Learn about what to do when your pet is scared; and why you have microbes inside your cells. Then, stick around to meet Natalia Reagan: an anthropologist, primatologist, and comedian who will be filling Cody’s shoes while he’s on paternity leave.
Learn about what to do when your pet is scared; and why the theory of endosymbiosis says you have microbes inside your cells. Then, stick around to meet Natalia Reagan: an anthropologist, primatologist, and comedian who will be filling Cody’s shoes while he’s on paternity leave.
What to do when your pet is scared by Cameron Duke
Endosymbiont Theory - you have microbes inside your cells by Cameron Duke
Learn more about Natalia Reagan
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-to-do-when-your-pet-is-scared-you-have-microbes-inside-your-cells-and-meet-natalia-reagan-again
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about what to do when your pet is scared; and why you have microbes inside your cells. Then, stick around to hear about why Curiosity Daily will sound a little different over the next few months.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
If thunderstorms send your dog running for cover, your instinct may be to try and comfort them. But you may have been told that comforting a fearful animal may backfire and actually reinforce their fear instead. Nobody wants that! So what do you do? To get to the bottom of this, Curiosity Daily writer Cameron Duke spoke with Dr. Mindy Waite, who’s a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist. She says that this advice comes from a basic misunderstanding of animal behavior — and if your pet wants comfort, go ahead and cuddle them.
To understand where this confusion comes from, Dr. Waite first explained how an animal behaviorist thinks about behaviors. When an animal is afraid and starts panting, and quivering, and running to hide, we often see that as all one behavior. But actually, they’re all separate behaviors, and they each fall into one of two categories.
Some of those behaviors are called respondent behaviors. Respondent behaviors can be thought of as automatic responses to a stimulus. Panting or quivering at the sound of thunder are great examples. These behaviors are independent of any reinforcement; they happen on their own through association with a stimulus, like thunder.
But then on the other hand, you’ve got operant behaviors. And these are based on reinforcement. For example, commands to sit and stay are reinforced by getting a treat. In this case, maybe the dog responds to a thunderclap by hiding in the bathtub. If the bathtub makes the thunder seem quieter, the behavior is reinforced.
Dr. Wait says that when an animal is afraid, it’ll engage in multiple respondent and operant behaviors at the same time. Since the emotional and physiological response of fear is a respondent behavior, it’s entirely independent of reinforcement. This means it’s perfectly ok to comfort your pet — it’s not going to encourage them to be fearful next time.
Now, you can reinforce operant behaviors, for good and bad. Dr. Waite says that you can help to comfort your dog by reinforcing beneficial operant behaviors: things like training your dog to go to a safe place like a kennel when it’s afraid.
The key is to not let your behaviors become the stimulus. Pets can be great at spotting patterns, and they’re always watching you. It’s ok to turn on classical music to calm a scared pet, but don’t turn on the music in anticipation of something your pet finds scary.
Finally, if you believe your pet’s anxiety is harming them, then seeing an animal behavior specialist might be the best thing for both of you. Otherwise, go ahead and give them the cuddles they need. Thunderstorms are scary, after all.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by KiwiCo. KiwiCo creates super cool hands-on projects designed to expose kids to concepts in STEAM — meaning, science, technology, engineering, art and design, and math. And it all happens from the comfort of home!
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You probably know that you have bacteria inside your body, but what if I told you that you had bacteria inside each one of your cells? Don’t freak out, it’s true and totally normal. In fact, it’s how we evolved cells complex enough to make human beings. Specifically, it’s how animal cells got mitochondria and plant cells got chloroplasts. These important features started out as free-living microbes.
Here’s the deal. All life is made of cells, and all cells fall into one of two camps. Simple cells like bacteria and the much rarer archea are what you call prokaryotes. They have DNA, but hardly any organelles, which are the internal organs that do specific jobs for the cell. In contrast, the cells of eukaryotes — like plants, animals, and fungi — are complex machines with tons of moving parts. They can live on their own and can even be assembled into giant colonies that can listen to podcasts.
Here’s the thing: some of the organelles inside of eukaryotic cells look a whole lot like prokaryotic cells. Like, prokaryotic cells contain DNA and protein-producing ribosomes surrounded by a membrane. So do the mitochondria you find in eukaryotic cells. Scientists think that these organelles started out as free-living prokaryotes.
Like, take mitochondria, for instance. Those are the organelles that eukaryotic cells use to harvest energy. When mitochondria were discovered, scientists immediately thought they were weird. By all accounts, they look like and act like bacterial cells. This observation led evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis to devise her theory of endosymbiosis in 1967. According to this theory, mitochondria are bacteria — so, prokaryotes — that were swallowed up by a bigger cell and survived. Both cells benefitted — the little proto mitochondria got to keep on living and making energy, and the big hungry cell got to use that energy. The two evolved together ever since, one inside the other. I know: this sounds far-fetched. At the time, that’s what most biologists thought, too.
But eventually, the theory of endosymbiosis became widely accepted. This had a lot to do with the fact that mitochondria have their own DNA, and that DNA looks a lot like bacterial DNA. Interestingly enough, the same is true of chloroplasts, which are the organelles in plant cells that harvest light. They’re endosymbionts, too, and much newer ones at that. They evolved more recently from photosynthetic cyanobacteria. That means that plants never really evolved photosynthesis. More accurately, they acquired it.
The biggest step in the evolution of complex cells wasn’t a slow, stepwise progression. It was an abduction.
CODY: Before we wrap up, we have a bit of housekeeping to do. I’m, uh… gonna be a dad pretty soon. Like, pretty much any day now, soon. And I don’t know you if you know this, but it would be pretty hard for me to raise my first newborn while doing a daily podcast. SO! It’s gonna be business as usual for now, but once the baby arrives — probably in the next couple weeks – I’m gonna peace out for a while and focus on parenting. Don’t worry though: when I leave, you’re still gonna get 5 new episodes of Curiosity Daily with Ashley every week.
ASHLEY: Right, but I’m not gonna do the podcast all by myself. So you’ll be hearing a NEW voice on this podcast, and we thought today might be a good time to introduce you to the person who’ll be filling Cody’s shoes while he’s gone. Natalia Reagan!
[NATALIA/ASHLEY ad lib]
CODY: Ashley let’s see how good we were at teaching today’s topics. Natalia, can you help us recap the main things we learned today?
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Cameron Duke, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!