lull in the flashes of a very particular duration that is predicted ahead of time. Then we can pause the evolution of the jumps or the atom, or if you want, act. And this is the telltale signal that the flight, the quantum jump is mid-flight. And in fact, here we can see that it's in the superposition state. So condition on measuring the signal by looking at the atom in real, time, we can then apply an intervention, a microwave pulse, that tries to reverse the evolution

of the atom from the ground state to the excited state, right back down to where it started. So you push it back down. Is that like preventing the death of Schrodinger's cat in this case? In a way, I mean, of course, I should clarify that there were no. felines that were harmed or involved in the actual experiment. And here we focus on the excitations of an atom. But if you want, we can, in a sense, anticipate the jump of the cat from, say, the ground to the excited state and reverse it by applying a force of just the right amplitude and

direction. And if you get either the amplitude or direction wrong, then this experiment completely fails. Oh, yeah. Bye-bye, Kat. In the minute or so I have left, can you explain what use is this? I mean, besides pure research, in the realm of pure research, what can you learn from preventing the quantum leap? I think the main message to begin with is that the experiment tells us there's more to the story of quantum physics. and in particular is more to learn about randomness and predictability. There are subtle effects that allow you to do things which you might have thought impossible before.

And now this first demonstration, I think, also shows us that perhaps it could be possible to explore these effects and use these kind of interventions, these detections of early errors. In the control of quantum systems, for instance, in the early detection of error syndromes in, say, quantum error correction, in a quantum computer, if a quantum jump occurs, that can lead to an error in the calculation that one is performing. Now, if one can in a sense potentially anticipate that error before it does occur, then you can prevent it from propagating in your calculation and, you know, corrupting what you're trying to do. I think it also has very interesting applications to quantum sensing and so forth. this is still a very open area of exploration. Well, it's fascinating. I don't think we've ever talked about preventing a quantum leap.

And we wish you great luck, and congratulations on your success. Plotko Minib is research scientist at the IBM Quantum Computing in York Town Heights, New York, and he did his work as part of his doctoral dissertation at Yale. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, how patients with late-stage cancer may soon have more treatment. options. We'll talk about some treatments that work for one kind of cancer, being rethought, and maybe trying it out on another kind of cancer. Maybe it will work there in some cases. We'll talk about after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Cancer treatments have become more

and more effective and specific. But for patients with stage four cancer, the options can be limited. While new drugs are coming to the market, the FDA only approves them for a specific subset or stage of cancer, sometimes even for a specific age group. But researchers are looking to expand the pool of patients that can get these new treatments. And my next guest is one of those researchers. Dr. Sarah Hurwitz is an associate professor and director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at UCLA. She joins me from Los Angeles. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you.

You're researching a breast cancer drug. Tell us about the drug. What is the kind of cancer, breast cancer that it treats? So the drug itself is called ribocyclib, and it belongs to a class of medications called cyclone-dependent kinase-4-6 inhibitors. That's a mouthful, so we call them CDK-4-6 inhibitors. And the type of cancer that this treats, the type that we studied, was hormone receptor positive metastatic breast cancer. There are three different CDK-4-6 inhibitors that are available

and were already FDA approved in the past few years for the treatment of this type of breast cancer. But the one that we were looking at in this particular clinical trial was ribocyclyb, and we were specifically addressing whether or not adding this drug to standard anti-economic. estrogen therapy for this type of breast cancer would improve outcomes for women who are young, who had not yet gone through menopause. This is a patient population that is not typically studied as a whole specifically in a study.

Sometimes young women will be allowed on a trial, but our trial was specifically for them. And you got unexpected results, unexpected positive results with this. Yes, so we already published last year, similar to other studies that have, have been done with other CDK-4-6 inhibitors, we showed that when you add this therapy to standard endocrine therapy, it substantially prolongs the amount of time a woman can live with her breast cancer without it getting worse. Our particular trial, it was greater than a 10-month improvement in what we call progression-free survival or the length of time a woman can have control of her disease before the resistance

develops. What we presented this past week and has received a lot of attention is the fact that we were able to demonstrate that women who received this medication lived longer, period, not just lived longer with the disease controlled, but their survival was better. So if you look at one landmark point, 42 months after the women had been on the study, 46% of the patients who received anti-estrogen therapy alone were still alive, but if you looked at the patients who received this drug called ribocyclib, 70% were still alive. So that's a meaningful difference. And these were younger women, right, whom you gave it to? Yeah, they were all under the age of 59. There were over 670 patients enrolled in this study, and they were all pre or perimenopausal.

So their ovaries hadn't stopped functioning yet. They hadn't gone into menopause. yet. Is it possible then to find even another class of women with breast cancer who might benefit from this mixture? Absolutely. And if you have time for a little story, I can tell you that this class of medications, actually, it's very gratifying to be involved at this point in the story when survival has been demonstrated because I'm part of the laboratory at UCLA that is run and has been funded by Dr. Dennis Sleiman. You may know that name because Slayman in the 19th, 1980s discovered that Her 2, a protein that's expressed on cancer cells, is over-expressed in 20 to 25% of all breast cancers. That's a very poor prognosis-associated cancer.

He was kind of the first to say that there are breast cancer subtypes. And his sentinel findings led to the development of targeted therapy against Her 2, known widely as Herceptin. And that story led to a lot of philanthropic funding and government funding. And he pooled all that funding to develop a large laboratory, which uniquely allows all of his colleagues in cancer research in our division. We all share the resources from the fruits of his labor. And he developed this large cancer cell line panel, 600 different cancer cell lines, so that we could study new drugs and see how they work. You know, when people say why isn't there a cure for cancer, it's because cancer is not one disease. It's like, why isn't there a cure for infection?

There are many, many different subtypes. So he had 50 or so different breast cancer cell lines. And we received a drug in the laboratory around 2008, 2007, from a large pharmaceutical company that blocks this pathway, this cyclone-dependent kinase pathway, which tells the cancer cell that it can't. can divide. It can go into cell division. And the company that handed it over said, look, try it in your cell line panel, treat your cell lines with it and see if you get a signal of a type of cancer where this will work. And so he had a very smart PhD postdoc in his lab by the name of Dylan Conklin, who had tweaked the way that we run this experiment in the laboratory. And he was able to demonstrate with his team, led by Rich Finn, that hormone receptor

positive breast cancer, the most common form of breast cancer, is exquisitely sensitive to this inhibitor. And so that led to a phase one study. I was relatively new. I have to interrupt your story. I know it's an interesting story. I want to bring on another guest. A researcher who's looking to expand uses of cancer drugs. And we'll talk a little bit more about yours. I want to bring on Dr. Naraj Argarwal, who joins me from Salt Lake City. He's a professor of medicine and director of a genitone urinary oncology program for the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. Welcome to Science Friday, Dr. Argar Wong. Thank you very much. You're looking at a new drug for stage four prostate cancer. Tell us about the drug and what type of

cancer cells does it treat. Sure. So as we know, prostate cancer, just taking like a step back, prostate cancer is the most common, one of the most common cancers in American men, just after skin cancer. So if you take out skin cancers, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men. And the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths in American men after lung cancer. So this is a disease which impacts hundreds of thousands of men on a yearly basis. So this clinical study, which I had the privilege of being on the steering committee and steering the whole trial at the global level, included a new drug, Apollutamide, which is a novel androgen receptor inhibitor, which basically means it targets a protein known as androgen receptor,

which drives the cancer cells, prostate cancer cells. So until now, until like from 1942, when it was discovered that testosterone is the fuel for prostate cancer, the strategies to block testosterone production in the gonads became the mainstay of treatment. And that did not change until 2013 when addition of chemotherapy a front or a drug aberrateron with steroid were shown to improve. survival. So fast forward, moving to 2019, we were using chemotherapy with dositaxil or this drug aberrateron, which requires concomitant steroids for many years. Those were the two standards for these men. Now, in 2019, we published this study in New England General of Medicine just last week, and this is about a large phase three trial, more than 1,000 men, with advanced on metastatic prostate cancer, newly diagnosed, and they were randomized to standard androgen deprivation

therapy versus androgen deprivation therapy with this new drug, Apalutamine. And what we saw was really remarkable, both dual primary endpoint of this trial, which were overall survival and progression-free survival, which basically means how long the disease was contained by this drug and was not allowed to progress. So progression-free survival. Both were remarkably and statistically significantly improved by adding apollutamide. There was a 33% reduction in the risk of death and 52% reduction in risk of progression of disease. So, given based on these findings and of course I would like to add something really quick whenever we talk about these newer drugs

we always worry about side effects yes we are getting two extra years three extra years for these men but what at what cost so the the remarkable part of this study was that the quality of life in men who were receiving apollutamide was preserved and maintained while they were under treatment despite getting many months to years with survival benefit. So overall, if you look at grade three, four side effects, which we call as clinically significant side effects,

were very similar in both harms, 42% versus 40%. So yes, this drug improves survival outcomes and doesn't increase side effects and maintain quality of life. So that's what I would like to want it to something. So do you think this will become a standard practice of using this new drug? That's a great question. So I wouldn't say this will be the only standard practice. A similar drug, anzalutamide was also shown to improve survival, the overall survival in this meeting.

At the same time when our paper was published and presented, so I think these two drugs, which belong to this novel class of drugs known as direct and direct drugs, as direct androgen receptor inhibitor, I think they will become the mainstay of treatment in these patients. Most of my patients have very few patients who are very enthusiastic about getting chemotherapy or steroids for long durations. So I think this is a very welcome change or a welcome option for those patients. Dr. Hurwitz, do you think there are other drug combinations that are out there?

And I mean, in different permutations that have yet to be tried, that might be successful. in treating breast cancer? Yes, absolutely, and I'm struck by Dr. Argywal's results. They're very similar to the ones I've been discussing, and I think it's fascinating because both of these studies were dealing with a hormonally driven, highly common cancer, and both studies, I think, showed that when you add a new agent to a hormonally directed therapy, you get great outcomes. The pipeline for new targeted therapies for many cancers, not just breast cancer, it seems like it's exploding.

At this meeting, I think many of us meet with one another academic centers and industry partners discussing some very exciting therapies that are on the forefront and will hopefully show promising results like the ones that we're presenting here today. Dr. Harker, well, do you agree there are other combinations and other benefits to looking at drugs that are available all the time and then finding new combinations for them? Yeah, absolutely. I think this is just a start for us. All these men doesn't matter how much we have improved survival. This remains a fatal disease down the line. And there's so much we need to be done. And I think, you know, anything we can do to make the drug development faster and availability to our patients, make it easier for these drugs to become available to our patients. I think anything we can do in that direction, we should do it. It seemed to be saying that the side effects or the lack of that actually makes them more tolerable for these patients, and that's why they're willing to take them. Yes, all these new drugs, I tell my patients, they usually have less than 10% side effects

what we used to see with traditional chemotherapies. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Dr. Hurwitz, do you find that true with your new medicines? Yeah, sometimes the new therapies that we look at have a great effect, a great benefit, but the side effects are something that we really have to manage and deal with. So there are some therapies that don't show a benefit in terms of quality of life parameters. As a note, most of our clinical trials now require us to survey patients throughout the study

to ensure that their quality of life is preserved. It's now a mandate. The ribocyclib therapy, similar to what Dr. Agarwal is talking about, is also incredibly well-tolerated. Patients feel well on this drug and are generally not affected. They're able to lead productive, high-quality life. If these are drugs that are not normally prescribed

for those types of cancers, will medical insurance or Medicare pay for these drugs? Yes, so it's a great question. The cost of these new therapies is certainly something to consider, and the therapy I'm discussing is already FDA approved, So this is just sort of cementing in stone, if you will, that the benefits are quite important and significant. But on a global perspective, you know, in speaking with colleagues overseas, drugs like this are approved, but that doesn't mean that they'll be funded.

Many health care systems will require that overall survival be demonstrated before funding will occur. So my hope is that now that survival benefit has been demonstrated that the access to this life, saving medication will be broadened globally. And I'd also like to point out that, as you mentioned, you know, this drug is FDA approved for metastatic breast cancer, but it's now being evaluated in the curative setting. There are ongoing studies to evaluate whether or not we can reduce the risk of recurrence for early stage disease. Is that true also of your drug combination, Dr. Agarwal, will it be reimbursed by Medicare

or drug companies or insurance companies? Yeah, so we are waiting for FDA approval, approval of this drug, appalutamide, and we are really hoping that FDA will approve the apollutamide for patients with metastatic, castration sensitive, or advanced prostate cancer very soon. And where can people learn more about your drug and also your drug, too, Dr. Hurwitz? Yes, so online. There are a number of resources online and available at just Googling the ribocyclib or cyclone-dependent kinase 4-6 inhibitor is a good resource. There are a number of other online resources where you can find out information. Daggerwa. I agree.

It's so much easier to find information now compared to what we used to have like 10 years ago even. So Apalutamide is the name. and Googling with apollutamide, I think we'll get a lot of answers, but there are a lot of good places to look for these drugs and more information. I think I would start with Prostate Cancer Foundation, American Cancer Society, and so on. All right, we've run out of time. I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today, Dr. Sarah Hurwitz, Hervitz, Associate Professor and Director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at UCLA,

Dr. Naraj Agarwal is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Genito-Urinary Oncology Program for the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the University of Utah. Dr. Herbert, Dr. Herbert, Dr. Agarwal, thank you for being with us both today. Thank you. We're going to take a break, and we come back. It's the real-life secret of pets. What are your cats doing when you're not around?

Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. When it debuted in 2016, the Secret Life. of pets, rack number one opening weekend, and it raked in over a hundred million bucks. Not a bad haul for an animated movie about the

adventures of apartment dwelling cats and dogs, and one rabbit named Snowball. What makes that movie so appealing, even worthy of a sequel, is this one question that I'm sure every pet owner has. What are my pets doing? When I'm not at home to see?

Well, researchers are starting to figure out how to answer that question for cats. Our feline friends, spend quite a lot of time outside of our line of sight, either napping or bathing or playing or hunting. But that's merely speculation because, well, we don't know what they're doing. So to get the data, researchers need to catch them in the act on camera. They need cat cams, and that's what they did.

My next guest recently published a mythologically study where she successfully tracked the movements of 16 outdoor domestic cats to find out what they were up to. She joins me now via Skype from the UK. Marron Hook is a senior lecturer at the University of Derby. Dr. Hook, welcome to Science Friday. Welcome. Sorry, good evening. Good evening. Good afternoon, probably. Yes, it is. Thank you. You were the first person to do something like this on this scale, 16 cat cameras. What made you want to try something like this? I'm by no means the first one who did this. So there have been other people who have used cat cameras on cats and probably even on more cats.

They had a slightly different approach to it. So they used it to answer a specific question like how much are they hunting and things like that or how often do they cross dangerous roads from the animal welfare perspective. And I have done this coming from a similar direction. because I wanted to know how much their hunt as well. But when I watched the videos, I thought, actually, we can get much more out of it, and we can actually see what kind of behaviors they are doing. And I was intrigued to use that because often it's very difficult to find out what animals are doing

when they are out of sight, obviously. And it is very likely that animals behave differently when no observer is there. Why are people so interested in this To know what their cats are doing? Well, there are various angles to this. So there's obviously the angle to the whole predation problem of cats So that you want to know what they are hunting, how much they are hunting,

with there are certain types of habitats where they are hunting more So that you can try to regulate the hunting more and also to try to find out with there are certain things that can be done to reduce it. There's also the cat's behavior study perspective or the cat's welfare perspective. So we can learn much more about the behavior of the cats. And quite a lot of people like cats very much, and they're great companions. And so we want to understand the animals that we are living with and what they are up to, I guess. Yeah, can you give us some results of what you saw the cats doing? What were they doing?

Well, cats are obviously very, I would say, patient animals. So what you can see them doing a lot is just sitting around. But being alert. So you can see from the cat camera footage that they're sitting for half an hour or more at the same spot. But you can see from the flight movement in the video camera that they are constantly. constantly scanning their surroundings, seeing what's going on. But interspers with that, there's also quite a lot of exploration, for example. So a little bit of sniffing here, a little bit of sniffing there. There might be the odd encounter with a neighbor cat. And that, again, I found very interesting the way, how they interact when no other humans are around.

Yeah, so that was quite interesting for me. I'd like to bring in another cat researcher who is using cat cameras in her work. Michael Delgado, postdoctoral researcher at the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. Dr. Delgado, welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. What intrigued you about Dr. Huck's study when you saw it? Did Dr. Hook come up with anything that you found unusual? I loved that the study really focused on methodology because so many times we were,

We see the results of a study, and we don't ask, how did the scientists collect the data? And so this study was really important because not only did Dr. Hook look at what was showing on the cat cams, but they validated that data by also doing a second camera on the cat where they could see what the cat's perspective was compared with what they actually observed the cat doing. So that really helps those of us that do study cats understand what are the best methods and what can we displace? from a cat cam. What can't we discern from a cat cam? So I don't want to speak for Dr. Hook, but I know some behaviors were easier to track from the cat cam than others, behaviors like scratching and climbing versus perhaps, you know, it's more difficult to discriminate between resting or sleeping. And so that really can help future researchers refine their methods in

studying cats using catcams and knowing what they can use them for and what they might need to use other methods for. We've all heard the old expression about how difficult it is to bel a cat. How difficult is it to place a camera on a cat who will actually cooperate with you, Dr. Hook? I think there are two types of cats really. They're the cats

that perhaps after a little bit of being slightly disgruntled or so will tolerate the collar quite well I would say cheerfully, not quite, but they don't mind it too much and then there are cats where you

immediately see they don't accept the caller and then we obviously wouldn't continue trying it. So if the cat says no, then it is a clear no for welfare reasons. But the cats that I tried it on and those for which we had the data didn't show any signs of distress essentially. Dr. Delgado, how successful have you been on putting cameras on cats? So we're not putting cameras on cats. studying indoor cats and we have a separate camera monitoring the cats. We did use accelerometers, so little fitness sort of, you know, activity trackers on the cats. Those were quite a bit

lighter than your average cat cam. And so overall the cats did tolerate them, although we had a few cats in the study that didn't even want to wear the small activity tracker. But we kind of skirted the cat cam problem by having external cameras viewing the cats instead of putting the camera on the cat, again, because we were primarily interested in indoor cat activity rather than cats that have access to the outdoors. Dr. Hook, did you think about putting cameras scattered outdoors for your cats? I think that wouldn't be feasible because the range size of the cats is too large, and you would only see them for a short second, so you couldn't really do the same kind of studies.

You can use wildlife cameras for other purposes outdoors, just to check, for example, how many cats are in an area, so that has been done for wild animals, white felons as well. But you couldn't really study the behavior in that sense. So you can do that for indoor animals or for animals in a zoo or something like that. But to study the behavior in detail, you need something where you really observe the animals. Did you notice, and let me ask you first, Dr. Hook, did you notice any different behavior in the cats when they were around people and when they were not around people? and stuff that they would be doing the same way?

I think our data that we have collected so far is not enough to scientifically say something for definite. But from what I've seen, I would definitely say yes and also from my own experience with my own cats, for which I have the largest proportion of the footage. When she was on her own outside, she would essentially not use my own garden. She would go much further away, actually.

But when I was around, I noticed that she was always within one or two meters, so she wouldn't even leave the garden. She was very close to me and not go away. So that was something that was definitely different when I was there and when the cat was not there. And another thing, again, which is very preliminary, which I think would be extremely interesting to study, is that I had the feeling that the vocalization started to change

so that when the cat was outdoors, and I also think I noticed it in other cats, when they were outdoors, that the vocalizations of the cats sounded slightly different than when they were indoors. Interesting. Dr. Delgado, did you observe anything different? Well, we know that cats, when, so our study was looking primarily at feeding behavior,

and we know at feeding time that a lot of cats will solicit. attention from their owners, either in the form of rubbing, against them, or meowing, circling, pacing. And so we do see a lot of activity at feeding time with the owner. And there are other things we know about cats. For example, meowing is a behavior that is very much directed toward humans in adult cats. We know that kittens meow at their moms. But adult cats do not typically meow at each other. They use other types of vocalizations. And so we know that through the process of domestication and living with humans and learning about humans that cats have figured out that meowing is a successful strategy for getting food, for going outside, getting attention,

all of those things. Interesting. Number 844-724-8255. Speaking of cats, let's go to Jeff in the greater Houston area. Hi, Jeff. Hey, how are you guys doing? Hi, go ahead. I just wanted to make a comment.

I love Science Friday, by the way. You guys are great. Thank you. But I read about catcans years ago, and it sparked a little bit of curiosity on my part. So I got a cat cam for my cat. And then also, I cannot remember the name of the message board, but I found out that there were a bunch of other people that had catcams for their cats too. And a little bit of behavior that I never expected to find out is that cats have multiple homes when they're indoor, outdoor cats.

And what do you mean by that? Well, what I mean is, for instance, there was a kid down the street that I guess my cat was also his cat. And he would get off the school bus at, say, 315, come home and feed the cat. And my cat was at his house. And it was his cat. And my cat would go over there and get fed and hang out and get petted and her and do all that stuff. and then I would get home from work at, say, 6. And then suddenly my cat's back in my house being my cat again.

And you learned... And you learned this from the cat cam you put on your cat. Yeah, yeah. Turns out my cat was cheating on me. Too timing you. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. I think, Jeff, that's a first for Science Friday. the cat cheating on its owner.

Did the other owner know that it was cheating on it also? Did you go over there and talk to the other person down the block? Now, I guess it's a little bit of cat voyeurism. I just watched it. But yeah, no, the cat had two different families. And, you know, when I was out of town,

it was their cat. And when I was in town, it was my cat. That's great. And it had two different names. Two different names, two different. lives. Thank you. Let me get a reaction from Dr. Hook. Your cats were roaming around. Did you notice anything like that? Well, my own, well, my, my current cat, I think, does visit the neighbors, but I still think that he thinks that he's my cat. And my previous cat was very, very close to me,

so I think she didn't have a second home in that sense. But I've heard that before, so several cats do that. Yeah. Do you think that people should be getting commercial catcams now and putting them on their cats to learn more about what they're doing, Dr. Hook? I think it can be quite interesting for the owners as well, although I guess that I don't know how mad you need to be to watch hours and hours and hours of the footage. But some of my students used catcams as well for some projects that they did, and they gave. to friends and relatives. My students told me that some of their friends were actually quite surprised, for example, at how social, in fact, the cats are in terms of their relation to their humans,

that they were, for example, following their humans much more than the owners had actually realized. So they definitely learned something by watching the cat cam footage. What do you think, the dog owners are going to say about this? Are they going to say, hey, I need a dog cam? study too? I guess when you're going for walk with your dog and the dog is free running

then they might also learn things that they wouldn't know but I guess dogs are usually definitely in in the UK and I guess in the US as well dogs are normally much more under control than cats are

so I guess there's less time where a dog is away from their humans but it might be interesting to see what they're doing when they are in the house and the owners away. So it might be still interesting. Dr. Doggata, would you agree with that in the house? Dogs? Yeah, I mean, dogs are with their humans much more than cats are. And so I think part of what drives the desire and the mystery, you know, what is my cat doing is the fact that cats do spend much more time unsupervised. And as a, you know, a society in general, we've accepted that cats are allowed

to roam freely. aren't the same kinds of laws about free-roaming cats. And so I think that adds to this desire to know what are they doing. And, of course, sometimes you find out, and maybe you're a little bit shocked by what the camera reveals. Well, now that you know this, what do you do with this information you're gathering? Dr. Delgado. Oh, what do we as cat owners or scientists? No, as a scientist.

What do you do now with this information? Yeah, I mean, I think that every time we are studying cats, we usually have a specific hypothesis in mind or a question that we want to answer. And sometimes we learn other things about how cats spend their time. And as Dr. Huck said, sometimes it's a welfare-related question. And certainly, for me, as someone who primarily studies cats who are housed indoors, I am concerned about their levels of activity. We know obesity is one of the most serious health problems facing our pets. And if they are sitting inside all day just sleeping, then that's important information for us to know in regards to, okay, we need to provide enrichment and activities for our

pets that can help them be more active, whether it's when we're gone or when we're with them. I want to thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Dr. Marin Hook, a senior lecture at the University of Derby, and Dr. Michael Michael Delgado, host Doctorateau, School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California in Davis. Good luck with your cats. Thank you so much. You're welcome. BJ Leatherman composed our theme music, and speaking of that, a quick program note,

We're going to be hitting the road again in August coming to San Antonio. Join us Saturday, August 10th for Science Friday Live from the Lone Star State. We're going to talk science stories in the San Antonio area. We have lots of live music and more. The date Saturday, August 10th, info tickets at ScienceFriday.com slash San Antonio. And if you're saying, hey, what about an event near me? Well, you can visit the events page on our website. Sign up for our event's newsletter to find out.

when we might be in your neighborhood. Go to ScienceFriady.com for that. San Antonio, August 10th, Science Friday Live, and you can look for tickets there on our website, sciencefriday.com slash San Antonio. Have her great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato in New York.