The Infinite Monkey Cage - Cats v Dogs

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Brian Cox and Robin Ince sniff and paw their way through the evidence to put to rest the age-old debate of whether cats are better than dogs. They’re joined by TV dragon and dog devotee Deborah Meaden, comedian and cat compadre David Baddiel, evolutionary scientist Ben Garrod and veterinarian Jess French. They learn how the domestication of our four-legged companions by humans has had a profound impact on their physiology, temperament and methods of communication. They debate which species is the most intelligent and skilled and try to lay to rest the most important question of all – which one really loves you?Producer: Melanie Brown Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robin Ince and this is the Infinite Monkey Kennel.

Or basket. Or possibly Infinite Monkey Cardboard Box. Because today we are pitting two of the nation's favourite pets together in the biggest battle between species ever broadcast on Radio 4 on Saturday night. Or the repeat on Wednesday. Or the repeat on Wednesday afternoon, which might also be on Mondays, actually, as well. Yeah, you might be listening on BBC Sound as well

or wherever you get your podcasts. Or wherever you... This is the problem with doing big Saturday night, World of Sport, Dickie Davis, giant Haystack-style intros. Dickie Davis. People don't receive the media like they used to, do they? Who remembers Dickie Davis? That dates a long time. Yes, yes.

We got to Dickie Davis much faster than normal, didn't we, Brian? Brian, of course, has a slight Dickie Davis? That dates a long time. We got to Dickie Davis much faster than normal, didn't we, Brian? 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. Very clever. So, you marvelled at bats versus flies. You gasped at wasps versus bees. Now it is the ultimate challenge.

It is cats versus bees. Now it is the ultimate challenge. It is cats versus dogs. In the red corner, we have a dachshund. In the blue corner, 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. It's gone wandered off because that's what they do it's wandered off probably for a few days maybe even a few weeks it's gone off for long enough that eventually the owner in tears goes around all the neighboring telegraph poles and pops up little lost cat images all over it weeping 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 give me a gourmet meal and I might purr before I dig my claws in really unnecessarily tightly.

I'm a dog person, by the way. So in today's show, we ask what makes the best pet, cat or dog? In order to conduct, perhaps, the greatest scientific debate since Shatley and Curtis discussed the nature of spiral nebula on 25th

of April 1920 at the Smithsonian. We will explore the science of breeding domestic pets. No, some of them definitely knew about that, Brian. I definitely heard. More than knew about Dickie Davis, anyway. We'll explore the science of breeding domestic pets, the relative intelligence and skills of the aforementioned species.

And which one of them really loves you? Because some of them are lying. So, to help us sort out the Abyssinian from the Alsatian we are joined by an evolutionary scientist, a vet, a dragon and somebody who spent much of their life living in a fantasy world and they are? Hello I'm Deborah Meaden. I am businesswoman, investor and TV dragon and I think a great ambassador for dogs is Old Yeller. I don't know if anybody remembers Old Yeller, but it was the most loyal... It was a film that I watched when I was much younger,

and I can't even say the name Old Yeller now without feeling slightly emotional. I'm Ben Garrett. I'm an evolutionary biologist, broadcaster. I've written a whole series about dogs, and I think my doggy ambassador is the littlest hobo. It's like a kick-ass version of Lassie. 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? I am David Baddiel. 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. It's the best name ever for a cat 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, took her, actually, to the vet for the first time, it got a big laugh in the waiting room. You know, what's the name of the cat? Chema Meow. Massive laugh.

But the receptionist just wrote down on her computer, Meow. Right? Just like her surname. 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, and the vet got up the cat's details on his computer, I could tell he was thinking, meow, what an unoriginal... So that was disappointing, but, yeah, that's why.

And this is our panel. 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? So you are fighting on Team Cat. Let's just find out how many people in the audience are on Team Cat. Three!

And how many on Team Dog? Three! Immediately a lower voice there. Lower voice! 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 in 2024. Oh, I feel... No, no, no, you're click-baiting the issue there. I am. That's making everyone seem like a bigot now just because they've got a dog. You are a bigot, Robin. And also, tell you what, my long-haired Daxon Maximilian's going to take you down.

This is because we've set this sign show up in an adversarial manner, as is often the want of broadcasters. And it's nonsense. So I'm going to stop it now. There we go. I'm going to ask a sensible question. I'm not interested.

Hang on, we want to know. We want to know, we want to know, 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 really enjoyed. I thought he was a superhero. Yeah, superhero in Batman, but not woman.

Not cat woman, cat man, which wouldn't work because Batman would think, well, no, I'm Batman. So you have to be cat woman. This is ridiculous, well, no, I'm Batman, so you have to be Catwoman. This is ridiculous, David. I'm confused. Yeah, so am I. Jess, why are you a Catwoman? 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. You know, with a dog, they love everyone, don't they they you've got a treat for them they come to you but with cats you really have to 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 so I'm team cat simply because I think they make you feel a bit special right let's move over to Ben team dog I agree with everything jess said that's why i'm team dog i've got enough complex relationships in my life without having to try and impress a bloody cat 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 that's that's it because a friend of mine said i never thought this before how the relationships are so opposite exactly what you were saying there that a dog says yeah i love you and you're going nice to be loved and a cat says well you'll have to earn my respect 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? 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. So, yeah, I think dogs are a lot less worrying. But the problem is, right, that essentially dogs, and you're right, it's a false binary. I quite like dogs. Dogs are fine. They're just not cats. Cats are absolutely brilliant, right? I think the dog people want the cat people to hate dogs, and we don't. Also, you said that thing about how cats disappear. Dogs are always there. Dogs are in your face.

Dogs are like, I love you, I love you, I love you. There should be a restraining order. They are stalkers. Can I ask a science question? I would like to ask, Jess, as a vet, if we go back to basics, what are the physiological differences between cats and dogs? Yeah, so they're both part of the same order,

the carnivora, and they're both essentially a very similar body plan. But cats are perfectly adapted for hunting. They are obligate carnivores, which means they have to eat meat, whereas dogs will eat a combination of meat and vegetables and basically whatever they can find lying around. I'm sure if you've got dogs, you know they will eat just about anything. So cats have this really perfectly adapted body for hunting. They have these incredibly sharp claws which are protractile that 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. 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. If cats are brilliant hunters, which I'm sure they are, why have they thought, instead of hunting, we will colonise humans and they will feed us? What is it in humans that so responds to cats and dogs, that finds them cute? 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. Keeping that bit about itself is weird. But I do find cat faces to be incredibly attractive. That sounds weird as well. At this point, David's started to pull out the various different dresses and skirts he's made for his cat.

I'd also like to say that the other end of the cat is really not very attractive. 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 like some morbid pencil sharpener. They do it. Why do they do that, by the way?

My cat does something else, which is another reason why I like dogs so much. 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. Wow. That's brilliant. You think that's brilliant?

Yeah, it's brilliant. You wait till your cat does it to you. It's not... I like almost anything... Again, weird. Cats do it. It's weird. Like, once I'd lost a cat.

We take our cats on holiday in England if we're renting somewhere and they will let us have a cat right and we have four of them we got four i'm a nut 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 he's essentially a lion cub he went missing when we had to leave that property and and be out of there by sort of 12 o'clock. He went missing. He was found three hours later in the attic.

I'd spent two hours crawling in the insulation. My lungs were about to give out. I was sweating. I was so angry. I found him. I held on to him. And as soon as I saw him, I thought, oh, wrong. Because of the faces.

In evolutionary terms, so how far do we have to go back to find a common ancestor between the dog and the cat? So what's the evolution of the story? The most likely common ancestor is a group of mammals that lived just around about the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. So it left an opportunity for loads of other things to suddenly diversify, and we saw the mammals explode onto the scene.

So we had a group called the myacids, which looked like civets or jennets or weasley type things that lived right across north america right into north africa and it's quite a wide distribution and they did really well um lots of different environments they started to split into some of the groups we see today and as far as modern cats they started to branch off about 10 and a half million years ago and then dogs about seven seven and a half million years ago so they're quite recent splits from a tree that we can trace back to about between 45 and 60 million years ago 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 so so just you i

mean when there are certain animals brought in i I imagine every now and again there might be a more eccentric pet that comes across, you know, into your veterinary practice. 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. 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 what brought the cats near to us. And they realised maybe living around humans wasn't so bad. Generally, these days, though,

people seem to think you can domesticate anything. And that really isn't the case. 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 it's not like you can just suddenly take an animal from the wild and put it in a cage and and that suddenly becomes what we see as a domestic animal or a pet it's it really is only specific animals that I think make good pets and we see this with some cats and dogs don't we so there's a rise in servals these beautiful african long-legged cats that are gorgeous, that people describe as very dog-like, and they're a modern pet.

And we see occasionally wolves or very recent wolf-domesticated things coming into the UK, and they're terrible pets. Even within the dog-cat groups, 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. I'm going to bring it back to the binary, because I think there is fun to be had in the binary,

even if it's not real. Cats have actually won, right? 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. And I say that as an avid fan of both. Right? When you say both as an avid fan of both. Right?

Like, they're many, many more than dogs. When you say both again, we need to return it. Is there a shaded area in that Venn diagram? Do you find that, Deborah, as someone who's got both dogs and cats, how do you perceive their relative intelligence, capacity for empathy and so on? 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, 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 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 I've got five dogs and 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 and the cat's like I want it when I want it but not so when I don't 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 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. But when there was a resulting interaction, it was much shorter than if the cat initiated the interaction. 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.

I love that, though, tolerate it. That is the word. That is exactly the word. It says a lot, I suppose, ultimately about, I suppose, the egos of the owners, which is would you rather be loved or merely tolerated? And it kind of... I think loved. I think most people would rather... That idea, I think it shows again from

a freudian perspective david i think the idea i'm not having this tolerated some cats some because it implies just a generic idea and i would say the generic idea sorry about this does apply 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. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors,

like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working.

Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. 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? And if we're in the adversarial mood, what do we know about? Which is the smartest animal? So you're right, you've hit the nail on the head there.

It's so difficult to do this. What we're seeing right across the animal behaviour board is almost a reset. So standardising testing of intelligence across animals. But you're looking at a really socially adept animal the dogs and a very intelligent stealthy hunter cats you've got to assess those in different ways if you assess their social behavior then yet dogs will always be better because they're pack animals but they're pack animals we've bred them to work alongside us 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. Trusting a cat with a bomb? No. Absolutely no. Well, it would diffuse it one way or the other. It would, yeah, absolutely. The dogs don't diffuse it, do they? They sniff it out.

A cat would do that thing at the edge of the table where it's just pushing. To continue, though, so the dog's a pack animal. It's got some abilities to live in groups. 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. 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 live. They have to hunt as a pack. They live as a pack. 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. But if you're looking at pure intelligence from a hunting, stealthy sensory base,

then cats almost always outperform dogs. So again, you're comparing two very different things. As a vet, when we're treating these animals, so dogs and cats, which is the most difficult to deal with? I mean one of the most difficult things in a veterinary consultation is getting the cats out of the baskets so in that respect cats are really difficult just to even look at in the first place and cats are really really good at even look at in the first place um and cats are really really good at hiding if there's anything wrong with them um whereas a dog will come in and

you know it's really laboring it's limping on its leg if it you know really ham it up 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. Oh, not again. It's another life gone. To be fair, the other reason it's probably just lying there is it's broken every bone in its body. I'm not sure I trust you as a vet now. 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. I'm just saying I think we're more reasonable and it's scientifically based yeah i have a fear that you both have a brain parasite and jess is looking suspicious because do you come across something called toxoplasmosis jess i will not disclose if i have or have not come across so there is a tiny single-celled protozoa parasite that lives inside rodents rats and mice predominantly in the uk now that parasite can only reproduce weirdly we don't know why in the gut of a cat and it controls the rodent's brains to the point where they become sexually attracted to the cats

and will go and actively seek them out. David. Yeah. Yeah. I knew I shouldn't have eaten that leftover whiskers. So we see that the rodents actively seek out the cats so that this parasite can reproduce inside the cat. However, research has shown, loads of research in repeated situations,

has shown that up to 50% of cat owners have this brain parasite. So who's got a cat here? Oh, no hands, literally no hands went up. So what's the test for it? Just fancying cats? Or is it more than that? No, it can really... Your inhibitions completely diminish.

Yeah, this is me. Ability to assess risk completely goes. There's quite a whole plethora from certain mental health problems right through to risk detection are associated with the presence or absence of toxoplasmosis in us. So approximately, in the UK, they reckon it's about 51%, which is very close to 52%.

LAUGHTER Are infected with this brain parasite because of cats. 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. So basically they're zombies. Yeah, those two. Those two. You're arguing with the zombie theory of consciousness. Whereas we're clearly not. Jess?

Deborah, you have cats too, right? I have got cats. Yeah, I think you might have this parasite. Now, hold on. Can I say, I've never had... A rat has never shown any sense of attraction to me whatsoever. No, but actually, recently, they've found that this risk-taking behaviour can make you much more successful, and entrepreneurs are really, really likely to have this parasite.

It sounds like a good thing, this toxic parasite. It sounds brilliant. So half the population. Although, of course, it doesn't manifest itself in any particular way. 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. But 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. I don't really think those two over there are being controlled by a tiny parasite to love cats more. Well, one of them is. Can I ask? We were talking about intelligence. It's a pretty good argument, by the way, isn't it? The vates, the cats versus dogs.

I have two cats. I'm now swaying toward dogs. You did say you were pretty angry with your cats at the moment. You've had trouble with them, haven't you? Well, not really. They bother me too much. I was interested in what you said, actually, that the way to stop them bothering me is to ignore them completely.

They prefer to be ignored. They're more likely uh come up for a for some attention if they're ignored so that's what you want to be doing i had a terrible moment this is this is going to be in terms of you thinking i've got this parasite what's it called toxoplasmosis okay this will demonstrate that i have got it i'm afraid so 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, right? So my wife is away at the moment filming. Zelda doesn't really like me. And I was in bed and I thought, oh, she's over there.

I could see her ignoring me. And I have a recording on my phone of Morwenna singing this song because I want the cats to come to me. So I played it, Zelda came on the bed, she looked at the phone, she looked at me and she went off again. Can I just say at this point, thank you very much for your honesty

this evening. It was very refreshing. I wanted to know a little bit about the intelligence going back to that of how we test intelligence. You were saying there are the problems of... Because when we had a crow on the show, you didn't get on with that crow. Lovely, lovely feather. It didn't get on with me.

No, it didn't take you at all. But 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? So we can give them a whole bunch of enrichment tests where they have to, everything from pulling levers and pressing buttons, and you can give them multi-staged, effectively games with the reward. And we've tried the same, well, colleagues have tried the same with cats, 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 researcher and to get the reward the cat can't really be bothered really um so we don't know when we look at your 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 is that becoming more fashionable that people are trying to craft the cats

into different shapes and colours and produce more diversity? Yeah, I think 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 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 and yeah I think it is becoming more fashionable to have breeds of cats I suppose but still there are probably I think there are 73 types of breeds of cat and there's I don't know 300 and something breeds of dogs 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 we don't have that huge diversity in cats like we do in dogs it's only 73 because i couldn't could you deborah could you name many i can't really name many but you could say bengal and yeah doesn't maybe you can name a dozen breeds of cat probably you're gonna make me do it now, aren't you? Siamese. Siamese. Siamese Burmese, Abyssinian,

savannahs, short hair, Russian blues, Norwegian blues, Maine Coons, Swedish blues. It's a better moment than I thought it would be. Yeah. Cornish Rex. Cornish Rex. And what are the ones without any hair? Sphinx.

Sphinx cats. We had Devon Rexes, actually. Oh, I like a Devon Rex. That problem of breeding, do we see similar things in cats? 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 yeah historically we bred animals for purposes so lots of the dogs came for from hunting or you know they had specific jobs 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 and we are definitely starting to do that with cats as well 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 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 and sometimes that's really high isn't it there are certain dog breeds i'm thinking of one in particular where about 40 percent have a condition called chiari's malformation, where the back of the brain actually tonsillates or herniates

through the skull into the vertebrae. 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. 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 keep it nice and general. Well, in general, what has the longest lifespan?

The cats live longer or the dogs live longer? Cats live longer. Cats live longer, yeah. But there was a dog recently, it was 31 or something, wasn't it? Really? Yeah. But that's an anomaly. But yeah, typically cats are much longer lived.

It's the anger that keeps them going. Deborah, how different do you think your life would be if you didn't have those pets? You know, what do they give you? And we can talk about this with cats and dogs. We don't have to say cats versus dogs, obviously. It's that sense of what it gives you psychologically. My face went all soft then.

And it went soft because I cannot imagine life without them. I, you know, as we all are, imagine life without them I I you know 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 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 you know it's very relaxing um and and to have them look at you in that way dogs they want to please you let me just ask i wanted to in the the adversarial spirit of the show so in terms of the senses of these animals so dogs versus cats so what are the differences

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. 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. 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.

But just one more evolutionary question. I don't know if this is correct, but I read somewhere that a cat meow, and cats only meow to humans. How clever are cats? They only meow to humans. They don't meow to other cats. And someone, I read,

it's because they know that it's a bit like a baby's cry, and we will respond to it. How do they know that?'s a bit like a baby's cry and we will respond to it. How do they know that? They actually do meow to other cats, but only when they're kittens. So kittens will meow to their parents. And I think... That means my cats think I am their dad. This is what I want.

The adults also meow to their kittens, so it could be that they think you're their child. With the cat personality, it's probably more likely. It's very Schrodinger's, the whole thing. 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,

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. What does that sound like? It sounds like a purr with a high-pitched baby cry. It does fit in, doesn't it, with the slightly clichéd 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. Cat purrs are incredible as well. We don't know exactly why they do it. We think it might be self-soothing. But they also have this incredible quality of... They can heal bones and they can heal skin. They can make granulation tissue

grow 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 so and cats do heal really really well after surgery we cat. So we could strap purring cats to sick people. Because a dog would do it. If a dog could save someone and be like, I'll be there, strap me to you now. A whole bunch of cats, never. So we've covered...

So sight-wise, then, not a great deal of difference. I mean, they can see better in the dark, but... But in terms of smell, for example? 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. Let's take that one. But sort of the average dog would have maybe, say, 100 million,

whereas the average cat would have 200 million. And come back to this debate that you know dogs are really varied 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 can i ask about the chihuahua right 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. It does feel like the short man at the bar you know that kind of thing. 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?

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. Their skull is enlarged. And so they might have a constant headache, which, you know, it would make you quite angry. 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. And, you know, that's one of... I mean, basically what we're really saying is the whole supposition of this show is based on lies. Just because it looks good in the Radio Times listings. But fortunately we've waited till the end to give that away. Well, it's true.

I mean, I've gathered that we're asking simple questions such as what has the best eyesight, cats or dogs? And you rightly say, well, it depends. What's the best sense of smell? It depends. There's as much variation within dogs as there are between species in some sense. It is a ludicrous conceit.

And it's because, as Jess said earlier... I'm so sorry, by the way, everyone. I'm sorry we brought you here. And I'm sorry we've wasted your evening 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 your relationship whereas rightly or wrongly we've managed to diversify dogs into several hundred jobs and it's effectively made 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 fits into a handbag you know what that is not far off there was someone someone 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. You remember her, don't you, sis? She's in the audience tonight. Not the woman with... You'd know if she was in the audience tonight.

Really, lady? I'm going to ask you a difficult question. I'm going to force you to choose, Deborah. So because you have both, if I were to say, as an evil scientist, you can only have one, you can either have the cats or the dogs, what would you do?

I know it's an impossible question but the cats are listening that's right i know they you know they they know how to take revenge cats don't they i mean they've got sharp claws oh don't it's really hard they play really different roles in my life and i know you're you you want to know you want me to choose. That's an interesting point, though, that you said they play different roles. They do have different roles. They're very different beings. And in the same way, it's very difficult physiologically to work out the differences between them. The relationships are different, so I can't.

Brian, ask me to make up my mind. You haven't got a dog, have you? I don't have a dog, but I just wanted you to say David, make up my mind. You haven't got a dog, have you? I don't have a dog. I just wanted you to say, David, make up your mind. Go on, David, make up your mind. Cat. What's the cat wearing? Is there any evidence for better well-being

if you've got a dog rather than a cat? There's a long-term study done in Tokyo looking at the relationship between ageing and owning cats or dogs, and over 11,000 people were studied, randomised testing and everything. 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.

And physically, you don't typically walk your cat and you don't take your cat on the beach twice. So part of it is a lifestyle, I guess, as well. But maybe it's harder to tease apart that relationship. But yeah, there are, on the surface at least, quite significant differences between human health, longevity, better health, and owning dogs. Do you think that there's part of that that when you take your dogs out, you talk to people?

You know, there's a lot of communication around dogs, whereas your cats are very much in your home and they're yours. And I think communication must be a helpful thing in terms of Alzheimer's. The summary, Ben, really is that what you've basically said is cat owners are ultimately turned into zombies and will die young. So, David... How would we summarise, then? So we're where we started, really, aren't we?

This is why we're here instead. Who are our cat people? Who are the dog people? Who says, love all the animals but not as much as David? Well, we also asked our audience a question and we wanted to know what is the one animal you would like to domesticate and why? My teenage son, Oliver.

He's a disgrace. A chameleon, because it matches the colour scheme of any room. Sea otter, because they are so cute and they have pockets. Do they? Sea otters are perverts. Yeah, they really are. 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. Yeah. Otters, scariest animals I've ever treated. Really? Yeah, otters. Do they have guns in the pocket? Why, just in terms of their aggression?

They are so aggressive, yeah. Absolutely wild. We'll just go for you. What have you got, Brian? This is a good one, a sloth. So my wife doesn't think I'm the laziest thing in the house. What have you got, Deborah? I've got elephant,

so I can finally talk about the elephant in the room. I have William Barrett writing, I think this is designed to please the scientists. Amoebas, bit selly, I know. Hasn't gone well for William Barrett. To be fair, David, you didn't sell that one, did you? What's the name? Jess, have you got another one?

The sea sponge, so I could train it to give me a good scrub down in the bath. That's a bit salty. Deborah, you've got another one? My children, because I have to live with them. That's from Tim Fleet. I felt I should name them. Yeah. Ben?

Julia says a phoenix. If Dumbledore had one, then it's good enough for us. Plus, it would create some interesting new Darwin Awards. Ooh. I've got protozoa, so when I go to work, I can say, adios amoebas. I've got an elk, because I broke the hat stand. There's a lot of people with teenage children here. There's another one. Our son.

Then we wouldn't need hazmat kit for his bedroom. Anybody more? An ant, because it would help with fiddly tasks that my fingers are too fat for. 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 can only get better. Thank you very much to our panel. Jess French, Ben Garrod, David Baddiel and Deborah Meaden. Next week is very exciting because our show is going to be Brian's school reunion. 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. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for joining us. Bye-bye. APPLAUSE listening. Thank you for joining us. Bye-bye. Turned out nice again.

Hello, 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? Maybe some green tea to boost your brain power. Time's up. Or doing the plank to lower your blood pressure. How about snacking smartly? Delicious. To benefit your heart health. So to benefit your brain and body in ways you might not expect, here's just one thing you can do right now. Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change we will share stories of how they

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