We discuss a new app that can translate a cat’s meow into human languages, how the Epaulette shark is teaching us about climate change, and a potential treatment that might prevent cerebral palsy.
We discuss a new app that can translate a cat’s meow into human languages, how the Epaulette shark is teaching us about climate change, and a potential treatment that might prevent cerebral palsy.
Flirting Cats
Walking Sharks
Preventing Cerebral Palsy
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Find episode transcripts: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/flirting-cats-walking-sharks-preventing-cerebral-palsy-0hmynifc
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today we are gonna talk about a new app that can translate a cat’s meow into human languages, how the epaulette shark is teaching us about climate change, and a potential treatment that might prevent cerebral palsy.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, I have a question for you as a cat owner.
CALLI: Ooh my favorite subject! Hit me.
NATE: Do you ever feel… like your cat is flirting with you?
CALLI: Okay, I’m not sure what I expected but that definitely wasn’t it. She does turn up the charm when there’s tunafish around. Why do you ask?
NATE: Well, I recently read about a new mobile app that can prove that cats can, in fact, flirt with humans.
CALLI: Interesting! I guess that’s not surprising to anybody who’s taken care of a cat, though. I mean they do give femme fatal energy. How does the app work?
NATE: Well, this story started when New York Times reporter Emily Anthes downloaded an app called MeowTalk, a mobile app that claims to convert cat meows into English. Her cat Momo is a self-described chatterbox, and Emily thought “I wonder what Momo is actually saying.” When she first downloaded it though, the cat, being a cat, stopped meowing. And the app didn’t seem to really work when the cat did meow. But then Emily went on a week-long trip and when she returned, Momo meowed and the app registered that as “Nice to see you… let me rest.”
CALLI: Typical cat.
NATE: MeowTalk was created out of the age-old desire to communicate with animals. We’ve been doing that for centuries anyway: teaching sign language to great apes, chatting with parrots. But MeowTalk wanted to take it a step further and use machine-learning algorithms to decode animal communication. Think about it: machine-learning systems are able to extract patterns out of large data sets and can actually distinguish between the squeaks rodents make when they’re happy and the sounds they make when they’re distressed. It’s a very easy fit!
CALLI: That makes sense. And plus - you can talk to your cat!
NATE: Exactly, the goal of MeowTalk is to help people build stronger relationships with their cats.
CALLI: So what’s the verdict on the app so far?
NATE: Well.. mixed. A meow is a surprisingly complicated thing to translate. Like if a cat is being fed, a meow is usually short, high-pitched, and has rising intonations. But when a cat is in a carrier, they have long, lower-pitched meows with descending intonations. And the problem with translating these cries are the varying uses of melody in their meows. MeowTalk is based off of, and expands, an algorithm that can distinguish between three types of meows pulled from when cats were being brushed, while they were waiting for food or after being left alone in a strange environment.
CALLI: Mmmm, that doesn’t seem like enough situations to pull from.
NATE: Which is what I mean by “expands.” Because the app takes it a step further, detecting and analyzing cat utterances in real-time, assigning each one a broadly defined “intent,” like happy, resting, hunting or “mating call.” Then it shows a plain English “translation” of whatever intent it detects, like Momo’s “Let me rest.”
CALLI: Do any of the meows ever translate to “feed me or I will freaking murder you”?
NATE: Not from what I can see, why?
CALLI: Mmm, I dunno, Nate. My cat looks pretty murdery when she has to wait for dinner. Actually wait, you said cats can hit on you! How was this discovered?!
NATE: So, Emily experimented with MeowTalk for days, and found the app fascinating, but at times unsettling. For instance, one time her cat meowed and the app said Momo said “just chillin!” Another time, she said “my love, I’m here!” And then another, she picked Momo up off the floor, and allegedly, Momo said “hey baby, let’s go somewhere private.”
CALLI: Oh, that cat is totally hitting on Emily.
NATE: That’s definitely how it looks.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, we talk about sharks a lot on this show so when I find something new about our favorite underwater creatures, you’re the first person I come to.
NATE: Wow, Calli, I’m so touched. What kind of shark news do we have on the docket today?
CALLI: It’s so interesting! The epaulette shark, based near the Great Barrier Reef, is considered “the toughest shark out there” and, wait till you hear this, it can walk.
NATE: Wait, it can walk?! Okay, actually before you get to that, I need to know what makes these sharks so tough and how are they tougher than a shark like the Great White, for example?
CALLI: Well, you are right, great white sharks are pretty tough but epaulette sharks are more resilient when it comes to their environment. The epaulette shark has evolved to survive the harshest ocean conditions: it can survive out of water for multiple hours AND it can survive devastating heats. It’s slender, sandy-colored, and sports a large black spot on its side, which looks like an epaulet, AKA the shoulder piece worn on traditional military garbs.
NATE: And… It walks.
CALLI: It does! But the shark walking isn’t the focus of the study, it’s more about WHY these sharks can walk.
NATE: Tell me more.
CALLI: As always, it’s all about climate change. Researchers believe that the shark’s ability to walk evolved out of a need to crawl into tighter spaces they couldn’t otherwise swim to. Not just to avoid larger predators, but to find shade and avoid the heat. By understanding the epaulette and why and how it evolved, researchers could figure out what climate change has in store for the world moving forward. So, they examined how these particular sharks, again they’re considered THE TOUGHEST SHARKS, could react to future climate scenarios… and the results were not good, Nate.
NATE: Oh no.
CALLI: For context, you have to understand how many threats the epaulette faces daily. They can survive an impressive temperature range, between around 21 to 27 degrees celsius or 70 to 80 degrees fahrenheit, but they thrive in warmer waters near the Great Barrier Reef. The shallow waters it lives in get warm at a rapid rate anytime there’s a low tide in the summer. And they have to suck it up and deal with it, because if it swims deeper, it will be vulnerable to bigger predators such as the bull shark. Basically: these sharks are SURVIVORS. So with that all being said, the researchers took epaulette eggs and put them in an environment that simulates potential warmer climate conditions of the late 21st century, up to 31 degrees celsius or 88 degrees fahrenheit. And let’s just say the results alarmed the researchers.
NATE: How?
CALLI: Well, first of all, the epaulettes were born much smaller, hatching prematurely, and their famous black spots became discolored almost immediately. The yolk of the eggs, which the epaulette fetuses draw their energy from, depleted at such a quick rate that the sharks had to learn how to forage for food much earlier in life.
NATE: Wait! This happened to the “toughest shark” in the ocean? What does that mean for other ocean life?
CALLI: If the toughest shark in the Great Barrier Reef reacted this negatively to future ocean conditions, then we have a problem. This actually paints an even grimmer picture for the rest of the reef’s inhabitants. If this is too stressful for the epaulette, it could be worse for other species.
NATE: So what would happen exactly?
CALLI: Well, other than the obvious deficiencies created from an unusually warm climate, the reef’s ecosystem relies on the well-being of the epaulette. It’s a mesopredator, which means it hunts smaller animals while being preyed upon by larger animals. You remember the Food Pyramid they used to show us in science class? The epaulette basically represents the middle of a balanced ecosystem’s diet.
NATE: Okay. This is bad. But I have one question; if the epaulette has evolved to withstand worse and worse conditions, is there any chance it could evolve to adjust to these warmer temperatures? Or would that take too much time? After all, they were sort of just dropped into this hellscape future without any warning.
CALLI: Right. And that’s the next step of the experiment. And you’re right, this kind of evolution takes generations, and when it comes to epaulettes, that means a loooooong time. They live 10 to 20 or more years and don’t reach sexual maturity until a late age, around 7 years old. But the researchers have hope. They want, in their own words, this beautiful quirky shark that’s so tough to be a beacon for climate change education.
NATE: Right. Because what better messenger is there to get your point across than a walking shark?
CALLI: Hey, it got you to pay attention!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: When it comes to common diseases, there’s a lot of talk of cures and treatments but what about prevention? Research into disease prevention is super important especially for congenital disorders, or conditions that you’re born with. There’s some fantastic work being done at the University of Auckland where they are advancing research on preventing cerebral palsy. This is huge because there isn’t currently a cure for the disorder and it affects about 764,000 people in the United States alone.
CALLI: Wow, that’s incredible. I guess I never realized there isn’t actually a cure for cerebral palsy. Can you walk me through some of the symptoms?
NATE: Of course! Cerebral palsy is defined by the CDC as, “... a group of disorders that affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture.” That means that someone with cerebral palsy has difficulty with stiff muscles, uncontrollable movements, balance, and coordination. It’s the most common motor disability among kids.
CALLI: But you said that it can be prevented?
NATE: Yep! Cerebral palsy isn’t something that usually develops entirely on its own. Over one-third of cerebral palsy cases come from severe brain injuries that develop over time after premature births. And that injury can show up a long time after being born, sometimes weeks later, sometimes months later. Most doctors believe the brain injury is so severe that there’s no point in trying to understand it, let alone treat it.
CALLI: But what causes the injury? Is it physical, like a child being dropped after birth? Or is it something else?
NATE: It’s something else entirely: the researchers discovered that young animals with cerebral palsy were born prematurely and showed signs of intense inflammation in the brain.
CALLI: Huh. And so what’s the treatment?
NATE: What the researchers discovered is that if you’re given the anti-inflammatory drug Etanercept within three days of the brain becoming inflamed, it almost completely prevents serious injury from occurring at all.
CALLI: Almost completely?
NATE: Well, the drug still takes time to fight off the inflammation, and three weeks of recovery is required. But after three weeks pass, and the inflammation disappears, the injury doesn’t occur at all. And if there’s no injury, then that completely prevents cerebral palsy from forming at all.
CALLI: This is pretty huge, Nate. But why do we have to wait until the child’s brain is already inflamed to give them preventative treatments like these?
NATE: Practicality. Meaning, think about how chaotic the birth of a child is in general. Even aside from the growing pains a family has in learning how to take care of a child, there’s simply not enough time for a baby to properly develop AND be given three weeks of recovery time. Plus, you can’t fight inflammation that isn’t there yet.
CALLI: Interesting. So how effective was the experiment?
NATE: It hasn’t been tested on human children yet, but the researchers expect that will change soon. The wide window for treatment gives them hope this will be the foundation for not only a prevention of cerebral palsy, but possibly even a cure later on.
CALLI: So who was the treatment tested on?
NATE: Sheep. Specifically, sheep fetuses that were born prematurely. Experimentation on sheep is relatively common because of their availability and general inexpensiveness, but in this case, sheep were used because the way cerebral palsy develops in their brains was found to be nearly identical to the rate of humans. What this means is that with certainty, the researchers strongly believe that all of these results would pop up for humans as well.
CALLI: This is all so interesting, and promising, and a million other descriptors, I dunno, it’s just exciting, Nate. How soon until this becomes a widely available treatment?
NATE: Right now, the researchers are seeking approval for human testing, so who knows. What we DO know is that if the treatment is successful with humans, we might just be looking at an end to cerebral palsy as we know it!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. A new app called MeowTalk has popped up that translates a cat’s meow into human languages. A reporter for the New York Times discovered that not only does the app work… but her cat has actually been hitting on her!
CALLI: As scary as a shark walking around the seafloor may sound, the epaulette shark of Australia is something to be admired - and it’s the focus of a current study on climate change that discovered that the epaulette might not be able to survive in a simulated version of the climate of the late 21st century. However, if scientists can crack the code on what makes the epaulette so enduring, they might be able to find a way to help the rest of us survive a little longer, too!
NATE: New research out of New Zealand has discovered not only the cause of cerebral palsy, but a potential way to prevent it completely. Cerebral palsy develops after a brain injury is sustained following a period of inflammation. And by taking the anti-inflammatory drug Etanercept within three days of the brain becoming inflamed, cerebral palsy might finally have a way to be completely prevented! About 10,000 babies per year are born with the condition in the US, so this is a great step in driving those numbers down.