I decided it would be fun to add a Silly Sundays post to my new blog every week and this week I looked at the weird case of a cat that could "predict" death.
I took a rather silly view of why the cat could predict death but in a few articles there were some what i thought reasonably plausible ideas as to how the cat did it. They included the idea that the cat could smell something coming from the dying person or it was simply mimickng what the staff did before a patient died. I just wondered if there was actually a good solid scientific reason as to why a cat could do this or is it just good ol bullshittery ??? :?
Not too sure about 'death' specifically, however there have been anecdotal reports of dogs identifying cancer. There are now efforts to develop electronic sniffers for certain types of cancers.
Also this:
PLoS One. 2010 Jan 27;5(1):e8819.
Urinary volatile compounds as biomarkers for lung cancer: a proof of principle study using odor signatures in mouse models of lung cancer.
Matsumura K, Opiekun M, Oka H, Vachani A, Albelda SM, Yamazaki K, Beauchamp GK.
Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America.
A potential strategy for diagnosing lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer-related death, is to identify metabolic signatures (biomarkers) of the disease. Although data supports the hypothesis that volatile compounds can be detected in the breath of lung cancer patients by the sense of smell or through bioanalytical techniques, analysis of breath samples is cumbersome and technically challenging, thus limiting its applicability. The hypothesis explored here is that variations in small molecular weight volatile organic compounds ("odorants") in urine could be used as biomarkers for lung cancer. To demonstrate the presence and chemical structures of volatile biomarkers, we studied mouse olfactory-guided behavior and metabolomics of volatile constituents of urine. Sensor mice could be trained to discriminate between odors of mice with and without experimental tumors demonstrating that volatile odorants are sufficient to identify tumor-bearing mice. Consistent with this result, chemical analyses of urinary volatiles demonstrated that the amounts of several compounds were dramatically different between tumor and control mice. Using principal component analysis and supervised machine-learning, we accurately discriminated between tumor and control groups, a result that was cross validated with novel test groups. Although there were shared differences between experimental and control animals in the two tumor models, we also found chemical differences between these models, demonstrating tumor-based specificity. The success of these studies provides a novel proof-of-principle demonstration of lung tumor diagnosis through urinary volatile odorants. This work should provide an impetus for similar searches for volatile diagnostic biomarkers in the urine of human lung cancer patients.
If people only die when the cat's sitting on them, perhaps a little pepper sprinkled on the cover would prolong life?
There was a 'House' episode' on the topic last year.
A cat in nursing home would sit on a person's bed, and the person would die within a few hours.
House's explanation: The people who died had a slight fever, and their temperature rose slightly. Their bed was warmer. Cat went where it was warmer.
House is my second favourite TV atheist. My favourite is Dr Temperance Brenn who is not only brilliant,but after whose persons I lust deeply.
If you could reason with religious people there wouldn't be any (Greg House)
http://www.politedissent.com/archives/2245Originally Posted by Drop Bear
A fever or if the nurses are using a heating blanket - like I said in the other thread.
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