Yoshi the cat and genetically engineered wolves

This week’s Caturday Cat Fact

Did you know that there’s an extinct genus of sabre-toothed cat called Yoshi? Originally described as Machairodus from a Greek specimen in 1862 by Hensel, it was later moved into the genus Pikermia, then back into Machairodus. In 2015, Spassov and Geraads erected the new genus Yoshi, with the following diagnosis:

A felid intermediate in size between a lynx, Lynx Kerr, 1772, and a cheetah, Acinonyx Brookes, 1828. The skull is short, wide (rather cat-like in proportions), with a broad frontal area and a deep face; profile vaulted to strongly vaulted in the frontal region; rostral part short and broad; zygomatic processes of the frontal bones short and rounded; postorbital constriction weak, area of postorbital constriction short; frontal sinuses invading the whole bone, from the nasals to the parietals, as well as the zygomatic processes of the frontals; sagittal crest weak; median part of the nuchal crest concave in dorsal view. Upper canines short, without crenulations but with an anterior keel located mesially rather than mesio-lingually, lingual surface almost flat or slightly convex, buccal one slightly flattened to convex. P3 and p3 without distinct mesial accessory cuspid, m1 with distinct talonid. Symphysis of the mandible not elevated, without any mandibular flange.

The genus name, Yoshi comes from the name of Spassov’s “favorite cat.”

Superficially, the skull looks remarkably like that of a cheetah: cheetahs are known for their vaulted skulls, meaning they are really strongly convex on the top, or dorsal, side. See below a picture of the holotype of Yoshi garevskii from Spassov & Geraads (2015):

Spassov & Geraads did a phylogenetic analysis that recovered Yoshi as a member of the Felinae, closely related to the cheetah, but a 2022 analysis by Jiangzuo et al. recovered Yoshi as a sabre-toothed cat (Machairodontinae) within the tribe Metailurini.

Specimens assigned to the genus Yoshi have been found in South Africa, Chad, Iran, Greece, Spain, Ukraine, and China.

What am I working on?

Our Isomet has been looked at by the machine shop at uOttawa, and is back at the museum! I brought my defatted wolf bones to the museum and glued some broken bits together. Next step is to embed those specimens in resin before I cut them. I will also need to finish the first cuts on the rest of the sample that I didn’t get to before breaking the blade.

The big news this week was Colossal Biosciences’ announcement of the supposed “de-extinction” of the dire wolf. It’s not really that, and there are a lot of ethical concerns. You can see my deep dive into Colossal’s website and press materials in a blog post on this site. I also gave some comments to Loraine Centeno at Metroland.A bunch of Colossal scientists and collaborators released their genomic analysis of the dire wolf (annoyingly, none of the technical stuff that came after the genomics) on Friday. I haven’t read that yet because it came out at 8pm and I wanted to watch TV, but there’s a great Bluesky thread by Dr. Jess McLaughlin.

Cat updates

Cola’s bloodwork came back normal. The next step is deciding if I want to get her looked at by a neurologist, which will be very expensive. She hasn’t had any more seizures or anything else unusual since last Friday so I will probably wait a bit before deciding. Hopefully it was just a one-off. She has an appointment with the dermatologist on Monday to check on the progression of her itchiness (likely allergies). She’s been doing great, except for a little set back when I was away a few weeks ago that seems to be resolved now!

Learning

To help get Momo acclimated to Cola, I am working my way through The Science of Feline Introductions, a self-paced course at the IAABC Foundation. It is taught by Patience Fisher, a cat behaviour consultant in Pittsburgh.

Today, I attended the Community Cat Podcast’s Online Behaviour Day Conference. It was super great, and two of the sessions were relevant to my issues with Momo & Cola, so that’s awesome!

I am still hoping to catch up on readings so I can start tuning into the Data Science Learning Community’s book club for the book An Introduction to Statistical Learning with Applications in Python. I have some, but very limited, experience in python, and I’m looking forward to taking some time to learning it!

Reading

I finished reading Tiny Experiments! I also read Jacobin’s The ABCs of Socialism this past week, and have started Tanya Talaga’s All Our Relations, which was the Massey Lecture in 2018.

I am also reading John Bradshaw’s The Behaviour of the Domestic Cat, which you can probably guess inspired my #CaturdayCatFact for today!

To see more of what I’m reading, you can check out my profile on The Storygraph or check out this year’s 365 papers list on my Codeberg page.

Listening

I like listening to really chill, uncomplicated novels as audiobooks when I go to sleep. I used to love the Warrior series by Erin Hunter as a kid, so I’m revisiting it as my bedtime stories. I am currently listening to Book 4 of the Dawn of the Clans series, The Blazing Star

Watching

I’ve been watching Hell’s Kitchen as background while I do things around the house. I’ve never watched it aside from stray episodes here and there, so I started at the beginning and I’m now on season 10. I don’t really like that it glorifies toxic work environments in professional kitchens, but it does make for good TV.

I’m also keeping up on the current seasons of Rupaul’s Drag Race and Top Chef - the latter is in Canada this year!