Horse manure may help pandas tolerate cold temperatures: study | Hacker News Reader

Horse manure may help pandas tolerate cold temperatures: study

nytimes.com

39 pointsketamine__12 comments

When I take my dog on walks she likes to roll in foul smelling stuff. I think it's poo, but I'm not sure. The resulting smell on her fur is very distinct (bad, but not really a poop smell). The other day she saw (smelled?) a grease/oil stain on the sidewalk and immediately plopped down and started rolling in it.

Dogs used to be predatory pack animals, they instinctually mask their smell so that any prey downwind wouldn't be alerted to their presence.

I used to have herding dogs and they loved to roll in cow dung. One of my current dogs appears to like to roll in dead worms at the park.

I had a husky a few years ago that managed to find a dead animal and roll in the rotting guts every time we went to the beach. The worst was when she B-lined for a rancid dead seal and rolled in it. She loved it, but the smell was almost as hard as skunk spray to get out of her fur.

I had a dog that did that after having a bath.

I'm sure it was trying to cover up the bad smell of the shampoo with the natural odour of real poo (if you pardon my pun).

>The behavior may help the pandas tolerate cold temperatures because a compound in horse dung, the researchers propose in the paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may short-circuit a cellular thermostat that makes pandas sensitive to chill.

>A chemical analysis of the dung revealed two short-lived compounds called sesquiterpenes, which are commonly found in plants. When applied onto the paws and fur of laboratory mice, the sesquiterpenes rendered the rodents indifferent to frigid temperatures or a chemically induced chill.

"It’s still unclear how ubiquitous this behavior is among pandas" ... "And if the idea pans out, it would be a bit baffling, Dr. McShea said. Pandas, like other bears, have very thick coats of fur. “They are adapted for cold weather already,” he said."

Just because they're biologically adapted doesn't mean they're not uncomfortable. The hypothesis is that it makes them feel warmer, similar to how drinking alcohol makes you feel warmer in a blizzard. I imagine the sensation (if true) might be maladaptive to the extent they forgo other behaviors that protect them from the cold, but humans have gotten really far tending to our physical pleasure while often ignoring their unhealthy causes.

EDIT: A better example: by all accounts (laymen, primatologists) wild chimpanzees apparently hate rain. If chimpanzees had the choice, all things being equal (e.g. safety, access to food, mobility, etc) a chimpanzee would always choose to sleep under a roof in rainy weather. Yet as far as we can tell they're otherwise well adapted to the rain, including to sleeping in the rain.

My girlfriend suggested that it's the panda's kind of sham-poo.

Giant pandas are our worst charismatic megafauna.

> “I don’t know, though,” he added. “I’ve never rolled in horse manure.”

Apparently they researched this question for a decade. Maybe they could have saved some time if the researchers smeared themselves to see what the effect is.

Thinking about it this does feel a bit silly on their part. They're probably spending the better part of the decade to understand why it works, but its odd that they wouldn't have verified, or attempted to verify, that it works at all (even if humans != pandas)

And so much cheaper than a Canada Goose parka!

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