36. How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa with Dr. Jonathan Losos

Dr. Ann Hohenhaus interviews Dr. Jonathan Losos, evolutionary biologist and author of The Cat's Meow, How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to your Sofa. Dr. Losos studies the ways humans are transforming cats and how cats in turn are transforming the world around them. Tune in as they discuss:

• What the ancestor of the domestic cat looked like
• How Dr. Losos became a cat lover
• Dr. Losos' leap from studying lizards to cats
• When were cats first domesticated?
• How cat mummies are helping determine where cats were domesticated
• Surprising things Dr. Losos learned in his studies
• The relationship between saber-tooth cats and domestic cats
• The methods Dr. Losos uses to study cats
• Should cats be allowed outside?
• What Dr. Losos will be researching next

Also on this month's show: 

• Viral trending animal story about Ricardo the bull, who was found running on the train tracks in Newark
• Animal news, including the shelter that had all their dogs adopted for the first time in 47 years
• Pet Health Listener Q&A 

Do you have a pet question for Dr. Hohenhaus? Email askthevet@amcny.org to have your question answered on Ask the Vet's Listener Q&A.

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We want to remind our listeners that this program is for informational and educational purposes only and intended to substitute for professional veterinary medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The Animal Medical Center does not recommend or endorse any products or services advertised by Sirius XM. Welcome to Ask the Vet with Dr. Ann Hohenhaus. This is the place to talk about your pets and get advice for the top veterinarian from the Animal Medical Center in NYC. Hear from the leading authorities on animals and ask your questions. Now here's your host, Dr. Ann Hohenhaus. Well, hello everyone, and happy to thousand and 24. This is our first ask the vet of the New Year. And I'm really happy that all of you joined me today on our Ask the Vet podcast. And we're going to journey into the fascinating world of animals, all kinds of animals, but specifically cats to today. For any new listeners, I'm your host, Dr. Ann Hohenhaus. I'm a senior veterinarian and director of health information at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, which is right here in New York City, where we're broadcasting from today. On our show today, I'm going to be talking with the Jonathan Losos author of a wonderful new book, The Cat's Meow How Cats Evolve From the Savanna to Your Sofa. Based on his research, humans are transforming cats, and cats, in turn, are transforming the world around them. I can't wait to hear what Jonathan has to say about what the future will hold for felines and humans living together. I'm looking forward to this very intriguing conversation and I hope that you will stay tuned. The Schwarzman Animal Medical Center is the only level one veterinary trauma center in New York City. I know your pet's health is a top priority for you and your family, So if you're curious about your pet's well-being or simply seeking advice on maintaining your pet's health, I'm here to help. Just send me your questions. You can send them by email. And if you don't have a pen and pencil now, I'll give this again later in the show. But our email is really easy to remember. It's askthevet@amcny.org and I'll answer your questions on next month's Ask the Vet program. Again, askthevet@amcny.org. And now it's time for the trending animal of the month. It's time for the Internet's most talked about animal. This one is kind of close to home. Ricardo the Bull. A one and a half year old Texas Longhorn steer who weighed in at 750 plus pounds, was spotted running on the train tracks near Newark's Penn Station. The commotion disrupted train service to and from New York City for nearly an hour while animal rescuers and law enforcement worked together to wrangle and corral the steer into a fenced lot. The steer was then transferred to Skylands Animal Sanctuary, a 232 acre farm that cares for about 450 animals in Montage, New Jersey, at the Sanctuary. Ricardo was assessed by a veterinarian and found that he was in good health. Although exhausted following this harrowing adventure on the train tracks in Newark. Ricardo will now rest peacefully in his new forever home, referred to as the bull on the loose until he was captured and renamed after one of the officers who helped to capture him. Ricardo is now immortalized in the form of a six inch stuffed animal sold only at the New Jersey train station. So I had to see what Ricardo looked like. And I'm going to tell you that Ricardo, the bull stuffed animal, is sold out on New Jersey Transit's website. But the website does say that if you already ordered your Ricardo, be patient. He's coming for amazing videos and photos. Just Google Ricardo the bull. To see him on the train tracks in Newark. And now it's my pleasure to welcome today's guest, Jonathan Losos author of The Cat's Meow How Cats Evolved From the Savanna to Your Sofa. Jonathan is an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and the founding director of the Living Earth Collaborative. This collaborative is a unique biodiversity center and partnership between Wash U, the St Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botanic Garden, an internationally renowned scholar in the field of evolutionary biology. He has written more than 250 scientific papers. And trust me, I know that is an enormous amount of work. He's also written three books and is a self confessed cat lover. So, Jonathan, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Ask the Vet podcast. Well, thank you. And it's a great pleasure to be here. So before we start on the real questions, those ones that have been preapproved, it's the title of your book is From the Savanna to Your Sofa I'm not sure I can define savanna. So tell me what a savanna is so people know where cats came from. Savanna is essentially an open grassland with some trees. I think when people think of Africa, they think of the Serengeti and places like that, which are these savannahs. And so. So that's what they are. And that's where the ancestor of the domestic cat lived. So what did that ancestor look like? Like, how big was it? 5 pounds, 20 pounds, 200 pounds. That ancestor, which is called the African Wildcat, that's the name of the species, looked a lot like a pet cat. I like to say that if you saw an African wild cat in your backyard, your first thought would not be how did an African wildcat get to Manhattan? But it would be what a beautiful cat. I've never seen one quite like it. So they really are very similar looking to domestic cats in many ways. Are they stripy spotted? Yes, they're striped or with with lines of spots down their side, what are often called mackerel tabbies. I love mackerel tabbies. They're the ones with kind of like they're not really spots. They're big blotches on the they're they're much bigger than a spotted cat like leopards. I think of a spotted. But the mackerel tabbies have bigger spots to me. Yes, they come in several varieties, but yes, you're absolutely right. So when how did you get interested in Cat? Well, ever since I was a little boy, when I was five years old, I went with my mother to the local animal shelter and we adopted a rescue Siamese cat to give to my father for his birthday. And ever since then, I have been crazy about cats. So it's been a lifelong love. So what kind of -What the Siamese look like? What color? Well, it was the silver. The. I'm not sure that the light colored body with the points on the ears, the dark years, the dark face mask, the dark tail and paws. Chocolate point. Yes. And so just interesting for our listeners, if you think about what a Siamese cat looks like with those chocolate tail toes, mask and ears, those are parts of the body that are cooler and that that impacts the hair color in the Siamese cat because those parts of the body are cooler and therefore the hair turns out darker. I don't know the biologic mechanism for that, but if you shave a Siamese cat for surgery, for example, their fur in that shaved spot will come back darker until they go through a shed cycle and then it'll go back to its original color. So that's that's just a unique pearl about Siamese cats is the cooler body parts. Can I throw in an added point on that? And looking at pictures, we had another Siamese that was dark all over and looking through family albums. We realized she got darker as she got older. And I believe that's because cats don't regulate their body temperature at as high a level as they get older. So the darker Siamese might actually have been a Tonkanese. Those cats are pointed but they are have a darker their body is darker than the Siamese who's usually very pale between its feet, tail face and ears. I wonder if it was a tank rather than a Siamese. I wondered that too. She was a stray rescue, so we don't know. But it's certainly possible. Well, maybe if she got some hair from her, we could. DNA analyzer. I don't know. Can we DNA analyze and tell breeds of cats? Yes. If those technologies have been developed, I think that would be that would be fun if you had, you know, people a lot of times same hair from their cats. It just they sometimes do interesting things. Someone gave me a book on how to make felt from cat fur. I have not taken it up just yet. So my notes here say you started studying reptiles, specifically lives. So my question is, how did you make a leap, shall we say, from lizards to cats? Well, your notes are absolutely correct. I've spent my career studying lizards and how they adapt to their different circumstances. And it never occurred to me as I developed as a scientist to to study cats for two reasons. One is I wanted to go out into nature and observe what animals do in the wild. And anyone who has tried to follow a cat around knows just how impossible that is. You know, as soon as they figure out what you're doing, which is right away, they give you the shake and head off into the bushes and you don't see them again. So it didn't seem like cats didn't seem like a good subject for the studies. I wanted to do. And I was also under the impression that there really wasn't any interesting science being conducted on cats. And by cats I mean the domestic cat, not lions and tigers and so on. And so I developed my career studying lizards and how they evolve and adapt and so on. And then about ten years ago, I came to realize that I was absolutely wrong about the state of cat science. In fact, people are studying cats in the same way I study lizards and my colleagues study eagles and hippos and all kinds of other animals. Using the latest technology from GPS tracking to genome analysis to chemical isotope studies. So I realized there really is a lot of interesting cat science going on. And then I had what I humbly submit was a brilliant idea. I would teach a class to freshmen called The Science of Cats. my. So is it on Zoom? Can I enroll? Well, the class isn't. At least not yet. I have given lectures on it, but the whole class isn't. But maybe someday. But the idea was to lure the students in on cats and then teach them how we study nature. Just using cats as the example. And the class turned out to be very successful, a lot of fun and so on. And so it wasn't much of a leap from there to say, Well, why not write a book on the same topic for all the people, you know, all the many cat lovers in the world would like to know a little bit more about where cats came from, why they do what they do, and what the future may hold. so, ah, yeah, I'm going to have to get on your mailing list. I think so that if you teach it online, I can sign up because it's a little far for me to go to St Louis. Just take a class three times a week. I know it's only once a week for 3 hours at a time because we go on some field trips and so we need those big blocks of time. We go to the Saint Louis Zoo to see the Wildcats. We go to a cat show, to a cat sanctuary and places like that. I love cat shows. It's so much fun. They've got that little poofy thing on a stick that they try and get the cat's attention with so everyone knows what a dog show looks like because they're on TV all the time. You know, there's a Westminster Kennel Club show in February. There's the show after the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And who has ever seen a cat show on TV? Exactly. They don't get the credit they deserve. There was a great movie on them, a documentary a couple of years ago called Tales from the Catwalk, which showed what cat shows are like. really? I'll have to watch that one. Tales from the Catwalk. Okay. Yes. So back to your book. You trace the evolutionary origins of cats to Africa. I think we kind of knew that all along, right, That cats are desert animals. Yes. That was long suspected. And it was particularly thought that they were domesticated in the somewhere in the region we call the Middle East today. And recent studies have confirmed that is the case. And if you go to Egypt and go into the pyramids, there are little cats. You know, in hieroglyphs on the wall and there are all kinds of great cat statues that come from Egypt as well. And then they're they're cat mummies. The Brooklyn Museum. this would be a field trip for you. The Brooklyn Museum has a I think, a very nice collection of cat mummies, actually. That would be an interesting class to talk about. Cat mummies. Absolutely. So the ancient Egyptians cats were clearly domesticated by 3500 years ago because we see them painted on tomb walls and the statues clearly in domestic contexts, wearing a collar, eating from food underneath a chair at a table and so there is no doubt that by that time cats were domesticated. The question is, were they domesticated in Egypt or did it happen sometime earlier somewhere else? And then they just were brought to Egypt and that's how are you going to fit? How are you going to figure that out? Well, one of the ways to do it is to look at those mummies you were referring to. And scientists have been able to take little samples from those mummies, little bits of hair or bone and sequence the DNA. And with that, they can get a sense of the genetic changes that had already occurred by then. And how those relate to the genetics of cats that are alive today. that's so you're just going backwards and making a cat family tree till you get to the top of the tree and there's no more ancestors. Exactly. That's exactly right. And it turns out you can get DNA out of archeological remains that are thousands of years old. And it's allowed some researchers to really trace that history in great detail. So see what has changed in a fairly short period of time from the African wildcat to all the different cats we have today, big cats and little cats. So how did that happen? Well, let me step back one point and say the cat family actually appeared 30 million years ago and all of the cat species that are around today, their ancestor lived about 11 million years ago. So cats have been around for a while, but it was the the African wildcat that was domesticated in the last few thousand years and turned into the domestic cat. The the general understanding on that is it occurred in the area sometimes called the Fertile Crescent, which spans, say, Iraq and Iran and Turkey through Israel and perhaps into Egypt. And that's the area where civilization first began, where people settled down, they stopped being hunter gatherers and they started agriculture and living in villages. And that area was within the range of the African wildcat. And so the idea is that some of these wild cats were attracted to the villages because there are lots of rodents there, that people were growing crops and storing them. And that led to a rodent explosion, a population explosion. And so some of the cats started hanging around the villages and eating the rodents. And these were the cats that obviously had the personality to tolerate being around people. Some cats more even wildcat, some more than others are like that. In turn, people started recognizing the value of these cats. They were nice to them. Maybe they gave them a little food or let them into the into the little huts where it was warm and dry. And again, the cats that were the boldest would do that. And through time there was this co evolutionary dance where cats became more and more willing to hang around people. And that's how domestication began. And so I think it's a lot about the help that cats give to people, meaning that if you have grain that you're trying to store and then the rodents come to try need the grain, then you need the cats to keep the rodents down and then they're kind of cute and they're really kind of nice and they're fun to have around. And so then then everyone just hangs out together all the time. That is pretty much exactly what what happened. And, you know, animals have personalities like we do and the cats with the personality to hang around people, they benefited from that. And so they had more kittens. And the genes for for those behaviors got passed on. And then we in turn treasured them more and more. And it was a cycle that reinforced itself. And it's just not that different than than dogs. I think there's been less effort at breeding cats and breeding dogs, but we worked we meaning humans, have worked very hard to make dog breeds that urge sheep and dog breeds that fetch game and dogs that do a whole variety of things to to make our lives better. But in turn they get a good deal out of it as well. You know, because they're not a wolf in a barn anymore. They're the dog on the sofa. So dogs and cats, I think, evolved similarly around people, but kind of with a different trajectory for different reasons, probably correctly so because it took advantage of what dogs can do that people need and what cats can do that people need, which is just be darling. So in writing your book, what was the most surprising thing that you learned in in writing the book? Well, what didn't you expect to hear or find that's a tough question because there were so many interesting things that that I learned. Just to tell you a couple of them. One of them was that I thought so. People who live with cats, no cats will meow to you and they're trying to tell us something. We would think. I always assume that cat's meow to each other to communicate, and the fact that they are meowing to us just means that they've accepted us into their social circle, that they're treating us like honorary cats. But it turns out that's not correct, that people who have studied colonies of outdoor cats, you know, did they just go out and watch them, just like Jane Goodall does with chimps and other scientists do? What they discovered is that cats do not meow to each other to communicate very much at all. It's not something they do with each other. They communicate in other ways. They growl, they hiss, they have signals, facial signals and so on, but they don't meow to each other. So the fact that they meow to us is a behavior they have picked up during the domestication process. And so this is one one of the ways that cats have adapted to to living with us. So that was one unexpected finding. Another one has to do with two of the cats. I have Winston and Jane, who whose mother was a stray cat that sadly was run over when they when they were kittens. And so they were hand-raised. And we've had them ever since. These two kittens are now adult cats look nothing like each other. One is slate gray, the other is black and white and looks like a Holstein cow. And the male, the black and white one is 17 pounds of muscle and the other cat is petite. I was always wondering how could two such different cats come out of the same litter? Well, now I know it turns out that cats, female cats, when they're in heat, when they're receptive, will mate with many different males. In fact, in many places it's very common for the female to give birth to kittens with multiple fathers. And so very likely that's that's what happened with Winston and Jane. Same mother, but different fathers. So those are two of the two of the facts that come to mind. So I have a friend who posts on Instagram a lot and she rescues mostly mama cats with babies. And right now she's got a litter of orange ones that really cute. And those they have all got to have the same father. And then she has another litter right now that some are stripy and some are gray, furry and the stripes are short haired and the furry ones are long gray ones are long haired. And I bet that's you know, if you watch her Instagram feed, you could probably pick out which Mama's had more than one boyfriend at the right time to get these really cute litters of kittens. The stripy and the gray litter are There must be seven kittens on that litter. It's a huge litter of kittens, which also suggests maybe that that there was more than one dad in that because, you know, the typical cat litter is probably like 3 to 5 maybe. But but this one huge, huge number of really adorable kittens. So one of my favorite cats is the saber-toothed tiger, because I was fascinated with like dinosaurs when I was a kid. So anything about the saber-toothed tiger that goes into this class or book that you have written? Well, we do talk about saber-toothed, actually, we call them saber-toothed cats. Now because they're not particularly tigers, although we grew up calling them saber-toothed tigers. We do talk about in the class in a couple of ways. First up, as I mentioned earlier, cats evolved the first cat about 30 million years ago. For 10 million years, nothing much happened in the cat world. And then the cats branched off into two different groups of cats. And one of those cats were the saber-toothed cats, and the other branch were the non saber-toothed cats that gave rise to all the cats that are alive today. So saber-toothed cats go back 20 million years. And it turns out that for much of those 20 million years, there were many more species of saber-toothed cats than there were of non saber-toothed cats. They were much more plentiful and and diverse. And that was only recently that the saber-toothed cats died out. Why that is, we're not sure. Part of it is that humans probably killed off the big game that they ate, but I like to think, you know what? If it had gone the other way, what if the non saber tooth had gone extinct and the saber-toothed cats had survived? Now, could we have saber-toothed house cats? I know the veterinarian here says know about it. Yeah. It's tough enough to deal with cats with their regular little pointy teeth when they decide to sink them into you. You know that it Cats are a challenge. I adore cats and I if there was a job for me just to be cat veterinarian, I'd think seriously about it. But there was recently a paper published that 70% of cat owners have been bitten or scratched trying to medicate their cats, which tells you how difficult it is to medicate cats and how important it is for people like me to be sure that their clients are safe. When I start prescribing 800 medications for a cat with a lot of problems now, how are your cats? Can you give them medications? Well, no. We have those issues. A couple of our cats need to be pilled these days and we found a few techniques now that we can get them to take their pills. But it was a struggle for a while. So these are very friendly cats otherwise. But they won't. They they won't. They won't cooperate. No. And you're trying to hold their head and give a pill. And then the other 9/10 of the cat is spinning around and twirling and floor. I mean, it's it really it, it contributes a lot to the fact that cats are medically underserved because your little 5 pound cat all of a sudden becomes a 250 pound beast when you need to put it into the cat carrier and then it gets to the veterinarian, It's really not happy about that. And so people just say, I'm not taking it to the vet unless it's near death. And that's not good for cats because we can fix things if we see them soon enough. And and if the cat is really in bad shape, it gets much more difficult to fix them. So in that way, cats are their own worst enemy. I think when it comes to sick sickness and trying to take care of them. Well, that's certainly been our experience as well. Yeah, and interesting that you have hand-raised kittens, which I have done a lot of hand raising of kittens and was very hopeful. But the end product was cooperative and being and willing to be medicated. But you're proving my hypothesis wrong here. I wonder if somehow they need to be trained for that during their formative young young days and somehow train them to be to be to take pills. Well, when I have kittens, I groom their nails all the time and I open their mouth and looking at all the time when I'm playing with them, hoping that maybe they'll think that's normal. And then when they are older and sick, they'll be like, yeah, I'm supposed to open my mouth when she hangs on to it. But I don't. I have two of my fosters as patients and they're miserable. They're just like your cats. They cannot be medicated and they're lunatics in the hospital. So I don't know. I don't know if that makes a difference. So you mentioned a brief like little lip there that you use a similar method to study cats as Jane Goodall uses to study gorillas. So what does that methodology look like? Well, it's, you know, the the traditional way to study animal behavior, the low tech way is simply to go out and watch them. And, you know, if you do it long enough, you learn to identify different individuals and you just take notes on what they do. This is difficult for cats in most settings. Maybe that the study I referred to was outdoor community cats that were fed regularly and used to having people around. And you can watch them because some of them anyway, because they're used to people. Other cats are much more difficult to study, at least, at least outdoor cats. Today, however, there are all kinds of high tech ways to understand what cats are doing and where they're going. And one of those ways is to put a little tracker on the cat with a GPS transmitter and you can even follow them on your iPhone or your cell phone these days with little apps that will tell you where your cat is going. And the scientists are doing the same thing with a little bit more sophisticated methods. And that gives us a clear idea of where are they wrong? Now, of course, that doesn't tell us what they're doing. And the way scientists are studying that is by putting little kitty cameras on their collar, a tiny little camera that hangs, you know, below there, below their head. And you get the cat's eye view of what it is seeing. And from that, you can interpret a lot about their behavior. It doesn't make you dizzy to have that camera dangling around kind of thing. Looking at the videos. Yes, they love the camera. You know, it bouncing up and down as the cat moves. And when it jumps, there's this, you know, blur. And so it actually does make you a little seasick of sorts. But but after a while, you get a sense of how to interpret it and it doesn't bother you so much. So if you're tracking cats through your GPS device, how far and certainly not in New York City, but when I lived in a in a much smaller community, my cat went outdoors. So how far do you think my cat was going when he went out every day? Well, a lot depends, as you said, on where you are, that if there's a lot of open countryside, they can sometimes go quite far. But the biggest one ever recorded, I think, covered an area of about four square miles, which is an enormous range. But that's the extreme case. And most cats don't go nearly as far, and particularly more so in cities. They stay most of them stay close to home. So a lot depends on the surroundings and then it depends on the cats as well. There have been studies where multiple cat that live in the same house. Some will wander quite far and others will stick to their own yard. So so it varies substantially. But still, four square miles is a huge area. Yes, but that was a study of a thousand cats and that was the extreme cat. It was in Ireland wind, actually. And it's house backed up to just this big open area and it roamed over it greatly. So do you think it's better for cats to be able to roam or do you think my cat should stay inside with me? Well, that is a a complicated question. It is certainly true that cats that go outdoor face a lot of risks. They can get run over by cars, which happens much too often. They can get eaten by coyotes. In many places in the U.S. they can pick up diseases, have all kinds of other accidents. So there are a lot of perils to going outside. On the other hand, some people argue that cats it's part of being a cat is being out exploring, being curious. And certainly there are some cats that just insist on being outside. Other cats are perfectly content to stay indoors. And the one thing that is clear is that if you keep a cat indoors, you need to provide stimulation. These are smart animals. They're curious animals. You've got to give them lots of things to think about, problems to solve and so on. So it's a it's a difficult question. If it's possible to keep your cat inside, it's the safer thing to do. In other cases, though, cats do go outside and some of them enjoy that. So in deference to that as well, it's also safer for the songbirds. And I'm pretty sure that bird populations are affected by cats out hunting birds as well. In some places that is incontrovertible in Australia. On many islands, cats have done enormous damage and caused species to go extinct. The data are a little less clear in the United States. It's certainly clear that cats kill lots of birds and lots of small animals. The impact that has on populations has not been studied nearly as much as you might think, and probably in some places it's really bad. In other places that they're out catching the pigeons and the and the sparrows. Maybe it's not such a big deal. Surprisingly, we need a lot of more research on that topic here in the United States. Yeah, and in Australia, it's not just the birds, it's a small marsupials that they also are often right and left and while people are very happy that their cats have hunting prowess, I hate to see some species go extinct because my cat's bumping them off while it's out for a walk. So we just have a minute or so left. And I'm wondering after this cat book, what are you going to be doing next? Well, actually, the issue just you just raised about the impact of cats on the environment. I was originally going to cover that in the book and it just became too much. But I think there's a lot more to be said about that and a lot more research that needs to be done to figure out just what is going on and what possible solutions might be. So I'm going to focus more on that moving forward and also start some studies of my own on local cats in the communities and how they behave because there's a lot we still don't know about basic aspects of cat behavior. And so I'm planning to do research of that sort. It absolutely sounds fascinating. One last tidbit that you can tell our listeners before we have to wrap up for this afternoon. Well, I think one thing that's interesting is that dogs and cats often can get along in a house even though they have different behaviors. Think about what it means when a dog wags its tail back and forth. That's a friendly gesture. But when a cat moves its tail back and forth, it's I'm nervous. Don't get too close to me. And yet they somehow figure it out. And so they, at least in some cases, can coexist peaceably. And I just think that shows what marvelous, intelligent, creative animals they are. What a great thought. To end this fascinating conversation. Thank you so much to my special guest, Jonathan Lassos for such a great discussion. And we'll look forward to your next book coming out. Well, thank you in this was wonderful. Now, if you'd like to learn more about his interesting research, you can watch Jonathan Losos' excellent presentation hosted by the Usdan Institute for Animal Health Education. Just log on to amcny.org/usdanevents and that recording is available to all that are interested in watching. Now, if you have a question about your pet's health, just email me at askthevet@amcny.org. and I'll respond to your questions on next month's Ask the Vet podcast. We're going to take a short break, but I hope you'll stay tuned because animal stories are coming up when we return. We're back with Dr. Ann Hohenhaus on Ask the Vet. And we're back here at the vet. There have been so many interesting animal stories in the news this month. It's time for animal headlines. The biggest animal news from across the world. For the first time in 47 years, all every single one of the dogs and cats at the Adams County SPCA in Pennsylvania have been adopted or strays have been reunited with their family. And this happened just in the few weeks leading up to Christmas. What a happy day that must have been at the SPCA. According to kennel technician Tony Hayes, 94 animals were spayed or neutered, vaccinated, tested for heartworms and tick borne illnesses. And following a thorough review, matched up the pets with potential adopters. Every animal found a forever home, and the staffers also helped 26 strays get back to their families where they belong all in time for the holidays. So as we begin 2024, I just want to send my heartfelt thanks to all shelter staffers, rescue groups across the country who worked so hard to do so much to help these animals in great need. Our second story is about one of my most favorite animals, and this is a African Black Rhino. His name is Jaali and he is a four year old male. Now, he just reached maturity when he was moved from a Michigan zoo to the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Desert, California. And once he got there and got acclimated a little bit, he got introduced to a girlfriend Nia. She's a female black rhino from the Cleveland Zoo. And the two of them were hooked up from a matchmaking appeal from the Association of Zoo and Aquariums Species Survival Plan to help this critically endangered species. And the folks at the zoo and aquarium survival plan match up animals of the same type, but not closely related. So they improve the hybrid vigor of these animals by not mating them to their cousin or their nephew or their niece. So the word from Palm Desert is that Jaali and Mia's first interactions, which were captured on video, were precious and extremely positive. Zoo President Allen Monroe said his first introduction is actually the culmination of several years of habitat design, research and construction to build the perfect home for this pair of endangered black rhinos. Everyone on the zoo's team hopes that with a little luck and after a 15 month pregnancy, that there will be at least one more Black African Rhino to add to the species diminished numbers. If you want to see these cuties, just Google African Black Rhinos for amazing videos and photos. Now, our third story might be my favorite because of course it's about birds and I love birds. So amateur ornithologist John Murillo was in Colombia here taking photos and he managed to capture an incredible photograph of a curiously looking honey creeper with blue and green plumage. But this just wasn't like blue and green mixed up. Half the body was blue and the other half was green. And that means that this bird was a bilateral gynandromorph or a bird that was half female and half male in its plumage or in its feathers. His companion, Professor Hamish Spencer, a Kiwi Professor of Zoology, immediately recognized that this was an incredible once in a lifetime experience phenomenon that is rare in birds. Murillo and Spencer subsequently published a paper on their discoveries in the Journal of Field Ornithology and, noted that it's just the second time in the past hundred years that a bilateral gynandromorph has been observed in this species. Pretty cool, huh. The other thing is that one of my favorite American bald eagle nests has a three day old chick in it. At the time that we recorded this. The little gray fuzzy thing was eating some yucky looking rabbit today, and it looks very strong and vigorous. So I'm hopeful for this little eagle. If you're interested in the eagle, you can Google Southwest Eagle cam and you'll be able to see this little guy, which could be a girl. I don't think you can tell when they're like gray, fuzzy and six inches long. Finally, at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center's 2023 Top Dog Gala, we honored several amazing working dogs at an event that raised over $2 million to benefit our not for profit mission. We had U.S. Border Patrol hero dog, K9 Yoda. He was recognized for capturing an a state convict in Pennsylvania after a 14 day manhunt. And I'm proud to say that AMC is the first organization to be given the privilege of honoring this hero dog. We also honor the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's Caring Canines. This is a team of dedicated therapy dogs and handlers who've been lifting the spirits of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer patients, caregivers and staff since 2007. MSK’s Caring Canines is always looking to add therapy dog teams to their group. So if you happen to live in New York and you have a terrific dog who would be a wonderful therapy dog, you can Google MSK caring canines for more information about how you and your pup can help cancer patients. If you're interested in seeing the photos of us all dressed up and looking not like our usual veterinary selves, you can Google AMC Top Dog Gala, or visit our website to see us in our party finery. And then I want to say that I just read an interesting opinion piece in the Truth about Cars that I thought was worth sharing. Author Tim Healey talks about the dangers associated with driving with your pet on your lap. And I have to applaud him for putting this message out there. It's dangerous for you to have your pet and to other drivers and pedestrians because when the pet moves around or jumps onto the floor, you're a much greater risk to get in an accident of some sort. And then the dog is at risk because it's not strapped in a carrier or someplace safe and become can become a projectile during a crash. So be sure to keep your pet in a harness restraint device behind the gate in the back, the car or in its carrier to keep everybody safe while driving. And now we have a few questions from our listeners. Our first question today is from Mariana. She says, for the last month or so, my dog’s left eye has slightly sunken with a visible third eyelid. We went to the vet and he assured us that there are no injuries around it, but his teeth are bad. He has been on antibiotics for an oral infection and was on pain for three days, but the area is not getting better. What to do? Please help. So I think what Mariana is describing is something called Horner's Syndrome. And when doctors say that something is a syndrome, it means that there's not really there's not a single cause of it could be caused by many things. And Horner’s syndrome includes a dilated pupil, an eye that sinks in the third eyelid, then pops up over the eye. It's that little white kind of shiny thing that you can sometimes see in the corner of your dog's eye and a droopy eyelid, which is also called ptosis. So when a pet has Horner's syndrome, it tells you that there's a problem in the neurologic pathways of the eye, and the neurologic pathway is really long, and it goes from the brain all the way down to the third rib and then back up from the the spinal cord at the level of the third rib, back up to control the eye. So this is a really long neurologic pathway and has a possibility to have many different problems. Thus, it's called Horner’s Syndrome. So the problems that can cause Horner's Syndrome range from an ear infection to cancer. And some pets don't even have a cause. And we call their Horner’s Syndrome idiopathic, meaning we don't know why. So this is the kind of problem that might take a couple of very collaborative specialists to sort out what is wrong with her dog's eye. And that would be an ophthalmologist to make sure there's not a problem with the eye or the eyeball itself, and then a neurologist to evaluate the nerve function in the spinal cord and the associated nerves. The good news is most of the time Horner’s Syndrome doesn't have a cause and doesn't cause the problem. But if there is a problem, you want to know about it, so you can correct it early. So good luck, Mariana, to you with this complicated problem, and certainly let us know how your pooch does. Our second question today comes from Stephan. He asks, Charlie is a 19 year old small poodle Bichon Frisé mixed breed who has had a persistent cough for months. Charlie is otherwise an absolute hero, full of energy, enthusiasm and appetite, and his loving curiosity of life are great and inspiring to anyone who encounters him. X-rays and exams were inconclusive of any health issues or medications were not prescribed. My question is how to determine what is going on with Charlie? What tests can be administered to help manage the symptoms of a persistent cough, and how to understand if this cough has other underlying causes that can be addressed through diagnostic and therapeutic treatments. So first of all, congratulations, Stephan, for having a 19 year-old dog. You're pushing the Guinness Book of World Records there with Charlie. And good, if all Charlie has is a persistent cough. He's doing pretty darn well at 19 years of age. So there are several common things that can cause coughing in pets, especially small breed dogs. So one is a collapsing trachea and you don't always see a collapsing trachea on an x-ray. And AMC's website has resources and a fabulous video about collapsing trachea by our Head of Interventional Radiology, Dr. Chick Weiss. Another common cause of chronic coughing in dogs is chronic bronchitis, and that is typical much more common in small breed dogs than large breed dogs. And I'm hunching that Charlie is small because he's a poodle Bichon mix. And so chronic bronchitis will often benefit from bronchodilators and cough suppressants. Sometimes though the pet will get an infection, and that complicates the chronic bronchitis. Then there's another kind of strange disorder called pulmonary hypertension. So that's high blood pressure. But the blood pressure is high only in the lungs. It's not high. If you put a little cuff around Charlie's leg and check his peripheral blood pressure. Pulmonary hypertension tends to cause a lot of coughing and can be treated to improve the coughing. But you probably need specialists again, to sort all this out. First, you need a specialist in cardiology who does an echocardiogram, which allows you to measure the blood pressure in the lungs and determine if Charlie has pulmonary hypertension. And if Charlie doesn't, then you might need an internal medicine specialist who can do a endoscopy of his lungs and test it with a culture cytology to determine if there's an infection or something else going on his lungs. But I, I think that you're correct. There are more diagnostic and therapeutic things that can be done for Charlie. And just like for Mariana, I hope that you'll let us know how Charlie does and what the ultimate diagnosis is. So with that, we're going to take a little break and we'll come back with news from the Animal Medical Center. We're back with Dr. Ann Hohenhaus on Ask the Vet. Welcome back to Ask the Vet and now it's time for news from the Usdan Institute at the Animal Medical Center. I probably don't have to remind people that it is officially winter. And to help keep our pets safe during these cold and blustery days, the Usdan Institute of the Animal Medical Center is sharing these tips. First, keep antifreeze out of your pets fridge and clean up any spills or leaks from your car right away. Antifreeze will ruin your pet's kidneys, and you don't. If you know that your pet has eaten antifreeze, it needs to go to the emergency clinic pronto. Don't forget to beat the horn before starting your car in the winter, because sometimes a cat or other animal will go up in the wheel well or into the engine block where it's toasty warm after you've been driving your car. And they think it's a good place to sleep. Of course, it's a dangerous place to sleep. So be sure that you give any animals that have crawled into your engine a little notice so that they can get out before you start driving away. For thin coated dogs like Italian greyhounds, for example, you might want to consider a dog jacket or sweater. If you notice that your pet's always under the blankets on the bed or under that throw on the sofa. That might be a dog who would benefit from a coat or sweater this time of year. And of course, we always want our pets to be clean and smell nice. But winter time, just like your skin gets all dry and scratchy in the winter. The same thing can happen to your dog. So remember not to over bathe your pet. And this is not a good time to shave your pet because they really need that fur to insulate and keep them warm. Don't forget those cats outdoors. There are many places on the internet where they give you ideas on how to make houses for cats that are cheap and easy and keep cats in colonies like our guest was talking about today, keep them warm and dry during these cold winter months. Space heaters start plenty of house fires every year and certainly pets tipping over space heaters is probably one of the causes that space heaters have problems. So be sure that if you're going to have a space heater, use one that the exterior is cool so no one gets burned and then a heavy base so that your pet can't tip that space heater over. And then finally, we're expecting a big storm here in New York this weekend. And so I'm sure that lots of pets will be having musher’s wax put on their feet to protect their paw pads from snow, ice and salt. Or maybe a booty or two to protect those little feet. Now, as a pet parent, I'm sure you're looking for guidance to help you make sure that your pet is always healthy and well taken care of. And the Usdan Institute for Animal Health Education can provide that. Our website is packed with invaluable information curated by agencies, veterinary experts. And it is your go to resource for pet health and always free access to timely pet health articles, upcoming events, video tutorials and other educational resources. And we have information for your canine companion, your curious kitten, or your feathered or furry or scaly pet, and you can just log on to AMCNY and click Pet Health Information. Don't forget, we have a really interesting upcoming event on Thursday, January 25th at 6 PM. Dr. Douglas Palma who's a Specialist in Internal Medicine, and also the department head of internal medicine at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, discusses the diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease in both dogs and cats. So there's something for everyone in this presentation. As usual, all Usdan events are free of charge. What? You have to go on our Web site and sign up so that you can get the Zoom link so that you can attend. I'd like to take a moment once again to thank our wonderful guest, Jonathan Losos for joining me today and give a special thanks to all my listeners because of your continuing support of Ask the Vet. We're now ranked number three. We've moved up a notch on Feedspot’s Top 100 Pet Health Podcast. If you're looking for advice on maintaining your pet's health or have a question about a disease, just email me at askthevet@amcny.org, and I'll answer your question on next month's Ask the Vet program. Ask the Vet can be accessed on the SIRIUS app, on all major podcast platforms and also on AMC website. Thanks to our long standing partnership with SIRIUS XM. Don't forget to check us out on social media on Facebook. It's the Animal Medical Center and on Twitter and Instagram, it's AMCNY. Don't forget to take a moment to give Ask the Vet podcast a review and like it and subscribe so you keep getting new episodes. Wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2024 and I'll look forward to seeing you again next month on Ask the Vet podcast.