Cats are one of the most beloved pets in the world, but they are more than just companions. They have also helped in various research projects and been experimented on more than once. Whether assisting in the foundation of cochlear hearing aids, being a useful prop in the search for a cure for AIDS/HIV, or possibly alerting humans to radioactive waste, cats are undeniably useful.
In 1929, two Princeton University professors conducted an experiment, and turned a cat into a telephone, all the while proving the hypothesis that as a sound becomes louder, the pitch should be higher as well. This was done with a live, sedated cat. The skull was cut open, and a wire attached to the part of the brain that perceives hearing. One of the men, Ernest Wever, then went into a separate sound proof room with a transmitter, while the other man, Charles Bray spoke into the ears of the cat. Wever could hear him. They performed a few more experiments with the cat, attaching wires to different parts of the cats brain and restricting blood flow to understand how the brain hears things. In the end, this set up the basis for the cochlear hearing aids, which translates sounds into electricity while simulating the auditory nerve on the brain.
Cats have helped with quality of human life, but they may also end up helping to save them. There is a plan to engineer cats to glow green when they come into contact with radioactive waste. In 1981, the US asked a panel of scientists to find a way warn future descendants of radioactive waste in the case that they no longer used modern languages. One solution was to use a monument to warn people off, such as an obelisk, but a far more popular idea is what is called the “Ray Cat.” The idea behind it is to reproduce the fluorescent light that some animals such as frogs give off when in the right conditions, or if that fails, the hope is to engineer cats using an enzyme interaction. A group formed in 2015 called “The Ray Cat Solution Movement” is currently attempting to normalize the term “Ray Cat” in common vocabulary.
This isn’t the only time that humans have attempted to make cats glow in an attempt to help human society, however. Because cats are better models for AIDS than most other species of animal having a very similar disease, they are the model used to test genes with the virus. Their approach was to clone a cat and genetically engineer the resulting embryo. They implanted a gene into a cell, and then added the nucleus into an egg cell that was missing its nucleus. The cats resulting from this experiment glowed either green or red when exposed to a blue light. The scientists then used this method to come at FIV, the feline version of HIV. The idea is to use gene therapy to change a person’s DNA to be able to fight off HIV. Antiviral proteins taken from monkeys were introduced to the cats DNA, and the result was a cat who’s DNA resisted replication and spreading of the disease. Although no AIDs proof cat has been made yet, scientists are still hopeful to find a cure for HIV, and to help cats with their FIV problem in the process.
Dogs may be man’s best friend, but cats have always been partners to man. Cats have provided so much more than just companionship over the years, and now they may just be offering a way to save lives.
More Information
AIDS/HIV:
https://www.livescience.com/15994-glow-dark-cats-aids-virus-research.html
Radiation:
Hearing:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/princeton-cat-telephone
https://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2017/04/the-cat-telephone/
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/princeton-cat-experiment/
The Augur 