Category: Animal Studies

Illusion-schmillusion, if I fits, I sits.

June 9, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Engaged in a cupboard reorganization spree, we never anticipated it. Sujayita, my wife, was folding her purple woollen cardigan in order to stash it in a drawer. The cardigan has a woollen belt that runs through a solitary buckle at the back of the waist. The belt was on the bed, and I happened to lay it out in form of a closed circle. Whoosh! Our cat baby Widget Greything (a.k.a. Baghum, the bitty hauspanther), who seems adept at Disapparating and Apparating at will, appeared right at the center of the circle, nonchalant, in a statuesque manner.

“Whoa! It’s true, what they say about cats and geometric shapes,” I exclaimed.

“Of course. There are studies that show this too,” Sujayita said. “But not all cats, though, you know. . .”

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Of Serious Concern: Drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii in Treated Wastewater

April 15, 2016 / / 1 Comment

Currently one of the most common disease-causing bacterium in the world, Acinetobacter baumannii, for sure, is a nasty bug — an emerging nosocomial (hospital-associated) pathogen, being increasingly observed in serious conditions requiring intensive care (including ventilator-associated pneumonia, sepsis, meningitis, wound infection and urinary tract infection). Unfortunately for patients, particularly immune-suppressed ones, this bug is now known to be extensively drug resistant (XDR; resistant to most antibiotics including carbapenems, with the exception of two drugs of last resort, colistin and tigecycline), with a smaller proportion resistant to even these two (known as pan-drug resistant, PDR, which are therefore virtually untreatable with the current crop of FDA-approved medications).

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Bovine Blackguards, A Profound Potboiler

February 3, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Having been born and growing up in India, the land of the sacred cow, I am no stranger to this domesticated, quadrupedal ungulate of the subfamily Bovinae, genus Bos. It’s difficult not to have respect for an animal whose scientific name already proclaims it to be the boss, and I am culturally well-conditioned (‘well-done’, one might say) to accord an immediate reverence to this multi-faceted (not to mention, delectable) animal. After all, Gau-mata, or Cow the Mother, is an enduring socio-religious meme in India, stemming from simpler, more agrarian times — possibly a testament to the species’ intimate association with human history ever since it was domesticated about 10,500 years ago (archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that cows in Southeast Asia, Bos indicus, a different lineage from cows in Europe, were domesticated about 7000 years ago in the Harappan civilization).

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Best Friend, Indeed

July 24, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I love dogs. I grew up in households with dogs, and feel very comfortable around most dogs. And they seem to return the feeling. This has happened not only with familiar pets in the households of friends and family, but also with strange, unfamiliar dogs under otherwise trying circumstances. Through my childhood and young adulthood, I lived in an enclosed residential area which happened to serve as a sort of shelter for many random stray or abandoned, ill-nourished and emaciated street-dogs – some of whom were even survivors of abuse elsewhere. These dogs had the habit of raucously barking, for no apparent reason, at people walking by them; I remember, I used to stop, turn towards them and talk – mainly asking why they were barking at me – and this would inevitably result in the cessation of said barking, sending me my merry way. What’s more – they seemed to gradually recognize me (or perhaps my scent?) and would no longer engage in the pointless howls when I passed by.

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Inflammation, Acupuncture, and HPA axis: Faulty Science Clouds Understanding

February 18, 2015 / / 1 Comment

In the wake of my recent critique of acupuncture being touted as a remedy for allergic rhinitis, I was pointed (via a Twitter comment) towards a 2013 review in Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which purported to propose a mechanism for the much-claimed anti-inflammatory effects of acupuncture. There are several putative mechanisms, discussing all of which will make this post gargantuan. Therefore, I shall focus on the explanation involving the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.

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Lies, misrepresentation, cherry picking quotes: PeTA’s tactics to garner support against animal research

April 30, 2014 / / 17 Comments

I work with immunology of infectious disease and study host-pathogen response. My work has naturally involved a good amount of animal experimentation, especially mouse models of various infections. These mouse models are incredibly useful, because they offer a valuable window into the process of infection, pathogenesis (‘disease production’), and the kind of immune response a vertebrate mammal generates to the infection. The same broad reasoning applies to rodent models of various metabolic and endocrine diseases, as well as cancer. These models are attractive because most often these research animals are genetically homogeneous, and therefore, provide a less complex (and more manageable) environment to study the genesis, as well as treatments, of a disease – while mimicking much of the same physiological responses seen in larger and more complex animals.

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Love Smart, Delightful Elephantics? Let It Be Free

February 27, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I don’t know why, but I have always loved those gentle giants, elephants. Whether it is because of growing up in India (a large part of the Indian subcontinent is home to Elephas maximus, the Asian Elephant), or listening to the stories of Ganesha, the cute-but-powerful and mischievous god of Hindu theology, or reading about Hathi, the old and respected head of the elephant troop, who becomes a friend to Mowgli in Kipling’s The Jungle Book, my perennial favorite – I don’t know… But these gorgeous animals fascinate me. [Confession: I felt immeasurably sad watching the Oliphaunts die under attack in Lord of The Rings.]

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homeopathy replacing antibiotic? Oy vey!

November 23, 2010 / / 5 Comments

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli is a common etiological agent of enteric diseases of young piglets. E. coli attaches to intestinal villi using surface protein adhesins, and subsequently colonizes, and proliferates in, the anterior small intestine; the production of enterotoxins results in clinical disease. The diseases manifest in two ways:

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