UC Science Today

What can our pets tell us about our own quirks? Researcher Mikel Delgado of the University of California, Berkeley recently looked at how our personality traits align with our relationships with our pets, particularly cats and dogs.

So, we basically did a massive survey of pet owners online. So someone who identifies as a cat person is probably going to score higher on the neuroticism scale, which is a measure of things like anxiety and depression and hostility, and also the openness scale, which is kind of your creativity and artistic bent, maybe openness to new ideas, whereas dog people tend to score lower on those scales. On the other hand, dog people tend to score higher on extroversion and agreeableness. So we found, consistent with previous studies, those results, but we also found that people who said they were both a cat and a dog person fell somewhere in between."

This was also the first time a survey like this focused solely on the personalities of pet owners, rather than the general population.

What can our pets tell us about our own quirks? Researcher Mikel Delgado of the University of California, Berkeley recently looked at how our personality traits align with our relationships with our pets, particularly cats and dogs.

So, we basically did a massive survey of pet owners online. So someone who identifies as a cat person is probably going to score higher on the neuroticism scale, which is a measure of things like anxiety and depression and hostility, and also the openness scale, which is kind of your creativity and artistic bent, maybe openness to new ideas, whereas dog people tend to score lower on those scales. On the other hand, dog people tend to score higher on extroversion and agreeableness. So we found, consistent with previous studies, those results, but we also found that people who said they were both a cat and a dog person fell somewhere in between."

This was also the first time a survey like this focused solely on the personalities of pet owners, rather than the general population.

What can our pets tell us about our own quirks? Researcher Mikel Delgado of the University of California, Berkeley recently looked at how our personality traits align with our relationships with our pets, particularly cats and dogs.

So, we basically did a massive survey of pet owners online. So someone who identifies as a cat person is probably going to score higher on the neuroticism scale, which is a measure of things like anxiety and depression and hostility, and also the openness scale, which is kind of your creativity and artistic bent, maybe openness to new ideas, whereas dog people tend to score lower on those scales. On the other hand, dog people tend to score higher on extroversion and agreeableness. So we found, consistent with previous studies, those results, but we also found that people who said they were both a cat and a dog person fell somewhere in between."

This was also the first time a survey like this focused solely on the personalities of pet owners, rather than the general population.

In the last two decades, one of the most rapidly growing areas in research is the quest to understand how the brain works – and the severe consequences when the brain goes awry. The biggest challenge, according to neurobiologist Jack Feldman of UCLA, is that the brain is probably the most complex object in the universe.

"I realize that other people have said that, but it’s probably true. There are 80 billion neurons, they’re all connected to each other, so by the time you go through the combinatorial, the numbers just get to be totally out of hand. We need to be able to solve, to understand things. One way of doing it is to try to tackle the simpler problems first to provide a foundation for the more complex problems."

Feldman and his colleagues are working on just that by pinpointing the brain’s ‘sighing reflex’. Their findings will help in the understanding of the neural control of breathing, which has broader implications for lung function.

"We would like to understand what the mechanisms are to be able to find therapies for things like SIDS and sleep apnea and Rett syndrome and so on and so forth."

Disturbances like fires and clear cutting can leave forests devoid of vegetation, but not quite lifeless. By simulating these disturbances, ecologist Sydney Glassman of the University of California, Berkeley found types of fungi that could survive these catastrophic conditions. The fungi known as ectomycorrhizal, which pine trees rely on for nutrients, could in fact remain in the soil as dormant spores, even if its actively growing companions are destroyed.

"I was sampling in pine forests across North America. I was working in a collaborative group, most of the people were taking soil and sampling what was the active ectomycorrhizal fungi. And then what I did was, at those exact same locations, I simulated disturbance. So I dried out the soil, left it hanging out for several months, and then I planted seedlings in it and determined what ectomycorrhizal fungi were able to survive this disturbance and colonize plant seedlings. So I could pretty much tell you with at least 80-90 percent probability, which fungi are going to survive in any given pine forest in North America."

In the last two decades, one of the most rapidly growing areas in research is the quest to understand how the brain works – and the severe consequences when the brain goes awry. The biggest challenge, according to neurobiologist Jack Feldman of UCLA, is that the brain is probably the most complex object in the universe.

"I realize that other people have said that, but it’s probably true. There are 80 billion neurons, they’re all connected to each other, so by the time you go through the combinatorial, the numbers just get to be totally out of hand. We need to be able to solve, to understand things. One way of doing it is to try to tackle the simpler problems first to provide a foundation for the more complex problems."

Feldman and his colleagues are working on just that by pinpointing the brain’s ‘sighing reflex’. Their findings will help in the understanding of the neural control of breathing, which has broader implications for lung function.

"We would like to understand what the mechanisms are to be able to find therapies for things like SIDS and sleep apnea and Rett syndrome and so on and so forth."

Disturbances like fires and clear cutting can leave forests devoid of vegetation, but not quite lifeless. By simulating these disturbances, ecologist Sydney Glassman of the University of California, Berkeley found types of fungi that could survive these catastrophic conditions. The fungi known as ectomycorrhizal, which pine trees rely on for nutrients, could in fact remain in the soil as dormant spores, even if its actively growing companions are destroyed.

"I was sampling in pine forests across North America. I was working in a collaborative group, most of the people were taking soil and sampling what was the active ectomycorrhizal fungi. And then what I did was, at those exact same locations, I simulated disturbance. So I dried out the soil, left it hanging out for several months, and then I planted seedlings in it and determined what ectomycorrhizal fungi were able to survive this disturbance and colonize plant seedlings. So I could pretty much tell you with at least 80-90 percent probability, which fungi are going to survive in any given pine forest in North America."

Disturbances like fires and clear cutting can leave forests devoid of vegetation, but not quite lifeless. By simulating these disturbances, ecologist Sydney Glassman of the University of California, Berkeley found types of fungi that could survive these catastrophic conditions. The fungi known as ectomycorrhizal, which pine trees rely on for nutrients, could in fact remain in the soil as dormant spores, even if its actively growing companions are destroyed.

"I was sampling in pine forests across North America. I was working in a collaborative group, most of the people were taking soil and sampling what was the active ectomycorrhizal fungi. And then what I did was, at those exact same locations, I simulated disturbance. So I dried out the soil, left it hanging out for several months, and then I planted seedlings in it and determined what ectomycorrhizal fungi were able to survive this disturbance and colonize plant seedlings. So I could pretty much tell you with at least 80-90 percent probability, which fungi are going to survive in any given pine forest in North America."

In the last two decades, one of the most rapidly growing areas in research is the quest to understand how the brain works – and the severe consequences when the brain goes awry. The biggest challenge, according to neurobiologist Jack Feldman of UCLA, is that the brain is probably the most complex object in the universe.

"I realize that other people have said that, but it’s probably true. There are 80 billion neurons, they’re all connected to each other, so by the time you go through the combinatorial, the numbers just get to be totally out of hand. We need to be able to solve, to understand things. One way of doing it is to try to tackle the simpler problems first to provide a foundation for the more complex problems."

Feldman and his colleagues are working on just that by pinpointing the brain’s ‘sighing reflex’. Their findings will help in the understanding of the neural control of breathing, which has broader implications for lung function.

"We would like to understand what the mechanisms are to be able to find therapies for things like SIDS and sleep apnea and Rett syndrome and so on and so forth."

How do genes properly distinguish an arm from a leg during development? In a recent study on bats, researcher Nadav Ahituv of the University of California, San Francisco found that a total of 7000 genes were expressed differently in the wing versus the hind leg. His team did this by sequencing the bat’s entire genome, and found that switches known as “enhancers” control these wing formation genes.

"So we made a fully annotated genome so we can find where the switches are, near what genes they are, and what genes they might be regulating. Enhancers are sort of the on switch, they tell the gene when to turn on, and at what level, and at what location. Most genes have what's called a promoter, right next to them. And so the enhancers are sort of the promoter of the promoter, they tell the promoter when to turn on the gene."

But not all genes expressed in either the wing or the leg may be directly involved in their development.

"More functional studies will need to be done to prove that but at least, in terms of the number of genes that we saw that are different, it’s quite high."