TWIL: Dog Tail Wag Direction

One thing about cats and dogs: you know how dogs feel. Cats are all loving and playful and they get pissy and stalk off.

Evidently, dog emotions are so reliable that scientists have run experiments and found that dog tails wag in one direction when they are happy and another when they are mad. 

No such experiment has been done on cats because it is pointless. Goldie’s tail twitches just they same way when he is hunting or purring or playing. 

Comments

[KC]

Cat ears say things, though. But yes, generally, there are Good Reasons they don't use cats as behavior/other study animals all that often...

(do you remember when it came out that apparently all the lab rats have been super-stressed by both 1. their environments being bad rat environments and 2. human male pheromones, and therefore a bunch of results are probably invalid since they were assuming a "calm" base state instead of a "stressed" base state? And then, of course, there is this: https://gwern.net/maze Someday we'll learn more things, and someday maybe we will act on the ones we already know, and someday maybe we'll do more menopause research as well...)

[KC]

(to be clear, big fan of scientific studies, and also I am impressed by what we *have* learned even though there are design flaws in some studies; not a fan of meta-studies that lump apples and oranges together [is X treatment good for "pain" and then it dumps neuropathic pain and inflammatory pain and all sorts of areas of the body together...] but in general: science is good! But it could be better, and it sometimes frustrates me that it isn't.)

[theQueen]

KC - I think perhaps pure science is good, but not reported in as much unless to say “The government has spent 1 million dollars to study the effects of car exhaust on pigeon reproduction.” Without the bigger picture, it seems frivolous.

[KC]

Science is generally also expensive. There is that. But yes, there is usually a big picture that makes weird-sounding things not frivolous. (not always; there was an "I've got a cure for cancer but it's being suppressed by Big Pharma" dude who convinced enough people that there were *repeated* studies of his thing... all of which came back "nope, does not cure cancer" and it is a whole weird fiasco and people *still* want the government to try, try again, but also, eh, sometimes things work, so there is that within science as well.)

(also it ate my first comment on this post, sigh; probably because it had a link.)

[theQueen]

KC - I have tried twice to get your comment on here. Taking the link out entirely this time.

theQueen said:
KC - Yep, thought it was spam. Here it is:
"Cat ears say things, though. But yes, generally, there are Good Reasons they don't use cats as behavior/other study animals all that often... (do you remember when it came out that apparently all the lab rats have been super-stressed by both 1. their environments being bad rat environments and 2. human male pheromones, and therefore a bunch of results are probably invalid since they were assuming a "calm" base state instead of a "stressed" base state? And then, of course, there is this: Cat ears say things, though. But yes, generally, there are Good Reasons they don't use cats as behavior/other study animals all that often... (do you remember when it came out that apparently all the lab rats have been super-stressed by both 1. their environments being bad rat environments and 2. human male pheromones, and therefore a bunch of results are probably invalid since they were assuming a "calm" base state instead of a "stressed" base state? And then, of course, there is this: [LIN-K UTTERLY OBLITERATED]
Someday we'll learn more things, and someday maybe we will act on the ones we already know, and someday maybe we'll do more menopause research as well...)

Did not know lab rats are stressed. No wonder they die when they drink or eat anything artificial.

[KC]

Re: rat stress, you may find these interesting (Rat Park should not be interpreted as "a healthy social environment eliminates addiction" but "a healthy social environment reduces addiction when there are other factors also discouraging addiction" for behold, bitter water is *bitter*)(and maybe broken links can get through):
www .science .org/content/article/male-scent-may-compromise-biomedical-research
en .wikipedia .org/wiki/Rat_Park

The thing about "oh, hey, there are confounding factors that we... are still not doing anything about" is here: gwern .net/maze