Cats v Dogs

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Speaker 8 BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Speaker 5 Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

Speaker 1 I'm Robin Ince, and this is the Infinite Monkey Kennel. Or basket.
Or possibly Infinite Monkey Cardboard Box. Because today

Speaker 1 we are pitting two of the nation's favourite pets together in the biggest battle between species ever broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday nights.

Speaker 10 Or the repeat on Wednesday.

Speaker 9 Or the repeat on Wednesday afternoon.

Speaker 1 Which might also be on Mondays, actually, as well.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you might be listening on BBC Sound as well, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 Oh, wherever you this is the problem with doing big Saturday night, World of Sport, Dickie Davis, giant haystack-style intros.

Speaker 1 People

Speaker 1 don't receive the media like they used to, do they?

Speaker 10 Who remembers Dickie Davis?

Speaker 13 That dates are not that serious.

Speaker 1 We got to Dickie Davis much faster than normal, didn't we, Brian?

Speaker 1 Brian, of course, has a slight Dickie Davis thing because he actually has some of his hair dyed grey, so you think he's a real boy.

Speaker 11 Very clever.

Speaker 1 So, you you marveled at bats versus flies. You gasped at wasps versus bees.
Now it is the ultimate challenge. It is cats versus dogs.

Speaker 5 In the red corner, we have a Daxund.

Speaker 13 In the blue corner,

Speaker 1 we were meant to have a Russian blue-haired cat, but it's just wandered off because that's what they do. It's wandered off probably for a few days, maybe even a few weeks.

Speaker 1 It's gone off for long enough that eventually the owner in tears goes around all the neighbouring telegraph poles and pops up little lost cat images all over it, weeping.

Speaker 1 And then, after about four weeks, it just comes back nonchalantly through the cat flap and goes, Yeah, I've just been out. What of it?

Speaker 1 Give me a gourmet meal, and I might purr before I dig my claws in really unnecessarily tightly.

Speaker 10 So I'm a dog person, by the way.

Speaker 10 So, in today's show, we ask what makes the best pet cat or dog?

Speaker 10 In order to conduct, perhaps, the greatest scientific debate since Shoutby and Curtis discussed the nature of spiral nebula on the 25th of April 1920 at the Smithsonian.

Speaker 10 We will explore the science of breeding domestic pets.

Speaker 5 I definitely knew about that, Brian.

Speaker 12 I definitely knew about that. You're more than you about Dickie Davis, anyway.

Speaker 10 We'll explore the science of breeding domestic pets, the relative intelligence and skills of the aforementioned species.

Speaker 1 And which one of them really loves you?

Speaker 1 Some of them are lying.

Speaker 1 So, to help us sort out the Abyssinian from the Alsatian, we are joined by an evolutionary scientist, a vet, a dragon, and someone who spent much of their life living in a fantasy world.

Speaker 5 And they are.

Speaker 8 Hello, I'm Deborah Meaden. I am businesswoman, investor, and TV dragon.

Speaker 8 And I think a great ambassador for dogs is Old Yellow. I don't know if anybody remembers Old Yellow, but it was the most loyal.
It was a film that I watched when I was much younger.

Speaker 8 And when I can't even say the name Old Yellow now without feeling slightly emotional.

Speaker 2 I'm Ben Garridge. I'm an evolutionary biologist, broadcaster.
I've written a whole series about dogs, and I think my doggy ambassador is the littlest hobo.

Speaker 2 It's like a kick-ass version of Lassie.

Speaker 18 Hi, I'm Jess French. I'm a vet, an author, and a children's TV presenter.
And my favourite cat ambassador has got to be Garfield, because who doesn't love a ginger cat and lasagna?

Speaker 19 I am David David Badiel. I'm a writer and comedian, and I'm going to nominate myself as the best ambassador ever for cats purely on the basis that I once owned a cat called Chairman Meow.

Speaker 20 It's the best name ever for a cat.

Speaker 23 And actually, I know it's the best name ever for a cat because when I took it to the vet for the first time, I took her actually to the vet for the first time,

Speaker 20 it got a big laugh in the waiting room.

Speaker 19 You know, what's name, the cat, Chairman Meow, massive laugh.

Speaker 22 But the receptionist just wrote down on her computer, Meow, right?

Speaker 20 just like her surname

Speaker 24 so when I went into the actual vet and the vet got up the cat's details on his computer I could tell he was thinking meow what an unoriginal

Speaker 19 so that was disappointing but yeah that's why and this is our panel

Speaker 1 So we need now to talk about, well, really, all of you to explain your interest, why you are supporting the animals that you are. Well, let's start with you, Jess, right?

Speaker 1 So, you are fighting on Team Cat. Let's just find out how many people in the audience are on Team Cat.

Speaker 1 And how many on Team Dog?

Speaker 1 Immediately, a lower voice there.

Speaker 14 Dog voice!

Speaker 22 But that's the thing, which is, I think, as someone who spends a lot of time going on about being a cat man, is that it's seen by some people, the dog people, as a little bit not right for a man to be obsessed with cats, which I think is a very questionable idea idea in 2024.

Speaker 1 Oh, I feel no, no, no, you're clickbaiting the issue there. That's making everyone seem like a bigot now just because they've got the dog.

Speaker 5 You are a bigot, Ron.

Speaker 1 And also, tell you what, my long-haired Daxon Maximilian is going to take you down to this.

Speaker 10 This is because we've set this sign show up in an adversarial manner, as is often the want at broadcasters.

Speaker 10 And it's nonsense. So I'm going to stop it now.

Speaker 5 There we go.

Speaker 26 George.

Speaker 10 I'm going to ask a sensible question. I'm not interested.

Speaker 26 No, hang on.

Speaker 26 No,

Speaker 1 We want to know. We want to know.

Speaker 1 Because also, I just like the way David, you said, I'm a cat man, which actually sounded more like you were kind of a jazz musician in the 1950s, which I'm really interested in.

Speaker 5 I'm always a superhero. Yeah, superhero.

Speaker 19 In Batman, but not woman.

Speaker 23 Not cat woman, cat man.

Speaker 20 Which wouldn't work because Batman would think, well, no, I'm Batman, so you have to be cat-woman.

Speaker 8 This is ridiculous, David. I'm confused.

Speaker 24 Yeah, so am I.

Speaker 19 Jeff.

Speaker 24 Why are you a cat woman?

Speaker 18 Well, listen, I spend my day job working with both cats and dogs, and I love them both, but I feel like with a cat, you really have to earn that love.

Speaker 18 You know, with a dog, they're so they love everyone, don't they? You've got a treat for them, they come to you. But with cats, you really have to

Speaker 18 do something special to earn that love. They're not just going to come to anyone, you know.
They decide you're for me or you're not.

Speaker 18 So I'm Team Cat simply because I think they make you feel a bit special.

Speaker 1 Right, let's move over to Ben, Team Dog.

Speaker 2 I agree with everything Jess said. That's why I'm Team Dog.

Speaker 2 I've got enough complex relationships in my life without having to try and impress a bloody cat.

Speaker 2 If I feed you, give you a home, I'm not in some sort of abusive thing with my cats and dogs at home, but if it takes more than that for them to love me, it's one fewer cats, one more dog.

Speaker 1 That's it, because a friend of mine said, I never thought of this before, how the relationships are so opposite. Exactly what you were saying there, that a dog says, yeah, I love you.

Speaker 1 And And you go, isn't it nice to be loved? And a cat says, Well, you'll have to earn my respect, Deborah.

Speaker 8 I've got cats, and I hope they're not going to be listening to this, because I think they know more than they let on. But dogs are a lot less worrying than cats, aren't they?

Speaker 8 You know where your dogs are, and you walk in the house, and they're enthusiastic, and they love you, and they jump up, and they see you. But as you say, cats you might not see for months on end.

Speaker 8 So, yeah, I think dogs are a lot less worrying.

Speaker 20 But the problem is, right, that essentially dogs, and I, you're right, it's a full spinery.

Speaker 16 I quite like dogs.

Speaker 20 Dogs are fine. They're just not cats.

Speaker 21 Cats are absolutely brilliant, right?

Speaker 20 I think the dog people want the cat people to hate dogs.

Speaker 24 And we don't.

Speaker 25 Also, you said that thing about how cats disappear.

Speaker 24 Dogs are always there.

Speaker 16 Dogs are in your face, dogs are like, I love you, I love you, I love you.

Speaker 22 There should be a restraining order.

Speaker 1 They are stalkers.

Speaker 10 Can I ask a science question? I would like to ask, Jess, as a vet, what are the, if we go back to basics, what are the physiological differences between cats and dogs?

Speaker 18 Yeah, so they're both part of the same order, the carnivora, and they both essentially have very similar body plan. But cats are perfectly adapted for hunting.

Speaker 18 They are obligate carnivores, which means they have to eat meat, whereas dogs will eat a combination of meats and vegetables and basically whatever they can find lying around.

Speaker 18 I'm sure if you've got dogs, you know that they will eat just about anything. So cats have this really perfectly adapted body for hunting.

Speaker 18 They have these incredibly sharp claws, which are protractile, but they can pull them in when they want, but actually, most of the time, they are in and they only bring them out when they need them, which means they remain perfectly sharp.

Speaker 18 They have these incredibly flexible bodies, which mean they can jump and climb and get up trees, jump out of trees. They're brilliant, perfect hunters.

Speaker 24 If cats are brilliant hunters, which I'm sure they are, why have they they thought instead of hunting, we will colonize humans and they will feed us?

Speaker 27 What is it in humans that so responds to cats and dogs, that finds them cute?

Speaker 19 Like, is it to do with the fact that I see a cat and it seems with its big eyes and tiny nose to be a sort of very, very pretty version of a human? That sounds a bit weird.

Speaker 12 Keeping cave sounds weird.

Speaker 28 But I do find cat faces to be incredibly attractive.

Speaker 5 That sounds weird as well.

Speaker 1 At this point, David started to pull out the various different dresses and skirts he's made for his cat.

Speaker 8 I'd also like to say that the other end of the cat is really not very attractive.

Speaker 1 That is, I would say, the greatest argument against cats when you're staying at someone's house and you are woken up by their cat's bottom there on display. And they do it.

Speaker 1 They're a morbid pencil sharpener.

Speaker 8 They do it.

Speaker 13 They do it.

Speaker 12 Why do they do that, by the way?

Speaker 8 My cat does something else, which is another reason why why I like dogs so much.

Speaker 8 If I don't wake up when the cat would like me to wake up, obviously the cat's in charge of the house, he licks my eyelid open.

Speaker 12 Wow, that's brilliant. You think that's brilliant?

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's brilliant. You wait till your cat does it to you.
It's not, it's.

Speaker 21 I like almost anything, again, weird.

Speaker 26 Cats do.

Speaker 26 Like once I lost a cat.

Speaker 19 We take our cats on holiday in England if we're renting somewhere and they will let us have a cat, right?

Speaker 20 And we have four of them.

Speaker 20 I'm nuts, right? And we have four cats and one of them, Ron, who is polydactyl, which means that he's got seven toes, is unbelievably strong cat.

Speaker 22 He's essentially a lion cub.

Speaker 20 He went missing when we had to leave that property and be out of there by sort of 12 o'clock.

Speaker 24 He went missing.

Speaker 22 He was found three hours later in the attic.

Speaker 21 I'd spent two hours crawling in the...

Speaker 22 insulation. My lungs were about to give out.

Speaker 24 I was sweating. I was so angry.

Speaker 20 I found him. I held on to him, and as soon as I saw him, I thought, oh, Ron.

Speaker 5 Because of the faces.

Speaker 10 In evolutionary terms, so how far do we have to go back to find the common ancestor between the dog and the cat? So what's the...

Speaker 2 The most likely common ancestor is a group of mammals that lived just around about the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Speaker 2 So it left an opportunity for loads of other things to suddenly diversify. And we saw the mammals explode onto the scene.

Speaker 2 So we had a group called the myasids, which looked like civets or genets or sort of weasly type things that lived right across North America, right into North Africa.

Speaker 2 It was quite a wide distribution, and they did really well, lots of different environments. They started to split into some of the groups we see today.

Speaker 2 And as far as modern cats, they started to branch off about 10.5 million years ago, and then dogs about seven, seven and a half million years ago.

Speaker 2 So they're quite recent splits from a tree that we can trace back to about between 45 and 60 million years ago.

Speaker 1 Do we see a pattern in the animals that can be domesticated? Or is it just down to the ones that we have chosen to domesticate?

Speaker 1 So, Jess, I mean, when there are certain animals brought in, I imagine every now and again there might be a more eccentric pet that comes across, you know, into your veterinary practice.

Speaker 18 There's certainly ones that are not a good idea to have. I mean, it sounds like you think one of those is a cat.

Speaker 18 But I suppose, you know, originally we thought about domesticating things that we could eat, and then cats probably came about because we had these grain stores, and that attracted rodents, and that's sort of what brought the cats near to us.

Speaker 18 And they realized maybe living around humans wasn't so bad.

Speaker 18 Generally, these days, though, people seem to think you can domesticate anything, and that really isn't the case.

Speaker 18 You know, most of the animals that we have these really incredible relationships with, so cats and dogs, that's been going on for thousands of years.

Speaker 18 It's not like you can just suddenly take an animal from the wild and put it in a cage, and that suddenly becomes what we see as a domestic animal or a pet.

Speaker 18 It really is only specific animals that I think make good pets.

Speaker 2 And we see this with some cats and dogs, don't we?

Speaker 2 So there's a rise in servoles, these beautiful African long-legged cats that are gorgeous that people describe as very dog-like and they're a modern pet.

Speaker 2 And we see occasionally wolves or very recent wolf domesticated things coming into the UK and they're terrible pets. Well even within the dog cat groups

Speaker 2 there are things that still don't make good pets at all. But in terms of what you can domesticate, you can domesticate a lot given enough time.

Speaker 22 I'm going to bring it back to the binary because because I think there is fun to be had in the binary, even if it's not real.

Speaker 23 Cats have actually won, right?

Speaker 20 And the way we can tell they've won is the internet, because the most viewed thing on the internet by miles and miles and miles is cats, more than porn.

Speaker 12 And I say that as an avid fan of both.

Speaker 21 Right? Like, many, many.

Speaker 1 When you say both again, we need to return it. Is there a shaded area in that then diagram?

Speaker 10 Do you feel like, Deborah, as somebody who's got both dogs and cats, how do do you perceive their relative intelligence, capacity for empathy, and so on?

Speaker 8 So I think they're both pretty smart, and I think they just show their intelligence in completely different ways. So my cats have five words.
I know their noises. I know I want to go out.

Speaker 8 I want my food. But they're a lot more independent.
And I think that they're, I think they have empathy, but they have it on their own terms.

Speaker 8 And quite frankly, when they can't be bothered, they can't be bothered. Dogs, I think, are very different because they are there all of the time.

Speaker 8 I've got five dogs, and there's always one at my side, there's always one touching my hand, which just gives me the impression that they want this close relationship.

Speaker 8 And the cat's like, I want it when I want it, but not so when I don't.

Speaker 18 There was actually a study that investigated exactly that, where they monitored cats in their home environments, and they monitored how many times the humans, actually it was all women, how many times the women initiated the contact with the cats, and how many times the cats initiated the contact with the women.

Speaker 18 And they found that if the human initiated the contact with the cat, then the resulting interaction, if there was one, sometimes the cats just walked off.

Speaker 18 But when there was a resulting interaction, it was much shorter than if the cat initiated the interaction.

Speaker 18 But they found that if the owner was receptive to when the cat came over and initiated the interaction, then they were much more likely to subsequently tolerate it when the woman initiated it.

Speaker 8 I love that, though, tolerate it. That is the word.

Speaker 13 That is exactly the word.

Speaker 1 It shows it, it says a lot, I suppose, ultimately, about the egos of the owners, which is, would you rather be loved or merely tolerated? And it kind of

Speaker 12 loved.

Speaker 21 I think most people would rather be lost.

Speaker 13 I'm not having this tolerated.

Speaker 22 Some cats, some, because it implies just a generic idea.

Speaker 24 And I would say the generic idea, sorry about this, does apply to to dogs dogs all love you cats some love you and some don't and also some cats attach to particular people in a household to be honest quite a lot of my cats don't really like me what's going on right how needy am I I love them

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Speaker 10 In an academic sense, measuring the intelligence of animals is notoriously difficult. Is there research into the intelligence level in some sense of cats and dogs?

Speaker 10 And if we're in the adversarial mood, what do we know about which is the smartest animal?

Speaker 2 So you're right, you've hit the nail on the head there. It's so difficult to do this.
So, what we're seeing right across the animal behavior board is almost a reset.

Speaker 2 So, standardizing testing of intelligence across animals.

Speaker 29 But you're looking at a really

Speaker 2 socially adept animal, the dogs, and a very intelligent, stealthy hunter, cats. You've got to assess those in different ways.

Speaker 2 If you assess their social behaviour, then yeah, dogs will always be better at them.

Speaker 10 Because they're pack animals.

Speaker 2 But they're pack animals, and we've bred them to work alongside us.

Speaker 2 And we've got 360 at least breeds of dog around the world, and they do everything from transport, such as sledding, to bomb detecting, to therapy. Imagine cats doing any of these things.

Speaker 2 Trusting a cat with a bomb? No.

Speaker 29 Absolutely no.

Speaker 12 Well, it would diffuse it one way or another. It would, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 16 The dogs don't diffuse it, do they?

Speaker 12 They sniff it out, but they don't move with it.

Speaker 32 A cat would do that thing at the edge of the table where it's just pushing.

Speaker 13 No whom.

Speaker 10 To continue, though, in terms. So the dog's a pack animal.
It's got some abilities to live in groups.

Speaker 2 And in terms of understanding you from a social perspective, they're much better at reading your face. I'm very dangerously close to agreeing with David a little bit here.

Speaker 2 It's not that they're aloof, they just can't read you in the same way that a dog can. Which is related to their evolutionary history, the way that they have to hunt as a pack, they live as a pack,

Speaker 2 they understand their social dynamic. A cat doesn't do that.
They're semi-solitary, they don't need to look at faces, and they don't have the same range of facial expressions that dogs do.

Speaker 2 But if you're looking at

Speaker 2 pure intelligence from a hunting stealthy sensory base, then cats almost always outperform dogs. So it's again, you're comparing two very different things as a vet when you're treating these animals.

Speaker 10 So, dogs and cats, which is the most difficult to deal with?

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 18 one of the most difficult things in a veterinary consultation is getting the cats out of the baskets.

Speaker 18 So, in that respect, cats are really difficult just to even look at in the first place.

Speaker 18 And cats are really, really good at hiding if there's anything wrong with them.

Speaker 18 Whereas a dog will come in and you know it's really labouring, it's limping on its leg, if it you know, really ham it up.

Speaker 18 Whereas the cats they're so brave and they just take it all, you know, been hit by a car, broken every bone in its body, but it just sort of lays there with a sort of dejected look on its face.

Speaker 18 Oh, not again, it's another life gone.

Speaker 1 And to be fair, the other reason it's probably just lying there is it's broken every bone in its body.

Speaker 12 I'm sure I trust you a little bit, man.

Speaker 2 I have picked up on something. I'm going to have to say this now.
From a scientific perspective, I do think you two are far more vocal than what we are, Deborah and I.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying, I think we're more reasonable.

Speaker 26 Because,

Speaker 2 and it's scientifically based,

Speaker 2 I have a fear that you both have a brain parasite.

Speaker 11 Oh.

Speaker 2 And Jess is looking suspicious because...

Speaker 2 Do you come across something called toxoplasmosis, Jess?

Speaker 18 I will not disclose if I have or have not come across it.

Speaker 2 So, there is a tiny single-celled protozoa parasite that lives inside rodents, rats, and mice predominantly in the UK.

Speaker 2 Now, that parasite can only reproduce weirdly, and we don't know why, in the gut of a cat.

Speaker 2 And it controls the rodents' brains to the point where they become sexually attracted to the cats and will go and actively seek them out.

Speaker 5 David,

Speaker 21 I knew I shouldn't have eaten that leftover whiskers.

Speaker 2 So we see that the rodents actively seek out the cats so that this parasite can reproduce inside the cat.

Speaker 2 However, research has shown, loads of research in repeated situations, has shown that up to 50% of cat owners have this brain parasite.

Speaker 4 So who's got a cat here?

Speaker 26 Oh, no hands, literally, no hands went up then.

Speaker 24 So what's the test for it?

Speaker 25 Just fancying cats?

Speaker 21 Or is it more than that?

Speaker 2 No, it can really, your inhibitions completely diminish.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is me.

Speaker 33 Ability to assess risk completely goes.

Speaker 32 There's quite a whole

Speaker 2 plethora from certain mental health problems right through to risk detection are associated with the presence or absence of toxoplasmosis in us.

Speaker 2 So, approximately in the UK, they reckon it's about 51%, which is very close to 52%.

Speaker 32 Are infected with this brain parasite because of cats.

Speaker 2 So, no wonder you two are so rabidly obsessed with your cats. It's not your fault, you've just brain controlled, that's fine.

Speaker 12 So, they're basically zombies, yeah, yours too.

Speaker 33 These two

Speaker 2 theory of culture, whereas we're clearly not.

Speaker 18 Jess, Debra, you have cats too, right?

Speaker 8 I have, I have got cats.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I think you might have this parasite.

Speaker 8 Now, hold on, can I say I've never had a rat has never shown any sense of attraction to me whatsoever.

Speaker 18 No, but actually recently they've found that this risk-taking behavior can make you much more successful. And entrepreneurs are really, really likely to have

Speaker 18 this parasite.

Speaker 24 It sounds like a good thing.

Speaker 12 This parasite.

Speaker 10 So half the population.

Speaker 10 Although, of course, it doesn't manifest itself in any particular way.

Speaker 2 No, there's a whole range, but most of us will never know you've got it. You're not going to start, leave here and go buy a pack of dreamies this evening.

Speaker 2 But it's scientifically, there's at least a significant proportion of us in this room tonight will have a parasite because of a cat. And it does control our brains in some way, shape, or form.

Speaker 2 I don't really think those two over there are being controlled by a tiny parasite to love cats more.

Speaker 1 Well, one of them is.

Speaker 12 Can I ask? Can we participate in this?

Speaker 10 It's a pretty good argument, by the way, way, isn't it? This debate, the cats versus dogs.

Speaker 10 I have two cats. I'm now swaying to odd dogs after

Speaker 1 you. You did say you were pretty angry with your cats at the moment.
You've had trouble with them, haven't you?

Speaker 10 Well, not really. They bother me too much.

Speaker 10 I was interested in what you said, actually, that the way to stop them bothering me is to ignore them completely.

Speaker 18 They prefer to be ignored. They're more likely to come up for some attention if they're ignored.
So that's what you want to be doing.

Speaker 24 I had a terrible moment.

Speaker 25 This is going to be in terms of you thinking I've got this parasite.

Speaker 12 What's it called? Toxicos. Tyxoplasmosis.

Speaker 23 Okay, this will demonstrate that I have got it, I'm afraid.

Speaker 24 So one thing that one of my cats does is that Zelda is that she will come to my wife if my wife sings only you by Yazoo.

Speaker 11 Right?

Speaker 20 So my wife is away at the moment filming.

Speaker 24 Zelda doesn't really like me.

Speaker 20 And I was in bed and I thought, oh, she's over there. I could see her ignoring me.

Speaker 21 And I have a recording on my phone of Morwenna singing this song because I want the cats to come to me.

Speaker 20 So I played it, Zelda came on the bed, she looked at the phone, she looked at me and she went off again.

Speaker 1 Can I just say at this point, thank you very much for your honesty this evening. It was very refreshing.

Speaker 1 I want to know a little bit about the intelligence though, going back to that of how we test intelligence. Like you were saying, there are the problems of

Speaker 1 because when we had a crow on the show, you didn't get on with that crow. Lovely, lovely crow.
It didn't get on with me. No, it didn't.
It didn't take to you at all. And but

Speaker 1 we saw the intelligence of the crow dealing with different kind of puzzles. What are the equivalent versions for a dog to see at what level it can deal with a puzzle or whatever it might be?

Speaker 2 So we can give them a whole bunch of enrichment tests where they have to, everything from pulling levers and pressing buttons and

Speaker 2 you can give them multi-staged, effectively games with a reward. And we've tried the same, well colleagues have tried the same with cats.

Speaker 2 And this is not to be disparaging to cats actually there is a genuine response that we very often can't tell whether they can't do it or just don't want to and that's almost an official response like i think they probably could if they wanted to and that probably goes to your side they're just very independent and quite sassy whereas a dog will do it potentially to please the the researcher and to get the reward the cat can't really be bothered really um so we don't know when we look at yeah dogs a huge range of dogs and sizes and shapes and they've been bred to be working dogs and pets and so on With cats, not so much, but but are you seeing now, as a vet, are you seeing more specific breeds?

Speaker 10 Is that becoming more fashionable that people are trying to craft the cats into different shapes and colours and

Speaker 5 more diversity?

Speaker 18 So, historically, the difficulty with breeds of cats is that because they're going out and doing whatever they want to do, they can mate with whoever they want to. So,

Speaker 18 the lines became very mixed. But now, people are starting to keep their cats indoors more.
It's easier to sort of control that breeding lines.

Speaker 18 And yeah, I think it is becoming more fashionable to have breeds of cat, I suppose, but still there are prob I think there are seventy-three types of breeds of cat, and there's I don't know, three hundred and something breeds of dogs.

Speaker 18 So we've still got a long way to go until we see that diversity. And they're still much more similar.
You don't get, you know, a Chihuahua and a Great Dame.

Speaker 18 We don't have that huge diversity in cats like we do in dogs.

Speaker 10 It's funny, 73 breeds, because I couldn't, could you, Deborah? Could you name many? I can't really name many breeds. You could say Bengal and yeah a dozen maybe.

Speaker 24 You can name a dozen breeds of cats. Probably.

Speaker 8 Siamese. You're going to make me do it now, aren't you? Siamese.

Speaker 20 Siamese.

Speaker 8 Siamese, Burmese, Abyssinian, Savannah's, short hair, Russian blues, Norwegian blues, Maine Coons,

Speaker 8 Swedish blues.

Speaker 13 It's a better moment than I thought it would be.

Speaker 13 Norwegian women.

Speaker 12 Cornish wrecks.

Speaker 8 Cornish wrecks. And those, what are the ones without any hair? Sphinx.
Sphinx cats, eh?

Speaker 10 Yeah, we have Devon Rex. We had Devon Rexes, actually.

Speaker 8 Oh, I like a Devon Rex.

Speaker 1 That problem of breeding, do we see similar things in cats?

Speaker 1 Because we've heard a lot of things about the fact that the number of different breeds of dogs means that there are many dogs that have been bred to a point of really, you know, life-shortening kind of shapes and sizes.

Speaker 18 Yeah, historically, we bred animals for purposes. So lots of the dogs came from hunting or, you know, they had specific jobs.

Speaker 18 But over recent years, we've sort of tended more towards breeding for aesthetics, and so we're starting to breed in these brachycephalic faces, which are the squashed flat faces, which are really problematic for breathing.

Speaker 18 And we are definitely starting to do that with cats as well.

Speaker 18 So, there's a trend at the moment for specifically breeding polydactyl cats, which have extra digits because people think they look like they've got huge paws, like more like lions or big cats, and certain cats with sort of coat conditions or curved ears or shortened tails.

Speaker 18 You know, these are all things for aesthetics, they don't have a function, and of course, they then have an impact on the animal's life.

Speaker 2 And sometimes that's really high, isn't it?

Speaker 2 There are certain dog breeds, I'm thinking of one in particular, where about 40% have a condition called Chiaris malformation, where the back of the brain actually tonsillates or herniates through the skull into the vertebrae.

Speaker 2 And it's a really common breed that a lot of older people often have because they're quite sweet little lap dogs. And it's because we're, as Jess said, so selectively breeding these things.

Speaker 2 We are messing them up a little bit, aren't we? I think both sides is something we can all agree on here: that it's

Speaker 10 keep it nice and general. Well, in general, what has the longest lifespan? The cats live longer or the dogs live longer?

Speaker 26 Cats live longer. Cats live longer, don't they?

Speaker 2 But there was a dog recently, it was 31 or something, wasn't it?

Speaker 14 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that's an anomaly, but yeah, typically cats are much longer lived.

Speaker 5 It's the anger, keeps them going.

Speaker 1 Deborah, how different do you think your life would be if you didn't have those pets? You know, it's, you know, what do they give you? And we can talk about this with cats and dogs.

Speaker 1 We don't have to say cats versus dogs, obviously. It's that sense of what it gives you psychologically.

Speaker 8 My face went all soft then.

Speaker 8 And it went soft because I cannot imagine life without them.

Speaker 8 I'm, as we all are, very busy all day, every day. I'm away from home.
I'm, you know, there's a lot of stuff bombarding at me.

Speaker 8 And when I go home and they, they just, they don't, they don't care who I am, what I do, how busy I am. They just want their life with me.
And it's a very, very therapeutic thing.

Speaker 8 You know, it's very relaxing.

Speaker 8 And to have them look at you in that way. Dogs, they want to please you.

Speaker 10 Perhaps just as I wanted to, in the adversarial spirit of the show, so in terms of the senses of these animals, so dogs versus cats, so what are the differences?

Speaker 18 In a lot of the senses, cats are going to come on top because they are superior hunters and they use all of their senses in doing that.

Speaker 18 So, with eyesight, cats can see in three colours, dogs can only see in two. Both of them can see movement really well because they're both trying to catch prey.

Speaker 18 Cats can see really, really well in low light as well. So, they can see about six times better than us in low light, whereas dogs can only see five times better.

Speaker 28 But just one more evolutionary question.

Speaker 19 I don't know if this is correct, but I read somewhere that a cat meow, and cats only meow to humours.

Speaker 23 How clever are cats?

Speaker 19 They only meow to humours. They don't meow to other cats.

Speaker 28 And someone read it's because they know that it's a bit like a baby's cry, and we will respond to it.

Speaker 5 How do they know that?

Speaker 18 They actually do meow to other cats, but only when they're kittens. So kittens will meow to their parents.
And I think...

Speaker 19 That means my cats think I am their dad.

Speaker 12 This is what I want.

Speaker 18 The adults also meow to their kittens, so it could be that they think

Speaker 18 their child.

Speaker 12 With the cat personality, it's probably more likely.

Speaker 18 They also do this special thing called a solicitation purr, which is where when they're purring, they add in this really high-pitched bit, which, like you said, sounds like a baby cry.

Speaker 18 And they know that that's much, much, much more likely to get a response from us. We see it as much more urgent when they put this extra high-pitched bit into their purr.

Speaker 14 What does that sound like?

Speaker 18 It sounds like a purr with a high-pitched baby cry in there.

Speaker 22 It does fit in, doesn't it, with the slightly cliched idea of cats that they are the only animal who purrs. They're the only animal who in a performative way says I'm having a good time.

Speaker 18 Cat purrs are incredible as well. They are we don't know exactly why they do it.
We think it might be self-soothing, but they also have this incredible quality of

Speaker 18 they can heal bones and they can heal skin. they can make granulation tissue grow.

Speaker 18 So, the cat's purr is at 25 hertz and 50 hertz, and we actually use those frequencies in medical healing to promote bone growth and to promote healing after surgery and things like that.

Speaker 18 So, and cats do heal really, really well after surgery. We see that.

Speaker 2 So, we could strap purring cats to sick people

Speaker 13 because a dog would do it.

Speaker 2 If a dog could save someone, be like, I'll be there, strap me to you now.

Speaker 13 A whole bunch of cats, never.

Speaker 10 So we've covered so it sight-wise, then, not a great deal of difference.

Speaker 18 You said I mean, they can see better in the dark, but

Speaker 10 but in terms of uh smell, for example.

Speaker 18 Smell's a tricky one because dogs have such a wide range. So we have something like a bloodhound, which has 300 million olfactory receptors.

Speaker 2 Let's take that one.

Speaker 18 But sort of the average dog would have maybe, say, 100 million, whereas the average cat would have 200 million. And we come back to this debate that, you know, dogs are really varied.

Speaker 18 We have chihuahuas, we have bloodhounds, we have collies. They're really diverse.
We can't say there isn't really an average dog because dogs are so variable, whereas cats are all relatively similar.

Speaker 1 Can I ask about the chihuahua, right?

Speaker 1 Because there's a friend of mine who's got one, and it's an incredibly angry dog that's always kind of trying to have a fight and yet never seems to realise it could easily be picked up and thrown out the window.

Speaker 1 And it does feel like the short man at the bar, you know, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 What is it in the breeding that has led to them behaving in a way which seems to entirely reject the notion that they really won't be able to handle anything?

Speaker 18 I mean, we don't actually know if they feel pain because of it, but they do have a malformation with their brain, which means that it's always under quite a lot of pressure.

Speaker 18 Their skull is enlarged, and so they might have a constant headache, which you know would make you quite angry, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 Because actually, we've said all this thing about dogs being friendly. Not all dogs are friendly, some dogs are horrible, and some cats do appear to be friendly.

Speaker 1 And you know, that's one of the, I mean, basically, what we're really saying is the whole supposition of this show is based on lies

Speaker 1 just because it looks good in the Radio Times listings. But fortunately, we've waited till the end to give that away.

Speaker 10 Well, it's true. I mean, I gathered that we're asking simple questions, such as what has the best eyesight, cats or dogs? And you might say, Well, it depends.
What's the best sense of smell?

Speaker 10 It depends. There's as much variation

Speaker 10 within dogs

Speaker 10 as there are between species, in some sense.

Speaker 10 It is a ludicrous conceit.

Speaker 33 And it's because, as Jess said earlier.

Speaker 1 Sorry, by the way, everyone, I'm sorry we brought you here.

Speaker 12 I'm sorry we've wasted your evening.

Speaker 2 We've kind of, but Jess said earlier, we've kind of hit on what a cat does really well. It hunts and it will provide companionship in its own terms, in your own terms, in your relationship.
Whereas...

Speaker 2 Rightly or wrongly, we've managed to diversify dogs into several hundred jobs and it's effectively made.

Speaker 2 well we call them breeds obviously but they're they're each one has a different role so from chihuahuas they have a role a great dane has a role bullies have roles all these different dogs whether they're lap dogs or hunting dogs what role does a chihuahua have then

Speaker 22 fits into a handbag

Speaker 1 do you know what that is not far off there was someone uh that my sister used to know that her mum had two chihuahuas that she couldn't feel that she could leave them outside the supermarket so she wore a larger bra and she would place the two dogs inside it it

Speaker 12 you remember her don't you sis she's in the audience tonight not not the woman with the choice you'd know if she was in the audience tonight

Speaker 13 i'm gonna ask you a difficult a

Speaker 26 difficult

Speaker 10 difficult question

Speaker 10 i'm gonna force you to choose deborah so because you have both

Speaker 10 if i were to say as an evil scientist you can only have one you can either add the cats or the dogs what would you do

Speaker 10 i know it's an impossible impossible question, but I. I think the cats are listening.

Speaker 8 The cats are listening, that's right.

Speaker 13 I know.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 they know how to take revenge, cats, don't they? I mean, they've got sharp claws.

Speaker 15 Oh, don't!

Speaker 8 It's really hard. They play really different roles in my life, and I know

Speaker 8 you want me to choose.

Speaker 10 That's an interesting point, though, that you said they play different roles.

Speaker 14 They have different roles.

Speaker 8 They're very different beings. And in the same way, it's very difficult physiologically to

Speaker 8 work out the differences between them. The relationships are different.
So

Speaker 14 I can't.

Speaker 19 Brian, ask me to make up my mind.

Speaker 10 You haven't got a dog, have you?

Speaker 20 I don't have a dog, but

Speaker 28 I just wanted you to say, David, make up your mind.

Speaker 10 David, make up your mind.

Speaker 34 Cat.

Speaker 12 What's the cat wearing?

Speaker 1 Is there any evidence for better well-being if you've got a dog rather than the cat?

Speaker 2 There's a long-term study done in Tokyo looking at the relationship between aging and owning cats or dogs. And over 11,000 people were studied, randomized testing and everything.

Speaker 2 Those who had dogs were 40% less likely to develop Alzheimer's, for example, whereas there is no discernible difference owning cats. And as Deborah said earlier, part of that is going out.

Speaker 2 And physically, you don't typically walk your cat and you don't take your cat on the beach twice.

Speaker 2 So part of it is a lifestyle, I guess, as well. But maybe it's harder to tease apart that relationship.

Speaker 2 But, yeah, there are, on the surface at least, quite significant differences between human health, longevity, better health, and owning dogs.

Speaker 8 Do you think that there's part of that that's when you take your dogs out, you talk to people?

Speaker 8 You know, there's a dogs, there's a lot of communication around dogs, whereas your cats are very much in your home and they're yours.

Speaker 8 And I think communication must be a helpful thing in terms of Alzheimer's.

Speaker 1 The summary, Ben, really, is that what you've basically said is cat owners are ultimately turned into zombies and will die young.

Speaker 12 So, David,

Speaker 10 how would we summarise then? So,

Speaker 10 we're where we started really aren't we?

Speaker 9 Any progress?

Speaker 1 Who says love all the animals but not as much as David?

Speaker 1 Well, we also asked our audience a question, and we wanted to to know what is the one animal you would like to domesticate and why?

Speaker 1 My teenage son Oliver.

Speaker 5 He's a disgrace.

Speaker 10 A chameleon because it matches the colour scheme of any room.

Speaker 21 A sea otter because they are so cute and they have pockets.

Speaker 12 Do they?

Speaker 2 Sea otters are perverts.

Speaker 13 Yeah, they really are.

Speaker 1 Otters are like the dolphins, aren't they? They were a real pin-up and everyone loved them. And then there was a little bit more research, everyone went, ooh, there's a dark side.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 18 Otters, scariest animals I've ever treated. Really?

Speaker 14 Otters.

Speaker 26 Otters.

Speaker 24 Well, they have guns in the pockets.

Speaker 10 Why, just in terms of their aggression.

Speaker 9 They are so aggressive.

Speaker 18 Yeah, absolutely wild. We'll just go for you.

Speaker 1 What have you got, Brian?

Speaker 10 This is a good one. A sloth.

Speaker 10 So my wife doesn't think I'm the laziest thing in the house.

Speaker 1 What have you got, Deborah?

Speaker 8 I've got elephant, so I can finally talk about the elephant in the room.

Speaker 24 I have William Barrett writing, I think this is designed to please the scientists. Amoebas, Bit Selly, I know.

Speaker 23 Hasn't gone well for William Barrett.

Speaker 1 To be fair, David, you didn't sell that one, did you?

Speaker 1 Jess, have you got another one?

Speaker 18 The sea sponge, so I could train it to give me a good scrub down in the bath.

Speaker 13 That's a bit sorry.

Speaker 8 Deborah, you got another one? My children, because I have to live with them. That's from Tim Fleet.
I thought, felt I should name them.

Speaker 2 Julia says, a Phoenix. If Dumbledore had one, then it's good enough for us.

Speaker 2 Plus, it would create some interesting new Darwin awards.

Speaker 1 I've got Protozoa, so when I go to work, I can say, Adios, amoebas.

Speaker 10 I've got an elk because I broke the hat stand.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of people with teenage children here. There's another one.

Speaker 1 Our son, then we wouldn't need hazmat kit for his bedroom.

Speaker 13 Anyone anymore?

Speaker 2 An ant because it would help with fiddly tasks that my fingers are too fat for.

Speaker 1 Here we go. Here is the trad one.
We always get one of these, and I'm always pleased to find the different ways you've worked it in. From Michael, scorpions, because stings stings can only get better.

Speaker 10 Thank you very much to our panel. Jess French, Ben Garrett, David Bediel, and Deborah Meaden.

Speaker 1 Next week is very exciting because our show is going to be Brian's school reunion.

Speaker 1 Well, not so much a school reunion, it's going to be your kind of particle physics conference, which is even more exciting for you because the infinite monkey cage is going to go back to where it all began in search of the infinitely small at CERN in Geneva, home of the Large Hadron Collider.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for joining us.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 8 Till now, nice again.

Speaker 4 Hello.

Speaker 1 I'm Dr. Michael Mosley and in my BBC Radio 4 podcast, Just One Thing, I'm investigating some quick, simple and surprising ways to improve your health and life.
So which will you try?

Speaker 34 Maybe some green tea to boost your brain power?

Speaker 10 Time's up.

Speaker 14 Or doing the plank

Speaker 34 to lure your blood pressure. How about snacking smartly?

Speaker 29 Delicious.

Speaker 4 To benefit your heart health.

Speaker 1 So to benefit your brain and body in ways you might not expect, here's just one thing you can do right now.

Speaker 34 Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds.