I’ve been spending a bit of time on social media lately. So, the algorithms that drive these websites of torture have had plenty of training on how to antagonise me. One sure-fire way to grind my gears is to make a bold statement about what “the science says” …usually, in regard to someone’s favourite or least-favourite politician, diet, or ideology. 

No! Science doesn’t “say” anything. Science isn’t some weighty tome of certified facts that you can strike down upon your opponent’s head. Anyone who has spent any time with scientists or the literature that they generate, will tell you that scientists are adept at avoiding definitive statements. It may actually be physically impossible for scientists to write a conclusion that doesn’t include wiggle words like “may”, “might” or “could”. And there is a reason for this – as you study something, the list of things you don’t know grows rather than shrinks. No self-respecting scientist, upon discovering a population of homosexual rams, stands up on the soapbox to announce that “science says that some sheep are gay and we trust that there will be no further questions on the matter”. Although, as we will later learn, that might have been an advisable approach for the “Barnyard insights into sexuality” research group.

Science doesn’t “say” things, science “asks” questions. Science is a systematic pursuit of knowledge via an ever growing collection of questions. 

And, man, can those questions be strange. I’ve been trawling the internet for weird animal science. Let me share what I have found so far.

Can we make glow in the dark animals?

Creating fluorescent animals was all the rage in the late nineties and early noughties. The gene for the aptly named ‘Green Fluorescent Protein’ from jellyfish was spliced into pretty much anything creature that scientists could breed in the lab. Mice, cats, dogs, pigs, cattle, sheep, fish, and many other creatures could be found fluorescing under blue lights in laboratories throughout the world.

“Wait a minute”, discerning readers may say “if science is about a growing list of questions, this sounds a bit off-piste”. Bear with me. Glowing animals were not the end game for this research. Scientists were asking how genes work. They chose the green fluorescent protein gene in their early work because of its very obvious effects. If your kittens start glowing then it’s probably because you have successfully introduced a jellyfish gene into their DNA, other reasons are very unlikely. 

These days Green Fluorescent Protein and a few other visual genes are used more precisely in genetic experiments. Instead of randomly shotgunning the whole genome with glowing protein, it will be slotted in place of a particular gene that is being studied so that scientists can see where this gene is being activated and under what circumstances. 

When I worked with transgenic mice for my PhD, my friends were disappointed with my pictures of ostensibly normal mice. “Trust me”, I would say, “under the right circumstances I can make this little guy’s kidneys turn bright blue and that means we don’t know everything about the hormonal control of kidneys!”.

Of course, glow in the dark kittens did pave the way for the more practical transgenic creatures. For example the Canadian goats that produced super-strong spider’s silk in their milk at McGill University. Or, closer to home, AgResearch’s transgenic dairy cows that can lactate hard-to-produce protein medicines such as Herceptin.

Can we give farm animals false teeth?

Since the dawn of time, probably, man has wondered what would happen if we gave our geriatric farm animals dentures. This idea resurfaces and then dies on a fairly regular basis. As recently as 2016, there were patents filed on false teeth for cattle and sheep. 

Researchers have tried all sorts of ways to extend the lifetime of livestock chompers. This includes UV hardened protective coverings and glued in false teeth. You can’t fault the ambition of these researchers and their dedication to applied science. But, the line of farmers that are looking to take up backyard dentistry in their threadbare ewes is probably very short. And, I don’t think your fingers belong inside the mouth of a cow that has been studying how to escape the head bail for the past decade. But I don’t know for sure and that’s what makes this a legitimate science question.

Can we train sniffer bees?

Honey bees have a wonderful sense of smell that is on par with trained sniffer dogs. From tuberculosis to narcotics and explosives, there are plenty of “proof of concept” science papers on training sniffer bees. This isn’t as onerous as training a sniffer dog since it seems like any honey bee can be grabbed at random and trained to detect a given scent within half an hour. However, man’s best friend gets a better deal than the sniffer bee who is usually subdued inside a freezer and stuffed into some kind of restraint. Each time the target scent is presented to the honey bee, it is given sugar water. Once trained, the bees will show a pavlovian response to the scent by reaching out their tongues (I know this isn’t the right word, but I’m not guessing the plural for “proboscis”) in anticipation of the sugar water. They are then, apparently, released back into the hive to live their lives in peace. Or, I guess, until they try to eat explosives or narcotics out in the wild. The sniffer bee brigade were quick to roll out their training for covid-19 detection which provided promising results in the lab, but as far as I know, sniffer bees are not the cornerstone of anyone’s pandemic plan.

What’s going on with gay sheep?

Nothing screams “recovering academic” like sitting alone on a Saturday night watching an hour long lecture on homosexual sheep. But, “Barnyard insights into sexuality” by Dr Charles Roselli of Oregon Health and Science University is edge of your seat stuff for endocrinology. This field of science is usually dull graphs not videos of copulating rams.  Through careful observations over two years of each ram’s life, this research group identified that 8-10% of commercially bred stud rams only ever mate with other rams. The research group asked themselves if there was something anatomically different about the brains of the homosexual rams and then set about trying to answer that question. They found that, yes, there was some evidence that parts of the gay ram’s brains were more comparable to ewe’s brains than heterosexual rams. There was some evidence that this might be due to hormonal levels when the fetal brain was developing in gestation. But, in true science fashion this was largely inconclusive and each answered question led to a bunch of new questions and theories to test.

This research provides fascinating observations about how the brain works. In gay sheep and in activists. Dr Rosselli received death threats after activists erroneously stated that his research group was drilling electrodes into the brains of live sheep to find a method to reverse homosexuality. There were no electrodes or drills, and the researchers were trying to make more, not fewer, gay sheep during their quest for understanding. The researchers also found a larger population of bisexual rams that they seem to have left alone

Right, I have chewed up my word count and I didn’t get to the bit about sending cattle embryos into space, the wobbly possum project or the curiously contentious subject of cattle magnetism. Do cows prefer to align themselves with the earth’s magnetic poles? It wouldn’t be science if you weren’t left with some questions.

Originally published in Countrywide Magazine. Image by Emily Rees.