The Science Pawdcast

Episode 4 Season 7: Probiotics, Martian Soil, and a Dog Eats 44 Foreign Objects

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 4

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Energized by scientific discoveries about probiotics and ancient Mars, we share insights into pet health, including urgent safety tips for pet owners. Today brings stories of microbiology—with probiotic sugars—and pet news worth reflecting on.
• Discussion on probiotics and sugar cravings
• Key takeaways from the Mars studies revealing ancient water sources
• Heartfelt pet care tips following a dog’s medical emergency
• Insights on monitoring signs of intestinal distress in pets
• Exploration of the connections between Mars’ past and life beyond Earth

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Speaker 1:

Hello science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zukoski. And I'm Chris Zukoski, we're the pet parents of Bunsen, beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.

Speaker 2:

The science animals on social media.

Speaker 1:

If you love science.

Speaker 2:

And you love pets.

Speaker 1:

You've come to the right spot, so put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail.

Speaker 1:

This is the Science Podcast. Hi and welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode four of season seven.

Speaker 1:

Here on the farm we have had some balmy temperatures, warm like shorts weather. Okay, maybe not like shorts weather for the average person, but when it gets up to about six above Celsius it is so smoking hot in February. People wearing shorts and flip-flops and Crocs and walking in the snow barefoot I'm not actually exaggerating. Chris was walking in the snow barefoot, adam was walking in the snow barefoot and I have just been wearing shorts outside because after you go through minus 25 and minus 30 and it warms up to six degrees Celsius, you might as well live in a sauna. The snow is melting rapidly but, to be fair, there's just so much of it. It's not going to go for a while. We're in for some colder temperatures coming up, so it's just a bit of a reprieve.

Speaker 1:

On the animal front, bunsen continues to improve. He's not at 100 percent, but every day he's walking stronger, with less tippy tapping and Bernoulli's loving play school. Beaker is just a good girl self. And Ginger wants to escape and Ginger wants to escape, so we've been taking her in the cat backpack. Okay, what's on the show? This week In science news we actually have two science articles. One is about probiotic yogurt and sugar. Okay, so that's one, and the other article is about some new findings about ancient weather on Mars, which is really cool. In pet science, we break down that viral story of a Bernice Mountain Dog that ate 44 foreign objects. We got tagged in it so many times because, of course, bernoulli's a bit chewy, but there's some good pet science and kind of like things to watch out for in that section. Okay, let's get on with the show, because there's no time like science time. All right, this week in science news, chris, we're going to talk about sugar.

Speaker 2:

You love sugar, you love it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, okay, you got me. I love I have a sweet tooth, for sure.

Speaker 2:

You do. You really like sugar All the treats and at Christmas time your family does baking.

Speaker 1:

It's deadly.

Speaker 2:

It's deadly. It is deadly. Yeah, I always try and avoid the sugary cookies and all the snacks, but then once I start having one, then I just can't stop.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's some sweets I like and some sweets I don't. But I do have a sweet tooth for sure I like. I don't know. I guess my family that was big. We had lots of treats and sweets Not necessarily good for your health or for your weight. So this news item that we're looking at is a bit of a commentary on probiotics. There's lots of claims out there that probiotics may help with sugar cravings. So the song of the sugar gets knocked down with proper probiotic use A lot of probiotics that you see on in yogurts and in capsule form. The advertised benefits, such as they improve your gut health, they give you more energy and they reduce your sugar cravings. So the question is if you take a daily probiotic dose, will that really reduce your cravings for sweets?

Speaker 2:

I don't know if that's true, because they've done a lot of studies in mice which suggest a link between gut bacteria and sugar consumption, which suggest a link between gut bacteria and sugar consumption. Mice physiology is not the same as human physiology, so gut health in mice is quite different than gut health in humans.

Speaker 1:

So if it's good for the mouse, is it good for the human? Here we move to nature, microbiology and a study from China that identified a bacteria and molecule affecting sugar preference. The bacteria was a bacterioid Volgatus. And a study from China that identified a bacteria and molecule affecting sugar preference. The bacteria was a bacterioid Vulgatus and the molecule was actually vitamin B5, which the bacterium produces. Mice lacking a sensor in their gut had reduced levels of this bacteria and thus vitamin B, leading to an increased amount of sugar that the mice wanted to eat. And if they gave the mice that bacteria and vitamin B, it lowered their sugar intake.

Speaker 2:

So, interestingly, the vitamin B5, and I don't want to say the name incorrectly, but I'm going to try pantothenate that stimulates the GLP-1 production. Now, if you're familiar with the GLP-1, that is, it gained a lot of attention recently because drugs like Ozempic mimic its effect, which controls the blood sugar and weight. It controls your blood sugar, which then reduces your cravings and impacts your weight. The GLP-1 triggers the production of a protein which influences the brain's appetite control center, and the exact role of that protein, or FGF2-1, in the hypothalamus is unclear, but it does appear to reduce the desire for sugar unclear, but it does appear to reduce the desire for sugar.

Speaker 1:

So those things like Ozempic, they mimic that GLP-1, which, in this pathway, reduces your craving for sugar. Am I getting that right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it stabilizes your blood sugar, which affects your cravings for that sugar.

Speaker 1:

That sugar and in the mice model, the vitamin B5 stimulated GLP-1. Okay, so this seems really rosy, but we have to put our skeptical hats on. There's a couple limits to just deciding to take this bacteria every day so it stimulates the GLP-1 in your body. This only reduced sugar cravings in mice lacking that receptor, meaning it might not work. In humans who have an intact receptor, there's concerns that this bacteria might contribute to intestinal inflammation. You might just get intestinal trouble from taking this bacteria. Furthermore, the biggest challenge with all of this is that no human studies have confirmed these effects in humans, and you mentioned before, chris, that what works in mice with their physiology doesn't necessarily transfer to humans.

Speaker 2:

That's right. But then, additionally, companies are not required to test probiotics specifically in humans before marketing them, to test probiotics specifically in humans before marketing them, so that it's an untested field where they can make claims because they're not regulated by the FDA. Because if they're making a dietary supplement, that's not covered by the Food and Drug Administration, so they can market those probiotics freely as long as they don't make the claim that they treat disease.

Speaker 1:

So they can allude to things that it does reduce sugar cravings, but they can't say it treats obesity, for example.

Speaker 2:

Exactly so it's a loophole. And evidence supporting their claims often comes from animal studies which don't necessarily reflect what would happen in a human. So it's a bit of a circle, right.

Speaker 1:

So the conclusion I think is perhaps with regulation of your appetite for sugar is probiotics might be a little overhyped. Remember, many probiotic products don't even contain the bacteria we're talking about. And if they do help, your individual responses will probably vary quite a bit based on your own biology. So keep your skeptical hat on. They may not help with sugar cravings, but obviously if they are helping you that's great, I guess. Don't go into it thinking that they will.

Speaker 2:

But you can still enjoy yogurt, because calcium is good for your bones.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's right. Okay, that's our first science article for this week In science news round two. Chris, let's talk about Mars.

Speaker 2:

Sailor Moon, sailor Mars. Every time I think about Mars, every time I think about mars, every time I think about it, I think about sailor moon, sailor mars, sailor mercury yeah yeah I just think of the martian movie yeah, we were in a session about the artemis yeah and the presenter loves space, lives and breathes space and is so excited about mars. And that's when she mentioned that she watches the March Martian and I said I have a story for you. Every time the Martian comes on, Jason stops what he's doing and watches it.

Speaker 1:

So where this the tie-in is with our study. I always love covering space stuff. I love space too. I love Mars. Mars is really cool. Well, the conclusion from the study is that Mars's red color may not be from what we thought, and ancient Mars is thought to be warm, or warmer and wet. Yeah, and the chemistry may prove it wasn't warmer. It was probably really cold in order to get that red hue and the potential coastline.

Speaker 2:

So there's actually two new studies that explore Mars' past and its interaction with liquid water. In these studies, scientists have identified a possible ancient beach in Mars' northern hemisphere ancient beach in Mars's northern hemisphere as well as a water-containing mineral, which you alluded to, but it's called ferrihydrite. That may explain the planet's red hue. So they were mistaken on what they thought caused the iron oxide. So these discoveries of the possible ancient beach and the water containing mineral baria hydrate offer new insights into Mars's climate and liquid water history over 3 billion years ago.

Speaker 1:

So there's always been a debate, as long as I can remember, that Mars was cold and dry or warm and wet, and these studies that we're talking about was that early Mars was wet, not dry, and probably really cold. So this may help settle that debate. The research that we're going to be talking about, the data, comes from China's Zhurong rover, which landed on Mars in 2021 and investigated this theory. It used ground penetrating radar to detect subsurface structures. It found a sloping region, and that sloping region resembles the sloping on Earth's beaches. Also, it found pebble-to-sand-sized sediments, which is common in coastal regions. This was all published in late February, like only a couple days ago, and this is the evidence that there was this big beach. Probably you wouldn't want to swim in it, it would be really cold, but it's not there anymore, it's all dried up.

Speaker 2:

Do you think it would have been colder than the North Sea?

Speaker 1:

Oh, I don't know. I've swam in the Pacific Ocean off of Vancouver Island. That's chilly. Now there's some other things that they were able to rule out, obviously because when you find stuff like this, you have to debate what it could be.

Speaker 2:

The scientists definitely considered alternative explanations for that sloped feature that they found, and one of those would have been windblown sand dunes, but the shape doesn't match the Martian dunes that they can already see. They also thought maybe it could be river deposits, but that's unlikely given the sediment distribution. And lastly, they considered lava flows, but the structure lacks volcanic characteristics, so the coastal-like sediment deposits support the ancient shoreline hypothesis.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you're somebody who loves thinking about life outside of Earth, there are huge implications here for the habibility of Mars. In the past, the site was a shoreline and Mars did have a lot of water. This is the perfect location for life to develop, because on Earth the earliest life forms developed along our shorelines. Now, this doesn't confirm there was like full-size oceans like there was on Earth, but it does support the idea of large bodies of water in Mars' ancient past. Very exciting.

Speaker 2:

That is very exciting.

Speaker 1:

Now this leads us into the second part, which is the debate on what makes Mars red. I have actually taught kids wrong, if this turns out to be true, because I taught kids the reason that Mars is red. It comes from hematite, which is an iron oxide that doesn't contain water, and the hematite doesn't match the light absorption properties of Martian dust. This was published again only a few days ago in Nature Communications.

Speaker 2:

So a team of scientists conducted light absorption and reflection tests on minerals and compared that to the Martian dust samples, and they actually discovered that a mixture of fairy hydrate and basalt best matched Mars' surface color. So fairy hydrate is a water-containing iron oxide and basalt is a volcanic rock. And to get the best color match one part fairy hydrate to two parts basalt.

Speaker 1:

So all of this fairy hydrate suggests cold, wet conditions on ancient Mars. Unlike hematite, fairy hydrate requires water to form. This suggests that Mars had liquid water when its red surface formed. Very exciting. And in order to stabilize fairy hydrate on Mars like what we see today, ancient Mars had to be cold and acidic. Ferrihydrate on Earth is unstable and will turn eventually into more stable types of iron compounds like hematite. But on early Mars these cold, acidic conditions probably preserved it until the surface water disappeared. Very cool.

Speaker 2:

So the bigger picture. Combining the two studies, we have a new vision of early Mars. Mars had large bodies of liquid water, you know what, potentially even seas or oceans, and the planet experienced a cold to very cold climate.

Speaker 1:

That's cool. I feel bad because I did literally this year. It's in whatever like what we've known why Mars is red. I literally told the kids this year it was hematite.

Speaker 2:

That's okay. You can just go back and say you know what A new scientific discovery may have proved me wrong.

Speaker 1:

We're always learning more about space, and that's what makes space so exciting. That's science news for this week weekend. Pet science and pet news. Oh man, we think Bernoulli's bad, but there's another dog out there that is 44 times worse, chris.

Speaker 2:

Bernoulli eats everything non-edible. That's not true. We are very diligent and we watch him like a hawk. But his latest is picking up hangers off the floor. And we have plastic hangers and I'm going to be honest with everybody, I can't actually buy these hangers anymore. There is nowhere on the planet that has the hangers I like. So I really very sad that Bernoullilli has taken himself, taken it upon himself to chew them. Error for me is having them on the floor by the clothes pile the laundry basket yeah, we there.

Speaker 1:

He takes them out of the laundry basket, but it doesn't matter, we put something away from him.

Speaker 2:

We baby proof and he yoinks it out I don't know he's adam came home with a bag of socks.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what he was doing with those socks like a big bag of socks and I got busy this morning and brunelli shredded the socks into the bag. He shredded the bag and there were socks everywhere he loves plastic, I don't know I know, and we got tagged this.

Speaker 1:

This is why we're doing this is because this literally happened today. Bernoulli shredded that bag full of socks and then we got tagged with this incredible story of a Bernice Mountain Dog that survived, thank God, because this dog ate 44 socks thank god because this dog ate 44 socks.

Speaker 2:

Jason. The seven month old bernice mountain dog named luna actually had quite a few foreign objects, dozens of foreign objects, leading to the emergency operation to have them out it wasn't 44 socks, it was 24 socks and a whole other bunch of other crap.

Speaker 1:

I'm just super glad she survived. So why would this maybe be pet science or pet news? There are symptoms that your dog will have if they have blockages or they're full of foreign objects.

Speaker 2:

Owners actually noticed the symptoms, which prompted them to seek emergency care. What they noticed was frequent vomiting, luna having a firm, swollen, distended abdomen or stomach, and she was in discomfort and distress.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's similar to bloat, which makes it really scary. They might be very tired or pacing and full of discomfort. If you touch their belly they could be in pain. They might have a weird hunched posture or reluctance to move. If it gets serious, they'll die right, they'll go into shock and they'll die. So this is a very serious situation and you need to seek emergency care immediately.

Speaker 2:

So do you want to know what was in Luna's stomach?

Speaker 1:

Go ahead, it's wild 24 socks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a small onesie which is a baby shirt, like baby clothing. She had a hair scrunchie, two hair ties, a shoe insert like a Dr Scholl's shoe insert and 15 miscellaneous cloth pieces. Wow.

Speaker 1:

What were they?

Speaker 2:

They were miscellaneous cloth pieces. I'm not sure they might have been pre-chewed up socks that were in varying stages of digestion.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

The x-rays taken before the surgery revealed a mass of these objects inside Luna's stomach.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God. Now, I did mention Luna survived. She underwent two huge surgical procedures, like if Bunsen did have bloat. That's a serious medical procedure. I think they gave us like a coin flip if you would survive, right, if it was bloat, it's like a 50-50 thing. It wasn't good, no. So Luna survived, thank goodness. She had gastronomy, which is an incision in the stomach to remove all of that stuff, and entomology, which is a procedure to remove the onesie that had got all the way into her intestine. Oof, that's horrible, and this is coming to us from Corona, california, and the veterinarian team was a bunch of heroes. They did the surgery and Luna survived.

Speaker 2:

Now, jason, I didn't tell you about a co-worker's dog. So she has a puppy and he's just over a year and she has two kids, but her daughter is in dance, which you wear like these little clothes, like the dance and skating. So very similar, right, the outfits are minimal.

Speaker 1:

And then she wears leotard onesies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, leotard onesies, but then also tights. And she had left the leotard onesie, which is astronomically expensive, like $500. And the leotards, like the tights, on the floor, and half of the leg of a tight was gone. Oh man, where did it go? My coworker had to take her dog to the vet, and this is a bit of a gross part. So if you don't want to listen you can fast forward. But the vet put their finger into the dog's butt and said I can feel it, I can feel it, I just can't get it. I just can't get it. And so they were talking about what are we going to do? Are we going for surgery? What's going to happen? And the vet said, oh, just give me. I can feel it, so just give me one more chance. And so he did some palpitations of the stomach area and then he ended up getting it and he pulled it out of the dog's butt. God, and my co-worker said that was the worst smell that she has ever smelled in her entire life.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, three years was it probably three years ago, two or three years ago, we more than that. Three years ago, when Beaker was little, we would get from there. There's like a local company that made raw food that we would get for Bunsen and Beaker, and they had cow knuckles. You remember those that Bunsen loved to chew.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

And we thought nothing of it and he ate a whole cow knuckle. We definitely supervised bunsen. And in the blink of an eye you get busy with something and 10 minutes, 20 minutes go by and he ate the whole thing and that caused a blockage.

Speaker 1:

But when we took him in they we had x-rays right and they're like oh yeah he's got a piece of bone stuck in his intestine but the vet was pretty sure he would pass it because of the size. Yeah, and he passed it. So, poor Bunsen, at two o'clock in the morning because he was uncomfortable.

Speaker 2:

So uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

He was really uncomfortable and he went. I took him out to poop. I was there, that chunk of bone the size of a a golf ball shot out of his butt like a rocket. Yeah, like you, like you like a potato cannon it wasn't smelly, but there was a bunch of other stuff that came out right after that that was a little backed up. Hippo spray, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Hippos poop and they turn their tail and it's looked like a windmill of poop.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but he didn't need surgery and, as the vet thought, bunsen did pass it. It was a scary 12 hours because he was really uncomfortable and puking and couldn't poop. But there you go, there you go. There's definitely some tips. So if you're listening and you've got a little dog, or you got a dog, what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen?

Speaker 2:

There are things that you can do to prevent this. Keep your small objects like socks and hair ties and other non-food items out of reach. Supervise their chewing habits and provide safe, appropriate chew toys.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and their chewing habits, and provide safe, appropriate chew toys. And then monitor what. No more cow knuckles for Bunsen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we didn't do any more. Yeah, no, there were absolutely no more cow knuckles for Bunsen. And then this is what we need to do with Bernoulli is monitor Bernoulli and other dogs that are prone to eating non-food items, which is a condition known as pica. So I don't know if he has that or if he condition known as pica.

Speaker 1:

So I don't know if he has that or if he just likes plastic pica, not sure he did puke the other day and there was a couple bits of plastic in the puke.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

But most of it was like crap. He ate outside the grass and dirt, so it was on him really, but beakers puked before by eating grass.

Speaker 2:

But you know what Luna's case is a reminder that intestinal blockages can happen suddenly and require urgent medical attention. If a dog shows any symptoms, early intervention is important. So things like behavioral changes, like being lethargic and weak or restless, or pacing, whining, that hunch posture that you were talking about, yeah, that's what happened with Bunsen.

Speaker 1:

He could get some out, but not all.

Speaker 2:

Some but not all. And then it shot out of his butt like a potato cannon.

Speaker 1:

I'll leave this up to our wonderful listeners. Chris, you can Google image this, and it's in the story of the vet posing with all 44 items on a table after they remove them from the dog. It's, you know how police pose with when they've busted criminals with the drugs and the guns.

Speaker 2:

I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Oh me, yeah, that's what it's like, so you can Google image that yourself.

Speaker 2:

Yes, self, yes, but what you can't Google image is my colleague's dog, leotard tight, because he took that tight out of the dog's butt and then it smelled so bad he's usually I like to examine it, but this is so vile it's going away.

Speaker 1:

That's pet news for this week. That's it for this week show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to us. And a special shout out to the top dogs coming back week after week to listen to us. And a special shout out to the Top Dogs, our top tier of the Paw Pack, our Patreon-like community. We'd love your support. So check out the show notes. One perk as Chris reads out your name if you're a Top Dog, chris, take it away.

Speaker 2:

Amelia Fettig Rhi Oda, carol Pano, jennifer Challen, linnea Janik Karen Chronister, vicky Otero, christy Walker, sarah Bram, wendy Diane Mason and Luke Helen Chin, elizabeth Bourgeois, marianne McNally, catherine Jordan, shelley Smith, laura Steffensen, tracy Leinbach, anne Uchida, heather Burback, kelly Tracy Halbert, ben Rather, debbie Anderson, sandy Breimer, mary Rader, bianca Hyde, andrew Lin, brenda Clark, brianne Hawes, peggy McKeel, holly Burge, kathy Zerker, susan Wagner and Liz Button.

Speaker 1:

For science, empathy and cuteness.